Categories
Dream Journal

Flying Speakers-Rope, Odd Apartment Inspection

Flying around on a pair of huge speakers, pointed down. There’s a barely audible interference effect that repels it from the ground. It’s quite maneuverable, similar to this Flyboarding video I recently watched:

I ride it into a train junkyard full of salvage materials. I sneak behind a couch near the desk of a president. Lynae distracts him and we sneak out a side door while exaggeratedly ineffective security guards (who are in cahoots with us, anyway) are summoned. After this, the flyer is now made of rope and split into separate entities. A chase begins between a rope-helicopter which sports a lasso on its nose, and the trio of Bobby Hill, Connie Souphanousinphone (King of the Hill) combined with Connie Maheswaran (Steven Universe), and a charming old black guy. Rope is wound into a tight helix about their legs one at a time, and the three of them are propelled through the sky with the unspooling momentum. Connie/Connie switches kissing between the two.


Trying out a new apartment without the supervision of the landlord. Bright windows sunlit in the distance, broad open white spaces. Lying in bed with Lynae I notice a stray container of purple U-Stick glue rolling around the circumference of the room, oddly stuck to the walls with static electricity. As I note this to Lynae, it destabilizes and falls on her, startling her a bit. I say “at least I warned you, imagine the startle if I hadn’t.” Thus woken, we check out the kitchen (with two light switches), the bathroom (two of them), with two big open showers and two toilets each near two doorways. Terribly unprivate huge bathroom.

Categories
Mixtapes

Steve Reich Rethought

A collection of rare remixes and interpretations of works by influential American composer Steve Reich. Sourced mostly from SoundCloud, so you’re unlikely to have ever come across them before. Genre skews between danceable to downtempo, with a bit of ambient thrown in for breathing room.

Made by a fan, out of musical homages by fans, inspired by the art of someone who’s very obviously a huge fan of Music-with-a-capitol-M.

This same Steve Reich Rethought mix is also available on MixCloud.

  1. Coloreater – Six Marimbas — Steve Reich (Coloreater Remix) Soundcloud
  2. Röyksopp – Electric Counterpoint III. Fast – RYXP’s Milde Salve Soundcloud
  3. Somadrone – Steve Reich DRUMMING (Somadrone Remix) Soundcloud
  4. Violetta Lehmann Quartet – Steve Reich Electric Counterpoint Remix Soundcloud
  5. AB Sounds – Steve Reich – Drumming(s) (AB Remix) Soundcloud
  6. YGO SENTRIG – Music for 18 musicians, Section VII remix Soundcloud
  7. Prof Purple – Steve Reich- 2×5 (Jeremy Malvin Remix) Soundcloud
  8. Mattias Häggström Gerdt – Steve Reich – 2x5x808 Remix Soundcloud
  9. Adrian van den Broëck – Steve Reich ambient remix Soundcloud
  10. Denis Clifford – Steve Reich – The Four Sections (Carabas Remix)
  11. Eamonom – Drumming By Steve Reich – A remix Soundcloud
  12. Stand Still Band – Music for 18 musicians by S. Reich (Standstill & Refree free electric cover) live Soundcloud
  13. Evan Kuchar – Reich 2×5 (evan k remix) Soundcloud
  14. Hounds Tooth – Steve Reich Violin Phase-Houndstooth (Remix) Soundcloud
  15. gangsinu04 – Music with 70 clicks (Philip Glass and Steve Reich Remix)
  16. chrisofthelane – Remix – 50 Years of Steve Reich Soundcloud
  17. Future Kamba – Steve Reich – Electric Counterpoint (mps PILOT’s Future Takamba Remix) Soundcloud
  18. Tubesties – Steve Reich – Violin Phase (Tubesties Remix) Soundcloud
  19. Maison Paste – Music for Pieces of Reich (Collage Remix) Soundcloud
  20. sirmassim-odolce – Switched On Different Trains (rough Steve Reich remix) Soundcloud
  21. Meridian Responce – Enter the Reich (Music for 18 Musicians) (Meridian Responce Remix) Soundcloud
  22. XLR8R – Steve Reich & Coldcut Music for 18 Musicians (Maceo Plex Remix) Soundcloud
  23. Steve Reich – Electric Counterpoint: III. Fast (RYXP True to Original edit) Soundcloud
  24. Dario Lanzellotti – Steve Reich – Pulses (Dario Lanzellotti Remix) Soundcloud
  25. Powerplant – Electric Counterpoint II Slow

Categories
Dream Journal

Tiny Vacation Cabin of Mystery

A log cabin, set up between two pieces of playground equipment. It’s a rental and we’re staying there soon, so I show up early and work in the electrical closet to set up routers before our stay.

