I don't remember planning it, and I don't remember actually going. But I remember Kit and I being outside some kind of venue in Florida. I'm not sure where it was, the only thing I can say for certain is that it wasn't in Tampa.
We were going to see Porcupine Tree (unusual, eh?) and when we got there we got to see the opening band on this outdoor stage. But it wasn't really an opening band so much as a mixture of musicians that were not in a band together, really. Gavin was playing the drums, Danny from Anathema was playing the guitar. There were these two keyboard players whose keyboards were facing one another. I don't think they're "real" but the fair-haired one on the left was someone we knew from hanging out at the Mellotronen shop or something in the dream. He was in a band back in Stockholm and we'd secretly mocked him for not knowing how to pronounce Gavin's name. Anyways, the guys were really getting into it and it sounded great, but then there was this weird passage where the two keyboard players took turns hissing Gavin's name into the microphones. It sounded just like the bit in Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "The Lost Christmas Eve" where this kid is whispering "Christmas", "Christmas", etc. Except that this was Gavin's name and it clearly wasn't planned 'cause Gavin started laughing and almost lost his rhythm. Yeah, I know, like that's ever gonna happen.
After this gig, they started to clear away the stage, or rather the equipment placed on the ground, basically, as there wasn't really a stage and no fences or anything. So we realised that the "real deal" would not be out here. We spotted a stage and loads of amps through the windows of the building behind the outdoor stage and ran to the entrance. The line was long and we were really upset that we'd not gotten to the front. But as we got closer to the entrance we saw that people weren't moving towards the stage, they were mingling in the entrance hall. A bit relieved I asked Kit to take out the envelope with the tickets. As she did we realised that our trip had been so sudden that we hadn't told anyone we were coming. Not Mel, not Wes or Sam, and not Lynn (who in my dream had moved to Florida too). We were a bit downtrodden by our own lack of sense but at least we were going to see PT. So we got the tickets out of the envelope and there was this folded up, freakiskly long set of ticket-sized papers that had the shipping address, receipt, ads and sponsorship information on them (usually you get one or two bits added on to the actual tickets when UK venues send them to your home, but nothing like this!). Two of them would be our tickets and we had to find them. We could only find one and when we reached the woman checking the tickets we were really nervous about the whole thing. She said she'd find the second ticket for us (she seemed really nice), but after a minute she declared that there was no second ticket, only one. And of course we got upset but I managed to keep my cool and gave her my name and credit card number so that she could check her computer stuff for information on my purchase. She came back and said that I'd ordered one ticket for the indoor event and one for the earlier, outdoor event (clearly this doesn't make sense as we both attended the outdoor thing). Now I got really frightened as the gig was sold out and we couldn't get a second ticket. So I asked if she'd seen Sam, the tour manager. She hadn't and I begged her to let me go look for him a bit, since we had one ticket and all. It was all right so I headed for the stage and saw Steven over by a window. I darted forward:
"Is there any chance you could help me, Steven?" I blurted out before even reaching him and realising that it wasn't Steven at all, just a very calm-looking fan who'd donned the hair and glasses. He must've heard me wrong because he said:
"Sure, I can help you meet Steven later."
I wasn't sure if he tried to brag that he knew Steven or if he thought I was coming onto him and this was some kind of perverted game he was hoping to play. Either way I was surprised and disgusted and excused myself immediately.
I kept looking for Sam, and asked a couple of security guards who had no idea who Sam was. I even asked for "someone in the crew who speaks English with an American accent" as that only left Sam and Wes and seemed like safe bet they would've noticed. Nothing. Then I saw Hans and thought to myself: "I can not ask HIM to fetch Sam AGAIN!" and I didn't need to, because then he came out on stage. The beard was a little trimmed, but still there (so apparently his mother hadn's slapped it off his face yet, like he once told us she would).
"Sam! Sam!" I shouted and moved towards the stage. There was a lot of commotion around me but he still managed to hear me and came right on over. At this point the fear of the prospect of having to miss PT when we'd travelled so far to see them really set in and tears started pouring down my face. I felt like an idiot but I couldn't help it. I managed, somehow, to explain the situation to Sam and felt even more like an idiot when I heard myself beg him to help us if he could. He responded by giving me a great, big hug and tell me everything was going to be all right, he'd sort it all out. I wiped my tears and turned around to see Kit standing there, smiling and giving me the thumbs up for finding Sam. Apparently that kind woman by the entrance had let her in to help her look for Sam.
Next Sam told us to relax, the gig wouldn't start for ages and there was some kind of local teen marching band playing before them (and they sucked) and we should head over to the adjoining café before the gig and we'd still get to the front, no worries.
We sat down and the woman from the entrance served us tea and some weird looking cake-thing that apparently was a local specialty. You poured boiling water into it and it soaked it up and tasted even better than before. Really weird, but it was great. We looked out the window and saw this beautiful sunlit street (despite the fact that it had been dark outside when we queued to get into the venue) heading down from a lovely park to some really old stone houses and we were really impressed by this beautiful town. The woman came over and we tried to pay for the tea and cakes, but she said it had been taken care of already.
