Dream Journal, 10/26/2019

Sometimes I get into these one-night cycles of constantly having dreams each time I fall asleep, wake up, fall asleep and dream again. It isn’t good sleep at all, but quite interesting to record – especially the last dream featured here from the early morning of 10/26.

First of Three: I think this was the first dream, either that or it’s the second one. Thom Yorke of Radiohead is playing drums and singing in some unspecified apartment living room, and my friend from high school Winston Kung is there enjoying it too. Then I am in a dorm and am having a night terror (in the dream), my body is contorted and I call for help down a hallway where my father opens the door to another dorm adorned with a banker’s lamp I used to use in college and a calendar similar to something I had in the past.

Then it’s a bit fuzzy – something about clownfish, an awards ceremony/hall of fame, the Radiohead song Creep and Thom Yorke’s solo career.

Analysis: I have been listening to a lot of Radiohead and a bit of Thom Yorke’s solo work, which I did not find very interesting. Winston and I shared a liking to Radiohead’s song paranoid android from the OK Computer album which is probably why he’s there. Sometimes I have nightmares/night terrors/paralysis within dreams and always try to reach out to someone for help but there’s never anyone there. And then when there is someone there I don’t get the night terrors.

Second of Three: I forgot the first part of the dream but there is a platform high above the sky and rain, and there are people from Georgetown who are walking around trying to accomplish some tasks on the platform. I have to come down from the platform which is way up in the sky on a slippery ladder with other people coming up and down, so I go slow. My mother is encouraging me and I think about my grandfather for support. There is no rung at the bottom of the ladder so I try to breathe deep and I wake up.

Now – sometimes this can happen – I re-enter the dream as/in a plane, and fly across a map like the maps in the commercial airliner entertainment consoles. There are green, blue and orange markers and routes. There’s a lot of traffic in the sky and I’m trying to fly back in the direction of the ladder but I lose speed and land somewhere away from it, and turn into a jeep – the whole thing now looks like a comic book – and I’m frustrated that I can’t get back to where I was.

Analysis: Ok, I’m starting to think I have a subconscious fear of heights, because these types of fear to fall dreams occur a lot. The map just shows that I fly too often. There is a Tintin comic I’ve read called Land of Black Gold or something that features a jeep in the desert as well.

Third of Three: This is a wild one, and dreams like this are quite concerning since I feel like they are using parts of the brain that are normally subconscious, and for good reason. I see a lot of languages in bright pink made-up/random script overlaid over commercials, essentially the script/letters are randomly generated from what I think the languages look like, or the prototypical shape of the languages’ written form.

I see what looks like closing credits with “Arabic,” “Korean,” others and other languages, scenes of deserts, stones. The Korean “commercial” is a travel/airline commercial featuring an airliner and a woman garbed in traditional clothing flying in front of the plane – basically one of those celestial women. Again, a lot of squiggly lines, accent marks, curves, shapes – it’s like Chinese characters but exaggerated, ending credits, text overlays etc.

Analysis: The problem with these dreams is that I recognize my brain is in a state other than the one it was in in the previous two dreams. A “manic” state, so to speak, which I find to be slightly dangerous or, at least, similar to the night terror/sleep paralysis states that I experience otherwise. Or maybe I’m just overthinking things.

Philbert’s Phables Shanghai Edition – III – Musings on Music

As the dust settles and the “new car smell” begins to fade after my arrival in China nearly two months ago, the reality of living here for two or more years starts to set in.

I think this is a good thing, as it allows me to focus on my work and my writing.

On the other hand, the end of the honeymoon period came about rather quickly and with some unnecessary consternation. It is easy for me to live in Shanghai, but to enjoy it is a different story.

I have come to frequent a jazz bar in the neighborhood where I live and work called Wooden Box. It is pretty much that, a single-story wood-enclosed structure with a small area for live performances. The first night I went there the remnants of a typhoon were blowing through the city, so the light rain and the wind contrasted with the warmth and jazz within the venue. I even went up and sang a rendition of the song Night and Day a la Frank Sinatra to a crowd of about five people. The intimate venue allowed me to speak with and interact with the musicians as well.

The jazz bassist Danny spoke of how it was becoming difficult for foreign musicians to stay in the country due to tightening restrictions on visas. For whatever reason, we also discussed where everyone was on 9/11 (Danny was working as a legal proofreader in New York at the time).

Another evening I was there, some Chinese (probably) musicians were performing bluegrass music. Yes, American bluegrass music. It made me think of a bluegrass festival I went to with my grandparents in North Carolina when I was young. As these things go, it made me a little sad, since the world and America my grandparents lived in is no longer in existence, and I really don’t know what to make of its replacement.

