Category: Dream Theatre

In this dream I think I was in a car with someone who I had romantic feelings for (a fictional person). I was pretty sure they were reciprocated but nothing had ever been explicitly said or acted upon. For some reason we were in some situation or engaged in some activity that requires us to have our heads very close together. Perhaps listening or watching intently for something. I don’t remember and it just somehow made sense in dreamland. The tension was palpable. We inched closer over time. Eventually my head was resting on her neck and her head rested on mine. Then we looked at each other and after a brief moment, plunged into our first kiss with that wild abandon that only happens with first kisses.

There was such a unique, intense, subtle intimacy to this dream that was way hotter than any sex dream could be.

Let’s see how much I can remember from the variety of stress dream situations I encountered last night. I wonder if housesitting and sleeping in a bed that was not mine contributed to this.

I think this was all one continuous day but it’s hard to say for sure in dreamland and dream logic. The first part I remember involved me and my ex-wife. In the dream we had only recently split up and it was all amicable and such, but she was with someone new now and there was a bit of sadness for me as I was not yet with anyone else. I think we were also still roommates.

My friend since 4th grade, Andy Hunter picked me up as we had plans. He had his completely fictional dream little brother with him who was driving. We went to some kind of improv show that was in a large outdoor area and there was a lazy river that went around the perimeter. I was in the lazy river and wanted to get out but suddenly realized I didn’t know where my clothes or my phone were and I couldn’t get out of the lazy river naked.

Fast forward and suddenly somehow I was now dressed but trying to track down my phone and other missing possessions. Now it was an indoor club with several different rooms, stairways, halls and such. IT had the feeling of being behind the scenes of a funhouse or a theme park. HArd to explains but kind of old, wooden, maybe like an old theater or something. I had put my stuff in a cubby in the main performance room, but now they had moved everything and cleared the room for some kind of rehearsal. I asked if I could speak to the lady in charge to see if she knew where they might have taken my stuff, like if there was a lost and found or something. She said she’d talk to me if I could catch her and ran outside. I kept walking toward her and she would walk a different direction, playfully trying to avoid me. I eventually kind of corralled her and as she tried to sprint past I grabbed her in a bear hug.

Next thing I remember, Andy, his dream little brother, and I were now in the car again, but now it was my car and the steering wheel was on the right side. Andy’s brother was once again driving. I was stressed out because I remembered that I had left my Helix (a guitar amp/effects modeler) in the back seat of my car (another car at home I guess, as it wasn’t the one we were in) with the windows down and the doors unlocked. My car door was still open (on the car we were now in with the steering on the right, so I was on the left as a passenger), and Andy’s brother started reversing which caught my door on a small grassy incline which bent the door completely backward, damaging the hinges, the door and the car.

We found a mechanic shop still open late at night and I had the car looked at. I think the guy running the shop was Pedro Pascal. He handed me a bill for $150. I was shocked as I expected it to be far higher. That’s when he informed me that $150 was the bill just for looking at it. To fix it was going to be another $750. Andy, dream brother, and I all left and needless to say, I was quite down after this whole crappy day. It was now sometime well after midnight and Andy invited me to join him and his dream brother to get some “breakfast for dinner” as “breakfast for dinner” always made things better. Then I woke up.

I fell in love last night (in my dreams). There was some woman name Meagan (a fictional dream person) and we had absolutely magic chemistry. Like we’d just known each other forever. She was one of those people everyone falls in love with. My friend Esteban who was with me had fallen for her too but he could see that she and I had magic. We were all parting ways and Meagan and her friend were walking off one way while Esteban and I walked another. I looked back at her longingly, pondering if I should just let her walk away. Esteban smiled and waved her direction like “Go get her!” She and her friend disappeared around the corner of a building and so I ran after them shouting her name.

As I rounded the corner they were just…gone. Impossibly gone. It was a big open area and there was nowhere they could go I was baffled and crushed and confused. Had it all been a dream? Was she some mystical muse or something. I screamed “NOOOOOOOOOOO!” In frustration. It was too late. Then my tears woke me up.

I was at a large table having a meeting with a bunch of folks including Paul McCartney who was seated directly to my right. The person to his right made a joke and mimed punching Paul, then Paul as a joke mimed passing it on and punching me.

I said “Oh you don’t want to do that. I’m from Texas and you our reputation,” and I pulled out my phone and opened up a gun app that had a gun on the screen that you could swipe to pull the slide then tap to shoot. I tapped it a few times. Paul laughed and then asked if I had the cool lightsaber app. I did and Paul and I both fired up the lightsaber apps on our phone and waved them around in mock battle making lightsaber noises with our mouths even though the app made its own noises.

