My therapy appointment yesterday was for 11 AM. It’s a phone session and I get ready by plugging in my earbuds a few minutes early. When the buds are plugged in I have it set so the phone answers without me doing anything. At 11:03 the phone rang, and I said, “Hi Connie,” and what I heard back was, “This is an urgent message for the vehicle owner … .” I hung up. At 7:08 I still hadn’t heard from my therapist, so I called her. There was then some confusion as I kidded her about being late and she said I was late calling her back. What happened? She had the misfortune of calling the 15 seconds I was on the robocall. Now the call was doubly annoying. The law should be that if you get a call about a car you don’t own the caller is required to buy you a car. I’m not unreasonable, it shouldn’t be a new car but one that’s warrantee has just expired, as the call says that’s what they think you own.
That’s as far as I got. I have no idea what interrupted me but it’s now Sunday and I’m back to writing. I have no idea what I planned on writing. Let’s make believe it was brilliant; that it would not change just your life but set humanity on a new and better course. I sometimes wonder if that has actually happened; if some great mind had an amazing insight, got interrupted and could never recreate it. The one case of something like that happening was to Samuel Coleridge who had a dream that inspired perhaps my favorite poem, Kubla Khan got interrupted while writing it and forgot the dream when he got back to writing.
Kubla Khan
Or a Vision in a Dream. A Fragment
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – 1772-1834
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw;
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
I bet my blog was just as good as that. I had a dream last night that I remember. I’m not going to tell you the whole story, dreams are rarely interesting to other people, but there’s one element that is. The dream was in three unrelated acts with a different setting and cast in each. The second act started with me telling my friends about a dream I had, which was the first act. It wasn’t a lucid dream, I wasn’t aware I was dreaming while it happened, but I did realize it later in the same dream.
Remembering dreams is often problematic. Sometimes after you are awake you sometimes all of a sudden remember part of the dream which is now clear. How do we know that we really dreamed that part? Perhaps it’s just a trick of memory. Thinking of the dream triggered real memories that were then integrated into the dream. Many studies have shown that people’s memories are faulty, we vividly remember things that didn’t happen. Just look up Mandela Effect. Many people can share the same false memory. Think of all the famous movie quotes that everybody gets wrong, “Play it again same,” “Luke I am your father.” We can remember them being spoken, except that they weren’t. We can check those against reality. Nobody can check on our dreams. I would wager that many dreams that people say foretold events didn’t. The dreamers believe they did but they didn’t “remember” that part until after the predicted event happened. The world tells us to believe in ourselves, I tell the world doubt yourself. Don’t doubt your talents and abilities, doubt your thought processes, senses, and memories. They can all be fooled.
I’m trying to work hard on preparing things for Folk Music Notebook and hate falling behind. I fell behind last night as I spent almost the entire evening talking to a friend. That’s an acceptable excuse. On Tuesday I had called a friend. She didn’t call me back, but I knew she was busy. There was a time not that long ago that would have sent me into a spiral of doubt and loneliness. Therapy and meds work wonders. I didn’t feel that way at all. I was deciding when I’d call her again when I looked at my phone and saw that I didn’t have a notification that I had voicemail. I knew I should, my therapist had left one for me. I opened the voicemail app and saw I had many unread messages including one from my friend. She called back three days earlier. So, I called her then and spent the evening talking instead of watching streaming concert I had planned. In keeping with the theme of this entry I don’t remember who the artist was, just that it was one I didn’t see often and wanted to see, just not as much as I wanted to talk to my friend. Right now, I’m missing The Bombadils, why? I didn’t realize you had to register beforehand. That’s OK, it makes writing this easier. I am multi-tasking as I’m listening to The Mammals new album Nonet. I usually do merch for the band and that’s when I pick up their albums. That couldn’t happen this year. Now that I’m preparing my top albums list I realized that it would certainly be a contender, so I need to listen. This is just the preliminary listen; I can’t concentrate while I’m writing. It needs a full attention listen. I’m going to spend today either preparing the holiday show or intently listening in prep for the best of 2020 show. There are too many days that I’m tired all day and can’t concentrate enough for that. I have to take advantage of the days I feel up to it. As I was posting this I remembered who I missed last night, Moira Smiley and Seamus Egan! I’ve only seen Moira once, but she blew me away. I very much wanted to see her again.
I discovered a terrible change in Amazon Music. That’s how I do most of my listening. It’s great because it incorporates both the music I have on my computer along with streaming music. In previous years I listed the albums by release year so I could have a list of the contenders. They changed the format and now I can’t find a way to see that. That means I might be restricted to looking at albums that I own. I know last year’s list had several that I didn’t. This is going to be a tough year for top albums as I didn’t add as many as I’d like to my collection. For now, on I do better. I see an artist comes out with a new album I overcome my resistance to asking for things and ask them. I have to internalize that I’m actually on the radio, so this is not gratuitous. I’m going to have to overcome some more anxiety and contact Amazon customer service and find a way to sort music by release date. That’s my cue to stop writing and post this.
Wise Madness 