Mom's Birthday Weekend

This weekend was my Mother's birthday.  We went up to Corvallis and helped her celebrate.  A number of her friends were there -- I haven't seen many of them for years, and there's always a moment of superimposing what I remember them looking like with what they look like now.  On top of this, we ran into my sister's best friend, who looks suprisingly like how I remember her mother looking fourty years ago.  Reflecting on this phenomenon, it seems funny that we say, "Oh, how you've grown!" to young teenagers, but we don't say it to septuagenarians or octogenarians.

Early this morning I dreamed...

I was staying in a strange town, maybe Northfield.  I think I was visiting M.H. or attending some sort of folklore or mediaeval conference.  I'd booked a room in someone's house and decided to extend my stay, but there were complications and the nice room I'd been in was going to be rented out to someone else.

In another part of the dream, I was an extra in a show. with a menacing, Giant Dragon Marionette.  Mostly I stayed back stage while the GDM swooped over the stage right and stage left exits from audience balcony.  Stage left and right were restrictive, square tunnels--if the GDM caught you there there was no place to hide from its breath.  Thinking about it in waking life, the stage was from the old Corvallis High School.  There was a shift and the play became a little more real, and the cast was working together to deal with an actual swooping dragon.  I brought out a wind-up mouse/car smoke device and then scurried back stage again--this was vaguely helpful.  There was a musical quality to the action, but I don't recall any songs. 

At the end, a woman in black poofy clothing thanked me for delivering the wind-up smoke bomb, and told me to get out.

Somewhere else in the dream, I walked into a cafe music performance.  There was a lot of dark wood panelling, and the floors were wood as well.  There was a tallish musician in a duster / trench coat / black leather jacket.   It wasn't Neil Gaiman, but in waking life I'm thinking it sure looked like him.  He had a dark pillar-like folk instrument which was a cross betwee a bass (large), an oboe (black and columnar), and a therimin (touching the column at different heights produced a kind of therimin sound).  The musician invited me to play, and I rested the column against my shoulder and placed my hands upon it.  It began to thrum, and the next thing I knew, I was playing the "Skye Boat Song." I got better and better at it, producing harmonic fifths and chords to acompany myself.  

There was a strong sence of processing the music as I was playing, and there was also a strong emotional resonance within me that this was the most beautiful music I had ever played.  Ever.    The dream ended with me hanging off of Not Neil Gaiman's leather jacket, tearful and wondering how I had managed to create a Marvellous Song.

I had "The Skye Boat Song" in my head most of the morning.  Um, I like it, but I'm sort of bemused that my dream self would be struck through the heart with it.