‘A deep theatre’

I see some wonderful-looking shirts in a tailor’s shop and decide to be fitted for some. The tailor begins to examine me. However, at some point in the measurements, he is about to knee me in the stomach, but I stop him. Instead, he takes me to the back of his shop, to what appears to be a small room. There are stairs leading down, and as we descend them they widen and become quite grand. It soon becomes clear that these stairs are the way into a vast space. Down underneath the tailor’s shop is a whole theatre—a great concert hall, dilapidated. It has been here for a long time, the whole subterranean structure having been covered over by the shopfronts above. On the floor in the concert hall are unfinished violins that someone appears to have been making. I think of asking if I might try to play one of them; but before I can do this the tailor picks up an instrument and I notice there are three other people in the hall. They begin to play. The music, a very pleasing jazz, gets louder and louder, filling the theatre. I listen and imagine what a great venue this could be if only it could be fixed up a bit. One of the musicians is someone I recognise, a woman, a poet whose name I cannot remember even as I dream and even as I am told what her name is I still cannot remember it. The jazz has filled the space completely and then stopped [—so loud that it woke me up].