I dreamt that Rex Harrison was singing in that talk-singing way he had. He was singing Invisible Sun as usually performed by The Police. He was placing his quizical vocal emphasis on a very literal recital of the lyrics ala ‘Why can’t a woman be more like a man’.
Wilfred Hyde White was lurking silently.
This may be a repeat dream. It feels kind of familiar. London is surrounded by a wall and largely abandoned. I’m one of a small number who regularly gain access to the abandoned city via various burrowed tunnels. We have to be quick as there’s a low level exposure danger to being in London that isn’t specified.
We emerge by Marble Arch. There is much that is boarded up but dilapidated. All sounds are deadened in a similar way to the way snow deadens the passage of sound. Shouting out does not seem to carry the voice and an eerie silence pervades.
Night seems to fall at different times to the areas outside of the quarantine which puzzles us greatly. In time we find we’re spending so long in the abandoned city that we are deemed too tainted to stay in the world outside the city by the authorities so spend our lives in a no mans land between the two, the tunnels below and the fringes of the quarantined area.
Image by J@ck! under this creative commons licence
I had two main dreams last night. The first featured a man with a mixture of cereal flakes and coins embedded in his legs at an angle. At a distance it made his legs almost look scaled. It turned out he was a kind of anti super hero complete with dubious pants and a black cape. His aim was to introduce elements of chaos into lives. He thrived on chaotic situations. He would arrive, show how to bring order then twist the circumstances by introducing more chaos.
In between all this he just chased people for fun. He was chasing me. I ran.
Image by Neal Dench under this creative commons licence
My dream last night must surely be a film I’ve seen or book I’ve read. If not then it’s surely an amalgam.
First contact with extra terrestrials is made though not face to face. The Earth is overcrowded and overpopulated. War and violence regularly breakout though an elite live in relative normality.
Mistrust of the voices from the stars dissipates as they share their advice on how to solve environmental problems and cure serious disease. The population rises to even greater numbers and it’s clear that the Earth cannot house so many. The extra terrestrials offer to re-home many on an new Earth-like planet in another galaxy. In fighting for places is extraordinarily fierce and soon those that shouted the loudest gain their places.
We all watch as the self elected ones take their seats in alien designed machines where they will be broken down into atoms and transported in the blink of an eye to an new home. A new world. A fresh start. This would leave our Earth with sustainable numbers. If the population bloomed then the aliens would re-home a percentage again.
But the process was corrupted by own own engineering interpretation skills. There were errors we made in building the transportation devices from the plans supplied by the aliens. As a consequence information became garbled and the atomised individuals were never reassembled entirely correctly on their destination new Eden. A new Earth begins with millions disabled and disfigured by the mistakes in the planning of their journey.
Image by taratar69 under this creative commons licence
Do you know those huge human hamster balls? The large translucent inflated balls that people get inside and roll around for fun in? I dreamt I was in a similar contraption. Larger than a house but less translucent and from the inside more angular. Only a fraction of the outside light filtered in through the swirly multicoloured fabric skin.
I spent a lot of the time straining to see in the dim light and squinting to the fabric skin. I could see the covering flexing from the light winds outside and could hear the fabric flutter. I waited expectantly for the angular structure to start to roll as per a human hamster ball but was intrigued as to how I would move around as the solitary inhabitant of the structure.
Despite the constraints I felt fine about where I was with only a hint of uncertainty about the future.
Image original by Jeff Youngstrom under this creative commons licence
The main dream of the night revolved around the continual reappearance of odd objects in the skies followed by the slow materialisation of hybridised people in towns and cities. For a while it looked like we were to be swamped by the strange and the new but swiftly an achilles heal would be found which eradicated the visitors. No sooner had the threat passed than a new more immune wave of visitors would appear.
And repeat.