"What? Was it Sam who paid?"
She smiled and nodded and started talking about Sam and Wes and how nice they were. Then she asked if we knew if Wes was driving over from Tampe on his own (this is how I know we weren't in Tampa) but we had no idea.
I think this is where I woke up, and my first thought was that the view from the café window didn't match Florida. The stone houses were too old (like 14th, 15th century) and the park looked very English, nature-wise.
This dream was just a lot of the good experiences from our recent trip to the UK (which was a great success in every way, despite my worries!) mixed in with some odd stuff that I always find in my dreams. Blogs about the UK trip (that got extended to Finland) will be posted on www.myspace.com/campmanerg before New Year's, should you want to read about it.
Friday 28 December 2007
Monday 3 December 2007
The Dream of December 2-3
Things start out normal enough, but then there are some things that are just weird, and some things that are a bit... well, I won't get too graphic. Then there are a couple of things so weird I still, even as I write this, can't decide whether to include them or not.
OK. Once again the upcoming PT trip rears it's lovely head and this time things started out in the area I lived in between ages two and eleven. It was dark and Kit and I were waiting for the airport coach to arrive. I'm not sure what happened after we saw the bus arrive but then we were on this huge cruise ship, probably a lot like the one we'll be going on in March. Anyway, Beppo and Linnéa had joined us now, and why they were there I have no idea since this probably was a music cruise and we don't really listen to the same music.
I was off doing my own thing when I somehow ended up in this room that some people were staying in. It looked nothing like the real rooms on these ships, they had a really big living room - with a bath tub in one corner - and a really big bedroom next to it. The people staying there were some male musicians, their kids and these two girls who were their assistants (yes, they really were assistants and nothing else, though I have no idea why these guys needed them). One of the guys was supposedly French, though he had this really odd name that he actually had to write down for me to be able to learn it. One first name, two last names. He was living in India, though clearly not Indian, he had long, black hair in a pony tail, and it was quite curly. I'd say he was about 35-40 years old and judging by the teeth he was British (pardon my dental humour, but his teeth were not... bad, but certainly he didn't have that store-bought Hollywood smile), and he had a son who was about nine and had blond hair (and spoke British English). I remember that he was a widower (the man, not the boy), but I don't think he ever really told me, somehow I found out though. So me and French-British-Indian guy got on really well and then I left when it got really late.
Now, here some weird stuff comes in. Somehow, I know there was an earthquake. I think some of the interiors of the boat took some damage, but no one talked about it and everything else was fine. And I never made it back to our room because I met this man on the stairs going down who told me that Beppo had gotten really drunk and vomited on Kit's clothes and she was now washing them in the toilet. So I figured "fuck this" and headed back up to look for my Frenchman. And I found him sitting at a table not far from his room, playing poker. When I showed up he excused himself and we went to his rooms. The others were sleeping in the bed room and there were these windows between the two rooms that had blinds in them, blinds that were closed. And we sat there talking about his work, he was a session guitarist, when he said that he was playing Mejeriet with R.E.M soon. Mejeriet is, by the way, a venue in Lund that I've never been to and that is much too small for R.E.M, a band I don't really like. We agree that we should meet up at that gig and we keep talking. He tries to teach me how to pronounce his name - not that it was a great success - and then... well. There was some making out and removal of clothing. Aaaand then (here be one of the parts so weird that you're all going to think I'm deranged), for some reason, I was leaning over the bath tub and he was rinsing my hair, as if I'd had schampoo in it or something (which I hadn't). After this, I was in the bath tub and he was sitting next to it and we were kissing when I realised that the other people staying in that room
were watching us through the window. They were smiling. Not in a perverted way but more like "aww, our friend has finally found a girl". He got up to go in there and tell them to bugger off, or something, and I grabbed a towel and got out of the tub. My bra was on a table right next to the tub, except when I looked now there were ten bras, or something like that. I started looking for the one I felt sure I'd been wearing - because all of the other ones looked like other bras of mine. Thinking I must have remembered wrong I picked one up, and it was a 95 D (yup, European sizes, live with it) which is too big for me. Then I picked up another one which was "90A - for men" and I remember thinking "wtf???" in the dream before I put it back down and found the one I'd been wearing.
When I was dressed I felt a bit embarrassed and decided to head back to my room for some serious girl talk with Linnéa, who is really good at that stuff. But she's packing and says she has to go catch a train (apparently we're no longer on a ship, but at a hotel or something) to get home.* She says that she could ride with her parents in their car and leave thirty minutes later but that a car ride was probably the last thing her stomach flu needed. And then my mobile alarm clock went off and woke me up.
*As I typed this I had a recollection of a dream I must've had like six months ago where I was at this railway station that wasn't huge or anything, but had... Instead of tunnels running under the tracks that people could use to get to the platforms they had huge steel constructions with stairs and stuff to walk around. And it was dark out but this place was really well lit. I might have been chased by someone, because later in the same dream I remember being on a train, trying to run and hide from someone. Strange how thinking of some dreams brings back memories of other ones, isn't it?
