Saturday, August 22, 2009

Score, Sixth Style

Perhaps surprisingly, I don't often dream of Doctor Who. In fact, as far as I know, it's only happened once before: a rather charming affair with me riding around in Bessie with the third Doctor.

But that's it, really. Just a drive. Nothing else.

Until the other night.

I had me a dream with the sixth Doctor* (so, uhhh, no doubt about me dreaming in colour, what?). I'm not sure exactly at what point it started, but by the time I'm cognizant of what's going on, the Doctor and I am on the crest of a hill. A hill, I think, either in Gloucester (which I favour) or in Yorkshire: the bottom of the hill is in a mere, the top is bright green and dry. In the distance, we can see one hell of a storm bewing; the clouds are a violent black and purple curdling against an evening sky. The Doctor says he needs to know more about it, so I take a running leap off the hill. The valleys are full of giant broccoli stalks**: I run off the edge and leap onto one, which bows down with my weight into the valley, where a storm is fearfully raging. I pop back as it catapults up.

Later (in the sort of Strindbergian connexion dreams have), I'm driving along with the Doctor in a Morris Minor. We pull into the parking lot of my parents' church, only to see a future version of the Doctor -- the one from Real Time and after that sports a blue plaid version of his coat -- along with two versions of Peri. One from The Two Doctors and one from The Mysterious Panet. I convince my Doctor to pop off, so as not meet the future Peris, but this is where my dreams runs out.

What does it mean? Beats me, except:

*Ever since I purchashed "Attack of the Cybermen", I've been going through and listening to the commentary on each episode. I'm up to Terror of the Vervoids, ep. 3, so you can see where the Sixth Doctor angle comes from. Although Col makes one hell of a commentary guide -- second only to the vegetable man.

**Oh, this is so totally from watching that episode of The Powerpuff Girls with the Broccoloids they aired this week!

Oh, and can I just praise the sort of fate that makes sure I listen to Big Finish's "Company of Friends" the same week I re-read Shelley's Frankenstein? It's totally a B+ for effort and a C- for concept! I mean, did anyone bother to do research on Percy? Clearly not! The exigencies of writing a drama clearly take it up the ass here! I'd be more praising if the play were just not crippled by lazy writers!

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Somehow or other, I managed to read both the beginning of Shelley's Frankenstein and watch the episode of Wild Russia on the Arctic on the same day. (If you don't know, the frame story of Frankenstein takes place on a boat in the far north of Russia, past Arkhangelsk and the White Sea). I rather assumed any dreams I'd remember would have been about endless white landscapes and harsh colds.

They weren't. I had a rather odd one, really. To set it up, I should mention that while my academic writing is all done under my own name, most of the rest is done pseudonymously pseudonomically... under a pen name.

In my dream, I'm walking down a street in the town where I went to college. Except this street doesn't actually exist. It was a side street along the main drag which isn't really there; it was all white stucco and tall wooden doors and milk bottles and weeds, like something in Belsize Park.

Anyway, I'm walking down this street with my friend Jamie, who for reasons that remain unclear, is wearing a medium purple pants suit, rather like Hillary Clinton on an old TV set in need of knob-twiddling. We are on our way to a film opening.

Which is in a little cafe that's all brushed steel and glass-top tables. We settle in somewhere in the middle, just in front of a group of people I knew. I don't know who they are now, but they were all people I recognised then. I *think* they were all people I went to undergrad with, which would at least be appropriate to the setting.

And these people are sitting around reading and tearing into a script I wrote. Ruthlessly. I don't know where they got it, and it's clear they don't know I wrote it, but it makes me hugely uncomfortable, and I spend a good few minutes trying to figure out a) how to communicate my discomfort and b) and to tell them I think it's rather good.

The dream itself peters out about there. It's odd because I throw around a fair amount of scripts to people and -- often being harsh in reading others -- expect people to be just as harsh with mine. I'm thick skinned about it, because it's foolish not to take good advice. But apparently I'm not quite as thick skinned as I imagined, at least subconcsiously.

In any event, the next dream I had involved me losing control of a minivan on a slippery road and crashing into a tree. This was also in Chapel Hill -- I could show the exact spot, down to the tree, on Franklin Street going down onto 15-501 where it happend. Weird little book-end...