AstronomyDomine

I am sharing a hotel room with my sister-in-law, Michelle. We have separate beds. We appear to be on some sort of road trip. In the past, Michelle has given me CD's of J.S. Bach's music as gifts. This is because my wife had told her he is my favorite composer. In this dream, I am reclining on my bed and she is asking me questions about him. I try to explain why I love his music so, and describe what I experience when I listen to his art. I also give her some interesting biographical information on him. At some point, I get up to go to the bathroom. There I see an old, 80's-style transistor radio. As I push the chunky "play" button, the radio suddenly shapeshifts into an old library book on Bach. Glorious harpsichord music pours out of its pages when I open it. The music is elegant, exhilarating, exquisite...and wholly original. I marvel at the fact that I've never heard these Bach works before. I sit on the bathroom floor listening to the sounds, utterly stupefied.

The more I listen to the sounds, the more I begin to realize that this music is of pivotal relevance: it appears to be the missing link of transition between the high baroque which Bach epitomized and the lighter, more refined strains of classicism pioneered by Haydn and then perfected by Mozart. I ruminate in the dream that although musicologists conclude Bach is merely the culmination of the baroque, here I am listening to proof that Bach was also responsible for the transition into classicism! Academia will have to rewrite the textbooks!

Dumbfounded, I continue to listen to the music. As it plays on, I find myself more and more enraptured, enthralled and utterly amazed at how beautiful this music is. The synthesis of the two idioms is seamless. A lurking sensation however begins to surface in my mind as the music plays on: being a Bachian scholar, in reality I knew of no such transitional link existing in his music. This thought continues to wrestle in my mind and eventually nudges me toward a waking state. Upon awakening, I can still hear the tinkling and chiming and delicate phrasings of the passages of hypnogogic music, not yet completely faded. Motionless in bed and with my eyes still closed, I cherish the vanishing wisps of melody for as long as I can until at last they submerge back down into fathomless ocean of my subconscious. Dreamt 1/17/2017