Forgery League

Sunday morning I dreamt I was writing a song. It was coming along so easily - I had something like two verses, a chorus and a bridge, with what seemed like pretty good lyrics - when I realized I was dreaming. I woke myself up and scrambled around for paper, and tried to get it all down in barely-legible pencil scratchings, working out chords in my head…

And then I woke up. Aw, dammit. I crept into the other room - inasmuch as we have another room in this loft, and found a tape recorder. Couldn’t find a blank cassette, though. Maddening. Bits of the song were fading, naturally enough - enough to make me start wondering if I actually had come up with a song, or just dreamt that I had the feeling of writing a cool song, when in reality it was all the neural equivalent of “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet”... meaningless and possibly completely derivative. Sean woke up at this point and came into the room, grumbling that the lights were waking him up.

I smiled at him, and noticed how beautiful he looked. And realized I was dreaming, and decided to see what I could do in that state - realizing on some level that this additional distraction would probably make me forget what little of the song I could still remember. And somehow I was floating above him, holding his face in my hands. And then it changed. He became, in turn, several different people, some male, some female, and of varying ethnicities… I was fascinated, because my dreams aren’t usually so vivid.

And then I woke up. At least I could get a bit of it down… one of the verses, maybe. I figured. Since I don’t actually own a working tape recorder, I tried to find my busted-up MiniDisc recorder and perhaps get some of the melody down rather than trying to write it on staff paper - something I’m not very good at.

And then I woke up. I grabbed the sketchbook I keep by the bed and a pen… but the only thing I could remember was completely unrelated idea I’d had along the way: a simple vocal line à la Stereolab (“Ca le le le, ca le le le,” it went). That was it.

But by now I was in a feverish state of wanting to write something. So I wrote for a few pages, fragments of lyrics or poems or whatever, turns of phrase and scattershot similes inspired by feelings or visual impressions I’d had along the way.

Maybe it’ll be useful in a song someday. I don’t frickin’ know. :D

Quoth a friend, when I told him this story:

Nested dreams??? Oh, I am never, ever, ever sleeping ever again.