My Worst Nightmare (Not Really)

Last night I had a stress dream about my new piece. I was workshopping with Laura and Hajnal, who are in my piece in real life. Laura is on her side, playing flute and trying things out. Then Hajnal’s husband, Dorian, comes to rehearsal too with small percussion equipment so I think, All right, guess I’m writing for that too. More people appear, because it turns out that Hajnal thought it they’d dig what we’re doing and would possibly take part.  

Then I see tables set up for brunch, staff bustling around in my periphery, a dance floor, some guests cheering, some dancing. I assume Hajnal had planned this as well. It turns out to be a wedding reception. I do not see a bride and groom; it simply becomes fact. We are standing next to each other, looking at the scene, and she says something that implies she is as surprised as I am. I say, You didn’t plan this? And it turns out she did not.  

I start to panic because I REALLY need to work. My friend Jay appears with an envelope that looks like one of the bank statements I actually receive in the mail and says he will go downstairs to the admin office to sort it out, since he needs to drop off a payment (which is in that envelope). Luckily, time moves by extremely slowly. I look at my phone and what was ten minutes normally was only three minutes. I don’t know how; I just know it was true in this dream. So I think, Okay cool, I have time.

Hajnal and I are talking (where the hell did Laura go?) and I tell her that some bratty girl we know, who does not exist in real life, I think her name was CJ, got put in her place.  

Right before this dream was another dream, that there was an Urban Outfitters closeout sale at the top of a mountain. This is really random, because I have not shopped there in several years. The company was bussing people back and forth at regular intervals and CJ was a diva and asking to be picked up at a specific time. She was told no (this was apparently her being put in her place). At some point, my cousin and I are on the bus but we had not gotten off, so we were going back up the mountain.  

There’s a little more, but I’ll stop there. To anyone who knows what my day was like yesterday, or knows me extremely well, this would make almost perfect sense. Psychologists theorize that dreams serve a role in memory processing, and this was absolutely a bizarre culmination of my Friday. Although it was cut short by an invasive wedding reception, I did receive one creative idea during my dream workshop.

I have felt stuck this month, but yesterday, I was able to sketch two tiny ideas. It did not make me feel like I had any more momentum, but perhaps just starting at least sparked a little bit of imagination that was able to manifest itself during sleep. Taking something from concept to creation sometimes seems nearly impossible: having to manifest all my research, personal stories, and the ways I think about life into a piece feels like trying to create a meal where nearly all of it is made from secret ingredients and no one in the world knows what they are.

I guess I should end with something cheesy like, perhaps the secret ingredients of my creativity will reveal themselves in my deepest dreams or some shit like that. I am not a writer and I need to start composing today. I just really want to make something good.