The celebrity dream is a long-running feature of the American subconscious. At least I believe it true.
Our mundane dreams slip by. Our eyes glaze as other people describe their dreams. When graced with a famous or long-dead face, their resonance builds. Herman Melville was a gracious host in that old Victorian house until he went on a tirade insisting there was no way we could be related. Lawrence Ferlinghetti accused me of stealing a pair of chauffeur gloves.
I still remember walking with my father and bumping into Bill and Hillary Clinton. Before we parted, Dad quipped, "Well, if you ever see us again, you won't have trouble with our names," at which the president chuckled awkwardly. I have no idea what conjured Howard Cosell a decade after his death, but there he appeared in vintage 1970s form.
But until May 24, I had lacked a Bob Dylan dream. Seeing him onstage in a dream doesn't count. In this dream, Dylan and I threw rocks and skipped stones across a creek that doesn't exist.
We stood before the old house on Chillicothe Road in Mentor, Ohio. The drainage ditch that plagued during 12 years of summer mowing had grown wide enough to house deep blue pools teeming with aquatic life. The spines of dark-scaled fish occasionally ruffled the water. We started our throws with pebbles and gradually moved to large chunks of rock to compete for the largest splash. Goliath frogs sat on the marshy bank. The African natives' presence was odder than Dylan's.
Eventually we tired of the rocks and sat on the lawn, which was three or four days overdue for mowing. Wind tousled the lone massive tree in the front yard.
I long ago lost the ability to retain a dream in its entirety. I know there wasn't any talk about music, as much as I wanted to ask him about Highlands, his 16-minute song/dissertation based on a Robert Burns poem. We talked about life and now most of that conversation has broken down to mumbling. Not that I expected clear enunciation - this was Bob Dylan, after all.
Some other friends popped in. Dylan popped out, gone from the dream as quickly as he might flee in real life. Then I was up, ready to deal with another round of storm damage.
The irony of the dream became apparent an hour later, when the news touted Dylan's 70th birthday and recounted his influence. My subconscious spawned a dream, probably after a week of birthday build-up I barely followed. My brain knows I'm not a celebrity chaser, but granted me a few odd minutes with one of modern music's masters.
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