February 6th and Dreams

Dreams, Old Dreams, Real Dreams are Boring?

Happy February 6th, my friends.

I’ve not posted in a long while. Not here, not on social media (much), not in any of my mailing lists. Truth be told, I just haven’t felt like it. There’s so much noise out there, and I’ve been abandoning private malaises for personal joy and, well, I just kept thinking to myself, who needs thoughtful, sometimes funny little blogs to add to their TBR pile?

But this morning I decided that maybe some people like to read these after all, especially because the third person in a few weeks had sent me a message wondering where I was. And, as I was raised to be a people pleaser, I decided it was time to post. I’m here!

Geographically, here is back home in Los Angeles. For now. :)

But in my heart? I’m, well, here! :)

…

It’s February, of course, and for me, that’s always a time of dreams. February may be the shortest month, but growing up in Minnesota, the endless cold and darkness makes it interminable! It gets some intriguing holidays, though. Groundhog’s Day (celebrated by some of my friends as St. Brigid’s and or Imbolc), Valentine’s (bring on the romantic and sometimes ironic poetry! Byron! Keats! Walcott! Li-Young Lee! Emily Dickinson! Taylor Swift!) and then my birthday (which I share with Nina Simone and W.B. Yeats, and that should ‘splain everything.) As a kid and young woman, I spent hours upon hours reading novels, poetry, sometimes philosophy… daydreaming, of course, as my imagination has always been superior to most any normal day of life… playing and listening to music… and basically, I never changed. :)

This year, I’ve been reading that big bad list of the new rules of etiquette as listed over on The Cut (https://www.thecut.com/article/tipping-rules-etiquette-rules.html) and I want to add a rule that if you hyperlink to something in your blog or article, I, the lowly reader whose eyes you wish to capture, gets to see ahead of time - and not by hovering cleverly over the underlined word - what site, precisely, we are clicking over to and whether or not someone gets $.oo799 for my happily willing click (I do not make any such money at the time of this writing for the above link; substack may. Certainly someone gets something out of the deal.)

I’d recommend the article. I learned a few things, disagreed on some, and read it top to bottom.

One thing I learned that I hadn’t entirely known: describing your dreams (presumably the ones you have at night) is boring, as boring as describing a TikTok video. Okay, so, truth be told, I usually do find people describing TikTok videos to me pretty boring. Usually. Not always! Then again, I also find most TikTok videos boring! Sorry? Not sorry? Hear me out. The majority of what I see are people in silly costumes lip-synching lines from favorite films and TV shows. I don’t mind things getting super meta sometimes but… ugh. Come on. I have few precious spare moments available in a day, and if I’m going to spend them on social media, I want Cillian Murphy/ Peaky Blinders memes and speedy cake-frosting videos.

Of course I love all cute animal videos. I’m not a monster.

I do love clips from stand up comedians who have really paid attention and honed their craft. But watching influencers come up with rehashed material from 2017 is like reading someone’s blog who is just rambling about handsome Irish actors and the state of the world today and that’s… um…

I digress.

…

In life, both personally and professionally, I listen to a lot of people tell me their dreams. The kind you have at night, and the kind you wish for in life.

I find none of that dull at all!

Last night I dreamed, yet again, of our world in the midst of an apocalyptic event.

This time, Carlo, dressed confusingly in the kind of matching linen pants and shirt with a jaunty umbrella pattern you’d expect to see on a waiter at a cabana bar in Miami, and I (presumably dressed, how I know not) were working/presenting in a theater just as the end of the world started. I do mean a theater where people put on plays and musicals and such. Anyhow, a comet hit the earth and spread some sort of vampiric disease, at which point various nations started bombing each other, then in-fighting began amongst us plebs on the ground, and basically every doomsday scenario we’ve ever seen or I’ve ever researched (which is a LOT, because I’ve written and/or am writing multiple projects about the “end of the world”) struck all at once.

