Spoonful and Aspirin Dreams

I dreamt that I entered a club in London called 'Spoonful'. It looked like a big high school gym, wide space, high ceiling. I was to play there later with the Rolling Stones. What instrument? The owner, a tall, lanky guy told me the Stones played there in 1968, long before my time with the band, and that he was as poor now as he was then. He didn't look old enough to me to have been around so long.  I went out for a walk with a friend.  When it came time to return, we couldn't find our way through the streets of London. No one could direct us. Not being able to find my way is a theme that returns often in my dreams.   Yesterday, I read a story written by a journalist visiting Bucharest who couldn't find the grave of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, and didn't get much help from the Romanians, which was surprising as they are now revered by many of their countrymen.

I have noticed that medications which have nothing to do with your psyche, liked blood pressure, thyroid, pain pills, affect your dream life. A Mexican psychologist, whom my then spouse mistook for a Russian, once told me that a medication having to do with my psyche would not affect, would not change my thoughts. I didn't believe her, and, since as a psychologist she couldn't prescribe it, I never had a chance to test her thesis.

All of that happened. The rest I made up. I'll tell you how.

I am reading a novel by Italian author Claudio Magris, titled Blindly.  It is a difficult, confusing read. A man, or maybe two of them, relates the events of his life to a psychiatrist.  He or they covers two centuries, adventures in  several countries and on two or three continents, all of it fascinating while nearly impossible to follow.  At the same time, I am listening to the recent albums by a Texas singer songwriter named Ray Wylie Hubbard.   He too is a teller of stories, his songs are more like wild rants than Tin Pan Alley moon-June hit material (no wonder Ray Wylie has remained on the margins for four decades.)  Somewhere on the Internet he raves to whoever will listen, or rather read, about his current experiences, stream of consciousness stuff, all lowercase without punctuation, more fascinating tales.  And there, he recounts how he came up with the idea of a song titled "Snake Farm".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jNWPUFNA2U

And so, reading Magris and Hubbard inspired me to make things up out of scraps of memory, random observations and stories I read and hear about.  Making things up and stealing ideas is better than recounting stories of your real pain and misery, of crouching in a dark corner weeping, of making a fool of yourself time and time again. Let my missteps be mine alone to know about, they're none of anybody's business.