Category: Dream Theatre

2 separate batches of dreams last night.

In the first, my friend Joanna Garner (who I worked with in real life as an actor on her own original play called 100 Heartbreaks) was helping me produce an original play I’d written, and I had all the stuff needed for opening night (set pieces, props, etc.) loaded up in my 1995 Nissan pickup (the first car I ever actually owned which I sold about 10+ years ago). I went inside the theater for a minute and came back out to find it stolen (I know we would have loaded that stuff in long before but dreams don’t have to make real world sense). There was a group of suspicious teens hanging around in winter clothing like long coats and beanies, sitting on some benches behind a fenced in area and I asked if they’d seen anything. They said they hadn’t but had these smug smirks like they knew something and were flaunting it. They asked if it was a sexy car and I said it was a Prius S and that the S stood for sexy (forgetting for the moment that it was actually the old Nissan and not my current car, a Prius, no “S”). I checked the front lot of the theater even though I knew I’d pulled up in the back.

My ex was in the play as well, but in the dream we were together. I remembered being kind of bummed that she hadn’t texted me or said hello when she arrived at the theater which was odd. I went to find Joanna to tell her what was going on. She was with another producer or someone like that, and was obviously in the middle of being really busy. I went to hug her but she just kind of put her hand on my shoulder and was like “I’m really busy at the moment” and it was all a bit awkward and deflating.

I had about 15 minutes to collect myself before I had to go on. I thought I should study my lines but decided to instead take one last walk to try and find the truck again wanting to believe that I had just forgotten where I parked it. I also remember hoping the police wouldn’t hold it against me that I waited until after the show to file a report because I didn’t have time before the show started to deal with all that.

In the second batch of dreams (I had woke up and then went back to sleep), the first once again featured my ex. Again, in the dream we were together and I was picking her up from something. She got in the car and was a bit teary and obviously had something on her mind. Dreading what was to come, I asked her what was up. She said “I know I broke up with you before,”

“Yes,” I said dreading where this was going.

“I want to breakup again but I want you to do it.”

Naturally I protested and said I didn’t want to and she pleaded her case as to why (I don’t remember the details).

Then in my next dream in this block, my friend Brian Villalobos and I were at the store and he was incensed that the price of jelly had gone up. I figured it was just inflation but he insisted that couldn’t be it because it had been the same price for at least 4 years. Taking a different approach I said “Yes but think about how many times prices on things have gone up in your lifetime.” He considered the thought skeptically.

In this dream, my friend Kelsey and I were up to some silly shenanigans that involved dressing up fancy so she had me put on my tux. At some point I said “Jesus Christ” in that way Mr. Slave on South Park says it and that made her laugh and I mentioned how I can’t say “Jesus Christ” any other way (which is true). She said her equivalent was some phrase from the theme song to a kids show called “Kimmie…” something, I can’t remember. I hadn’t heard of it so I looked it up on YouTube.

Next thing I remember is being outside and my friend Sean Dornan-Fish had joined us. He had gotten kind of muddy, so he jumped in this shallow dove forward, completely drenching himself from head to toe. I was a bit shocked as it was freezing outside. Then I noticed that despite my efforts to be careful I had somehow gotten quite muddy as well. I don’t think I was in my tux any more at this point.

Later we were all winding down and were in comfortable lounging around attire (sweats, T-shirts, etc). Inside Kelsey’s fridge there had been some kind of pie incident and there was pumpkin pie filling all over the bottom of the fridge and a few more pieces in individual plastic containers. I remember the inside of the fridge was also huge. like two grown people could probably almost stand in it. She suddenly had another idea for another shenanigan and told me to put my tux back on. The end.

In this dream I was picking up my (dream) girlfriend (ex in reality) for some fancy date or function. I was dressed up and she approached the car in a sexy, form-fitting red dress. I was breathless and it was almost like life was in slow motion. Then as she arrived at the car, I realized I had not cleared the passenger seat of all the clutter and trash there. I did my best to quickly clear it, hoping there were no crumbs or anything that would get on her dress. Lucky for me, she didn’t seem to mind and scooted over really close, threw her arms around me and initiated some heavy making out.

Sadly the whole cluttered front seat part is only bit representative of reality.

In this dream I was feeling anxious. You see, for some reason I and a fictional dream woman named Misty had agreed to marry each other even though we’d never met. We had lots of mutual friends in the music scene and she too was a singer and musician. Justifiably, I was now having extreme second thoughts about this. I’m not even sure why we had made this agreement and I’m not sure that dream me was clear on that either. It wasn’t an immigration thing, I know that much. I was trying to be optimistic and thought “Well some people go into ‘arranged marriages’ so maybe this will turn out okay.” I had seen pictures of her on Facebook and knew that I found her at least moderately attractive, and maybe we could play music and sing together or form a duo or something. Never the less, to quote many a Star Wars character, I had a bad feeling about this. Why had we agreed to this? It couldn’t possibly be a good idea to marry someone you had never met.

