a decemberists dream (a rarity, i assure you)

I very rarely remember my dreams, aside from trivial details, like dreams wherein I can’t find the remote control for the TV.  This dream, however, actually lasted a while and was pretty funny.  So, as an homage to Todd’s blog o’ dreams, here’s mine.  It, surprisingly, involves the Decemberists1.

So I’m at a D’s concert, obviously, in a big, wide outdoor arena.  I was with friends, but I don’t remember who they were.  We got front row but way left, all the way to the edge. Yet, Colin was still somewhat center of me. Oh well.

They come out, people cheer. They start to play Hazards, but the song is all gibberish (in my head). Somehow my POV switches to a person’s video camera, which Colin has noticed and begins to sing to. It’s kind of fisheye-y.  As he sings, you can see he’s a little out of it, and he starts forgetting lyrics.  Then, out of the blue, he stops playing.  The whole band stops.  He says, “I’m sorry, but something’s not right” to the audience, then he and the other D’s proceed to pull Jenny’s organ station and Moen’s drums closer to the stage, basically putting the whole thing closer to the audience.  We erupt in cheers.

Then they start playing a really, really weird, psychedelic version of Hazards.  Everyone’s like, cool, but it’s barely audible through the speakers. So everyone starts shouting, “Turn it up!” and pointing their index fingers to the sky2. There might’ve been booing involved, I don’t remember; what I do remember is Nate Query throwing his bass down, doing one of those loud whistles where you put your fingers in the corners of your mouth, and shouting, “You know what? FUCK YOU” and then leaving the stage.  I remember him wearing a weird black barbershop quartet hat, but it was black and had a lot of shiny jangly jangles on it — something, I assume, John Popper would wear.  Anyway, the rest of the band follows him offstage.

At this point I’m confused.  I turn and notice that my friends — and mostly everyone else — has left, marching in a giant swarm of humanoids towards the ticket office to demand a refund.  I hurry after them.  But about halfway there, I turn and look at the stage — and notice the D’s going back onstage and grabbing their instruments to play.  So I shout, “Looks like they’re coming back!” and suddenly there’s a stampede as everyone rushes back to the stage.  I’m running my ass off, thinking I’m gonna lose my sweet spot!

As I’m running I pass by a giant, gnarled foot, draped in a blue and yellow sundress (flowery pattern, I think) down to the ankle. I’m supposing this belonged to some giant woman, but I can’t confirm this because my alarm clock went off and woke me up.  And that’s my dream.

  1. No sarcasm there — despite my /orate friends dreaming about the D’s to a great extent, I think this is the second dream I’ve had about them, and the first in such detail.
  2. In much the same way musicians do to the sound guy — point to a monitor, then point up.

weird dream night

Last night I had some weird dreams. I think it was because I was hopped up on candy and soda (I know, I’m such a party animal these days). The only one I remember clearly was about me chasing down my brother’s dog Bitamus (a giant Great Dane) through my old neighborhood, because some people wanted to kill him? Capture him? I don’t know. Anyway, at some point I found out that Bitamus was actually a hologram or something, and was inside a laptop. So I had to protect the laptop. And then I meet the bad guy, right in my old front yard. He’s got a gun and is about to shoot me. At this point my neighbor, Joan, mother of my two earliest friends, Mark and Doug, walks slowly down her driveway, smoking a cigarette. She doesn’t seem to notice that I’m in dire straits, which is somewhat frustrating. I don’t know how, but I manage to get behind the bad guy, but I’m on the ground, and he’s standing over me with his back to my face. So I, not shitting you, grab the guy’s ankles and kick him in the taint as hard as I can, multiple times, while shouting at Joan to for the love of god call the police, and the guy starts shooting at me from behind (why he didn’t just shoot my leg or something, I’ll never know). And that’s when I wake up. At 3am, full of fighting energy.

So sue me if I slept in today.