Category: Dream Theatre

The ex and I were in my car. At an intersection, some crazed drugged out people ran up to the car and pulled her passenger door open. They started throwing money in the car frantically saying we had to keep this safe for them. I tried to floor it but Since one of them was holding on to the passenger door handle, my car skewed that direction (dream physics don’t have to make sense). Eventually I got loose and we sped around a corner and into a dark area behind a building. We were trying to figure out what to do next, fearing these people would be trying to find us.

Something that has happened to me many times in real life, is that I’m having a bad dream and in the dream I’m trying to yell or scream but can’t so it’ just comes out as a kind of weak moan, and then it turns out the reason is that the exact same thing is happening in real life. I”m trying to yell in my sleep but am just sort of making weak noises. As has happened in the past, she’s next to me in bed and gently nudges me, saying it’s just a bad dream and snuggles up close to me. I’m comforted. Our bodies are close with our arms tight around each other.

Then in that moment, I start to realize that this too is a dream. I start to cry as I’m ripped from the dream world into the actual real world where my face is wet with tears. I try to pull myself together, grab my phone to distract myself for a moment and put on an audiobook as I try to forget my heart re-breaking, come back to the present, disengage from these emotions and just breathe. It was just a dream. But then it was just a dream.

I haven’t documented a lot of the dreams I’ve remembered but there’s 3 I wanted to try to document before they totally fade. Hopefully, I can still remember enough details even though it’s been a little while since they occurred.

Dream 38
I was at a party at someone’s house. I think it was most likely a house occupied by several (or more) college students. I was saying goodbye to a few people sitting at the dining room table and I remember one was a (fictional) girl who I think I kind of had a crush on so it was kind of that awkward excitement type interaction where you also want to hug someone but also totally overthink it and wonder if you should or if it’s weird or something. I said my goodbyes and left but as I got outside I realized I’d left my phone somewhere inside. So now I was faced with the more awkward reappearance and “Oh, hey, just me again. Forgot my phone,” type explanation. I went past the table into another room that was extremely and strangely packed and cluttered in an almost M.C. Escher-esque way. There was a stairway that went up the right wall then turned 90 degrees and continued up the front wall but it was totally blocked off with furniture and shelves so I had to climb over it and then walk along the hand rain squeezed up against the wall. When I reached the second part of the staircase, there was a couch on it that extended up the stairs and through the doorway at the top so there was just barely enough room between the couch and the top of the door way to squeeze through and drop down. That’s all I remember of that one.

Dream 39
My mind has been extra cruel with constant dreams about my ex. One standout was that I was watching some “hidden camera” TV show on TV and much to my surprise, suddenly there was some “night vision” footage of my ex wearing only a button down shirt and glasses having sex with someone.

Dream 40
In a more subtly cruel dream, my ex and I were driving around revisiting some places where she had gone to college. It was night and she was driving and pointing things out like “Oh that’s the building where…”, etc. At one point, she pulled over and seemed really sad and I saw tears welling up in her eyes. I asked her what was wrong.
She said “I just don’t want you to ever leave me.”
I looked at her with love, surprise and reassurance, tears in my own eyes, put my hands on her face and said “I’m not ever going to leave you. I love you,” and kissed her.

Yeah, that was fun. And ironic. I haven’t figured out of cruel dreams about your ex count as sadism or masochism.

This dream was very much like an ’80s John Hughes movies or something. There was a girl I was in love with (portrayed in the dream by an actress I know who shall remain nameless because I don’t know her well and I’m old enough to be her father probably). We were all at a big party and Will Ferrell was there too. It was no secret how I felt about her, but she walked up to Will and said “You wanna go bang?”

Will looked over at me, kind of sheepishly and was like “Well, I mean, that might be kind of awkward…he really likes you.”

And so, in a truly ’80s movie kind of way, I delivered some noble monologue along the lines of “Look, any guy she wants to…” I paused, starting to say “make love to” but hesitating, wondering which term to use.

She enthusiastically jumped in with a thrusting hips motions and said “Bang!”

I continued, “…bang, is the luckiest guy in the world and would be a fool to pass that up.”

He kind of shrugged and then off they went together, presumably to “bang.”

I started to walk out of the party totally dejected feeling like “This is what you get for being a good, noble guy.”

Then I slapped my forehead and felt like an idiot realizing that I should have said “Hey, look, Will is married with children, so that’s not really cool.”

Cue credits to some ’80s music as the camera cranes up.

