My sleep pattern for many years has been pretty much the same: Go to bed. Question whether or not I’m really sleepy. Nearly instantly fall asleep. Sleep soundly for 3-5 hours. Wake up. I know it is early, too early to consider getting up, but I can’t resist checking the clock to find out just how “too early”. Lay about wondering if I’ll every get back to sleep. Fall asleep. This is where my dreams tend to take place. I seem to go in and out of waking, and often feel as if I never really went back to sleep. The passage of time and the fact that I am occasionally actually roused by my alarm clock tend to indicate that I have been asleep. Just very, very busy.
Last night, after a day that was probably more stressful than I gave it credit for – first physical in a long time and wondering what it might turn up – I climbed into bed pretty early, about 10:30. The plan was to read for a while, but the cat was demanding attention and in the end I just decided to turn off the light. When I awoke it was 3:30. As usual, I had my doubts that I’d be able to get back to sleep, and as usual, it didn’t take long.
There is this phenomenon in Guitar Craft referred to as the “course dream”. It tends to be very vivid, and in content relates in some way to a Guitar Craft course. Sometimes it is highly specific, or it could be much more abstract in that way that dreams can be. But they are unmistakable. And they are often recognizable from within the dream; not so much “lucid” in the sense that I know I’m dreaming per se, but a kind of feeling of “oh look, I’m back here again.” For me they tend to come most frequently as a course somewhere in the world is approaching, or while one is going on. I have no particular philosophy on the existence of the collective unconscious within a group. I just observe that my experience has always been that when a lot of people are intensely focused on a project or a course, it can spill over into my dreams, even if I am not directly involved.
So I wonder what is going on today, because last night’s was a doozy. There are no specific courses or projects taking place, although something is always going on at one stage or another. The Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists project in Argentina completed earlier in the week. There is an “at-a-distance” course sponsored by the group in Europe beginning in a couple of weeks. So there is certainly stuff “in the air”.
This morning’s dream was so vivid, and so chaotic, that on several occasions I actually found myself kind of “rebooting” by waking up. I’m not totally convinced that these periods of “waking up” weren’t still contained within the dream, although a couple of times the purring cat at the bottom of the bed pinning my feet down served as a kind of reality check. But whether real or nested in the dream, these moments of waking up had the feel of getting me out of some kind of closed loop within the dream. Never seemed to be very successful from that perspective. I’d just reenter into another insoluble dilemma.
One specific moment: a rehearsal of the Orchestra of Crafty Guitarists. A smallish ensemble, perhaps 25-30 players, arranged in a deep U shape, with me at the top of the line on the right. We are sitting in Silence, waiting for the spirit to move, as it were, and the music to begin. I realize I have a Stratocaster strapped on and a small amplifier to my left. I squat down in front of the amp, turn it up, and unleash a powerful but controlled Hendrix-esque barrage of feedback. The other players look a little nonplussed. Some timidly join on their acoustic guitars. From my spot in front of the amplifier it takes an intentional and consistent effort to hear anything beyond myself. After some time I start to hear singing voices. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but in this case it is clear that the majority of the group has decided to treat this as “Curt is making a joke, so let’s join in and make it even more ridiculous.” Robert has a look of something between exasperation and disappointment on his face, and summarily signals for an end.
This was but a small moment in an Epic. I spent much of the rest of the dream in search of my missing acoustic guitar, encountering many adventures and misadventures along the way. In some cases, hilarity ensued.
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