Dream from 5/2/2009

I generally listen to music while I sleep. That is to say, that music generally plays while I sleep. However, last night, I listened to music while I slept. I also dreamt. Here is that dream.

First, for your information, I was listening to two very specific songs. The first is “Blood Embrace,” from Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy’s album Superwolf. The second was “81,” from Bonnie Prince Billy’s album Get on Jolly.

At the end of the first song, there is a dialogue from a film that goes like this. This dialogue, verbatim, was part of the dream. Here are the words:

“
Female: Charlie, I’ve uh…I’ve been with another man. Aren’t you going to say anything? You’re just gonna sit there. Charlie, I didn’t know when you were coming back, or if you ever would. I tell you, the men around here don’t respect anything. I told you all the guys that called me up…and then Cliff. He didn’t make a pass at me, I mean, he didn’t even do it at all. I knew what he wanted, but…he never did anything about it. And then it seemed like the two of us just had to.

Charlie: I don’t think I’m up for any more of this. Why don’t you go to bed? I’ll work this all out.

Female: What are you gonna do?

Charlie: I’m just gonna sit here.”

So that’s the dialogue. Now, I’m watching this conversation happen between two people in my dream. It is exactly word for word. Neither one of the persons is recognizable, neither then in dream sense, nor now as I think back on their faces.

The man, Charlie, is wearing a maroon knit shirt and has a flat top haircut, although nothing about him is extreme. That is to say, nothing about his appearance. He is, at the end of the dialogue, sitting in a large yellow truck. The truck is no regular truck. Rather, it is some sort of work truck, such as one that carries water. The woman, for her part, is similarly plain. Her hair is a bland blond color, shoulder length, and her bangs are split down the middle. Her clothes, which are a dull grey, gave me the sense that they were from the fifties, although even still, were nothing to stop the presses about. The woman is speaking with her back to Charlie, and she is clearly upset about her transgressions. As the dialogue closes, Charlie is in the driver’s seat of the truck, which positions his head about 7 feet off of the ground.

Charlie, while speaking his third line (I’ll work this all out) pulls a pistol from his lap and points it at the woman. She speaks her line, and as Charlie finishes the dialogue, he shoots her in the back of the head. She never knew it was coming.

As the gun discharges, our angle of the situation changes, and immediately, we’re looking at a close-up of Charlie. We never see any blood that likely resulted from the first shot. Charlie is quite a bit more rotund than earlier, and seems distraught. He is shaking and sweating as his focus shifts from what we can only expect to be the lady to directly in front of him. He is now John Goodman as he raises the gun to his temple. The gun is in his right hand and thus pointed at his right temple.

There is a horse, donkey or mule in the back of the truck, and we get the feeling that Charlie wants it to be dead as well. He fires once into his right temple, shifts the aim to the back of the truck and discharges a third time. The fourth shot is aimed directly into Charlie’s mouth, angled up towards his brain. He discharges a final time.

At this point, the second song kicks in. Specifically, these words are spoken by a narrator, words sung by Bonnie Prince Billy in the song, “81.” “You make seeds into sprouts, and hidden in the heart of things, you make buds into flowers, and hidden in the heart of things, you make flowers into edible things…” Then a line from my brain kicks in, “you had my dad blow my mom’s head off.” Again, these words don’t exist in the song, but they did in my dream. And again, these words took on the sense of narration in the dream. After my words came these, which belong to the song and appeared directly, “…what majestic treats do you still have in store for me? A breath of death, a day of rest.”

After this, Michael J. Fox pulls up to a curb with a mailbox. He is narrating our story. Charlie was his father, and the female his mother. His car is a small sedan, silver or gold, and foreign. He steps out of the car, wearing a Domino’s Pizza jacket. He is talking about how now he is an old man, an old man with grey hair. He is wearing a style of pants that are quite baggy, and upon seeing these, I comment (either aloud or intrapersonally) that “choosing to have him wear these pants was a good idea because I’ve seen people wear pants like that.” I think this is a reference to the Back to the Future films, and how terribly they predicted the future.

As he steps out of the car, Michael J. is approached by a young child, who is clearly his son. His son is wearing a matching, albeit much smaller, Domino’s Pizza Jacket. Michael J. grabs his son by his upper arm caringly and lifts him into the air. This he does lovingly and gently.