The house is small and charming, but I happen to watch one of the staff as she goes into the basement. It has a very slight slope — 1/3 of a story per turn, dug out like Mr. Mulligan’s Steam Shovel — and at the bottom of this narrow inverted pyramid-like space there’s a small door, almost a hatch.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/j_regan/41268494520

She disappears in there with some linens while I return upstairs to lounge and puzzle over how I might get in to this space, you know, for completionist’s sake.

Categories
Dream Journal

The House of Inequity

I’m a driver for a lowbrow company/boarding school/cult/orphanage. The roads around our compound are muddy and sometimes motor homes in particular become mired in the muck. After one such workday I come back for a shower (in one of the open, sunlit hexagonal group showers) only to find that it’s under repair yet again.

I’m shunted away to what I’m lead to believe is a reserve bathroom, but which has since been converted to a cramped bedroom barely large enough to contain a single, rumpled bed. The place seems to have been a proper bathroom in the 60s. One slanted wall with grimy oval cutouts once would’ve held stately vanity mirrors. I notice that the dimly-lit, echo-y, white tile walls go up unusually high. In fact they keep going up, narrowing into a disused laundry chute — and sneaky access to the otherwise tightly restricted rest of the house.

I’m spotted and nearly dragged off on the first floor I climb to. But from what I could see, it’s a common room, furnishings covered in felt, wooden bunk beds, a 70s handcrafted summer camp vibe… but with the disjointed quality of a children’s bedroom used by adults. The couple I narrowly escaped from could’ve been in a secret relationship, for all I know. No one felt free in this place, though our — were they teachers, minders, managers? — they certainly seemed to be rich enough.

I make it to the top floor, the attic built as an addition atop our oversized building, with bright panoramic windows that are so-angled as to show puffy blue-and-white skies. The people up here sport schoolmarm hairdos and Marie Curie-like studiousness, but to my great vindication, are also preparing an invasion force to wrest control of the rest of the house. This Gryffindor Army gave the impression of fierce, dark resolve. Surely one day theirs will be a glorious fight.

Exploring the upper floor further, I access a balcony that was used in the past for us to monitor the land around the main house. About 90% of this beautiful outdoor spot has been fenced off and replaced with an automated monitoring station. One rickety telescope off to the side for us, at least. I spy an open field of light brown grass freckled with isolated low trees. A single park bench. Nearer to the house, a gated-off chichi picnic dining area. A long elegant bench for rich people to eat our trendy “sweetie creamies”.

Unfortunately, this is about when I awoke. The Calea Zacatechichi I took about 3 hours ago seemed to have a-stirred up some curious stuff, though.

Categories
Dream Journal

Men Are Dogs (title taken from next day’s dream)

Welp… no getting around this one being weird: I was presented with a humorously-intended blowjob voucher from my old crush, while sitting in my own living room. In front of my wife no less. Not exactly a bad dream. Let’s just say I won’t be surprised if nothing comes of it though.


My Uncle Robert and Aunt Carol have a long, sloping, grassy field through the forests. A Pacific Northwest vibe. The grass is so tall (and wet) in places a full-grown man can hide in it. Taking a narrow tree-lined canyon path off from it, Lynae (to a small group) sketches out on a whiteboard her idea of a baseball score-keeping concept. Columns of Team A / Team B, a simple but useful discursion.


A bartender at a restaurant, perhaps a company cafeteria, gives me my change as flecks of gold suspended in a glass of water. I try to transport it outside by holding it in my mouth without much success. Coming back to my motorbike, I see that I’ve left my phone on it in plain view, on top of my jacket no less.

The store I was planning to go to has closed while I was inside the restaurant. Soon I do some super-high jumps on my scooter, front flips even, but the bike will still be fucked when I land.

Categories
Dream Journal

Osmosis versus… what was the other one’s name?

I find my former roommate Emily’s dating profile. Her first pic is from our apartment hall, which tells me that she’s still nostalgic for our time together but also doesn’t share what she looks like now.


In a store’s lost and found, I discover about 30 mini discs in a CD case which I, realizing their rarity, covertly steal in my hoodie. As it happens the attendant saw me and wryly confronts me, but after I tell him what they are and what I’m going to do with them — transfer them to archival digital — he gives a mysterious little nod of passing. Despite what I’d usually do I go right to work on them but there’s something amiss and none of them read correctly.


Sitting in a middle row of a classroom, Robby in the row ahead of me, Michael (Mickey before he was Mickey) in the row behind. Unusual as it’s the second night in a row I’ve dreamt of both of them.


I creep quietly toward the door of Aislinn’s North Beach apartment where there’s a bright glowing fishtank in window, but the rest of her lights are off so I leave without knocking.