Image by isdky-Brian Barnett under this creative commons licence
My recurring dream of very many years involves me filming a wedding, something I did for many years. Each week was a worry and starting out the day always had me almost sick with worry and nerves presumably akin to stage fright. Once I’d got going it was usually fine and I was on auto pilot.
That’s not to say that there wasn’t a lot to cope with as you were essentially filming a live event that you couldn’t stop stage (unlike photographers who did just that). They were all a challenge and the majority meant that you were filming often from 10am until midnight, lugging what in the early days was very large and cumbersome equipment (near broadcast in fact) with large battery belts, microphones, tapes and be ready for the unexpected.
Your job was, as much as possible, to be unobtrusive and in the early days as video was gaining a foothold as a new option for marrying couples, subject to a lot of jealousy from photographers, some of whom could refuse to photograph the wedding if they booked a videographer (the wedding photographers worried that guests would buy copies of the wedding rather than their then £8 a pop photos).
The clergy too were typically a prickly bunch. My often used opinion was that many of them had missed their calling as traffic wardens such was their hostile demeanor. The church used the emergence of video as an excuse to levy yet another fee on the pretext of requiring payment for the public performance of the organist (have you heard most church organists?) and maybe (if in attendance) the choir, which were already an additional cost.The church was as much as business as any of the other wedding services on offer. In addition videographers were required to purchase a copyright license to recird each wedding. Many churches did not allow video filming at all or worse charged the couple £80 for the privilege whilst making sure (& often will ill concealed glee) that the videographer had the most inappropriate filming position usually behind the couple and not allowing use of a radio mic that would at least allow us to pick the vows up clearly.
One of my worst experiences came back to me in this recent dream. A vicar that became known to many of us on the wedding video circuit was a particular annoyance. He would shout at us that we were not to move during filming (and mean not as much as move our fingers) which was from way back in the church , behind a pillar and just in front of a double life sized photo cut out of himself which occupied one side of the church. Yes this man’s ego was that large. The penance for daring to breath was a threatened stopping of the ceremony and ejection from your designated position of purchased privilege. It never happened to me but other videographers had experienced this action directly.
At the rehearsal he would tell us that he’d make sure we had an adequate filming viewpoint, from one side and revealing the back of the couples heads (thanks) but on the day would often motion the best man forward to block that view whilst slyly grinning and winking at us knowing that it would deliberately spoil the already appaling view that was available.
In the end I used to play footage to any potential couple wanting us to film in that church to show what was likely to happen. The winking and smiling at the camera as he pulled the best man forward to block a shot which he’d charged the couple £120 in order to secure was sometimes enough for couples to even cancel the church as their first choice for marriage though obviously this was not always possible but made me feel good that this man’s unchristian behaviour was exposed for what it was, just plain mean spirited.
I remember that once the ceremony had started he would always make sure the main church door was locked. On one occasion a Bride’s brother who had only just managed to get thew briefest time off from his Royal Navy tour of duty but who had not arrived at the church in good time was left deliberately locked out of the church unable to see his own sister getting married.
The last time I ever filming in that church the ego boosting cut out of this vicar had increased in size and now had arms outstretched with a ego-maniacal looking mixture of smiling and self obsessed devilment in the eyes.
Over the years I and others were bellowed at and treated like lepers by some vicars and priests of this land. Over time the more extreme behaviours subsided and the introduction of ‘all in one place’ weddings where a civil ceremony could take place in the same place as the reception helped quell slightly the desire for marrying couples to use the church as a convenient backdrop. I could understand the churches cynicism at these couples who were mostly neither originally religious or after experiencing many of these clergy behaviour ever likely to return to regular church going.
I have very many related filming recollections like the priest who used to take great delight in stabbing me hard with a cane whilst I was filming the Brides arrival knowing I was less likely to interrupt my shot by crying out in pain or protesting at his worryingly sadistic actions.
These are the stuff of my most common recurring dream.
Church photo by tricky ™ under this creative commons license
VideographerPhoto by thparkth under this creative commons license
