Celebrity Ether
My goodness, that was weird.
So the Buspar seems to be helping my anxiety, even if I get a little light-headed about half an hour after I take it, although a stiff drink seems to take care of that. But the dreams have just gotten more and more vivid, even if their focus has shifted from horrific anthropomorphic animals that bear a slight resemblance to my parents' very real new cat, and onto famous people. I know there is absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing worse than listening to other people's dreams, because once you get to the part where they say "So my ex-boyfriend said to me that purple represented honor and that I was not allowed to wear it on Sunday because that was the day that honor should be God's and then my mother screamed for me from upstairs that my bat was molting?" you are totally drowsing off and just trying to anticipate the key questions that will result from the expectant analysis ("I think the velvet represents your fear of death"), while also ticking off your grocery list and realizing you totally forgot to mail in your insurance check.
That said, I think-as do all people, truth be told- that my dreams might be different right now, if only because they're so... NORMAL, but they're all with goddamn celebrities and I don't understand. So yeah, two nights ago in my dreams, Cameron and I were introduced to Lilly Tomlin at some big party, and she was entertaining our circle with really amusing anecdotes about working with Robert Altman, and we were all cracking up, and then there was a lull in the conversation, and we all overheard Anne Coulter, at the next group over, start ranting about how George Clooney was "a big, stupid Hollywood blowhard" because of his anti-McCarthyist "Goodnight and Good Luck", and Lilly Tomlin marched right over and loudly told her off for all of her anti-Hollywood bluster, and any pro-McCarthyist standpoint. I can't do justice to her tirade now, is the thing, because in my dream Lilly Tomlin was a lot like Lilly Tomlin actually IS, and so Cameron and I just kept turning to each other saying "God, she is SO AWESOME", because that's sort of the only thing one can say about Lilly Tomlin, but I noticed that she was really on point with her anti-Coulter tirade, because there's a lot of things you can say against Anne Coulter, like she's a horse-faced, willfully stupid fucking evil kabuki demon whore who is hurting America, but that's not the point, you know? Because Anne Coulter. But Lilly Tomlin kept on point, and explained why celebrities have the right to express opinions in a public forum, and moreover how everything Coulter believes about celebrity culture is a vapid lie. Then I woke up and thought "Is anybody cooler than Lilly Tomlin?" I doubt anyone is.
Then last night, in the first dream I had I was being attacked by thousands of scorpions, but I woke up screaming and had a stiff drink and went back to bed again, and there I was, watching Larry King Live, and Al Gore was on, and Larry King said "So is the release of your new movie supposed to coincide with a return to entering politics?", and Al Gore said "I hope that thought wouldn't try to negate anything I had to say in the film, I truly stand by all of the science", and Larry King said "Not at all. Truthfully, I hope that I am talking to the next president of the United States" and then the studio audience- this was a dream- applauded, and Al Gore looked abashed. And I woke up and wondered if Larry King was really allowed to be so blunt about his personal political preferences, although in this day and age maybe the rules are changing, because W, and he's evil and we all need to take sides.
And then I just took a nap, and I was talking to my friend- also named Charlie (with the convenient last name of 'Tu', pronounced '2' and establishing a certain social pecking order without us even having to, like, butt heads or anything), and I had the song 'Amazon' by M.I.A. stuck in my head- in pretty impressive lyrical intactness, I might add, considering I can't understand a goddamn thing she's ever saying- and I said so to Charlie2. And he said "That song is awesome, I think it's my favorite M.I.A. song" and I said "Yeah, me too, but I love that Hombre song too" and Charlie2 said "You know they denied her a visa, right? Like, she can't come into the U.S.? She was supposed to be making a new album produced by Timbaland and she can't come here" and I said "I know! They aren't giving any reasons, but I'm totally sure it's because of some stupid terrorism thing, because her dad's a Tamil Tiger" and Charlie2 said "Yeah, because the U.S. government has some fucked up sense of terrorist equivalence, wherein being part of a hunted Sri Lankan minority that has formed a resistance army is somehow in some way like being Osama Bin Laden, because terrorist." And then I said "I mean, is she even all that political? I feel like most of her songs are like 'minga pinga numero Bucky Done Gone Galang Galang Galang', and maybe that means something in Sri Lankan, or whatever, but it's not translating as well as her infectious beats and rhythms", and Charlie2, who had by this time shape-shifted into my friend Dave, was like "You like her, right?" and I was like "Dude, I think she's fucking amazing, I just don't understand her lyrics. But God, that Amazon song? Stuck in my head", and Dave was like "Yeah, I read this hilarious thing in Pitchfork that was a myspace comunique that she wrote that looked like a weird text message and ended with her saying 'whatcanudo i m just gonna get drunk with my turtle", and we laughed and I asked him if he'd heard of Beirut.
