9/1/2023 -
I'm at a family gathering on my dad's side. My little brother is sitting next to me on this sleek long modern stretch around gray couch that we're on the far side of and he's freaking the fuck out. Just physically wilding out with his arms flailing around like a humming bird and acting as intentionally cuckoo bananas as possible. I look to my step mom on the other side of the couch and am like:
"Why is he allowed to act so crazy and I'm not?"
I do not even recall the answer to this question but I know I'm not super happy about it so I'm like, all right, I guess I'll just put him in a headlock then, which I do. I basically just try to forcefully restrain him, because you know, it's hard to sit next to a person that's intentionally going berserk.
Seems like a simple dream but honestly it not only harkens back to times long forgotten but also packs a metaphorical punch. My brother was about as ADD as possible when I was a kid which did sometimes push my buttons and lead me to forcibly make him calm down. Hell, sometimes he'd attack me even though I was quite a bit bigger than him. The act of putting him in a headlock here legitimately brought back memories of me doing exactly this when I was like 12. It felt the same.
On the metaphorical front, my brother is far more open about his shamanic inspired spirituality in familial contexts as an adult than I am. Are they super judge-y about it? Absolutely. He actually pointed out to me how judge-y they can be and I was sort of like:
"Oh yeah, I suppose I just stopped talking about it with them years ago sort of because of that, didn't I?"
In a sense, yes. So it's not even like he's allowed to act different and I'm not, it's that I intentionally suppress this side of myself on purpose because I suppose it's not a fight worth fighting. Truth: He could prolly learn to be more discrete as well. I respect the guile but again, you gotta pick your battles, you know?
Anywho, this all leads to one of my more common recurring dream scenarios which is the on-a-vacation-with-my-family theme. Same side of the family here and we're in some tropical Asian country. At lot happens here but what I mainly remember is that I'm supposed to be taking these like body board boats to rendezvous with a day trip type excursion on this larger boat. We're supposed to be partnering up but when I get to the point where I'm supposed to be sharing a body board thing the person I was supposed to go with hasn't shown up yet.
There's this other slim dark haired guy who doesn't have a board partner either and he's like:
"C'mon, I need a partner and we've got to head out."
But I'm not buying it so he goes by himself. The guy I was supposed to head with eventually shows up but we've missed our rendezvous with the main boat. So we head back to get drunk at a beach side bar waiting for the next boat and my Dad calls to complain:
"Oh my god, you left me here to go on the boat trip with that guy who wanted to be your boat partner."
That guy did seem to kind of suck now that you mention it. He almost persuaded me but I focused internally and the vibes felt off. I was clearly onto something.
The next thing I know we're out to dinner and it's this odd outdoor area seemingly in the middle of the jungle. We're sitting at this wooden picnic table and both my brother and I suddenly decide we're ready to eat. We apparently had eaten lunch later than the rest of the family so we were just hanging out for a while before finally grabbing chow. So we go up to the counter area where you order and we're so confused. How the fuck does this work? Oh, apparently all the sides were on the table and we were supposed to grab the ones we wanted, then bring them up here to buy them and also order a main. Got it.
So we head back to the table and explain that we had no clue how this was supposed to work so we're grabbing some sides. Except, almost everything is now gone and the second we mention we're about to grab sides, the other people immediately snatch up the last remaining morsels as quickly as possible. There were several cookies left and my little brother grabbed both of them aggressively the second I mentioned I was thinking about it.
None of this makes sense but we're like, well, we can still go get a main dish. And so we head up but it's so surreal. These women are like stuck in what look like mechanical wooden cages. There are 5 or six of these anachronistic wood machine compartments, each with a different woman in them. I look back at my brother and he's all:
"I have no idea what to do here."
And he's low key freaking out about it. I'm watching the other patrons though and I'm just like, well, it looks like you just pick a woman, walk up, and order. So I do. She goes through the options and I'm getting the fish sandwich. I even mention this to my brother.
"You know I like a good fish sandwich."
The order is placed and she then does a few things in her tree machine compartment, then hands off the order to this otherworldly food assembly line sitch. When I get to the front of the line it's almost like the whole thing is a mechanical wooden fish and you collect the orders when the final woman in the assembly line chain open's the fish's mouth and calls it out. I cannot understand what she's saying at all though so I'm just looking at all the orders to see if one's a fish sandwich.
There's this shorter thin white girl in front of me with very curly brown hair tied up in braids in the back. She's confused too and she walks up, then realizes she grabbed the wrong order which leads to her having a mild Karen moment. She just angrily mutters something under her breath but then her taller, thicc-er, sister with jet black hair and tattoos immediately starts yelling at her for being so culturally insensitive. Honestly, she's right but her response is almost worse than the Karen moment in terms of sheer intensity alone and I can tell she has mental issues which were just triggered, causing the scene.