And that was it really. The dream had no resolution. Like a show canceled without a finale.

I dreamt that the movie “Milk” with Sean Penn was an action movie that ended with a frenetic gun fight between Sean Penn and Eddie Murphy. There was lots of firing, jumping, flipping through the air, taking cover, etc. The scene ended in a standoff as they flipped past each other in the air with Milk landing, sitting on the floor in a corner and Eddie Murphy across a few feet away. As they pointed guns at each, Eddie’s character was taunting Milk saying “Come on! Shoot me! Go ahead!” But Milk wouldn’t shoot so Eddie quickly, and coldly shot him in the head. What a weird-ass dream.

I hesitated to document this one because it’s about her again. Nothing crazy, but I just didn’t want “Dream Theatre” to become exclusively about her. There’s been many more dreams of her I haven’t documented here but I remembered a lot of weird details about this one.

I was t a hotel for some reason and we had arranged for her to call me to catch up. The first time we would be actually speaking since my banishment. The phone rang, I answered and it was a bit of a confusing beginning as she was with someone on her end (him maybe), and whoever she was with was joking around and obviously distracting her as a joke. They shouted “She loves you!” playfully and she quieted them down to begin the conversation. I don’t remember anything in particular that was said, but I remembered that she had changed her number. It was no longer an Austin number. She had just moved to L.A. from Nevada so I figured it must have been one of those two and wondered why she had bothered changing numbers since area codes don’t mean much these days.

I had walked into the hotel and at the entrance to the bar which was closed at the moment, so while there was no one there, the door was open and it was a nice quiet place to talk. Two young men approached me and started to surround me and I could tell something was up. Next thing I knew, They had grabbed me, picked me up and were trying to pull me out the bar door and into these other doors where I presumed they would rob and beat me. While still on the phone, I started yelling for help and grabbing on to the door frame of the bar, trying to keep from getting pulled out. Then everything kind of froze like paused video game as I started analyzing my options and whether I could get a good angle to land a punch on either of them.

Then I woke up.

Once again, starring her. In this dream I was scrolling on Facebook and saw some pictures I had never seen of her in some stage show. They were very good, professional quality shots of her on stage, one in a leotard striking a very ballet-like pose. She was very lithe and toned like a Cirque Du Soleil performer. I wondered what and when this show had been and at first I thought maybe it wasn’t her. Checking her profile, I was initially confused as the profile picture was just a low resolution brownish themed logo of some kind and the name was just a random phrase, more than a name. Possibly something like “iPhone Brown,” though I can’t remember if that was actually it in the dream. I confirmed that it was indeed her and thought maybe she had just changed her name and picture since some people do that kind of thing for more privacy.

Then I woke up.

We were both staying at the same house for some reason. I think it belonged to someone we both knew. We had taken great care to avoid each other and hadn’t seen each other at all. It was late at night and everyone else was asleep. I turned a corner just as she was coming down the stairs and there we were, face-to-face. We both froze for a moment, not sure what to do, then instinctively, awkwardly kissed each other (in a quick, friendly way), then laughed as we both realized what she then verbalized, “Oh, wait, we can’t do that any more.” We started to talk and catch up. I think she sat on the back of the sofa and I sat sideways on a stool at the kitchen bar, a few feet away. It was warm and friendly. There was still love there. Much went unsaid.

Then I woke up with a heavy sigh, and a heavy heart. 

Still relevant:

I had a dream where someone reached to shake my hand and I was like “Hey, sorry, can’t do that right now.” Sign of the times.

I also had a dream that John Herndon was producing a western and I was one of the leads. He also then asked me to direct it. I was thrilled to do so but as we were setting up a shot, the gaffer seemed very stand-offish and resistant to me and had an attitude so I took him aside and introduced myself and was very kindly like “So what’s the issue here?”

He said he had worked with me on a few shorts and just didn’t like me or think I should be directing. I told him I was sorry he felt that way and hoped I could change his mind.

As we tried to get the next shot, we were very quickly losing the light and then very suddenly it was gone so I started looking for alternatives.

Later, I was trying to wrangle everyone to get another shot and everyone was kind of scattered. I asked what was going on and they said John and some others were part of a Q&A panel going on. That’s when I noticed that this ghost town we were shooting in was having some kind of festival and so there was a lot of people and music and stuff going on. We couldn’t do anything until the panel was over and even then with all the people and noise there was no way we could get a shot.

Someone asked if this meant we would be working super late and I said no, I didn’t believe in that. I was going to hold to reasonable days because pushing people gets diminishing returns so we’d figure it out later and try to move quickly and find ways to make up time and maybe shots we could cut.

Then I woke up. That imaginary gaffer is probably gloating.