Category: Dream Theatre

Last night I dreamt that I was at a party with the crew from a movie I was working on. Everyone, including the director, decided to shave their heads into Mohawks. I went along with it. Mine ended up being a very wide Mohawk where it was really more like just having the sides shaved. Then the thought struck me that we were in the middle of filming this movie! We weren’t done yet and now I had just pseudo-Mowhawked myself! Not only that, but I also had 2 other films in progress and how could we possibly deal with my hair suddenly being so drastically different! For the film I was on, I started thinking that since my character was about to head out on some kind of hunt or chase in the desert (or at least hot Texas) that we could justify the change with a line or quick scene. Since the director had been there and done it too, I wasn’t too worried about getting in trouble, but for the other two movies that still had some scenes to shoot, I was sure they would not be happy.

I arrived at work at night straight from a road trip with some friends. In my dream, the layout of the company was slightly different but very similar to real life. When I came in I saw that there was an audition going on for a movie by Aaron Koontz, and Cassandra Hierholzer was also there helping (this obviously stems from the fact that I did work at the same company as Aaron and Cassandra for 3 days, and I have been back to that company to audition for one of Aaron’s movies where Cassandra was manning the front desk). As I arrived, Brian Villalobos had just finished his audition so we hugged and chatted. He told me that his dad was still in the room auditioning. He had been rehearsing a father/son scene with his dad for the audition, and then convinced his dad to come along and actually audition. I went toward the audition room wondering if I might be able to squeeze in to the audition. The door opened and Brian’s dad came out along with about 6 or 7 other people including Aaron and other producers, etc. and I remember wondering how the hell they all had fit into the small audition room. I tried to visualize it, “Well the actors would have been on one side, while all those people would have had to have been over on the other side behind that desk…” Brian’s dad went one direction and I remember thinking that Brian had gone in the other direction and that they were going to be looking for each other. The group holding the audition seemed finished and so I didn’t say anything, feeling that I had missed my chance to get in.

The next thing I remember is not necessarily part of the same dream but I’m not sure that it’s not contiguous either. I was walking down a winding road through a field and there was a helicopter with a spotlight shining over the field. It caught a naked man in its spotlight and I remember knowing that this naked man was responsible for some horrendous crime. A small mob closed in on the man and beat him and stabbed him with sticks until he was dead. I found a small blade about the size of a machete that I knew was from the helicopter. The blade was firing like a Gatling gun and I think it was shining it’s own spotlight somehow as well. I pointed the madly firing blade at the man’s body while I tried to figure out how to control it or make it stop. It wasn’t very accurate. While it was spitting out a constant stream of bullets, very few actually hit the man’s body. I eventually found a switch and turned off the stream of fire and the light.

I realized that I thought I’d forgotten my jacket and my phone and for a moment I thought they might be on the dead man’s body for some reason. Luckily I then realized I did have my phone and started following the winding road, thinking I had a long way to get back to work. I checked Google maps on my phone and was happy to find that it was only about a half a mile, so I started walking instead of calling for a ride or something. I vaguely recall walking between two small houses in the woods on my way and vague details possibly involving bath robes and maybe dogs (separately, not related). It pretty much fades after that and I can’t remember any more.

In last night’s dream I arrived on the set of a commercial I was working on to see my friend Suzanne Shaw Lyons for the first time in over 20 years. I think she was doing something on the crew side of things and I can’t remember if I was cast or crew. Later we met up with my uncle, Brown Cooper, who is a Director of Photography and who was shooting this commercial. We all chatted and he mentioned something about another big commercial he had lined up. We asked if he needed any cast and he said that actually they were casting for the main married couple in the commercial. Susie and I immediately grabbed each other’s hands and launched into an improvised “audition” as a joke, acting like a married couple and saying that he should cast us. I remember holding up her hand with her real wedding ring on it and saying (in character) something about how I’d got her this beautiful ring and thinking how fortuitous it was that she was married so we had that handy prop!

That’s about all I remember. Even in my dreams I’m working doing what I love. No word on if Brown cast us or not.

In last night’s episode, my friend, Mark, had this awesome house (not his awesome real world house, a fictional dream house) with mostly glass walls to the outside and a huge, sprawling multi-level swimming pool. It wasn’t so much one giant pool, but more like several levels and lanes that added up to one contiguous pool. Mark had given me a spare key and basically told me I could use the place whenever I wanted. I was over there early one morning and had just taken a shower when I heard stirring. It was only then that I realized that Mark was still there and was getting up to get ready for work. I had thought everyone was gone and so suddenly I got really nervous about getting “caught” in the house even though he’d given me a key and permission to use it. I somehow still felt like I was abusing the privilege or something.