So, that was my weird dream. The rinsing out my hair and bra for men was... well, weird. But I still maintain that Kit's dream that featured Peter Hammill speaking Swedish in a Scanian accent was weirder. I haven't dreamt about Peter Hammill for a long time. I hope I will soon. And I really hope that he's got his normal language and accent.
Though, at least my Frenchman was quite attractive. That's something, I guess.
OK. Once again the upcoming PT trip rears it's lovely head and this time things started out in the area I lived in between ages two and eleven. It was dark and Kit and I were waiting for the airport coach to arrive. I'm not sure what happened after we saw the bus arrive but then we were on this huge cruise ship, probably a lot like the one we'll be going on in March. Anyway, Beppo and Linnéa had joined us now, and why they were there I have no idea since this probably was a music cruise and we don't really listen to the same music.
I was off doing my own thing when I somehow ended up in this room that some people were staying in. It looked nothing like the real rooms on these ships, they had a really big living room - with a bath tub in one corner - and a really big bedroom next to it. The people staying there were some male musicians, their kids and these two girls who were their assistants (yes, they really were assistants and nothing else, though I have no idea why these guys needed them). One of the guys was supposedly French, though he had this really odd name that he actually had to write down for me to be able to learn it. One first name, two last names. He was living in India, though clearly not Indian, he had long, black hair in a pony tail, and it was quite curly. I'd say he was about 35-40 years old and judging by the teeth he was British (pardon my dental humour, but his teeth were not... bad, but certainly he didn't have that store-bought Hollywood smile), and he had a son who was about nine and had blond hair (and spoke British English). I remember that he was a widower (the man, not the boy), but I don't think he ever really told me, somehow I found out though. So me and French-British-Indian guy got on really well and then I left when it got really late.
Now, here some weird stuff comes in. Somehow, I know there was an earthquake. I think some of the interiors of the boat took some damage, but no one talked about it and everything else was fine. And I never made it back to our room because I met this man on the stairs going down who told me that Beppo had gotten really drunk and vomited on Kit's clothes and she was now washing them in the toilet. So I figured "fuck this" and headed back up to look for my Frenchman. And I found him sitting at a table not far from his room, playing poker. When I showed up he excused himself and we went to his rooms. The others were sleeping in the bed room and there were these windows between the two rooms that had blinds in them, blinds that were closed. And we sat there talking about his work, he was a session guitarist, when he said that he was playing Mejeriet with R.E.M soon. Mejeriet is, by the way, a venue in Lund that I've never been to and that is much too small for R.E.M, a band I don't really like. We agree that we should meet up at that gig and we keep talking. He tries to teach me how to pronounce his name - not that it was a great success - and then... well. There was some making out and removal of clothing. Aaaand then (here be one of the parts so weird that you're all going to think I'm deranged), for some reason, I was leaning over the bath tub and he was rinsing my hair, as if I'd had schampoo in it or something (which I hadn't). After this, I was in the bath tub and he was sitting next to it and we were kissing when I realised that the other people staying in that room
were watching us through the window. They were smiling. Not in a perverted way but more like "aww, our friend has finally found a girl". He got up to go in there and tell them to bugger off, or something, and I grabbed a towel and got out of the tub. My bra was on a table right next to the tub, except when I looked now there were ten bras, or something like that. I started looking for the one I felt sure I'd been wearing - because all of the other ones looked like other bras of mine. Thinking I must have remembered wrong I picked one up, and it was a 95 D (yup, European sizes, live with it) which is too big for me. Then I picked up another one which was "90A - for men" and I remember thinking "wtf???" in the dream before I put it back down and found the one I'd been wearing.
When I was dressed I felt a bit embarrassed and decided to head back to my room for some serious girl talk with Linnéa, who is really good at that stuff. But she's packing and says she has to go catch a train (apparently we're no longer on a ship, but at a hotel or something) to get home.* She says that she could ride with her parents in their car and leave thirty minutes later but that a car ride was probably the last thing her stomach flu needed. And then my mobile alarm clock went off and woke me up.
*As I typed this I had a recollection of a dream I must've had like six months ago where I was at this railway station that wasn't huge or anything, but had... Instead of tunnels running under the tracks that people could use to get to the platforms they had huge steel constructions with stairs and stuff to walk around. And it was dark out but this place was really well lit. I might have been chased by someone, because later in the same dream I remember being on a train, trying to run and hide from someone. Strange how thinking of some dreams brings back memories of other ones, isn't it?
So, that was my weird dream. The rinsing out my hair and bra for men was... well, weird. But I still maintain that Kit's dream that featured Peter Hammill speaking Swedish in a Scanian accent was weirder. I haven't dreamt about Peter Hammill for a long time. I hope I will soon. And I really hope that he's got his normal language and accent.
Though, at least my Frenchman was quite attractive. That's something, I guess.
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