We- Carlo and I, that is- attempted to focus the attention of the people surrounding us by singing Bob Marley songs and inspiring them to be noble. But that only lasted as long as our theater was in tact. It was swiftly dismantled by forces both seen and invisible. After that, we hopped in a jeep with some non-stark-raving mad people, including a few children, and drove to another theater, one further inland, closer to mountains and away from the coast. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Soon we were hiding in bunkers, waiting out— more comets, multiple kinds of aliens, various weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare, more zombies and vampires and walking funghi. At one point, we escaped another theater (always theaters! I guess people really DON’T go see movies and plays anymore, because they were some of the only safe places to hide out in!) and walked around a hill to discover a huge amphitheatre.

There, many people sat in the audience along the hillside as it sloped down toward a stage where religious leaders of all types paced the stage like rappers. They shouted over each other, yelling and speaking all at once, preaching, reciting spiritual texts and scripture. A low hum was quickly turning into a loud rumbling and the orange-red flames of fire began erupting below the ground, peeking out just beyond the pontiffs.

Time to go! Carlo and I ran to someone’s truck, trying to rescue as many of the children as we could (who were, by the way, unconnected to the people on the hill, still all silently watching the mad gesturing and wild performances of the religious leaders despite the rising fires behind them), and we all escaped just as more apocalyptic things went— BOOM!

I woke up at that point, terribly disconcerted, smelling coffee, and shocked at how relaxed my husband was as I asked him in terror what time it was.

“Almost seven,” he said, and went back to reading about soccer.

…

Last night were the Grammys. I haven’t watched the Grammys much in life in general, and not for many years, speaking of dreams but now in terms of deflation.

I love to sing, we all know that! And I love a number of the people who won last night (I did read a few headlines). Sure, we could say I’m bitter, but it’s really not that- really! I’m bruised. About my singing career. And that’s okay.

Anyway, never one to quit anything, I’m developing a musical, slowly but surely. It’s more of a folk-rock opera, and I love it. I love everything I do. That’s why it kinda hurts if something goes off the rails as terribly as my singing career did. Not just a few rails! All the rails! Every train I tried to take. But I figure that, because I still love singing, and I love songwriting, and I love music, I have to just make my own train. Or gypsy van led by horses. Or heck, walk, if I must.

Because it doesn’t matter about my career. Really, it doesn’t. It matters about art, and about honoring dreams and following them wherever they lead. It matters about honoring the beauty in my heart.

Yes. Expectations and an attachment to an outcome that doesn’t or didn’t or might not happen sure can make a person angry and sour, all because the world didn’t give us what we think we deserve (and maybe do). But the joy and sorrow and spiritual gifts of singing stretch beyond money and fame and little statuettes…

Music is one of those things that connects us to both nature and the divine. Very few things can do so, and certainly not with the same immediacy. Our bodies are instruments used in aspiration to a higher order of being. Music calls us to touch upon its possible perfection, where it lives but we never can, and yet in so participating, we mere humans may realize the possibilities of something beyond our current awareness, our current way of knowing ourselves, shaped into something even more beautiful in the presence of that divinity. This growth of the self through song has nothing to do with staying the same, and is not bound by age or race or gender or geographical location or genre. It is available to all of us, even when we are not aware that it is happening.

And I get to take part in that!

That, my friends, is what I call a dream come true.

…

One last thing.

February 21st, the Spy v Spia theme song, written and produced by my friend Mark Mallman, performed by me and featuring Irina Volka, is being released on all music platforms and social media everywhere. That’s fun! For those of you who do not know, Spy v Spia is the short film/ independent TV pilot I co-created, co-produced, co-wrote, co-starred in and which has been in multiple film festivals since its premiere in July of 2022. We have a couple festivals more where you can see our project in person! It’s irreverent, impolitic, funny, sometimes romantic and even has action sequences. Think of it like Moonlighting, but about rival international spies. Anyway, the theme song is an homage to Shirley Bassey and Adele and also Leslie Nielson. I think you’ll love it. :)