I am in the Cinema Redemption—which is naturally a cinema where one begins watching the movie of one’s existence in one place and then has to move into another place to see the finish. There is a mud track between the two cinemas. The cinemas are, in any case, only tents—like the tents in which revival meetings are held. When I move into the second cinema, along the mud track, to see the remaining part of Being, there are thousands of people with me, all of them also come to be redeemed, like me. I think that it’s strange and wonderful that the actors in the movie we are watching are not like other screen actors, but appear to be real people—a whole procession of them that enters the cinema from behind the audience. They have their make-up on. After they walk up to the centre of the meeting, they step into the screen and the movie begins. The movie comes to its denouement with the actors asking us, “Why are you lost?” I am shocked by this, and even more by the audience, which responds, “It’s Riccardo’s fault!” But I did not respond, keeping my mouth buttoned tight. I know that their answer was wrong and that, in truth, if I were to speak at all, I would have to say, “It is my fault.”
Category: Dream reports
These dream reports are part of a work-in-progress on sleep and dreaming.
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‘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].
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‘Red streamer’
The Palace Hotel is nothing more than an ornate shoebox thrown on a hill. Bushes have had their hair cut. Trees are tall and lean. The lawn is green felt. There is a driveway snaking elegantly to and from the entrance. I am standing on the lawn in the middle of the dream of luxury. A car drives up. Two Americans step out. I know the woman but not her name. Her daughter is with her. We exchange a few words and decide I will take a photo of them standing in front of the shoebox. She leaves the camera with me as she drives off with her daughter to park the car somewhere out of sight. I frame the palace façade in the viewfinder of the camera, trying to get the right angle. The light is diminishing quickly. The woman and her daughter come back by foot but as soon as they reach me it is dark. There are no lights anywhere. The moon is out. There are no stars in this part of the country. “Why are there no lights?” we ask. We wander around, arms stretched out in front of us, trying to find an entrance or an exit. We are frightened and asking ourselves, “Why are the windows blocked so that no light comes through them?” We find an entrance and go inside. Inside is a great hall decorated with little more than a few plush chairs and sofas. Middle-aged and old people are sitting and standing around the room. No-one talks. A woman in grey breast-coat and knee-length skirt, very prim and proper, hair bunched tight to her head, obviously a complete bitch, enters the hall. She says something about breakfast being served at 5-30. I immediately think that this is an odd time to have breakfast: too early, or too late, depending on which way you look at it. “What sort of dump is this?” the American woman says just before she and her daughter run out the door into the darkness. They obviously don’t want to have breakfast at 5-30. I run after them to fetch them back. Outside the palace there is no reference point. Someone’s voice calls out to me. I think it is a man’s voice but actually it is only a rasping whisper coming from the trees that line the façade of the palace. I reach out to grab whomever is there. I get hold of it. It may not be a person at all. Is it a dog? It runs away from me and I am falling over. I slip and fall to the ground, legs up in the air and my right arm being pulled down between my legs towards my feet. I’m horizontal. Whatever it was I grabbed has turned into a long red splash, lighting the road and lawn beside the palace. It stretches out across the lawn like a red streamer. The sky is lightening suddenly into an icy sea blue, the form of the palace and the color of the lawn becoming visible. Though I tried to hold it, the red streamer curls and twists, climbing into the air. Breakfast is being served.
This dream-story was first published in The Ninth Satire. It is included among dream reports because it was originally a dream. In later years I abandoned attempts to turn dreams into stories and concentrated, instead, on finding a way of writing dreams that allowed them to remain, more obviously, what they were.
