Had a torrent of dreams last night. And most of them involved the theatre. No too surprising, seeing as I've spent most my life in and around theatre. In one, I was watching a production of You Can't Take It with You at a theatre somewhere in California. It was opening night, and an old friend was playing Grandpa. Well, Grandma, as I had switched the sex for this actor. As I was watching the show, I realized I had not set curtain call. In another dream, or another part of that dream, or another dimension/reality that I was seeing, I was casting a play with all these young people in it. Also not surprising as I direct a lot of plays with and for young people. This group was high school age, and the auditions were long. Afterwards, it was time to cast the show. There were about five of us making the decision. We decided on some local rehearsal studio to go do the casting, instead of staying at the theatre, and everyone went to put their headphones on for some reason. Mine got mixed up with the sound designer, who was part of the casting process for reasons unknown but felt totally normally in the context of the dream. I really needed my headphones, and was about to freak out, when we figured it out. And then I went to this apartment near the appointed place, started going over my notes, and met a friend not involved in the casting, and we discussed the song Time by Tom Waits. And that was that. And there were other dreams, too. Sometimes, I wake up and feel like I've returned from a ten year journey through strange lands.
I had a thought yesterday that maybe my dreams fuzziness of late were trying to tell me to write about something other than dreams on this blog. And last night's deluge of dreams seems to back that up. We are living in such a strange time. And in a way, I've been trying to normalize it, to make it palatable. This blog has become the same thing every day. Dream, thoughts on dream, brief commentary on the world, song. I think that is all fine and good, and structure is awesome, but I do think I also have to acknowledge the crazy, which I feel like I haven't done enough of.I don't think many of us have. I drove by Wash Park yesterday because for the first time in over a
week, I had to go get some supplies. And the park was full of people. I'd say 80% of the folks there weren't wearing masks. People were jogging, riding bikes, acting like it was a usual day off. And it pissed me off. I get the desire and need to be outside, to be near other people. I feel that need keenly, everyday. But suck it up, people. It's been all of a couple of months. Makes me rethink how awful it would be to serve time in a prison. Used to be, if I read about someone getting a couple of years for some crime, I'd think "wow, pretty easy sentence." Clearly, being locked up isn't as easy as I thought. For the most part, just being under this national version of house arrest is more than most of us can handle. And that's crazy. People who claim they want to make America great again can't make the slightest sacrifice in our country's time of need. If they want to make America great, they have to be great themselves. Whining about taking measures that seem to be working in slowing the spread of a deadly disease doesn't seem great. It seems entitled, childish, and foolish.
I want to continue to ask the big questions these times demands. What happens when we die? What happens when we live? Why has it taken a globe pandemic for some of us to realize how badly we have been treating this miracle of a planet that we live on? What have we been doing with our lives? What is truly important? How much can we withstand?
Here's one thing I always felt to be true, that these times have validated for me: Love, Forgiveness, and Acceptance are the only way to get through this world.
Here's a song. Time, by Tom Waits.
1 comment:
"Time" is one of my favorite Tom Waits songs from "Rain Dogs." It's hard to stay in one place all the time and feel like all you're doing is marking time, but time is part of our strategy in our war against this disease. The enemy is a virus that dies away if we wait it out and deny it the social contact that it uses to spread itself, but as human beings we measure time by things that we do. What happens to time when you can't do things you used to do? When asked what time is, Einstein once said that time is what a clock measures, but what if there were no clocks? We could observe time by the rising and falling of the sun, but those periods of darkness and light are mirrors of our sleeping and waking lives. Why did Paul the Apostle refer to that as his daily death and resurrection? It's because without clocks and sunsets, each moment of self-awareness is tick of a clock of consciousness. Patience, not panic, will save us, and while we're waiting we can heed the advice of Tom Waits when he says in the song, "It's that you love."
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