Woman in red becomes woman in orange last night, but Ariadne continues to appear...
I dreamt that I was having a première in a major opera house. The after party was in the lobby because people was so exhilarated that they just wanted to celebrate right there. An opera singer who was in the audience, quite corpulent in an orange gown, was seated on the red carpet. Beside her on the right-hand side, there was a silver champagne bucket on a stand. A music critic, a skinny man in a tuxedo was earnestly discussing the music. He had a small moustache. He resembled the science fiction editor J.J. Pierce.
"I wish I had a score," he said.
"Take mine!" I said I handed him a huge pile of bound manuscript, printed on the recto pages and with a mass of scribblings on the verso.
"But if only I had a libretto," said the critic. I said, "it's all there it's all there. It's in the scribblings." The scribblings what a cloud of words written in every direction, like a verbal galaxy. I pointed to one word after another and they resolved into a libretto.
In the opening scene, there was something mythological going on. A queen or goddess was languishing. She was in the story also dressed in orange, In flowing ancient robes. She sang of terrible grief. At first I thought she was Ariadne, but there was also something of Penelope in her. Because, she was waiting for someone, a king. The way the words were arranged on the page brought to mind an old edition I used to have as a child of the Gilbert Murray translation of MEDEA (that begins something like "O, that the Argo had not wended its way" or something). But those were not the characters.
As the critic examined the score, The music began to sound right there in the lobby. The fact opera singer began to sing along with it. She sounded like Jessye Norman. But, she was Caucasian with long blonde hair. It was a huge, Straussian score.
We were all awestruck that this person who was only in the audience remembered the music after one hearing. After her arietta, there were a few lines from a handmaiden bringing her news. The woods began either "oh queen" or "oh Diana." (I remember think wait a minute it's not Diana, suggesting that maybe she is Ariadne.) From a sweeping marble staircase above, the words of the handmaiden were being sung by Kaleigh Rae Gamaché who was swooping down in a black evening dress. She wore pearls. She had a huge bottle of wine. She was practically floating down the steps.
As she sang she altered the words to "my lady, the king commands you to accept this bottle of wine from the cast party upstairs." She poured wine for the opera singer.
We were all exhilarated, laughing and full of joy. It was a heady dream, as if portending some great artistic success.
Bona Myrt
Last night I dreamed about music and creativity:
In my dream, I have resurrected an ancient choral piece and I am conducting a rehearsal of it a library, a renaissance building, it's cathedral like but not a church. The piece is in A major, but at the end there is a magnificat for which there exist two alternative versions, one in Eb and one in A. The piece also weaves back and forth between the two keys by utilizing each of the two tonics as a pivot note into the Lydian mode of the other tonic. (This is more of a Wagnerian or even Mahlerian device, so it is very uncharacteristic of this period.) I am trying to decide which version to use. The Eb is much more complex and the A major finishes the work (a Vespers) in a more obvious way. I am going over the words with the chorus and the phrase BONA MYRT recurs again and again. In the dream, I am explaining that they mean "good pain" or "sweet pain." The words BONA MYRT are being sung as I wake up.
importantly, Eb and A are a tritone apart, making them the most remote possible keys from each other. They are therefore polar opposites. A piece traditionally finishes in the same tonality that it starts with, so ending an A major piece with an extended movement in Eb would be unusual, even daring (for an ancient piece that I presumably "resurrected"). The woman in red WAS in this dream, but I forget where exactly — I believe the chorus was in red and were all or mostly women. On waking, I realize that "myrt" also relates to death, but only "pain" appeared in the dream (viz, It. "martire", Eng, "smart" rather than Skr, Cz. "mrt" Lat. "mort-") The spelling of MYRT moves it towards the name MIRA that appeared in a previous dream.
More things I remembered: it's definitely a women's choir and they are wearing red over white surplices. The location is the vatican library, though I've never been there. The entire composition is about the Virgin Mary.
Bastet
In the interest of honesty, I'm posting the following dream. It has stayed with me for hours, and therefore must mean something.
I'm sitting in a room with a gray cat. Others are there with their pets. Everyone is boasting about how well they are feeding their pets. I take my cat in one hand and begin to feed him. It is very pleasant. But suddenly, The cat defecates onto my hand. And doesn't stop. I am incensed. I say, "I'm going to take you back to your room." But the cat doesn't stop. I start to carry the cat away. It doesn't stop. The feces are moist and odoriferous. I lose my temper. I slap the cat. He doesn't stop. Finally I take a pencil and begin to lash him. But he doesn't stop. He does this all the way back to his room, but in the seconds before I wake up, he transforms into a yellow baby chicken.
I don't think I've ever had a dream about both shit and violence before. Certainly never one where I am ever cruel to an animal. When I woke I thought it must be something trivial. Usually such dreams are easily forgotten. But this one remains in my mind.
I wasn't going to post it, but I have been doing so for the last seven years so here it is.
Water, Water....
It is 5 AM. I wake up from a dream where I am a young boy who has emerged from a high-rise after midnight. The street is flooding. Men in yellow hardhats are chatting, laughing. Water is coming coming coming from the left hand side. It is beautiful and exhilarating in the night. The street is like a river. It has white waves and dark water.
I begin running, chased by the water. I cross a metal bridge. It's a bridge with trapezoid iron grid work, like a railway bridge. I constantly take selfie's. I catch the water in snapshots of its motion. On the other side of the bridge, The colors are more blue and cool and the street is more medieval looking. It's a narrow high Street like an old English Village with cobblestones. I keep running and snapping pictures. The water is rushing behind me. Finally I manage to catch a snapshot where the water is a huge Wall frozen, much taller than me. It is so beautiful and such an elusive shot to have taken.
Very happy with myself, I turn right and the street it's more dry. There is a house with an iron covered walkway and a black gate. From a basement apartment, an old woman comes up some steps. She is followed by an elderly Asian couple. She says to me, where are your parents? Why are you out so late? You should not be out so late, a nice Asian boy like you.
Then I wake up.
Now it is 5:18 A.m. I am barely awake now, and I think I must go back to sleep. I just had to write down this dream before it went away.
Lumberjacks
Bits and pieces of a big dream about a jailbreak come to me. Also another dream set with carnival floats and bearded men in lumberjack shirts simulating fellatio with beer bottles. Weird, weird. Just fragments now. I was not meant to remember these, not like the others.
Hair
Last night's dream is about hair. Like Samson, my hair seems suddenly shorn. I find myself lying on the ground supine, and my hair, once long, is in three sections beside me, each divided by a little line of stones. The first section is my real hair cut short. The next segment seems to be white gravel. Finally there is a third segment of hair which is growing underneath a clear plastic covering. Although my hair is part of me it is also the earth beside me.