In last night’s dream theatre, I was doing a play with my friend Sharan. There was a lot of improvising and at one point there was a guest performer who showed up about halfway through the performance, and was going to do their act as intermission entertainment. Their act was pretending like they were deaf and so they didn’t know why they were there or what they were supposed to be doing. I went to greet them but the play was going on so I was trying to be quiet and was also confused as to whether or not the guest performer was actually deaf (they were not). Eventually it all got sorted. I feel like there were a lot more details about the play and my role in it and other stuff going on that I can’t recall now.

Cut to after the show, Sharan was driving a semi truck (just the front part without any big trailer attached) and I was in the passenger seat. We were chatting and as we drove up a big flyover ramp, we noticed some people up ahead waving and trying to get our attention. That’s when we noticed too late that there was a huge missing section of road. There was nothing we could do at this point. The truck plunged down nose first into a huge fall to the ground below. I closed my eyes and prayed to either be okay or for a quick and painless death. Even though I’m not religious (though I am spiritual) it still came out as “PLEASE GO PLEASE GOD PLEASE GOD!”

After the crash, miraculously, Sharan and I were both perfectly fine. At first I wondered how long it would take for rescuers to clear the rubble and get to us as we appeared to be buried. But then, in that illogical dream way, suddenly things were different and there was no rubble, but we were still waiting for rescuers as the truck was kind of mangled. Some people approached what used to be the windshield but was now just an open space and started asking Sharan for autographs as they were huge fans of her theatre career. We started searching around the truck for a pen but could not find one, though there were some dull pencils that weren’t really of any use. We were talking about how this was her husband’s truck (Her partner, Bryan wasn’t in the picture in this dream and her husband wasn’t a real person, just a dream entity). It also came up that her husband was real horrible POS. While searching for a pen we also found his porn magazine stash in a compartment on the driver’s side.

Then I woke up.

I feel like my brain uses my creativity against me when comes to bad dreams. They end up being artistic, nuanced, subtle dramas with an emotional gut punch.

I had at least a couple of dreams last night where an ex and I were together but everything felt weird and tense and there was a disconnect and I felt like they were not telling me things and maybe they were unhappy and had checked out and a breakup was coming. 

But it was the last dream of the night that really sucker punched me. I’ve forgotten most of the details now, but it was felt like some kind of sci-fi suspense film or something. All I can remember now is that me and another character suddenly found ourselves in what should have been my house (not a real place, just a fictional dream house), but we suddenly realized it was totally empty and that we must have both been brought to another timeline from each of our respective timelines or something. There was a feeling of panic and then the dream took on an inception-like layer in that I dreamed that I was dreaming that and probably moaning in distress in my dream-real-life like when you try to scream in a dream but can’t and in real life you’re making these muted sounds of actually trying to scream in your sleep. 

In my dream within a dream, I started to come to as I felt soft lips on my cheek trying to comfort me and gently wake me from the nightmare. It was a warm and sweet moment. But then I not only came out of my dream within a dream, but also woke up from that dream into the actual real world where it was all fiction and the loss of that sweet moment was devastating and brought real tears for a moment. It’s now night and I can still feel those lips on my cheek.

Dream within a dream
Then soft lips upon my cheek
Then reality

In this dream I went into a restaurant to get some food. I think it was a Freebird’s Burrito place. Maybe a Torchy’s Tacos, I’m not sure. I knew that this place was near where my ex lived so I sort of half-wondered if I might run into her. I stopped in my tracks a bit when I saw someone who looked like her husband and I was trying to figure out if it was him. Then I saw her turn around and look at me, but ironically the guy was not her husband, just some stranger.

She looked surprised but not unhappy to see me and we both kind of smiled and I could tell we were both sort of trying to figure out if we should hug or not. I wanted to. We ended up staying about 10 feet or so apart as we said our hellos and she grabbed her food on her way out. Of course I overanalyzed this and thought “Are we just not hugging because of the pandemic and such or did she not want to hug me?”

She said something to the cashier along the lines of “Hey, take care of that guy,” like she was a regular and was letting the cashier know that she knew me and to give me a good deal or something.

Then I woke up.

This one isn’t quite as vivid as usual, as when I woke up, I tried to push it from my mind and not think about it instead of dwelling on it, but it lingered with me the rest of the day and night and so I felt it deserved to be chronicled here.

