last night i was dreaming of this place that i knew

i don't know where it was, and for some reason i thought i was in the mid-west USA, but it looked more like this nature reserve outside Oxford

it was a plain where the sky came right down to the ground, one of those summer mornings that's more like a late evening, and huge glassy lakes with unmetalled roads and odd, immense three-storey wooden houses

that looked like clipper ships had just been parked on one side of their keels
i was wandering about - there were children far off - and this older guy was sitting looking out toward them playing by the lake, in shirtsleeves and braces, with a pipe. from over there somewhere i could hear this music

that just appeared and disappeared from hearing in slow, regular swells - chords, audibly electronic but imitative of an orchestra or something

it didn't go anywhere - but it didn't need to - it was like something immense was lying just over the horizon, breathing in its sleep

contre la musique

i'm on a riser in a warehouse at a music festival in barcelona. it is hot and sweaty and i am stripped to shorts. my body is wired in. there are electrodes wired into my fingers with butterfly clips that are measuring the galvanic response of my skin, feeding the data - which changes rapidly as my fingers etc stray near acupuncture points - into a MIDI/CV harness which is driving a Buchla and a Bidule patch that FFTucks with one output of the Buchla to create rough, stochastic-sounding beats and thick, swarming clusters of noise like screaming pterandons.

the galvanic response of my skin is changing, because i am sprawled across a dentist's chair having sex in the dark with someone whose face i can't quite glimpse in the flashback from the strobing lights in the warehouse. dark skin, i think. probably female (although i don't clearly remember) which makes it somewhat more interesting. at one point we attempt penetration...

(i don't remember who got penetrated, either. i think it was me.)

...but it spoils the music, so we go back to tonguing each other and so on. this creates fabulous crescendos and the volume is absolutely deafening. this goes on for ages - as i get spun onto my back and strapped in (eek) - and then she/he/it leans down and whispers, "is this increasing my automatic immunity?", which for some reason at that point in time is the most erotic thing i have ever heard.

therefore, just as i'm about to come, this strange flickering surface high above splits down the middle and empties what feels like ten gallons of warm water over both of us. predictably, this drives the modular absolutely batshit, my assailant flips a footpedal next to the dentist's chair, and the Buchla & beats go into free-associative mode, dropping the kicks and bassline as they gurgle away, talking to themselves frantically as we towel off in the dark, listening to the dancefloor screaming their approval, changing into jeans and white t-shirts, and then the lights come up.

then all of a sudden i'm having a conversation at the bar with Lee Ranaldo and trying to tell him how much i admire his work but for some reason whatever comes out of my mouth comes out of it like it's being played backwards.

...bwah?

i had a dream the other night that i had triplets out my ass in a bathroom stall at a train station.

w. t. f.

hello, who are you?

I found something blue and spongy in my ear when I woke up this morning. I could hear it in my dreams. I think it is going to be friends with me.

This is what it said: I have been watching you for a long time. Would you like to go somewhere else? There's a place. You'll need some paranoia to get there. Paranoia is available from all leading retailers and supermarkets in a variety of ergonomically-designed biodegradable containers. It is useful as a propellant, a pesticide, and an unmistakably piquant seasoning for red meats. Try it on steaks. I could get you some paranoia delivered tomorrow by courier. Will you be able to stay at home? The couriers we use won't ship to commercial addresses. It's a 90-day evaluation trial. There's a form and everything. It's from Korea.

but soft!

i've been sick for the past few days, and being sick always gives me weird dreams. last night, i dreamt that someone was performing Romeo and Juliet by using bananas as puppets. yes, as in the fruit. this was very odd.

however, what really disturbed was the apparent fact that my unconcious mind can recite shakespeare while asleep. if you can imagine a somewhat mottled banana wiggling in someone's hand and declaiming "but soft! what light from yonder window breaks?" o.O

ka-boom

I spent possibly seven hours playing Half-Life yesterday. The old one, not the new one. I got past the bit that scared me too much to get past the last time that I played the game (which was, you know, 2000, when I still had my virginity and a hypothetical girlfriend whose favourite band really and truly was Third Eye Blind and didn't understand why this was both funny and sad).

I dreamt of pipes, crowbars and headcrabs. And then I had a change of pace and was a Chinese particle physicist out on a Vespa, who had a head-on collision with a courier on a racing-bike. The courier was chewing a wooden toothpick and it got stuck in my eyesocket. Ow. The heated conversation - "no! leave it alone! the medics will be here soon!" - was the most uncomfortable bit of the exchange.

Recurring dream #3897

This is the one where I visit a client, walk up to his (broken) computer, watch it carefully for a few minutes, and then hit it with a spanner. When it fails to behave, I turn to the client and say:

It's fucked, mate. You're gonna need a new one.

And then he says:

OK.

And then I wake up and start crying.