When he came out I tried to play it all cool. Since I was wet and in a towel, Mark asked if I used the pool often. I couldn’t tell if he was just asking out of curiosity or if it was more a sort of annoyed interrogative tone. Not wanting to reveal that I’d just showered there as well, I made up some story about how I had just showered at my own place and then remembered some reason I had to come over and had just been so absent-minded and still half asleep that I didn’t realize I was still wet and just in a towel. Someone else had come over by this point (maybe our friend, Jesse, but I can’t remember for sure) and we talked about how cool the pool was.

Then we went horseback riding. I have only ridden a horse a few times in my life but I was really enjoying it. At one point Mark got off his horse to do something and his horse ran off. I volunteered to go search for it on the horse I was riding and I think I remember using my phone or some device as a GPS or something.

Later, in a separate mini-dream:
I was at a bar with Brian, Akasha and some other friends where this twin brother comedy duo was playing. They were very strange looking, I remember. Larger guys with very close set eyes and round faces. Brian was actually working behind the bar. As soon as the duo came on and started playing and making strange faces, Akasha kept trying to get Brian’s attention in that way when you don’t want someone to miss something you know they’d enjoy. Like the duo would make some face and Brian would not be looking because he was busy behind the bar and so Akasha would yell his name because she didn’t want him to miss that funny face they were making.

I’m finding documenting my dreams to be an interesting procedure. So many times I feel it’s kind of like trying to translate something from another language that doesn’t really have a direct translation. So much about dreams is hard to explain in real world terms. The internal dream logic that makes no sense out here, or the feelings or atmosphere.

In last night’s dream I encountered a person named Katie. This was no one real, but a fictitious dream persona who, in the dream, was someone I had met in England when I was still married and we were back there visiting my ex-wife, Jess’s family and friends. Katie was the roommate of one of Jess’s friends who we were visiting. I think Jess knew her in passing as well. When we had visited, she had hung out with us all as well and we had all got to know each other over the course of the evening.

Now cut to the present. I can’t remember if I was in England or if she was over here to begin with, but we had reunited to hang out and over the course of our evening, she had revealed that she had always found me really attractive and was very taken with me. The feeling now was mutual so there was smooching and holding her in my arms and general nice cuddliness. At one point she actually told me she loved me which surprised me, being that we really barely knew each other and I, in fact, told her that while I was definitely drawn to her, I didn’t really know her well enough to know or say that I loved her but it was all good and warm and fuzzy and happy (I’m pretty sure that part comes from the fact that I’m doing a scene from Manhattan for a UT class where there is a similar, though not identical exchange).

Then the dream cut to the next day. I was now at work (fictitious dream work, nothing from the real world) and someone had died suddenly. There was a funeral to take place that day and we were all preparing for it. There was a line of people in the hallway because for some reason, everyone going to the funeral had to meet here at the place I worked to fill out some paperwork or something. I knew Katie would be going to the funeral as well and now I was all nervous about seeing her. I didn’t know how to play it. I really wanted to see her but for some reason wasn’t sure how cool to play it. Like maybe she would be all cool and act like nothing had happened, or would be disinterested now. At one point I saw her in the line but pretended like I hadn’t seen her as I didn’t want to put her in a weird place or make her feel pressured so I figured I would give her the opportunity to approach me if she wanted.

I was wearing this really flashy, sparkly shirt that I have and thought that it probably wasn’t really appropriate for the funeral. Luckily I had another shirt that I changed into right there in the lobby. Then I noticed that the sleeve of my sparkly shirt had come all undone and the bottom half just sort of fell off leaving stringy strands dangling (much like the stage effect in the production of Spamalot I saw last night when the Black Knight’s arm got cut off and there were red strings hanging down, thus leading me to believe that’s the source for this particular dream ingredient). I was really bummed in the dream, as I really loved this shirt.

I think it was around this point that I kind of half woke up and felt some sense of sadness that Katie wasn’t real. It took me a while to really wake up enough to discern what was real and what was dream and that I was feeling this sadness and why. I then went back to sleep and did some major catching up, sleeping almost 12 hours. I feel like there’s a tiny kernel of sadness that I will carry for the rest of the day from my whirlwind dream romance.

