unzip my body, take my heart out

Could a body close the mind out?
Stitch a seam across the eye
If you can be good, you'll live forever
If you're bad, you'll die when you die



Couldn't shake off the dreams this morning, after far too long a night before. Not nightmares, not that, but disturbing, and feeling more like communication, soul to soul, mind to mind...mind to mine, with a mind not mine.

Hearing only one true note
On the one and only sound
Unzip my body
Take my heart out
'Cos I need a beat to give this tune



My subconscious speaks in code anyway, in hand signals, indications of language, hints and allegory, inference and vague suggestion. Many of the dreams featured Lindens changing hands, from small to large amounts, and the rest was blurred violence, emotional violence, pain and desperation.

Taking a picture of--
Taking a picture of--
Taking a picture of--



Three times I woke up enough to know I was dreaming, know there was a world just beyond my closed lids, and I had that oddly placid, yet desperate feeling of dragging myself away from what was happening, towards reality...and never quite being able to make it before I fell back into the world the images made.

Oh the body swayed to music
Oh the lightning glance
If I would give it all and all
Maybe you would hear me
Ask for half a chance



There was a lot of reasoning, I know. A lot of bargaining. A lot of trying to figure out what was happening, while everything was happening. Anger. Hurt. Deep rage, deep pain, and not from me. My body in the dream shaking so much, it translated to my actual body, the few times I was close to surfacing.

Hearing only one root note
Planted firmly in the ground
Undo my heart, unzip my body and
Lend to my ear a clear and a deafening sound



I've had worse dreams. I've had much worse nightmares. This was more the equivalent of watching a horror movie, that I've seen before and liked, and talking to folks in the same room about the issues of the day, over living in the world on the screen, and being terrified of what was going to happen next.

Unzip my heart



This was comprehension, understanding as far as I could, over ignorance. This was knowing that a led to b, hurt led to struggle, pleading led to pain. This was experience, and whatever dark lessons such experiences teach; this was not trapped in the storyline, just another taut line of vibrating ink drawn on parchment skin.

And if I need a rhythm
It’ll be to my heart I listen
If it don’t get me too far wrong



It's a small detail, a somewhat precise and miniscule distinction, but a valid one. Art versus life. Words on a page, not the universe within the pages. But it rocked me, these dreams, and I haven't quite shaken all of them off to back storage.

And if I--
And if I--
And if I need a rhythm
It’s gonna be to my heart I listen
If it don’t take me too far gone



Part of it was that sense of conversation. That I was not alone in this dream, that it wasn't just me alone, interacting with characters my mind had spun of whole dreaming. Instead, I kept having the strong feeling, the unshakeable sensation, that I was communicating with someone beyond the barrier of my skin.

Everybody smile please
Nobody pay no mind to me
Finger in position on the switch
A little flash photography



Part of that, also, was that the bulk of each dream centered on someone else, someone not me, interacting with someone else entirely. I was...bystander. I was barely an interested party, save for my wanting to stop what was happening, needing to stop what was happening, and never knowing how.

Taking a picture of you
Taking a picture of--
Taking a picture of me
Taking a picture--



Simple deduction, this one: the events of last night (still unresolved, for which I'll have to speak with someone I was hoping I would not have to speak with) have left me feeling a sense of shared loss, a mournful frustration, a tinfoil-gnawing inability to offer more than support. I was, last night, stunned into silence and shocked mute, all of me wanting to reach out, all of me cripplingly unsure of the right words to speak, the right actions to take.

Ramalama Bang Bang
Flash Bang Big Bang
Bing Bong, Ding Dong
Dum dum d-dum dum



But that doesn't explain the major themes of this dream set. That doesn't explain the participants my mind chose. That doesn't explain the feeling of conversation, over imagining.

With a hammer Bang Bang
Flash Bang Press Gang
Bing Bong, Ding Dong
Dum dum d-dum dum



Far be it from me to go overboard on the psychoanalysis, but everything else made sense to me--from the setting to the scenes--until the actors of the play stormed in. Then all sense flew out the window, and I had to sit back and wonder, when I was capable of such detached observing, why them? Why those names, those faces? Why those hearts set against mine?

With a st-stammer
Bang Bang



I still have no answers, and more questions for every possible moment of comprehension I push myself through and beyond.

And if I
And if I need a rhythm
Gonna be to my heart I listen--



And through it all, every second, every moment, of dreaming, I still have this etched in razor-sharp clarity: that I did not invent this on my own. I still have this persistence of presence, this sensation from somewhere beyond me, that I shared these dreams, these fragments, with someone else.

On that, I most sincerely hope I'm wrong. Because there is no way to ask, and no answer I'd be able to accept.

(Lyrics from Roisin Murphy's "Ramalama (Bang Bang)".)