So, about this war you are having with the Megalons, how is that working out?
Why don't I have dreams like this? (Stolen from TDR.)
As may have been apparent from my recent posts, I have been suffering from crippling insomnia for the past month or so. The good news is, yesterday night I finally got caught up on sleep!! Had this fucking amazing dream to celebrate. It was this sort of combination of American Idol and Anne Rice and Gladiator and Art Forum.
And Iron Chef. Always Iron Chef.
The dream operns in this city at night, where a group of hipster vamipres are competing to be the next Surrealist/Dada art superstar. But, not famous yet, they have to work cliche day jobs in bars and bohemian cafes to make a living?but unlike cliche Struggling Artists, they don't have to work there to make money. . . .they work there to kill and eat the horrible greasy-haired thrift store hipsters who patronize those places.
Oddly enough the main character, a lady cohabiting with a human male boyfriend, is never seen. She is just off the side of the frame the whole movie. Anyway she lives in a cliche glamorous loft space. the cops kind of know she is behind a series of bizarre disappearances, so they put cameras in her apartment . . . but she is a vampire so she does not need light, so the cameras can’t see anything. However, the human male boyfriend is a neat-freak, and has this super advanced “sharper image”-style vacuum cleaner with lots of little lights built into it. So the cops can only eavesdrop when he is vaccuming. Why do I dream this kind of stuff??? You tell me.
Anyway, long story short, the cops found out that she keeps files of totally incriminating information on the city’s rich and famous elite of art critics, and the cops are so greedy for this dirt that they just turn a blind eye to her cannibal antics.
Anyway some malevolent power challenges her. At first the interruptions to her perfect life are subtle, coincidental-seeming. But then the harassment escalates-- break-ins, the kidnapping of her daughter. . .. until finally she breaks down --the unseen surrealist vampire heroine does -- and shrieks, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME??? And at last the malevolent power announces its true intentions. . . . to battle her in an Iron Chef-style freestyle Dada art battle . . . . to the death!
The malevolent power is ALSO never seen. It seems to be a shadowy cabal of Great Old Ones, or something. But they chose an earthling for their champion, -- a BAD surrealist vamipire artist hipster -- and the earthling is kind of their spokesperson. As the bad artist explains, the duel will be fought in a giant circular room which evokes both the roman colluseum and the guggenheim museum. Both artists will have 6 hours to “freestyle” some surrealist art, using only the materials provided, after which the judges will pick the best art. the losing surrealist vampire of course dies horribly; the winning surrealist vampire becomes an art-world superstar.
So as soon as the heroine agrees to the death duel, the bitch-ass villain starts changing the terms and conditions. “Oh, did I mention it is from midnight to 6 am?” (Knowing full well that the heroine’s custom is to work from 6 PM until 2 AM and she becomes totally exhausted thereafter). . . and, “oh did I mention that this is a tag-team fight?” So the heroine has to go find a partner, and there ensues a scene of such cliches I am embarassed to have even dreamed it.
She has to find the now-disgraced-art-world-ex-champ (NDAWEC) who has retired in disgrace and is now drinking himself to death, and only he can save her. . . IF she can re-motivate him. Anyway he is a white guy with a beard in a biker bar, playing some drinking game. Some big biker guy ? the gang leader - suddenly shows up and tosses a playing card to the man seated next to the NDAWEC. . .and that man suddenly comes to life, jumping up as if he was a zombie assassin who has just been activated (“Manchurian Candidate”-style) by a magic card to execute a hit, and starts stabbing some random guy in the face, while the biker king just smiles.
So the NDAWEC is like, “Say buddy, I don’t care if you ARE the biker king, you can’t use card-triggered zombie assassins in HERE. This is a classy place.” And then the big biker says, “ok, I can hang with that. How about I stab you my damn self??” And plunges a dagger into the guy’s arm. It barely goes in. the biker, frustrated and with everyone watching, starts using both hands to try cutting the arm but the blade barely draws blood. “Ha ha, little did you know that I am a . . . vamipire! And a surrealist!”
See what I mean?? Totally cliche. Anyway that event ? where he stood up for what is right and decent ? is kind of a turning-point for the NDAWEC and so he agrees to be the tag-team partner of the heroine. At that pont, the asshole villain promptly selects the NDAWEC ‘s Japanese ex-girlfriend as HIS partner, knowing full well that he (NDAWEC) still has a thing for her and even thinking about her crushes his self-esteem, plunging him back into alcoholism and mediocre art, etc. WHAT A JERK IS THIS VILLAIN.
The very day of the Iron Chef Death Match, everyone shows up to the Guggenheim/Colluseum. And the villain ? having not yet totally crushed the spirit of the heroes ? unleashes his most perfidous treachery yet! New rule; ONLY OIL PAINTING . I should mention that the Unseen Heroine’s chosen medium is cloth sculpture. Cue fog horn.
At this point, the dream totally ceases to be narrative. Time stops. What has happened?? The heroine and the now-rehabilitated NDAWEC (who is a painter) have teamed up to create a masterpiece, a work of surreal art so powerful that it breaks out of the narrative and destroys all preconcieved notions of space time and aesthetics.
From now on, the dream is just one long drawn-out camera zoom into this magnificent painting.
(Naturally the painting won the contest, and presumably the villain and the horrible ex-girlfriend were put to ritual death, with stakes and garlic never to suck the blood of the living or have shitty exhibits in coffehouses again. But at this point, that is no longer even important!! All that is important is the painting. )
See, normally the heroine tries to do the biggest cloth-sculptures possible. Kind of like Christo but instead of wrapping things she just piles cloth on the ground in pyramidal stacks and waist-high walls. She is fascinated by the folds, and by making the colors as intense and deep as possible, but I digress. Anyway she never had the money to do a sculpture more than 600 feet long, but now, thanks to the magic of painting, she has achieved her dream ? a WHOLE PLANET COVERED IN A MAZE OF CLOTH WALLS. Or rather, A painting of that planet which is so realistic and Dalilike that somehow it IS a whole planet. Imagine, like, choirs on the soundtrack.
The walls zigzag over the surface in all different colors, most of the time the walls curve back and forth, so that , when seen from above, they seem to be spelling out letters and secret messages of drastic, life-altering enlightenment, in a language I cannot read. So the remainder of the dream is devoted to zooming into the painting, from the big scale (whole planet) slowly zooming in on a particular wall, then to a particular cloth, then a particular fold on that cloth, never losing detail. There is a certain fractal quality to it where no matter how far down you go the patterns just repeat.
Anyway i swear to god i really dreamed that, and was so happy when i woke up, i almost forgot how hungover i was!
Comments
on 2005-04-27 7:56:17.0, Joe Drymala commented:
This is really genius.
and, further, on 2005-04-27 8:25:48.0, ben wolfson commented:
He seems to have dreams like that ALL THE TIME, if he can be believed.
and, further, on 2005-04-27 10:36:02.0, Joe Drymala commented:
The second-to-last paragraph is sort of mindblowing.