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Dream On

I've got to tell somebody 'bout this dream . . .

Most of the time my dreams are dense, spooky affairs involving endlessly shifting yet recurring settings and several varieties of impending doom (tsunamis, fires, floods, etc.). I'm sure any one of them could give a shrink enough psycho-fodder for years of interpretation.

The dream I had just before waking last night was not such a dream. It was entirely atypical, and therefore must be shared. Enjoy.

* * *

I was aboard a circular, inflatable raft on an open, shallow, tropical sea. I can't recall whether it was just me or whether Ashley was there with me (if she was there, she didn't have a lot of lines), but I know one thing. The Stones were there.

The Stones were, from what I could gather, gearing up for a big world tour. As usual. In pursuit of this tour, they had hired some three or four supporting musicians of varying repute. I think one of them had been the guitarist for some fairly well-known but certainly not Stones-calibre band from recent decades. They Might Be Giants or Simple Minds or some damned thing. All of these supporting hacks were preening starlets whose already overgrown egos were clearly stretched to breaking point by their newfound gig with the Stones. They were gossiping with each other endlessly about the cool things they had done, dropping names like a, uh, leaky phone book. (Except for Dave Grohl, who retained some class . . . more about him in a bit.)

(An aside about the supporting musicians: Due to the way my dreaming brain works, they manifested themselves as chunks of kindling that had been driven into the bed of the raft. During the unfolding events I am striving to describe, I occupied myself by pulling them out of their predicaments. Dreams being the way they are, this process in no way interfered with the conversation.)

Anyway, in the depths of their swaggering yak, these supporting musicians kept prefacing stories about their own exploits with "Don't get me wrong, I love the Stones, but . . ." After a spell of rocking aboard this raft with the Rolling Stones and these uppity chunks of kindling, I got fed up.

"Look, you punks," I told the hired guns. "Cut it out. These guys here are the Rolling-fucking-Stones -- the GREATEST BAND IN ROCK'N'ROLL! Y'all are a bunch of has-beens and never-beens." With that, I leaned back on the raft, quite smug in anticipation of the thanks I expected to hear from the Stones. But my smugness was short-lived.

"Did you ever stop to think," Mick Jagger inquired of me, "that after decades in rock'n'roll we are as tired of hearing about being the 'Rolling-fucking-Stones' as we are of small-time criticism and oneupsmanship?"

I was utterly staggered. Withered in my seat. "Uh, no, Mr. Jagger, Sir," I answered. I tried to explain to whatever Stones would listen how my sycophantry was somehow better than the supporting musicians' two-faced ego-pumping, but I got nowhere.

Just then, Charlie Watts, who had been absent (though I hadn't noticed), returned from a fight with a polar bear. He had won. I quickly forgot he was there.

After a spell, the hired musicians got back to bragging to each other. As part of this bragging, I heard them refer repeatedly to Dave Grohl (who was present) as "the greatest drummer in rock'n'roll!" And I began to wonder what Charlie Watts might think of this, were he alive.

Then I realized he was alive. And I further realized that, in addition to being alive, Charlie Watts was actually there on the raft. He had just beaten the crap out of a polar bear. Oh yeah!

Just then, the polar bears attacked. Only these polar bears looked more like the guy stuffed in the monkey suit in "Trading Places" than proper polar bears: wiry with black fur. Everyone on the raft began pelting them with rocks, and I scored some good hits myself. But the truth is we all looked to Charlie Watts to deliver us from danger.

So it was a shame when a moment later he had vanished, along with the rest of the Stones and their uppity hired guns, leaving me (and Ashley?) alone on the raft, overrun by gorilla-ass polar bears on a shallow tropical sea.

And then I woke up.

* * *

I could not make this dream up, and even if I had it wouldn't be worth telling. So tell me: what does it mean?

Posted by FLOG at July 15, 2004 12:26 PM