I almost never remember my dreams. I’m not even sure I have them very often. I slept particularly well last night, and I had a dream, and I woke up remembering it. What follows is every detail I can recall, I went to blog it immediately so I wouldn’t forget anything, since this is such a rare occurrence for me.
I dreamt I was playing in an orchestra dress rehearsal. By that, I don’t mean I was dressed up, rather, we were having a rehearsal in a performing venue, probably very close to the actual concert. The few faces I remember were all from my old high school orchestra, included my orchestra director Winifred Crock. I was sitting last chair cello, which I used to sit sophomore year, but instead of having only 3 or 4 cellos, we actually had 4 or 5 stands of cellos, a much larger section. Also like sophomore year, I had no stand partner. We were in a large, dark amphitheater, the stage had a dark, shiny, reflective look, and there was a row of lights on the front, but I don’t recall *any* overhead lighting. Also, the entire audience was just a huge pool of water, one at least 10 feet deep.
We were playing exclusively show tunes, which my high school orchestra rarely did. Lots of John Williams, hard stuff. I suppose there was one exception, I think we played Holst’s Planets also – maybe just Mars. As usual, Mrs. Crock was way stressed out over how difficult the material she had chosen was and our apparent difficulties in playing even now, days before the concert.
We finished our second-to-last song, and somehow I remember that Star Wars was up next. I carefully put my cello down, and slip away to get Mrs. Crock a soda, hoping it would make her feel better. As I leave the amphitheater, I realize it must be inside a mall, and it must be after 9 or 10pm, because the entire mall is dark and deserted. I walk around looking for a soda machine, but I eventually find a poorly lit arts and crafts store which happens to be open.
I don’t see anyone in there at first, I only noticed it because one of the two employees there calls out to me “hey you, over here!” as I walk by. Strangely, there are also other customers in the store. Also strangely, they have some cans of soda. The only diet they have is Pepsi. I could have sworn Mrs. Crock drank diet, but I couldn’t recall if she preferred Pepsi or Coke. I was pretty sure in fact that it was Coke. I got 2 cans of the Pepsi anyways (hey, gotta get one for myself, so if she doesn’t want it it wasn’t a wasted trip).
I go up to the clerks with the cans. As I approach the middle register, one explains “Sorry, this register is sorta like our calander, we don’t use it to ring people up” and the other one explains to her “silly, of course we could use it to ring him up, we just normally don’t” but at this point I have already moved over to another register. Just before they tell me what I owe, I realize my wallet is gone and I have no money at all. I say “hang on, I’ll be right back!” and I scurry off to find my wallet or some money or something. I distinctly recall briefly considering pan handling, but dismiss the idea since there is nobody around in this dark, deserted mall.
I approach the amphitheater. As I approached, I saw that a large group was joining ours, probably just for the star wars. They were all dressed in costume (dancers often do dress rehearsals in costume because it affects them more). As I approached the theater I saw rows of girls dressed in Star Wars type outfits – not the nerdy sort, the sort the background characters wear at the “end of movie celebrations”. I think I heard the celebration music coming from the theater too, and they were dancing to it (think the music from the end of episode 4).
I get inside the amphitheater. but this time, there is no way to get back to my chair without getting wet. I don’t recall how I got out of the theater but going in is a problem. Mrs. Crock is still conducting Star Wars stuff. I slip into the water and swim (mostly underwater, to be more quiet) up to the stage on the left side (where the cellos are). The stage is too high, I can’t get on it from here, especially not without Mrs. Crock noticing. I don’t recall if I had the cans of soda or not at this point, but I assume not. I might have thought about something like “would she still be as mad at me if I had the soda?” I swim over to the right side, and find a sort of ramp I can walk up, then I sneak back to my seat. I don’t recall how I did it, but I assume I would have gone around the back side of the orchestra, rather than walking right behind Mrs. Crock. I don’t know why I feared her anger, she was always a kind and understanding person to us. I think I was just in “full suck-up mode” or something, so anything bad in her eyes was to be avoided.
Well, that’s about all I remember. I think I woke up after that. I wanted to blog about this before I forgot it, because I almost NEVER remember my dreams, and because this particular dream reminded me of many people I miss a lot from high school, not the least of whom being Mrs. Crock.
I could analyze this dream, try to figure out where it came from. There are lots of references to the day’s activities. I cleaned out my wallet, which I hadn’t done in a long time, so that is the “losing my wallet” thing – my wallet lost some weight as I removed a ton of business cards and things. I recently met someone new at DDR last night, so I had mentioned that I started playing cello in 5th grade, which brought up all these memories of those fun times. We also talked about my musical preferences a bit. DDR could represent the dancers, and the show tunes could represent all the music I “don’t dislike, but don’t really seek out, I just listen to it when I come across it”. Though my high school orchestra rarely played show tunes, we always wanted to. My orchestra here in Seattle, on the other had, just recently had an almost full-concert of just show tunes (but not good ones, very little John Williams, mostly stuff from the 1960s). I walk past pan handlers every day practically, in Seattle, so that is not abnormal, but it would have been a strange thought in high school. I’m not really sure where the swimming came from.
That’s all I can really think of, to analyze the dream. Weird stuff, huh?