That's all I remember until time and perspective shift. Now we're in a much more crowded, upscale, and still very surreal restaurant in the city. I don't recall precisely what happens here but I absolutely remember the feel of it. Large wooden tables with huge heavy chairs bearing the most intricate engraving imaginable. Pointed spires of transcendent precision imagery, stained to perfection. Faces within faces peering out of shiny treated wood. Excellent fucking chairs man, excellent fucking chairs.
9/2/2023 -
I'm visiting these relatives and it's not specified whether or not they're my relatives or my wife's or whatever but they're old. They live in this non-descript 50's style and very modest white house and I'm chilling in the the kitchen area but when I look into the living room everything starts going batshit. This porcelain being that looks like a naked woman's body from the waste down suddenly flies off the wall and starts humping these silver pipes that are floating in the middle of the room on a small fluffy white cloud. The lower body sculpture isn't messing around either, it's on top and thrusting in an excessively vigorous manner.
At some point they change positions so the cloud pipes are sideways and then they rocket off towards opposite sides of the room in an explosive fashion. When this happens I walk into the room and exchange glances with this older thin bald with gray hair on the sides dude wearing a brown suit.
"Did you just see that?"
Clearly he did. The room now transforms into this absolutely exquisite and otherworldly art inversion experience. We've arrived. Alive in the superunknown. Beyond the point of no reply. Oh my lord the colors. I have never seen so many colors.
But I do find myself outside of the devilishly heavenly fugue state for a spell. I'm walking down a hallway and wait a minute. I've found a secret door. It was invisible until I scanned it with my insectile telepathy but there it is, hiding. It leads to another wooden hallway and a medium sized square room with an incredibly detailed art telescope. I wish I had better word. Psychedelic metallurgy of the highest (weed pun intended) caliber.
I pull the thing out from the wall and start to peer into the exceptional contraption but wait a minute. I'm absolutely dreaming here. I know this but what do I do? Do I try to control my environment? It's tempting but honestly, what the hell is going on with the dimensional art telescope thing? I kind of want to know more about that than what would happen if I took the reins.
Now I'm out at a restaurant eating with a few people that I don't know very well. I overhear them talking about the band Midday Veil and I interject to mention that I hung out with them a bit back in the day. They seem baffled by this until I mention that I used to play in a psych rock band that played with them a few times in the early 2010's.
Now it's tracking for them but I've psi teleported to the entrance to this goddamn amazing art school/performance art school with the same hyper color mind melting vibes as the art dimension from before. I'm completely gobsmacked by the hypnotic color explosion feel of the place when an older gentleman in a suit interjects:
"It can be a bit much at times."
Once we're in the door, the ridiculously fashionable ensemble of students put on a musical performance of sorts. And you know, typically I don't like musical theater shit but since my consciousness is like flying through rainbow colored space trails inside their minds while they're singing, I can put my genre biases aside and concede that I'm impressed.
What's absolutely hilarious though is that after the show we go into the dinning hall area to grab some chow and pretty much immediately this dark haired male student wearing a sparkling silver suit with a blue lightning bolt on it breaks into a song and it's like he's workshopping new material for his classmates. I immediately understand what the old head meant when he mentioned that it could be a little bit much.
I'm now being introduced to my room while I'm at this freaky art school. This shorter guy with curly long hair introduces himself and shows me the room he shares with his girlfriend if I ever need to grab him. I cannot stress enough how incredible this whole facility looks. Over the top color everywhere. Shag carpet everything. Such sweet sweet mind candy.
Later I'm working on a collective project in this art studio type environment and we need something very specific to make our project happen. I remember that the long haired dude had some of whatever this is and so I seek him out. When I knock on his door it swings open but no one's there so I start looking for whatever it is I came for. They won't mind. But then I spend a bunch of time essentially snooping while looking for whatever it was. Now I'm noticing that it's pretty obvious that I've been going through their stuff as I was making zero attempt to put it back where it was. This project's going to rule though, so they won't give a shit. They'll just be glad I found the secret element.
My experience in the psychedelic performance art wing of the Invisible College goes on for more than a bit longer but that's roughly where I lose track of it. What would my life have been like if I went to art school rather than getting a degree in psychology at a football school? I just did not get super into making art until I was already in college, which sort of doomed that potentiality but I will in fact always wonder. In a metaphorical sense though, maybe it's never too late.
While you're here, do you like psychedelic industrial noise rock? Of course you do.
Comentários