Jazz and bluegrass, bluegrass like what I heard on public radio when I was living in North Carolina, those haunting winter nights.  Who put the record on every Friday? Someone has to keep the light on for the arts when the onslaught of now threatens to extinguish them. The songs my grandparents used to listen to, so many of them from the 30s, 40s, 50s, are gone with them. Someday, I too will grow so old that I won’t know any of the songs on TV, on the radio, on the internet, whatever will be the form of communication then. Telepathy for all I (and Elon Musk) know.

It’s a scary thought, which is part of the reason why I try to listen to new songs to keep up with whatever’s going on in music right now. But sometimes I still find some interesting bits, like an Apple Music album called 1930s Radio Show Classics. Live from the Hotel Lincoln, in New York City, is Artie Shaw and his Orchestra. Right now I’m listening to a song called Night Over Shanghai, about “pale yellow faces and sad old eyes.” Ha!

Actually, I doubt they will ever stop playing Beatles or Jimi Hendrix songs in my lifetime, so I might be safe there. And the artists like Beyonce and Taylor Swift will want to maintain their dominance for years to come (Note: I am not a fan of either). But in 2017 I remember watching the MTV awards, again with my grandfather, and there were quite a few artists and acts that I couldn’t recognize at all, until Jared Leto showed up with tribute to Chester Bennington of Linkin Park (the band’s lead singer who had committed suicide). Finally, some people I knew.

Where am I going with this…music, jazz, getting older, music will always be my refuge. But it’s what happens when the music ends, that’s the problem.

Until next time…

Dream Journal, Sometime in September and on 9/26/2019

My dreams have either been too vague or too embarrassing to write recently. But I heard you wanted dreams, so here are some more – uncensored (well, almost)!

Two dreams. The first is probably the first well-formed dream I can remember since moving to China but ends in a sort of silly nightmare. I am at some sort of hotel and get into a car downstairs at the entrance. We drive towards a train station through cloudy/misty/polluted cityscapes and enter a parking lot where I climb a spiral staircase to a semi-hidden room where top brass from what appears to be the US air force and army are gathered for a meeting in a sort of WeWork/hotel lobby with cushioned chairs/cushions for chairs.

One of the meeting participants is a “Rand person” i.e. from one of the think tanks and I recognize her as someone I saw on a Tinder app once but is kind of crazy. She is very driven and comes up to me to say hello. Her name is Laura Anderson [no connection to anyone I know in real life] and she has crazy person glasses even though she is quite attractive; anyway people know to avoid her in terms of romantic connections. Then suddenly a pillow is shouting and talking to me, which I take to be real life because I’m in bed and “woke up,” which is quite scary indeed. Then I finally wake up from all this nonsense.

Analysis: This is very heavily influenced by what I am seeing in real life, being in China. The meeting scene is influenced from being in DC for so long and attending various events where US military or thinktank personnel are presenting, but it also gives the allure of a secret meeting on/in China at the top levels of the US military that I get to participate in. Perhaps I always wanted to work in the military or a thinktank. The Laura Anderson part is somewhat self-explanatory, at least I know people like that in the DC space, having lived there for so long.

Second dream, begins at a temple in Taiwan where the rain is falling and I see a tall, slim mixed young woman and end up having a “passionate encounter” with her in the woods. She turns out to be a prostitute. My character is actually a cop from the FBI or some American agency sent to Taiwan for a cybersecurity/smuggling etc. investigation, so he asks if the payment of ten thousand is in Taiwan dollars or USD, to which the prostitute scoffs.

Ok, not quite Taiwan, but yes woods

The next scene is him comparing slides with the Taiwanese cops as he is sent to investigate gangsters involved. They brainstorm criminal involvement, discuss informants, etc. But the character continues to see the prostitute, sometimes at her own apartment, where she covers (turns down) a picture of her from college with some of her friends, and we find out from the shot that she went to Georgetown as she’s wearing a college hoodie in the picture. Then the agent is in an aquarium by himself, with creatures all around and even some Merfolk-inspired creatures about him; it’s a dream-like scene. The prostitute is actually an informant for the gangsters, but she has feelings for the agent too so the gangsters eventually kill her.

He is alone in the aquarium

The agent sees her as his guardian angel and at times even wonders if he was/is imagining her or not. There is somehow a banquet that both law enforcement and the gangsters attend, and of course a fight breaks out. Eventually there is an “awards ceremony” (this is all in a fantastical sense) where the agent is outed as having been with this prostitute with all the pictures of them together, but he doesn’t deny it as he says he was in love with her.

Analysis: Ummm…use your imagination. I will say this though, there was an attractive young woman at Georgetown, mixed as well, whose claim to fame is that she had previously starred in a pornographic film of an abusive nature. She ended up being kicked out of Georgetown for dealing marijuana. Anyway maybe this prostitute character is vaguely based off of her.