Sometimes people show up in my dreams who I don't necessarily think about every day.  These are not always actual people, occasionally they are fictional. For instance, I have had dreams where Jimmy keeps on complaining about only getting the one take of this song:

It's a B-side, so no big deal, but he's kind of hard to reason with.

My brother shows up in my dreams fairly often, which is odd because he died in December 1998. Sometimes he is the same age he was then. Sometimes he is bald and wrinkled, which would seem to indicate he managed to age faster than me. At any rate, he's not exactly on my mind daily, except for maybe in my subconscious.

Other folks who make recurring cameos: random teachers from junior high and high school, musicians, Tom Glavine, Jesse Owens,  and that crooked cop from Casablanca.

I suffer from terrible insomnia.  Unless I am really jet lagged or physically worn out, getting to sleep is a struggle.  Simply, I can't turn my brain off.  I think about this, about that, about things that matter, about things that really don't matter, over and over and over and over.  When I am eventually able to sleep, my brain keeps right on churning. Enter dreams.

You might think this topic is just an excuse to reference songs about dreams... and well, you wouldn't be 100% wrong...

Let's keep this first installment musical.  Sometimes, I dream lyrics.  Here are some that I wrote down after waking up at a crazy early hour:

wrap me up in the rabble of the crowd that's had enough

I have no idea what that means.  I am certain there were other words around these, but when I woke up in that not-quite-coherent state, these are the only ones I could focus on enough to actually write down.  Good enough to keep, yes.  Good enough to write around, maybe.  Maybe another dream will bring me more lyrics to finish out this idea.

Sometimes I dream complete songs.  I mean, completely written and arranged.  Intro, verse, chorus, bridge, chord progressions, cool bass lines.  The conscious version of me who is typing this blog entry right now wonders how many of these are just popular songs that we all know, but recycled.  There is a part of me that thinks there might actually be something in there though.  Sadly, I generally never remember enough of the music upon waking to do anything with it... I say "generally", because there is an exception.  It's a song that is now called "Never Let Go".  I'll hold back additional commentary on that for a future blog post.

When I think about this further, I think that I might actually write better songs in my sleep than I do when I'm awake.  Yeah, that sounds like a pithy hyperbole, but I am afraid it may be true.  That part of me that is overly self-critical, the part of me that never thinks anything is ever good enough, the part of me that writes with chord charts handy... those parts aren't there when I'm sleeping.  Maybe the music I hear in my dreams is where my true creativity is?