Astute readers will know by now that everything I have just said about M.I.A. and my own opinions is absolutely, 100% true. I think I'm quoting my dream directly, moreover, because I've been remembering them well. And I realized this in the dream just then. And I turned to a person who was now, predictably, Cameron, and said "Jesus, why am I thinking so much about personalities in my dreams lately? I mean, I've been dreaming about Al Gore, Lilly Tomlin, Jon Stewart, Lindsay Lohan, David Eggers, M.I.A., Anne fucking Coulter, and even Cyndi Lauper- and what's that all about, anyway?- and all of these dreams seem to really involve real things about their personalities. Is Buspar really just a crazy drug to make you totally in tune with media? I don't get this."
Well, who better to explain the answer to that question than Don Delillo? So it's a good- if startling- thing that Cameron suddenly turned into him (and I haven't got a goddamn clue what he looks like, so let's say it was a Noam Chomsky look-a-like who I understood to be Don Delillo), and explained the entire situation to me: "It's not you. It's everything in contemporary culture has come to revolve around a personality. It is a phenomenon that has gotten ever much more marked in the past 10 years or so, with more and more cable channels popping up while simultaneously new reality shows spawn off, creating thousands and thousands of personality that cloud the psychic airways. And since each personality is NOT a person, but instead a cottage industry which must encourage more and more exposure in order to survive, one cannot engage in any aspect of American culture without receiving a heavy and possibly fatal injection of these personalities, and it is inevitable that eventually they will obscure all other aspects of life- romance, job, sense of self- and leave it with piles and piles of celebrity recognition."
"So it's not the Buspar?" I asked, somewhat horrified.
"It's not the Buspar," said Don Delillo. "It is life".
I woke up and wondered if I really liked anything that Don Delillo had written other than White Noise- which is sort of almost too on-the-money to really be rematched by anything else he could write, when Cameron gasped in horror. "Oh my God!" he said. "Carla just texted me! I think Tori Spelling is dead!", and I said "what?" and he's like "she just said that 'so sorry for loss of your beloved Tori" (because Cameron has a deep love of Lifetime movies that feature the actress), and so we turned on CNN, and found out that, thank God, it was Aaron Spelling that was dead. There was a loving tribute already underway, so we assumed they must be playing the story of his death in heavy rotation, and it included tearful statements by Farrah Faucett and 7th Heaven's Beverly Mitchell. I wondered if I was dreaming and realized I was totally awake.
"Good God," I thought. "Don Delillo was right."
So the Buspar seems to be helping my anxiety, even if I get a little light-headed about half an hour after I take it, although a stiff drink seems to take care of that. But the dreams have just gotten more and more vivid, even if their focus has shifted from horrific anthropomorphic animals that bear a slight resemblance to my parents' very real new cat, and onto famous people. I know there is absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing worse than listening to other people's dreams, because once you get to the part where they say "So my ex-boyfriend said to me that purple represented honor and that I was not allowed to wear it on Sunday because that was the day that honor should be God's and then my mother screamed for me from upstairs that my bat was molting?" you are totally drowsing off and just trying to anticipate the key questions that will result from the expectant analysis ("I think the velvet represents your fear of death"), while also ticking off your grocery list and realizing you totally forgot to mail in your insurance check.
That said, I think-as do all people, truth be told- that my dreams might be different right now, if only because they're so... NORMAL, but they're all with goddamn celebrities and I don't understand. So yeah, two nights ago in my dreams, Cameron and I were introduced to Lilly Tomlin at some big party, and she was entertaining our circle with really amusing anecdotes about working with Robert Altman, and we were all cracking up, and then there was a lull in the conversation, and we all overheard Anne Coulter, at the next group over, start ranting about how George Clooney was "a big, stupid Hollywood blowhard" because of his anti-McCarthyist "Goodnight and Good Luck", and Lilly Tomlin marched right over and loudly told her off for all of her anti-Hollywood bluster, and any pro-McCarthyist standpoint. I can't do justice to her tirade now, is the thing, because in my dream Lilly Tomlin was a lot like Lilly Tomlin actually IS, and so Cameron and I just kept turning to each other saying "God, she is SO AWESOME", because that's sort of the only thing one can say about Lilly Tomlin, but I noticed that she was really on point with her anti-Coulter tirade, because there's a lot of things you can say against Anne Coulter, like she's a horse-faced, willfully stupid fucking evil kabuki demon whore who is hurting America, but that's not the point, you know? Because Anne Coulter. But Lilly Tomlin kept on point, and explained why celebrities have the right to express opinions in a public forum, and moreover how everything Coulter believes about celebrity culture is a vapid lie. Then I woke up and thought "Is anybody cooler than Lilly Tomlin?" I doubt anyone is.
