I awoke this morning from a dream where I, in fact, saved a wee turtle. It was making its way through the snow, a dog was waiting to pounce, and I picked that shelled baby up and placed it in the river which, though a short distance away, was experiencing warm spring temperatures.
Some of my ideas for stories or characters have come from dreams. Although the character of Patti Washington from The Con has antecedents of sorts in my real world, the name and character and a central scene (in a forthcoming short story that features her) appeared in a dream, years ago. I knew I had something interesting with the character, and she seems to be a focus for a lot of the response I've received from people thus far who have read the book.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Kublai Khan" took its starting point, at least, from an opium dream. Many a 1960s hit had not dissimilar origins. Paul McCartney heard the music for "Yesterday" in a dream, though the original lyrics were allegedly something like:
Scrambled eggs
Oh my baby how I love your legs
Not as much as I like scrambled eggs
Wisely, he revised them just a bit.
Robert Louis Stevenson had been working actively on what became "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde," but a dream helped him complete it. Many a work has been written as metaphoric dreams, regardless of actual inspiration. Sting, meanwhile, literally dreamed The Dream of the Blue Turtles. I do not know if they were wee.
You get the idea. Dreams and creative inspiration have been long-time bedfellows.
Although I am no musician, I sometimes dream in songs. There was a song in the Patti Washington dream, though the tune, I later realized, my brain plagiarized from a song in Disney's adaptation of The Jungle Book, one of the first movies I saw in a theatre. My aunt took me to it-- I think she wanted to hear Louis Prima sing. Other times, the tunes sound original, though I cannot write them down, or even correctly recall them. I often wonder if I could have a career penning weird songs. Let's take a look at a few:
You've got the cutest bum
In the entire slum.
Well, it's no "Kublai Khan," but less intelligent things have been the basis of hit songs. I passed them along to my nephew, a successful working composer for movies and TV shows and videogames.
I suspect I won't be hearing them in a soundtrack any time soon.
How about this upbeat piece?
Hey little Bernard are your noses interchangeable?
Did you see the sinister figure who dances on the white picket fences at night?
Were you there in the bushes on that afternoon when the phoenix took flight?
Do you know the twin sisters who practice ritual magic alone in their room?
(I cannot recall the next line. It ended with "doom")
Did you watch as the legion of the dead danced up in the air
Floating three miles above the Tri-County Fair?
I awoke feeling fearful and uncomfortable, before feeling a new appreciation for why McCartney modified the lyrics to "Scrambled Eggs."
Then there was this charming ditty, dreamed about a year ago. I woke and immediately wrote it in my journal, only to see that it was utter nonsense. A country blues tune, it was, but with a distinctive Johnny Cash riff and a Tom Waits sort of vocal:
Big boob bum!
Riemann sum
Little Johnny's got his gun
Little Jenny wants to ride a silver horse
Big bomb bay!
Doo Dah Day!
Little Johnny's gone away
Little Jenny wants to chart a different course.
Yeah, I have the same response as you. WTF???
The most recent song to invade my dreams featured clean electric guitar riffs. Children chanted the verses. The world's worst rapper performed the chorus:
Joan Buchanan passes gas
Joan Buchanan—kick her ass!
Joan Buchanan bitch-slapped the guy
Who kicked her in the ass and he started to cry.
CHORUS:
Say hello to the duck!
Say hello to the duck!
If the duck comes by
You wanna say "hi!"
So say hello to the duck!
Joan Buchanan—she's on fire!
Joan Buchanan changed our tire
Joan Buchanan drove our car
Joan Buchanan- she's a star!
CHORUS
Joan Buchanan drove us home
Joan Buchanan's out on the town
Joan Buchanan milked a cow
Joan Buchanan take a bow!
CHORUS
I Googled "Joan Buchanan." There are a handful of them, all quite disconnected, so far as I can determine, from the song's subject or my own life. But perhaps she will be a character at some future date.
Alas, I don't see much potential here for a career as a song-writer. But if such a thing were in the cards, have I now, by posting this lyrical treasure trove online, jinxed it?