I awoke today at ten past three. At this time of year it hardly gets dark, and there was a full moon above the trees when I peered through the curtains on my way back from the bathroom. I immediately started on a round of internal observations. The nose had stopped throbbing, so I was most probably not going to die imminently of septic shock or galloping nasal gangrene. I lay for a while luxuriating in the absence of any kind of anxiety, social, free-floating or whatever. As usual my mind was racing. Five hours to look forward to at the interface between thinking and dreaming, stuff always happens in that zone, doesn’t it?
Dreaming out of control is less fun, it nearly always seems to involve being in a strange city, unable to remember where I’ve left the car, heading for the airport with no tickets. Alternatively, on screen two, it’s usually some anaesthesiological mildly nightmarish scenario harking back twenty years and involving lack of the pharmacological agents I normally use, not a happy situation, especially along with unfamiliar lung ventilators.
As the cab drew up at the kerb, I noticed the driver’s face seemed oddly familiar, although I couldn’t place him at all. He obligingly helped us get the cello settled into the back seat. It had been a successful concert, a full house and three standing ovations from a highly appreciative audience, and Euridice was in a relaxed and expansive mood. The taxi took off down the black shiny street, still wet from a recent storm shower.
We turned off into an area of the city that I couldn’t recognise, and after a few minutes stopped at an intersection. The driver gestured at the red light in front of us, and at once it seemed to enlarge, flickering and rotating. My first impression was that the traffic signal must have been colonised by advertisers, but while I was considering this unlikely idea, a clattering buzz overtook us and we saw a gigantic metallic green bluebottle swerve over the taxi and disappear over the buildings, wings screaming as it climbed. “Damned RoboSpies”, muttered the driver, accelerating rapidly away.
It must have been about half past three when the blackbird started to sing. I was entranced by the complexity of his message – exquisitely crafted phrases, descending in collapsing stacks of glittering cascades, repeated with alternative voicings and rhythms. I listened for a long time, trying to make some kind of sense of it as music, but it was completely baffling. I have exactly the same problem with piano music, it seems to have no relation to birdsong, no matter how hard I search for the connection, in or out of the dreamworld.
© Donnie Ross 2011
