(no subject)
I had a very intense dream.
It echoed one of my childhood memories- except the memory was a nightmare and the dream was nice.
In my childhood my father who was an opera singer (before he gave it up for a nine to five dayjob) seemed to have unreasonable expectations of my ability to understand sheet music at age four, without him having bothered to explain the concept to me in the first place.
So he'd summon me to him and put a piece of music on, and hand me the notes for it and say *Do you understand?* and I'd nod terrified because he was fearsome when he shouted at me about not understanding, and he'd say *Do you see the notes? Show me what the right notes for the music being sang now are* and I'd poke somewhere at random and he'd lose his temper and shout at me and call me Stupid and I'd say nothing at all and focus instead on the building of a wall in me.
So music is something of a gremlin and a big source of my insecurities.
In my dream I was talking with my father. And he handed me a large book, whose pages were full of moving scrawls like funny fish. Each scrawl seemed to have a life of its own, and I couldn't see its shape or give it a name, but when I looked at it it was as though I could get a glimpse of it, and of some larger mystery.
And my father asks: Can you see the notes? Do you understand? and for the first time, I do I do I do.
I can see the notes. They're talking to me. And I sing them.
In my dream a voice just came out of me, like something erupting from the deep and I sang words that made no sense, words which seemed like gibberish- but the music flowed from me, unstoppable.
Sometimes it was light and harmonious and at other times the music was haunting and tearing and raw, but it just went on and I let it go. Let it flow from me, from deep in me and just sang and sang and sang.
It felt wonderful.
It echoed one of my childhood memories- except the memory was a nightmare and the dream was nice.
In my childhood my father who was an opera singer (before he gave it up for a nine to five dayjob) seemed to have unreasonable expectations of my ability to understand sheet music at age four, without him having bothered to explain the concept to me in the first place.
So he'd summon me to him and put a piece of music on, and hand me the notes for it and say *Do you understand?* and I'd nod terrified because he was fearsome when he shouted at me about not understanding, and he'd say *Do you see the notes? Show me what the right notes for the music being sang now are* and I'd poke somewhere at random and he'd lose his temper and shout at me and call me Stupid and I'd say nothing at all and focus instead on the building of a wall in me.
So music is something of a gremlin and a big source of my insecurities.
In my dream I was talking with my father. And he handed me a large book, whose pages were full of moving scrawls like funny fish. Each scrawl seemed to have a life of its own, and I couldn't see its shape or give it a name, but when I looked at it it was as though I could get a glimpse of it, and of some larger mystery.
And my father asks: Can you see the notes? Do you understand? and for the first time, I do I do I do.
I can see the notes. They're talking to me. And I sing them.
In my dream a voice just came out of me, like something erupting from the deep and I sang words that made no sense, words which seemed like gibberish- but the music flowed from me, unstoppable.
Sometimes it was light and harmonious and at other times the music was haunting and tearing and raw, but it just went on and I let it go. Let it flow from me, from deep in me and just sang and sang and sang.
It felt wonderful.