Tired. But I usually am. We’ve been sleeping at College Perk to give us easy access to Firedean practice. Tonight we have ilyAIMY practice. Someday soon we shall put all of this practice into action, and we shall be a danger to ourselves and others, but for the moment…
I haven’t really LISTENED to music since I was in high school, and had that hour school bus ride every morning and that hour and a half every night. I spent that time curled around my Walkman, listening intently, reading lyrics from cassette cases, chilling myself with the intentness of musicians that I had no comprehension of.
I don’t ride around listening to music anymore. I should. I sometimes listen to music when I’m driving, but if I don’t have the lyrics in front of me, I’ll listen to the bass part, or the guitar part, or the drums, or even the vocalist, but I won’t listen to the lyrics. I blot out the rest of the world while listening, and end up driving to places and not remembering how I got there. It’s a failing.
So – we’re getting in a last couple of practices with Firedean before we run off to New England (they abbreviate it as NE which is confusing to those of us who have actually toured through Nebraska) and it’s the first time I’ve really focused on some of the lyrics. I’ve always been amazed by his ability as a songwriter – but I’m really listening – and more than that, relating. “I’m trying to Live up to my stereotype – but I’ve already given all I can (?) – all I want to do is lead a double Life – and sleep better than I did last night…”
And I’m relating strongly.
It seems I never actually sleep well. You can’t ask me if I slept well last night, you only get to really ask “did you sleep at least average?” (like Brennan did this morning). This morning I was brought out of dreams by a whining smoke detector – just whining due to 9 volt battery starvation, not for anything more dire – (an important note as we’re down the street from two arsons this week) and my brain is still cobwebby with altered realities.
My dream started nicely enough – I was working in this joint sort of electronics work space. Big tables, nice lighting. I was in one room, and Brennan and some Faceless Lackey were working in the adjoining space. My new mixer (the one I ordered in the Real World) had just arrived, and I was excited to see that I’d been chosen for a free promotion which included receiving a free laptop with my purchase. I started working with that immediately, and then went to the next room to have Brennan help me set it up. It’s then that I noticed that a wall of THAT room opened out into a nice little… glade. Perhaps a glen?
A decent-sized clearing with a couple of trees, a creek running through it, lots and lots of seating in a semi-circular arc – and in the centre – a Zeiss projector. So, I wandered over there and joined Heather at the planetarium show. It seemed perfectly natural that the guy who started the presentation could project stuff on the sky, and start and stop video presentations apparently projected on the atmosphere, controlling the sunrise and the sunset. My brother was there, and I sat a couple of seats away from Heather so I could talk to him. He was explaining how he’d joined the army (he was in uniform) and I felt like a hypocrite explaining that I didn’t like the idea, since I was wearing my camoflauge pants.
My dream somehow incorporated some sort of newscast at that point. There had been a murder in the town where my brother had been Living, and the body had been found in a creek… somehow the creek in the glade was sort of being used as the little newscaster screen and I saw the body roll by in the water over and over again, marred by streaking of river rocks and curious fish. It was also noted by the news that my brother was a “person of interest” since he was joining the army and leaving town.
When I looked back from all of this, feeling kind of down, I saw that Heather had taken her chair and moved away to another presentation down the hill, watching stars and comets and generally being impressed with the sky.
And that was where the smoke detector found me.