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‘The central European joke contest’
I am a traveller. But I do not appear to be getting anywhere recently. I am in a small town where many of the voices and faces are familiar to me—and occasionally speak my language. Or say things that I can understand. One day when I am in the hotel I hear a joke that, later, during an evening joke contest, no one is able to recall because it is told in a language no one in the town recognises. I stand up to tell the joke as best I can. It is helpful, at least, that there are visual aids in the contest—a picture appears in the centre of the room: two very tall couples and two very large cases, red, on the ground beside the couples, the two couples facing each other. I start to tell the joke but don’t know the language it is told in, so I simply imitate the sound of the telling of it—a bit like the way people speak Finnish in comedies. This seems to go on for a very long time, at least until the humor of expressing the appearance of a joke runs out and there is nothing left but to admit that I don’t know how the joke ends, begins, or even what was in the middle. Of course, I am a bit disappointed by all this—but no one else seems to be disappointed. Indeed, someone in the hotel, someone I know, Barry Ladbrook, pokes his head forward and says, “Go on, Stephen, tell them about how the two couples are actually porn stars!” Then, of course, without even knowing what the joke is, it all makes sense, strangely, especially the part about the luggage. So, I make a second, weak attempt to get the joke out, finally—in Finnish, in my Finnish voice. Still, it doesn’t seem to be working. It is really a kind of torture. However, it is over quickly because the scene in the hotel suddenly changes into a courtroom where a rather sickly, old drunk has been accused of a terrible crime. The old drunk drags himself into the dock to give evidence as I hear people in the court say “No doubt he will give the old excuse…” He looks up out of his pathetic, worn-out face, skin hanging off him so he looks like an apple strudel stuffed into a white shirt and dinner jacket—and says, “What can I tell you, for my sins, that might save me from the fire of perdition? Perhaps, I am your friend, and that may be enough.” It is.
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[3 September 1993]
I am building a huge structure that is later to be burned and I am building it with several other people. A great wooden structure. We are standing on top of it, stamping in pieces of wood. But it begins to fall apart. We balance on top of it as it falls apart, thinking how we can escape to the building that is close to it. We begin with a plan of escape, hopping from plank to plank, while the structure wobbles beneath us. But the instability of the structure reaches a critical moment and we are still on top of it. We look at each other. Someone close says, “I’m sorry. There is nothing to do. Try to fall well.” I fall. I fall for a long time. I fall, hoping that I will die. I don’t. Instead, I find that the structure was a kind of prison and that there are thousands, like me, detained in it. The prison is built near a wide river. There are no trees, no riverbank (the grass, neatly trimmed, goes right down to the water). A giant boat comes up the river, turns the bend to approach the building, and people start getting off. I’m amazed. They are foreigners, journalists. We will be able to tell them our story.
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[Sunday 8 August 1993]
Extravagant preparations are being made for a dinner in a very large, almost palatial home. When the guests arrive, however, there is only one of them—and it is Andrew Daddo (one of the Daddos, anyway). He is wearing oddly coloured trousers and other clothing in an old-fashioned style, probably from the sixties. He and my mother sit down to dinner. I don’t go. Grace is recited. He speaks an overlong, rambling, respectful prayer. I’m not very happy about all this and go off sulking.
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[Friday 4 June 1993]
[I have been having vivid, melodramatic dreams. This morning] I was at a large poetry reading being run by K———S———, but none of the other faces were familiar. It seemed to be peopled by the kinds of characters I see around St Kilda. There were enormous, mutant prostitutes displaying their deformities as they stood around the edges of the auditorium. Something has upset the program and K——— asks me to read. I make my way, despite great difficulty, all the way around the auditorium (apparently going the wrong way) to the back of the stage, from where I am supposed to make an entrance. But I have taken a long time. As I get out onto the stage it is clear that S——— has asked some other people to start reading. I’m upset by this, and there doesn’t seem any point in going on. I look for my ‘cello and immediately notice that there are many instrument cases around the walls of the hall. It’s incredible, I think, that so many people here are string-players! I spot my instrument and go over to it. It is not in its case. When I get there, some young men, musicians, are near it and want to talk to me. It appears to be resting on a chair or sofa and, before I get to it, the musicians are crawling all over the sofa and, in effect, sitting on the instrument. I complain about this. It doesn’t do any good. They say everything will be all right. However, when they take it out from under them, I am shocked to see that the belly has great gouges in it. Clear, white, deep lines of unstained wood appear from under the varnish. It is ruined. It is resting in a car. I am visibly upset and cover my face with my hands. People in a car parked behind me are watching me. I begin to cry in my sleep. I react to its loss as I would to the loss of a person, a friend. I am not hysterical, but I cannot hold back from the feeling of terrible loss. For a long time the musicians try to console me, but I tell them it was unique and cannot be replaced. [Several people want me to play, but I am thinking that there is not much point because I am no good. But this dream is not about music, or about the ‘cello at all. It is about work, about finding a job. I got a call from a consulting firm yesterday offering me an interview for a job. It is the first interview offer I have had in months. The job, however, is with a public utility located in Dandenong! The woman who called was aware that the location of the job could put many applicants off, and asked if I was still interested. My heart sank when I realised it would be impossible for me to accept such a job unless I moved to live out there. I said that I would think about it but knew, even as I spoke, that I would return her call and turn down the offer of an interview.]
Stephen J. Williams 