Often, my dreams go unremembered pretty much as soon as I wake up. I've always chalked this up to having a fairly mundane life - I get lost in the grind these days, and don't have much time even for writing. What little writing I do so closely resembles a reality that dreams about it probably wouldn't stick much longer than any of the other dreams I have.
Last night, though, I had an unusual dream, in that it was both memorable and mundane. I spent the full length of the dream insisting that I needed to make my way to New York City, knowing full well that I couldn't afford it. This is unusual for me, in that, when I daydream about travel, I rarely think of American cities - America is far too much Canada Senior for me to care overmuch about whether or not I see every major city. Also, when I insist on going somewhere in a dream, it's either somewhere far more removed, or somewhere I've already been.
I've never been to New York City. I've been within sighting distance, certainly. There just isn't anything for me there, apart from a few restaurants I have a passing interest in visiting. I've never been a metropolis kind of a guy and the famously abrasive personality of the average New Yorker seems to me to be like taking a tiger and throwing it to the lions.
As the dream evolved, it became less about the fact I was going to New York and more about the fact I was going to meet all sorts of interesting people when I got there. A lot of those people exist only in my mind and the mind of one or two other people. Then, in trickled the real people. My little rodent brain somehow decided I was important enough that people who lived nowhere nearby would drop everything and come to New York for no reason other than to have a conversation, and before long an inverse convention of a sort was planned, where I suddenly had for myself an audience with all the people I've loved to watch, listen to, or read, regardless of how logical that was, relevant the things I have to say are to their experience, or even, in three cases, whether they were alive or dead.
Delusions of grandure are nothing new to me - I've almost always been the centre of any universe I walk in to - but the idea of the famous, or even the internet-famous, knowing who I am is baffling. I'm a nobody, in terms of audience, and I take a certain amount of pride in that. I don't have to pander, and I don't have to sugar-coat things. I'm not in it for the money. I consider myself lucky as compared to a number of the people I dreamt about meeting because my livelihood does not yet hinge on my being entertaining.
Among the attendees of the conference was a large contingent of YouTube personalities, followed by a small smattering from Film and Television. These last were not invited so much as they spontaneously appeared and I think that made the little reverse-convention that much more exciting. It also created an unusual situation where people who would never, should never have gotten along wound up rubbing elbows for a few hours while my tiny mammal brain cooked up ideas for conversations. What did I have to say to TheTruePooka, and how was it different from what I had to say to AaronRa or Thunderf00t, all of whom speak on the same topics and all of whom I feel quite differently about? What was to stop me from using the ten minutes I get to speak with John Spencer to do nothing but ask him for advice on how to behave like one of his more famous roles, and how was that different from the conversation I intended to have with Richard Schiff? When OgreVI showed up, there was nothing to say. The gentleman provided the wine and I provided a smoke and we talked about crayfish etouffe and why I'd never been to New Orleans, or thought of going.
I'm not creole, not by a long shot, but with as much French blood as I have you'd think I'd at least want to look.
Cam and Paul showed up and there was nothing much to talk about. After a few minutes it became apparent I have no brain for Theology and no interest in football so we wound up talking about Freezer Cooking. I think I might have accidentally given away the secret of my scrambled eggs... or was it the secret of my creamy tomato soup. You know, a good soup like that, all you need is a little extra roux and you have a sauce instead.
Thinking about all that got me thinking about the time I went to Atlantic City for a baking convention, which got me thinking about how cool it would be to drag the old class together again. We had some fun times, especially when we were away, and what was more there were some surprising minds mixed among the riff-raff.
Thinking about that, of course, got me to thinking about why I picked New York in the first place, and then the reality collapsed back down, and I woke up.
An unusual dream, by my standards.
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