Sleep To Dream

I just had the oddest night of sleep in years.

First, I wake up at 3:57 a.m. from a strange dream. I have to get from Philadelphia to New York City with a bunch of high school buddies, including my L.A. James. I forget my passport and miss the last train, so we have to improvise. We take a train south to Wilmington, Delaware. the trains this enormous, deluze, modern thing. When we get to Delaware, James and I borrow his dad’s bright yellow, two-hundred thousand dollar Lamborghini. I drive. I’m a terrible driver. And the road is narrow through tunnels and cattle chutes. The whole vibe of the dream is frantic and last-minute and late. It’s terrible.

So I wake up at 3:57 a.m. I’m wide awake. I catch up on my fellow bloggers. I read the news. Then I step out on my deck and notice that the sky to the east is growing light. So I climb back into bed and eventually fall back into a restless sleep.

My last dream is the weirdest, and the worst. I’m in California visiting a bunch of college buddies. In reality, these guys (Pete, Paul, Eric, John) used to live in Boston in a house we called Mad Mell. The name came from the phone number (you know, like the oldie timey phone numbers like NIaGra – 3456), but also came to represent the madness within. I recorded “Out of Your Head” with those guys, if it’s any indication. We did a lot of drugs. Mostly pot, but also shrooms and plenty of cheep beer. And I wasn’t afraid to gobble a few pills. Not the best of times times back there in my twenties.

Anyway, the real Mad Mell was a circus-like environment, like my dream. We’re in the totally communal house on the edge of the Pacific. There are painters and sculptors and actors and musicians everywhere. Everybody is free-spirited, hippied-out, and frankly, pretty fuckin’ delusional. There’s some kind of performance being planned. Of course, they all want me to play.

Meanwhile, I keep saying to my girl (comma) friend, “Have you seen the view?” I’m kinda’ mackin’ on her. There’s a lotta’ of sex in the air, but it’s all behind closed doors. So I keep walking her to the window to show her the view, but time after time it’s locked in by fog. Finally, we see the view: towering, white-capped waves crashing onto a golden beach just steps from our front door. Then Ethan wakes up, and I have to look after him…

Then comes the performance. Afterwards, some guy comes up to me and introduces himself as So-and-So from Capitol Records. And he wants to talk about a record deal. Of course, I’m thrilled. We pile into a van that a buddy of mine is driving and head out to some spot on the ocean. Oh — get this — we’re in Italy now. So the dude driving the van drives really quickly towards the end of the pier, then stops just prior. I search and search for CDs with new songs ‘cuz all he knows is my crappy internet demos (ha ha). So I find something new (“A Simple Life,” I believe), and play it for him, and am dancing and singing along when a train rumbles by and cast some cool, strobey light on me. And the driver — it’s Paul now — says “That’s make a great music video!” And I’m all like, “Dude, we can do ’em right here for so cheap. All we have to do it shoot tape and give it to my brother.”

And that’s it. I wake up at 9:56 a.m. thinking I have a deal with Capitol Records. And I have to tellmyself over and over, ‘It was only a dream. It was only a dream. It was only a dream…’