I dreamt that my friend, Mical, got me an invite to a special VIP house party. Turns out Madonna was playing the party and everyone was super excited except for me since I’m not really a huge Madonna fan. She started the show outside and seemed disappointed at the small crowd but then she got inside the packed two story house and was visibly surprised by the huge crowd there. I was at an upstairs railing looking down into the living room where she was performing.

Later, after the concert was over, they were playing music over the sound system and I heard a little bit of my song “Infinitesimal” begin to play. This wasn’t super surprising since I knew I had submitted all my music to possibly be part of the mix, but then somehow it wasn’t my actual song, but some random radio promo I’d recorded using that song and so everyone was very puzzled by this weird promo, like me doing a DJ break on a radio station talking about upcoming events and such. I was also puzzled as to how this mix up had occurred and how the hell this random recording got in there.

In this dream, Robin Wright and I were in love but she was married to Mark Knopfler, guitarist for Dire Straits. The tone of the dream was strange as if maybe it was a movie. In this love triangle, Mark was not a good spouse. He was mean and grumpy. The three of us were there finally confronting the situation. Mark pulled a gun on me and then Robin pulled a gun as well, with the intention of using it on either of us if we tried to kill the other. I wrestled Mark’s gun from him and as a show of good faith to Robin, I set the gun down by her. Mark then left grumpily and Robin and I decided to run away together. Then we had hot sex on a table. I win!

It was later brought to my attention that there’s a strange connection here as Robin, of course, played Buttercup in The Princess Bride and Mark composed the score for it!

In Dream 33, Wade Rowland had just got his basic blue business checks in and a lot of money for artistic endeavors and gave me a bunch of checks. One for $300,000 and one for “7pm” among them for my musical services past and upcoming. I naturally figured that the 7pm was a mistake. Also he said that Elton John loved all his Earl Arbuckle songs and wanted to do an upbeat dance cover of one of them (it had a title in the dream but I can’t remember it). Elton had also hand drawn an album cover for a home made mix CD of Earl’s songs that he’d made.

In Dream 34, the old “teeth falling out” cliche made it’s second appearance for me. I was on set, shooting a movie. They were gearing me up for an action scene where I was sort of dressed like some kind of soldier or navy SEAL type person. There was a white head covering, kind of like a ski mask that was supposed to just leave the eyes uncovered but this one was too big and stretched out so it was sagging and not covering my mouth. I had suggested pinning the top/back in such a way that remedied the situation. Next thing I remember, I was in the house I mostly grew up in until I was about 18, and my teeth were all loose and starting to fall out. Alarmed, I called my doctor who happened to be Dr. Drew. Needless to say, he was very concerned. He asked if they were only falling out on one side, because if so, then that was a sign of testicular cancer and I should get checked for that immediately. I told him that no it was just one side, but all over. Then he was just silent. Uncomfortably silent. And I kept trying to get him to say something. I was saying something along the lines of “What? What is it? Am I dying?” I could tell from his reaction that it wasn’t good.

Then I woke up.

I finally had the old, cliche “teeth falling out” dream!

It started with me noticing the outer layers of enamel on my top front teeth cracking and falling off in little slivers and chunks. I was in the house with my late grandmother (I think she once told me she had teeth falling out dreams, so I wonder if that’s why she was in mine). Then I looked in the mirror and my teeth were really crooked and I though “Oh no! My $6K Invisalign work is all undone!” It was then I realized they were all crooked because they were all loose and falling out. As I hit them with my tongue they just started wiggling around and dropping out of my mouth. I realized that (in the dream) most of teeth had been implants and those were all the ones that fell out. My original natural teeth seemed to be fine. Naturally, I was very panicked. My mom was out somewhere so I think I tried to get her on the phone and was all crying for my mom and wanted her to tell me what to do.

Luckily, I woke up and all was fine with my teeth.

In dream 29, I was visiting my old friend, Esteban, who now was living with his parents in a large very rectangular 2 story house in Kansas City. I was staying there while I checked out Kansas City to see if I wanted to move there.

It was a very warm feeling house in color and design with lots of dark blondish wood everywhere. At least part of the second story had rooms along the perimeter with a railing overlooking down into the first story.

I had found a really great place to live and was about to finalize the deal When I suddenly realized, “Oh crap! I better research and see if there’s any kind of acting industry here before I move here!”

Esteban also had a baby camel or maybe a llama that was really cute. I also noticed he had a baby tiger kitten. I said “You got a baby tiger?”, and he explained that a friend of his had really wanted to play with one for her birthday so he had just rented it for a few days.

