Dream XVII

I was in a large, outdoor sculpture gallery, which had as part of its exhibits the inner skeleton of a two story bar. There, they were filming a documentary on pianist Cecil Taylor. At one point, he played one of his compositions and yellow smoke erupted from the piano at tthe conclusion.

As part of the show, he was playing a role in a play that was taking place at the bar. A young woman was making various pronouncments about the awfulness of life to her boyfriend. Her face was very stressed-looking and she made many painful expressions as she spoke. I wanted to take some pictures of her face so I could illustrate what I was going to write about the play. I used 1/60 second exposure time and my camera on manual. She was conscious of the camera and seemed pleased by my attention to her, but she did not break character.

Later, I met Mr. Taylor at another part of the sculpture garden, where some arc-shaped benches were ringed around some non-descript shrubbery. He asked what I thought of the play. I didn't like it, but didn't want to say that so I told him why I like David Lynch's films.

What I said was that the films may not make sense on the surface, but they give the impression of a very thorough logic just hidden beyond reach. If one could graps the nature of this logic, the films would make perfect sense. That is why I found his work so compelling; it wasn't just senseless, but ordered on a different kind of sense.

I used a story of a bankrobber to illustrate my thesis, showing how the eight segments of his story were contained in a greater whole, but if you removed the outer whole and only had the eight segments, the actions would seem unrelated and the story would make no "sense." As I was showing Mr. Taylor the poster I had illustrating the eight segments (getting up in the morning, getting dressed, going to the bank, robbing the bank, escaping, etc), jazz pianist Thelonius Monk joined us and sat in the same stone bench as the two of us. He seemed to be enjoying the discussion as well and made some appreciative remarks.

(Truth to tell, I was a bit awed to sit with Mr. Taylor but he insisted. Having Mr. Monk there as well made me feel truly out of my depth.)

Mr. Taylor was pleased by what I said, and also liked my camera. I had goten a few dots of green and yellow paint on the lens (where the numbers were, not on the lens face itself).

I then left, and watched a video of a slow pan across the lower facades of some marble buildings, as the soundtrack was of newscasters unprepared to speak of what the video was showing. They kept trying to make sense, and worse, trying (and failing) to anticipate what would be seen next. They would then have to retract this pronouncements with embarassment.

Later, I was back at work, where they were filming a movie, a live action Christmas movie teaming Jim Carrey's grinch with the Scooby Doo gang. All of them were kidnapped by a huge monster, who thrust them in a huge santa sack. However, I only saw the last part, when the Grinch and his lady friend were kidnapped. The monster then placed the bag on a huge piece of furniture (a dresser, or bureau) in his lair, which was like a giant Victorian house interior, festooned with Christmas decorations. He then undid the string on the bag, which opened slightly. But it was enough for the Grinch to open it the rest of the way.

The Grinch, who spoke in a sophisticated accent, asked if his companion was all right, and it turned out he was siting on the others. As they were kidnapped before he was, the Grinch was unaware that they were beneath him; this was intended as comedy.

They didn't even notice that the monster had opened the bag; that was to be another part of the comedy, as they would slowly turn and look up, see the monster still standing there, and became frightened. But that hadn't happened yet.