This dream started with me hanging out with a childhood friend, David Presley (IRL, he friended me on FB for a while but later unfriended me so we haven’t really been in contact since my teens). We were at a bar or a party somewhere and he said he had a surprise for me. Then, there was my ex. She had a fresh new short haircut, dyed red and looked beautiful, fit, and happy in a casual, stretchy black dress. She had come to reconnect with me and catch up.

Then the scene changed. I think we were at her house now. Her husband may have been present or maybe just somewhere else in the house (or maybe not present at all, I can’t remember exactly). It was a big, wonderful house. Very modern, with lots of glass and a view of the city. She was sitting in the corner of a room with a harp. She had learned to play in the years since we knew each other and wanted to play something for me. She was wearing some kind of cardigan, or overshirt which she wanted to remove now before she started playing, and in pulling it off over her head, it got a little stuck and comically struggled with it. In this moment I laughed and smiled because something about it was just so charmingly and endearingly “her.” It somehow just nostalgically reminded me of some aspect I had loved about her.

When she finally started playing and singing her song, I realized it was a kind of summary of her life in the years we hadn’t been in contact. A musical “catch up.” It was just a simple, sweet moment, and I was so happy to once again be in contact with my friend, to have her in my life even we weren’t together as I felt it should have been.

Then I woke up. It was 4:30am and there was a hollow pang in my chest realizing it was all a dream. That we were still completely removed from each other’s lives as if we had never known each other. I tried to shake it off and go back to sleep, the latter part of which at least I was a success. Throughout the rest of my day though it poked at my mind and wanted to be chronicled here, and so here it now lives. It was a nice, warm reunion though, even if only in dreams.

Woke up from exhausting cliché theatre dreams.

In this one I was starring in yet another production of Cyrano (my 3rd, and my 2nd go as the main antagonist, De Guiche). Clare Costello was Roxane. This was pretty much my typical theatre stress dream.I had just come off from a scene as pirate (there aren’t actually pirates in Cyrano, but the Gascony cadets are similar) and had to change to come back on as De Guiche for a scene with Roxane. I couldn’t find my costume pieces so I decided to check the other end of the theater but the only way to get there without the audience seeing me was to go outside, run around the side and then enter this side door that led to a little nook for a Stage Manager or something. When you opened the door, there was a very tall chair right at your level which allowed whoever was sitting there to view the stage through a high window. The floor was a good 10′ or so below. I managed to make my down safely but realized there was nowhere I could go from here without being seen by the audience.

I climbed my way back up avoiding a roach on the bottom of the door frame and ran back, around to the backstage area. Luckily I realized that I had more time than I thought but I had mostly wasted it with my trip around the theater. While frantically searching for anything that might work for a costume, I realized that the next few scenes felt very unfamiliar. It was closing night and I suddenly wondered if we had accidentally skipped these scenes the previous 2 nights. I asked Clare if we had done these scenes the last two nights and she wasn’t sure but also said she wouldn’t mind if we hadn’t or skipped them again because that was less to worry about, then she went on stage for a scene with and older man. I really hoped everything would just come to me once we started the scenes because they were my favorite scenes of the show, and I was also bummed that I most definitely wouldn’t have the right costume but, if I was lucky, something thrown together that would work and didn’t look like a pirate.

I started looking for a shirt that would work thinking that it would be easier and quicker if I didn’t change pants and that these pants could probably work. Someone told me to go check this deeper storage area where some costumers had been putting away stocks of stored unused costumes, but that area was already mostly cleaned out and bore no fruit. Back in the main area some costumers were hanging up some new bulk costumes they had ordered. On stage, Clare’s elderly scene partner was totally forgetting his lines and Clare was trying to help by whispering them to him but since everyone was mic’d up those whispers were loud and obvious. The man eventually laughed and apologized to the audience.

At that point someone decided that since the founders of Theatresports were in attendance, it would be good to maybe take a break and do some comedic improv games. They started calling some of the cast out to play and they called my name. I was standing in a shirt and underwear at the time so I shouted “I’m putting pants on” which got a laugh from the audience. I found a pair of pants I thought would work and I set them down so I could change take my shirt off as well to change. When I then reached for the pants again, I couldn’t find them. I was baffled, I literally had just set them down. There were boxes of new pants arranged by sizes that the costumers were hanging up though so maybe they had just grabbed mine to hang up thinking they were just laying around. Regardless, I couldn’t find them. I saw another few piles of pants of the right size but they were tux pants and not nearly right for the show.

Someone ducked backstage to once again ask if I would come out and play in the improv game break, and I said I was trying but couldn’t just come out in my underwear and was trying to find clothes to get dressed. They acknowledged me and went back to start some games with those already there.
At this point, I woke up exhausted.