In dream 30, my friend Sean and I were driving to Dallas late at night. As we were almost there, we saw a huge alien ship, bigger than the city itself, descend from the clouds in the night sky. Something happened and the ship started tilting, out of control. As it wobbled and veered, parts of it started hitting the city causing catastrophic damage and explosions. We turned the car around and started driving away as fast as we could, hoping we could outrun the ever expanding fireball.

In dream 31, my friend Dana and I were getting ready for some kind of show. However, we were in a strange place that was more like a school crossed with mall. We were in one room and she needed to get to “Room 30” to get finished dressing. To get to Room 30, we had to go through a long stretch of concourse filled with students and other people. Since she was only partially dressed, she sat on the floor and pulled her knees up, curling into a ball and started sort of scooting along using her toes almost like little insect legs to smoothly move along. I did the same, facing her but sort of enveloping her so I was covering her up so no one could see her partially dressed state. I was not quite as adept at the whole using my toes as little legs thing but I made it work.

We got to room 30 and then she showed me a good game to practice for mindfulness. You sat cross-legged with your hands on your knees, one hand facing up, the other down. For the hand facing up, you picked a spot on that same thigh and then after about 25 seconds, as quickly as you could, you tried to turn your hand over and slap the chosen spot with the center of your palm directly on the spot. Then you repeated the sequence with the other hand. I tried but both times my alignment was a little off, so I kept practicing. I think we eventually got up and went to finish getting ready for the show.

I was sitting in playing guitar with ZZ Top. It was very exciting as it was the biggest gig I’d ever played. There were several other musicians filling out the backup band as well besides just the 3 members of ZZ Top though. I hadn’t had any rehearsal and was just completely winging it but was totally comfortable doing so. I set my trusty Variax to its acoustic setting for this one ballad and Billy Gibbons was really digging it. Then we covered “Ex’s and Oh’s” by Elle King. As the solo section approached, I thought “I’m sure Billy will probably grab that,” and he did.

I also had 2 separate dreamlets about Brian and Akasha. In the first, there had been some get together at a bar and a bunch of us were there. Someone handed us a note that was written on a stack of paper, or maybe a book in colorful marker saying that Brian wasn’t going to be able to make it. After the gathering, a bunch of people were going to get something to eat somewhere. Akasha and I jumped in her 2 door red sportscar, but then decided to just hang out and catch up like old times. She needed to go do some clothes shopping anyway so we would go do that.

In the second dreamlet, Brian and I were in France. He had just bought a little Fender 1×12 guitar amp which I was toting for him and we were walking along this street checking out a row of flats. He was looking at them because they were thinking of moving to France. It was night but we went in one of them to check it out.

I said “Maybe we can just leave this amp here now if you’re going to move in.”

“Well, we haven’t actually bought it yet, so that’s not really an option,” he said.

Then I woke up.

In this dream, Elly (my girlfriend at the time of this writing) and I were on a road trip with Brian and Akasha Villalobos (two of my best friends). We stopped at this gigantic mall. It was possibly the biggest (fictional dream) mall in the world. In the food court there was an Indiana Jones themed fast food place. There was the normal counter manned by employees but behind them was an approximately 2 story tall adventure course made of foam facades, ropes, “traps,” ledges, obstacles, alligators etc. When you ordered, they would give you a temporary Indiana Jones jacket and fedora. The jacket had a whip attached to one side and a holster and shoulder bag on the other so it was a nice one piece fully decked out option. You couldn’t order anything specific, only a general type of food like “vegetarian” or such. Then you got to play through the obstacle course. It wasn’t static either in that once you reached the other side, it could all rotate to make a new scene for you to traverse back the other way. At any given time there were 5 or so customers dressed as Indy up on the adventure course. When you finally finished and dropped down, they would give you a random order (but in line with your general order type specified up front). You might get a burrito, or a burger, or any of a host of other options. That was part of the adventure.

Later in the dream, Brian and I were outside another fast food place somewhere else on our road trip. We were chatting and he had 2 oranges and we were rapidly tossing them back and forth trying to get rid of the one we had before the other was on its way. At one point he had an extremely errant throw (or maybe catch) over his shoulder and an orange came down in a high arc and hit someone’s car. Probably no big deal, as it was an orange, but Brian being Brian insisted on finding something to write a note with/on to leave on the car. Later we were inside finishing up our meal and chatting about some personal relationship stuff he was going through and possibly related sex life stuff.

Then I woke up.