v i v i d d r e a m s
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MY NEW NICKNAME December 18, 2005 In which my friends throw me a really lame bachelor party, and then give me a really crappy nickname. ME & MY MAKEUP June 10, 2002 In which I find myself competing with an unidentified black woman to see who is prettiest. GLENN DANZIG'S LEGOS May 5, 2002 In which I discover an entire national park made of Legos only moments before finding out about a tragic turn in Glenn Danzig's life. DUDLEY MOORE, DEMOLITIONIST April 3, 2002 In which the late Dudley Moore turns out to have a side business as a building imploder. |
ANOTHER BUILDING IS DEMOLISHED a dream I had the morning of September 8, 2002 It seems that I was in some sort of play. I don't recall any specific people who were in the play with me, but I know the cast was about eight people. So we rehearsed and rehearsed, a lot of it in a space that looked a little bit like the basement of the house I lived in growing up in Leawood, Kansas.  Kinda dark and low-ceilinged. I don't remember much about the content of the play we were rehearsing, except that there was a West Side Story-style dance number in it where I got to do a lot of leaping.
I also recall that the floor we were rehearsing on was a wooden floor that seemed temporary. As if it was laid down on top of the real floor in the rehearsal space. It was made up of sections that didn't fit together so well, like a poorly thought out parquet floor. So we were doing our final run-through and just as we were at the final scene of the play, a bunch of young upstarts wandered in rather noisily -- other performers that we (in the play) all recognized. There seemed to be some tension between the young rapscallions and us, as if there was a mutual lack of respect between us. I was maybe directing the play at this point, because I appeared to be just watching, while these younger actors came in talking loudly among themselves with total disregard to our rehearsal. I climbed up on a cubicle wall, which was conveniently next to me and tried to get their attention to have them shut up. When I finally got their attention, one of their group said, "Well, we're scheduled for this space right now. We have it reserved." I knew that they did, but I asked them if they could just let us finish the scene, as it was the last scene in the play and then we would be out of their hair. They quieted down, but then Wendy Molyneux (my teammate on Tiny Hostages) spoke up. Apparently, she was coaching this team of rapscallions. "Well, hurry it up," she said. "I've got to go in an hour." We eventually moved our rehearsal outside, taking with us the sectional wooden floor. It's not like I remember us moving the floor or moving outside, but more that we were just suddenly outside rehearsing on the floor from inside. The tech people for our show were hanging around still and I told them to go ahead and take off, that we didn't need them for the rest of the rehearsal. They were very grateful. Sometime after this rehearsal, I found myself walking through a park with Adrian Wenner.  At the time, this seemed very tied into the play, but I can't recall the connection. It was as if we were maybe walking to check out the space we were to perform the play in or something. We were just chatting and walking leisurely across this grassy expanse when we heard a rumbling. We both looked up just in time to see the 30-story office building where ArtistDirect is located imploding into a tiny pile of rubble.
While I was stunned, Adrian, on the other hand, was surprised I seemed so upset by it. You know, who doesn't like to watch a building get imploded, right? But I explained to him that my office was in that building and that no one had told me the building was going to be demolished, and all my stuff had been inside. My office had been filled with personal belongings in a way that is totally not in sync with reality: in truth, my office at ArtistDirect contains almost nothing of personal significance. Shortly after this, I got an opportunity to go back in time. Not far back in time, but just to an hour before the ArtistDirect building was demolished. My motivation seemed to be, at this time, to get all my personal stuff from my office. So, the next thing I know, there I am inside the deserted building, which looked, unsurprisingly, nothing like the actual office I work in. But it was completely filled with people's stuff. In fact, the building looked not at all ready for demolishment. Computers sitting on desks. Calendars hanging on walls, and all the power was still on. Interestingly enough, I wasn't suspicious at this point. It wasn't as if my thought was, "Wait a minute. Why are they demolishing this building with all this stuff still in it?" Neither was I in much of a hurry to find my stuff and get out. Instead, I spent my time snooping around in a way that was at times very leisurely and at other times just plain curious. And by that I mean that I kicked open doors to offices and jumped in as if I was some sort of action figure. During this whole time, I didn't ever come anywhere near my office. In fact, what popped into my head as I looked at a room filled with techno gizmos -- including a live microphone that I spoke into and heard my voice amplified in the room -- what popped into my head was profiteering: I could take a bunch of this stuff out of the building and no one would know the difference, because I went back in time and this stuff gets crushed by the building anyway! Before I can enact that plan, however, a semi-official looking guy came down the hall and reminded me that I should probably get out of the building. "You know they're demolishing it, don't you?" he asked me. "Yes I do, which I find very strange," I said. "Because I just found out about it. I was just coming to get my personal stuff from my office." (This was such a big concern of mine in the dream.) I added, "You'd think they would have sent a memo or something." "Well, you've got about 20 minutes. I'd suggest you just get out of the building." I laughed and replied, "You're right, I wouldn't want to be crushed along with all this stuff." And we got into the elevator, now with a sudden sense of urgency that was totally lacking only an instant ago. Before the elevator will move, the semi-official guy has a key he has to insert in the panel for some reason. After I pressed the lobby button, the elevator went up instead of down, which surprised both of us. But I didn't panic, thinking that, obviously, someone was still on an upper floor and needed to leave also. The elevator went all the way up, but the doors didn't open. We just stopped at the top floor for a moment and then began our descent. But we descended as if we'd been dropped. In fact, for most of the ride down, it felt like my feet weren't even touching the floor of the elevator. The semi-official man in the elevator with me was a little thrown by this as well and we sort of held onto each other to steady ourselves as the elevator plummeted. But when we reached the lobby, the doors simply opened and we stepped out. Which didn't really cause much of a reaction in either of us beyond a shrug. We hurried out of the building and back into the grassy park where I first saw the building fall.  But we were talking so much that I didn't really hear the rumble and by the time I turned around the building was already just a pile of rubble. I'm disappointed that I missed it, because who doesn't like to watch a building get imploded, right?
So, I guess because I missed it (and for no other external reason), time rewinds to right before the implosion, allowing me to watch as the building shudders and shakes and then the exterior of it totally collapses away, leaving just the girder skeleton of it. Which continues to stand. Making this collapse nothing at all like the previous collapse, because the whole building collapsed last time, not just the exterior. Exactly why time reversed or why the building didn't collapse this time is never fully explored as my cat woke me about that time by poking me in the face with her big fuzzy paw. © 2002 Jeff Drake |