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 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 my first post recounts 4 dreams and then there’s this one that says it’s #6. I’m not sure why that is. Either I just messed up when I started counting after my initial post (in which I said I could recall 3 dreams, and then I wrote about 4 so I fixed that too), or there’s a LOST DREAM. Now back to the original post.

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.

Since I seem to often have extremely vivid dreams, I’ve started a new category on my blog titled “Dream Theatre.” I figured I would update it with other recent dreams I’ve recounted to the friends involved. Four come to mind.

Dream #1:
My friend Akasha and I were in an empty classroom with a teacher. It was some kind of acting class. She and I were having some kind of discussion about the scene. The teacher came back and was ready to start again so I quieted down but Akasha kept on talking to me. I started getting nervous thinking the teacher was going to get mad but Akasha were determined to finish the conversation. The teacher kept waiting for Akasha to finish and then started to get annoyed and cleared his/her throat or something (at this point I can’t remember if the teacher was distinct person with a gender). Akasha just sort of put her hand up like “Excuse me, I’m finishing my thought here.”

Then the teacher started going over the scene. At this point in the dream Akasha was now the teacher and she was reading a male part opposite an actress reading the part of a little girl. I remember thinking “Why doesn’t the teacher have me read the male part instead of reading it herself? Ah, well probably because she is an actress as well and just enjoys being a part of the scene.” I figured she would then read the little girl part opposite me reading the male part.

Dream #2:
Akasha, Brian, me and a bunch of other people were at the pool of this apartment complex (felt more like a luxury hotel). Strangely, there were also some shopping aisles of shelves around the pool (see image).

As I looked off into the distance I saw some pictures drawn in the sky with smoke. The lower pictures were purple smoke while the upper pictures were black smoke. Clouds started to obscure the art so Brian and some of the others started walking down the road a bit to try and get a better view.

At this point I went down one of the shopping aisles (see image) and found Akasha laying curled up in a shopping cart trying to hide the fact that she was crying. She was wearing a short dress made out of of a raincoat-like material. I asked if she was OK, and she said yes. I reached out to touch her and comfort her but then became really self-conscious for a moment because my hand accidentally touched her boob. I very quickly then though “Eh, what’s the big deal? She’ll know that it was simply an accidental boob touch.”

Brian came back at that point and Akasha said “I told you they would hire a Mrs. before they would hire a Mr.” Turns out Akasha and Brian had both applied for jobs as leasing agents at the apartment complex and she’d got a call that she got the job and this is what she was upset about. Apparently she didn’t really want this job but had to take it.

I wandered off to leave them alone. Not long after they both came and joined me on the edge of this 5′ drop down to the road and Brian wanted all three of us to use our phones to take pictures of each other taking pictures of each other simultaneously because it would be so meta. Brian said he could never get his camera to work quite right though so I told him to let me take a look at it since I am the “Tech Whisperer” (a term I use in real life) and I’m sure I could figure out the problem.

Dream #3:
I had a show in this theatre space and it turned out the space was directly across from where my friend, Sharan, worked. She worked in an old 2 story house that had been converted to an office somewhere in a nice part of Austin (Hyde Park, maybe) shaded nicely by some trees . The 2 levels were separate spaces now and she was on the second level which was accessed via the external stairs up to the 2nd floor deck area where were two windows with a door in between them that had her name on the glass window filling the upper pane of the door.
I don’t think I saw her but there was someone else in the office I knew as well who came and said hi as I passed (I had to go up the stairs to house’s deck area to follow a connected walkway across to the other building/theatre space). Once across the walkway there was a stairway in a tunnel that curved downward into the theatre space.

That’s all the ones I remember/have documented descriptions of. I know there was at least one other with a bunch of friends getting together to play some games but that’s about all I remember of that one. I don’t remember any really remarkable details.

Dream #4:
Crappy night of sleep. Also I dreamed that Casey Cooper and I set off on an impromptu road trip to somewhere about 11 hours away (somewhere in NM I think). I think he lived in Dallas in the dream and I picked him up there first. Then about 10am I panicked, realizing I had to be at work and have 2 callbacks today and could never make it back in time but ran down to the bus station to see if they had a ticket to Austin. The clerks tried to let me use their automated phone system to get a ticket because that was free and if the clerk helped you book a ticket directly there was a small charge but the phone menu was very confusing and glitchy. Casey’s dad was also there now so he and Casey could drive the car back.

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 (don’t worry Kevin, I promise this has nothing to do with the running time of Living With Joban). 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. Me and two fictional friends named Jason and Peter (not any of the Jasons or Peters I actually know) 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 weather to just dial 911.

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