In last night’s episode, I was hanging out with Kevin Smith (the writer/director) at his house. It wasn’t his real house but my own dream version of his house which was kind of in the woods and elevated. He was telling me about this time when, just being goofy, he started climbing this tree. Then after climbing a bit he suddenly looked down and saw how high he’d climbed and became paralyzed with fear and didn’t think he’d be able to get back down. Luckily he did.

Then we talked about how the studio that produces Jeopardy had just moved into their new huge facilities built out in a desert as two adjoined complexes. We then talked about Alex Trebek getting to work in a transport pod that traveled on rails directly between his house and the studio. I can’t remember if we were wondering if that’s how he got there, or if we thought that’s how he should get there. We then theorized that he probably just had a limo that picked him up every morning.

EDIT 2022-7-28: I was doing some maintenance and fixing some stuff in the “Dream Theatre” category and I noticed that before I officially started chronicling these as a series, I had a post talking about 2 dreams, then another post detailing 4 more, so technically I guess this should be Dream Theatre 7, but I’m certainly not going to edit and renumber them all now!

I thought I’d beat the “spring forward” lag by going to bed really early last night. Then I woke up at about midnight and couldn’t get back to sleep for a couple of hours, but by that point I had already had the following dream.

I came home to find Larry (one of my closest friends, creative partners and former roommate, now living in California) and Breanne (awesome person who I wish was closer friends with) lounging on my bed catching up. It was nothing romantic or anything, just the vibe of two really close friends hanging out and catching up (they never met in real life, as far as I remember). Why they were hanging out on my bed in my room is one of those mysteries that can only be answered with “It made sense and was normal in dream logic.” I was very happy to find them there as, in the dream, we had all been very close but I guess hadn’t hung out in a while or something. There was definitely a reminiscing kind of vibe. We all talked about how the period of time when we had all met had been so important and defining in our lives.

Breanne and I then reminisced about this personality test we’d had to take early on in our friendship and how we thought we’d have a lot of it in common but that I had thought that we would differ on the “Religious History” section. She hadn’t thought so and when we got the test back our scores were very close (167 and 160) and apparently I had made some joking comment back then about owing her 10 million dollars if I was wrong. I joked that I was working on becoming rich and famous so I could pay my debt.

Yesterday as my work day was ending, a headache was starting to develop. I went to my callback, then to a table read and by the end of all that my head was killing me. The drive home was was miserable and when I got home I immediately went to bed without even eating any dinner. I slept for about 10.5 hours during which I had a couple of dreams.

In the first one, I was going to a music video shoot for one of my songs. I got there and realized I’d forgotten part of my wardrobe at home and had to go back and get it. Then, Kevin Machate, who was also working on it (producing maybe) started telling me how he also wanted a shorter radio edit. I was absolutely vehement that there would be no editing of my song. It was an organic entity with a flow and a rhythm and chopping it down would ruin all that. We got into a very heated exchange which ended when I said “Who doesn’t have 4 minutes to listen to a song?” and he replied “My sick mother, who is dying!” and stormed off.

The second dream may have taken place after the first or may be independent, I can’t remember. Two fictional friends named Jason and Peter (not any of the Jasons or Peters I actually know)and I were sitting in the living room of a condo or apartment on the ground floor of a three story building. I think it was my place, but I’m not sure. It had been pouring rain outside and the door wouldn’t stay closed. I got up and slammed the door a few times but it wouldn’t latch. That’s when I noticed it was because the door frame was very much askew. Like the whole building was leaning to the right, slightly. I pushed on the door frame and the whole building swayed a bit. Thinking that surely I was mistaken, I pushed the frame a little harder and the entire building shifted to the left and the top two floors went crashing and crumbling down into themselves and the building to the left. I was standing just outside the door frame looking in at Jason and Peter sitting on the couch and before any of us could do anything, the first floor then collapsed down into the ground and onto itself. I was now basically looking down into the sunken living room where walls and book cases and such had all fallen inward and it was mostly filled with water. I shouted for Jason and Peter but saw no signs. I knew they were most likely dead. I tried to figure out if I should jump in and start moving debris and trying to find them in the faint hope that I could save them or whether to just dial 911.

Then I woke up. On the upside, my headache was long gone and I felt well rested.