“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”
- William Dement
Do you happen to remember that scene in the movie Tootsie when Jeff (Bill Murray) is trying to stall for time before letting Sandy (Terri Garr) into his and Michael's (Dustin Hoffman) apartment? It's a complicated story. Anyway, he yells to her through the door that it would be just a minute, he had been asleep, “I was dreaming,” he says, “It's funny, you were in my dream. You had really big teeth, but you were still a nice person.”
If someone is recounting their dream to me, that is about the length that I can tolerate. Much beyond that and I am glazing over, sorry. It's one of my pet peeves, having to listen to someone's big long, meandering, disjointed retelling of their nocturnal cerebral ordeal. You know, “I was in a department store, sort of, but it wasn't really a store like a normal store…and there was a wolf…I think… or a big dog…not sure, and you pulled up on a go cart and said you needed to get some Indian food…and I only had on one shoe, I'm pretty sure…I don't know. It was all crazy.”
Yes, dreams are crazy, but you should work through your's yourself. I don't need to be your audience. If you absolutely must tell me something about your dream, sum it up in a couple of sentences like Bill Murray did, “I was in a spaceship with Daryl Scoby from fourth grade.” Alright. Got it. Moving on. The only time I'd be much interested in your dream is if I happened to be the hero of it. Then, by all means, please expound.
Quite often novelists will include a dream or series of dreams in a story. I always skip those. I know they're a literary foreshadowing device, but I don't care how important they are to the telling of the tale, I'm not reading a dream. Sorry.
Dreams are a popular topic in songs, though. I'm good with dreams that way. There are hundreds of titles that have Dream(s) in them. I'll bet you can name ten immediately.
I'm just going with one here. The Molly Hatchett reworked cover of the Allman Brothers' timeless classic, Dreams. They do that song proud.
I know I've mentioned this, but I saw Molly Hatchett the first time at The Rockin' Redneck Saloon in Jacksonville, NC in early 1979. Front man Danny Joe Brown was still with them. He was in his ever present white slip on loafers, just like the ones Cousin Eddie gave Clark Griswold in the original Vacation. I saw them again a couple of years later in San Bernardino, CA. By then, Danny Joe was out. They weren't the same band without him.