One Night's Dreams

I've had an interesting, dream-filled night, frequently waking so that I can remember much that I have dreamed.

To start with, I dreamed passages from Prokofiev's Second Symphony, which I had listened to before I went to bed. In fact, I heard the first movement three times yesterday, liking it more each time in spite of its tumultous, thick-textured, violently rhythmic character of "iron and steel."

Then for a while I dreamed scenes from War and Peace, which I am again listening to on audio CD, having just reached the part where Andrei Bolkonsky proposes to Natasha Rostov; I think this was the part I dreamed about. A little later I found myself caught up in a surprisingly enjoyable dream about a zombie apocalypse. Then I felt that I was a journalist interviewing a king while he and his retinue were in a large garden, or perhaps a golf course—an interview interrupted by an assassination attempt, a bombing, and the spanking of an adolescent prince wearing a yellow uniform.

Further on, I dreamt that I was a photographer in the 1960s, taking posed portraits first of the Kennedy family, then of the Beatles and some of their friends. I sensed that the latter session was meant for the cover of one of their albums, but that things were not going well and that my photos would never be published.

Lastly, I dreamed a cameraman's view of two celebrity talk shows. One of them was a 1970-ish program featuring Chevy Chase as the host, and he was very rude to his guest, a curly-haired woman who seemed to be a fitness instructor and who punished him by refusing to speak. Then, jumping ahead to the 1980s, on a set decorated in shades of white, the program switched to a talk-show vehicle for sometime Cheers star Shelly Long—though I can't remember any guests. Finally, I woke up when my subconscious started replaying the song "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper, which I had heard piped into the laundromat where I spent part of Saturday afternoon.

So there you have a slice of my subconscious. Good luck finding the chain of associations in it...

EDIT: I now also recall a dream episode in which my right arm had been amputated and I had to learn to make do with my left. I believe this idea came from another book I have been reading, Ramage at Trafalgar, featuring Admiral Lord Nelson. Or maybe it just comes of lying on my arm wrong...