Then last night, in the first dream I had I was being attacked by thousands of scorpions, but I woke up screaming and had a stiff drink and went back to bed again, and there I was, watching Larry King Live, and Al Gore was on, and Larry King said "So is the release of your new movie supposed to coincide with a return to entering politics?", and Al Gore said "I hope that thought wouldn't try to negate anything I had to say in the film, I truly stand by all of the science", and Larry King said "Not at all. Truthfully, I hope that I am talking to the next president of the United States" and then the studio audience- this was a dream- applauded, and Al Gore looked abashed. And I woke up and wondered if Larry King was really allowed to be so blunt about his personal political preferences, although in this day and age maybe the rules are changing, because W, and he's evil and we all need to take sides.
And then I just took a nap, and I was talking to my friend- also named Charlie (with the convenient last name of 'Tu', pronounced '2' and establishing a certain social pecking order without us even having to, like, butt heads or anything), and I had the song 'Amazon' by M.I.A. stuck in my head- in pretty impressive lyrical intactness, I might add, considering I can't understand a goddamn thing she's ever saying- and I said so to Charlie2. And he said "That song is awesome, I think it's my favorite M.I.A. song" and I said "Yeah, me too, but I love that Hombre song too" and Charlie2 said "You know they denied her a visa, right? Like, she can't come into the U.S.? She was supposed to be making a new album produced by Timbaland and she can't come here" and I said "I know! They aren't giving any reasons, but I'm totally sure it's because of some stupid terrorism thing, because her dad's a Tamil Tiger" and Charlie2 said "Yeah, because the U.S. government has some fucked up sense of terrorist equivalence, wherein being part of a hunted Sri Lankan minority that has formed a resistance army is somehow in some way like being Osama Bin Laden, because terrorist." And then I said "I mean, is she even all that political? I feel like most of her songs are like 'minga pinga numero Bucky Done Gone Galang Galang Galang', and maybe that means something in Sri Lankan, or whatever, but it's not translating as well as her infectious beats and rhythms", and Charlie2, who had by this time shape-shifted into my friend Dave, was like "You like her, right?" and I was like "Dude, I think she's fucking amazing, I just don't understand her lyrics. But God, that Amazon song? Stuck in my head", and Dave was like "Yeah, I read this hilarious thing in Pitchfork that was a myspace comunique that she wrote that looked like a weird text message and ended with her saying 'whatcanudo i m just gonna get drunk with my turtle", and we laughed and I asked him if he'd heard of Beirut.
Astute readers will know by now that everything I have just said about M.I.A. and my own opinions is absolutely, 100% true. I think I'm quoting my dream directly, moreover, because I've been remembering them well. And I realized this in the dream just then. And I turned to a person who was now, predictably, Cameron, and said "Jesus, why am I thinking so much about personalities in my dreams lately? I mean, I've been dreaming about Al Gore, Lilly Tomlin, Jon Stewart, Lindsay Lohan, David Eggers, M.I.A., Anne fucking Coulter, and even Cyndi Lauper- and what's that all about, anyway?- and all of these dreams seem to really involve real things about their personalities. Is Buspar really just a crazy drug to make you totally in tune with media? I don't get this."
Well, who better to explain the answer to that question than Don Delillo? So it's a good- if startling- thing that Cameron suddenly turned into him (and I haven't got a goddamn clue what he looks like, so let's say it was a Noam Chomsky look-a-like who I understood to be Don Delillo), and explained the entire situation to me: "It's not you. It's everything in contemporary culture has come to revolve around a personality. It is a phenomenon that has gotten ever much more marked in the past 10 years or so, with more and more cable channels popping up while simultaneously new reality shows spawn off, creating thousands and thousands of personality that cloud the psychic airways. And since each personality is NOT a person, but instead a cottage industry which must encourage more and more exposure in order to survive, one cannot engage in any aspect of American culture without receiving a heavy and possibly fatal injection of these personalities, and it is inevitable that eventually they will obscure all other aspects of life- romance, job, sense of self- and leave it with piles and piles of celebrity recognition."
"So it's not the Buspar?" I asked, somewhat horrified.
"It's not the Buspar," said Don Delillo. "It is life".
I woke up and wondered if I really liked anything that Don Delillo had written other than White Noise- which is sort of almost too on-the-money to really be rematched by anything else he could write, when Cameron gasped in horror. "Oh my God!" he said. "Carla just texted me! I think Tori Spelling is dead!", and I said "what?" and he's like "she just said that 'so sorry for loss of your beloved Tori" (because Cameron has a deep love of Lifetime movies that feature the actress), and so we turned on CNN, and found out that, thank God, it was Aaron Spelling that was dead. There was a loving tribute already underway, so we assumed they must be playing the story of his death in heavy rotation, and it included tearful statements by Farrah Faucett and 7th Heaven's Beverly Mitchell. I wondered if I was dreaming and realized I was totally awake.
"Good God," I thought. "Don Delillo was right."