Dreams.

Sharif recording tracks for Heather’s tunes on the new album.

I’ve been feeling a weight of stress that’s actually leaving me dizzy. Overwhelmed and tired and buzzed. Stuff with my mother, money, Life, the Universe, my career, the album, the next “tour”. I think I’m low-grade freaking out.

Doctor’s visits, doctor’s visits. My mom’s wrist is doing a lot better. Thank you for asking!

Pulsing in my temples, buzzing in my ears, feeling like I’m always an inch off the ground. Or under it.

Saturday night we played a wonderful gig at a local bookstore. Heather nailed the mood and the audience, I had been dubious because of my previous interactions, but she was dead on and even the regulars who recognized me from filming Cuppa T Jones at the same venue (who I’d taken to be all just hardcore blues fans) were blown away. It was truly an awesome show – but a weirdness hung with me.

Kristen recording some cello on Heather’s new song “It Could’ve Been Worse”.

The air is so thick with the Canadian wildfires that you can see the conest of light from the streetlamps. It smells of burning plastic and distant fire.

Sigh. Had to go to the MVA (that’s the DMV for those of you outside of the DMV) Wednesday morning because my 25 year-old car, which was historic last year, is no longer historic. I got it registered for one year since next year it will be historic again. Maryland? You get it right MOST of the time, and I’m glad you’ve changed your mind again, but surely you could’ve minded the gap.

There was one guy on the back wall, maybe he was emo. A couple of years ago I’d have called him a goth. He’d stayed slumped along the bookshelves in a way that aligned his beard with the shelving and his clothes blended right in. There was a weird moment where I’d been looking in his direction, and he turned his head, and it was like he’d simply been extruded from the wall. It reminded me of another nightmare I’d used to have, one where people were tattooed with patterns that matched the black and white walls around us, and they would turn their heads and vanish, tilt their hands to reappear. I dreamed about them for years. It was unnerving to see it happen in front of me – even though it was just a trick of dim lighting and distance.

Somehow I’m connecting that visual with the dream I had last night. I dreamt that “we” (I don’t remember who “we” were, but I wasn’t alone) were Living in a world where small rooms or even whole houses were being sealed off by some sort of … FORCE. A glowing blue clock would appear on the door, ticking down and when the clock hit 12, vines and tendrils would grow out of it, sealing the entire room, or house, or library away from the universe. The veins were reminiscent of the fungus from the movie we watched last night, Cold Storage.

Which was better than I’d expected.

Friday night, playing at the Worman’s Mill Village Gazebo.

Back to the dream at hand. I don’t know if there was much of a plot. I “knew”, like you know in dreams, that the world was slowly winding down and this was how it happened. You stayed out in the open, in fields and courtyards to avoid being sealed away and vanished, but sometimes you just HAD to go inside. You said goodbye to friends and family, as some of them just decided where to be settled in. Where to be DONE. I had a switch of perspective and as someone trapped on the inside it was peaceful until it wasn’t. Blue veins growing thicker and thicker inside till they entangled you and you were held immobile, hanging forever. Wound down.

I’ve been feeling this impeding doom, hanging, ever since I woke from the dream.

I’ve been working hard though.