Categories
Dream Journal

Vixen Hunting, Submarine Escape

Out in a wintry, grey, spread-out urban environment. Spot three vixens (female foxes) of gigantic size, perhaps 6 feet tall. My companion — a woman who’s not quite my partner, but certainly a good friend — takes aim with her hunting rifle and makes a clean shot at the lead fox. It’s then I realize the other two are a detailed mural, trompe l’oeil. Writing this now, I realize it could’ve been painted there as a decoy for exactly this purpose.

Afterwards, my wife’s grandmother shows up and folds herself neatly into a bag for transport.


Aboard a submarine, the captain from Seaquest (Nathan Bridger) and the young tech guy (Lucas Wolenczak) are together in a gym shower having sex. Within the dream I find this surprisingly boring, though I’m not sure who/what my dream persona is. A bit later the submarine is evading capture through rough water and can be seen darting in between the peaks of two waves. This image is particularly memorable as, in a later dream inside a classroom with Mickey and Robby T., I actually take care to draw it in pen.

Categories
Dream Journal

Exploring the Forbidden Office

Escorted on a secret tour through a complex of interconnected office rooms. The workers there have lived with the strangeness of the place for so long that, despite possible serious consequences, they’re willing to take small groups through it for a token bribe. I get an Ambergris vibe on account of the mysterious powers that run the place.

At the end of the tour, I return to a desk with a suitcase full of my shoes underneath. In the corner of a room, like my parent’s bedroom. There’s the chance my unseen boss will have a problem with it.

While waiting at a train station, up in a broad autumnal-leafed tree, I spot a very unusual-looking creature. It’s almost intentionally strange: a single large, unblinking eye on a prehensile stalk points at me while a confusing locomotion of multiple limbs shuffles/crawls/drags it through and out of the foliage. I watch as it leaps down from the tree, around the corner of a concrete wall, joining (or becoming?) a family group of ten or more and shimmering/disappearing into the ground.

Foggy wooden V-shaped viewing platform that I visit before my group. Climbing up a second time, the ladder has moved back and I’m not sure I have the upper body strength to pull me over. Kate Willett, who has lightened hair tips (perhaps from age) climbs up also and I realize this is as foretold in an old vision… a dream? Hm. She reveals a special name that lines up with my secret knowledge, something like “Ec-sdo-mai-ssis” without the dashes.

In our home, we have two regular-sized fish tanks. One has divider and a thin sick fish (a gullet?) breathing heavily on its side. Lynae does a water exchange at the same time as I do, and it results in one tank being nearly empty, and excess water for the other. Meanwhile I intermittently find tiny rats on floor, a consequence of a pregnant female escaping.

Categories
Dream Journal

Last Night in New Orleans

Slim invites us to a museum he’s been to before. Not knowing much about it, we end up liking it a lot — a museum named after Abita about New Orleans, and death (death with a little d and big D, Death). The black folks who run it are really into the place, too, and I wish I kept more details. One run-through, many catwalks, like a brewery tour. Death is alive.


Playing outside on the street of my childhood home on Kemper Court, I watch the adults steadily, one-by-one, leave their homes and leave me abandoned. There’s some new requirement for a federal ID (like the new TSA requirement, perhaps). I’m still a kid, but I’m also still me, and I know it’s some flavor of bullshit. In my head, while gazing at the neighbors house, I demand to know how much it costs to raise the neighbor kid Brandon. I haven’t thought about him in decades and I’m almost surprised I recall his name.

Passing the redeveloped portion of my hometown, Cathedral City, the part where Cat City Elementary used to be. Understanding that the absence of a place leaves the memories of that place unmoored, unrelatable. In the dream I can’t remember what it looked like, and all I observe is a line of tamarisk trees. The street has recently been the site of homeless encampments. A new bureaucratically long-named assistance center sits on the site of a former narrow park, battered tents obstruct the street (either in my direct experience or in my recalling of the past). Cranes return to the dark grass on the side of the road.

Spend several hours on a grimy and ghetto-y pedestrian overpass, passing the night in what ought to be an urban hell. Instead, there’s an erotic aspect, a sexual pastime. Who am I there with, am I male or female? — can’t remember. But it’s our secret location, ensconced above the rabble of vagrants, watching as if from a crow’s nest on a ship’s mast.

Inside a dainty house sometime after, I’m in charge of running the place.  I’m female, notably. There’s fancy teacups and luxurious wallpaper, but middle class, somehow unpresumptuous. There’s a stack of electronics that’ve been set up by my partner, stylishly white, antique by only a decade or two. Per someone’s request, I play some music on the DVD player, which is a clear plastic model, revealing the many spinning gears/components and quite fascinating to watch, spinning up, then becoming still.

Categories
Dream Journal

Spider-Sitting

I’m spider-sitting for a bunch of out-of-town friends, replacing rotting leaves with fresh ones to hide under. It’s a short time before I have to leave town for a very brief trip to New York, then Berlin. Plans have changed many times since Lynae booked the tickets.