Batch

09-26-2013 -- [Very long, detailed, funny dream, that like usual, I can not remember well enough to really do justice to it. I literally woke chuckling to all the insanity I'd just been through.] I am at a hotel or something, almost certainly at or near Walt Disney World, and I am with Dale. He's on the last full day of his vacation, and is stressing out about going home the next day. He's worried about packing everything and getting the rental car returned and all.

So I am walking him through it all step-by-step, and telling him it will all go smoothly and be easy to get everything done, and he is starting to calm down. Meanwhile, we seem to be eating in a little restaurant or cafeteria that seems more like it is in a school than a hotel (hints of FCM at IWU), and Dale is mentioning how he ended up writing some sort of sarcastic bit for a small humor newsletter, but what was supposed to be one little bit has grown into three, and he's handed them to me to read, and as I am doing so (and nothing ever reads well in dreams) the publication is growing from a Teens Today-size 11x17 folded-into-four-page handout to a Hornet-sized newspaper to a multi-page, multi-section full-size newspaper like the Orange County Register, which I am having trouble folding to carry under my arm.

Meanwhile, Dale has just taken out his trombone and has walked into the back of a classroom and sat down with his instrument as a very no-nonsense teacher and a bunch of students start to walk into the room. It seems Dale is sitting in on a rehearsal. The teacher is very tough and demanding, but all Dale ever receives from him is the occasional brief nod, so he must be a very good musician. [In real life I am almost certain Dale doesn't play anything.]

As the teacher starts and continues to lead the group, I am very surprised to notice all the brass players are segregated behind a 'sound-proof' barrier that can't block the sound entirely, but lessens it, so the teacher isn't having to constantly warn the brass not to blare, and urge the woodwinds and strings to be louder, to be heard, and I am thinking to myself what a brilliant idea it is, and wishing we had it back when I was in band. But Dale is not behind it, so I guess the trombone is a woodwind in this dream.

Anyway, they play for a bit, and then they seem to take a little break, and while the professor is giving his students small bits of individual instruction, I am making a few comments (about the vacation, not the music) to Dale, and though I am afraid the music teacher will snap at me, he doesn't. The teacher is a sort of a mixture between Mr. Eubanks (one of my teachers, though not a band teacher), Pat Moran, and Lisa Simpson's music teacher.

Soon the whole class is moving, and it seems like we move about a corridor over. It is like we are moving from a practice room to a performance hall, and starting to prepare for an actual concert or something. But there are more and more people walking in and getting involved, and lots of 'guest stars,' both from TV and from my past. Tony Shalhoub seems to be puttering around, and Ron Howard seems to be playing an instrument, and wondering how things are going to play out, but they are both very young. (Ron is Happy Days age, and Tony resembles his character in Galaxy Quest.)

There is a young lady who is top of her class, and very proper, but kind of stuck up (a sort of cross between Sharon Newkirk's brilliance and Cordelia Chase's attitude) who is supposed to be one of the star performers, but she has managed to do something to anger the professor, and he just points her to an out-of-the-way corner and orders her to sit down and shut up, which has her pouting and angry.

Meanwhile, there is a very flashy and flamboyant piano player, a kind of a cross between Liberace and Elton John, very forward, demanding, and visual, who is just passing through, but sees a piano, and can't help but sit down and start to play, and the professor tolerates it, but makes it plain he expects him to behave, and amazingly enough, manages enough presence that the flamboyant player meekly agrees.

So they are all starting to tune up and prepare, and Dale is still hanging in the background, out of the way, but ready to play. Since he is not one of the students, he doesn't want to put himself forward at all, but he is still going to sit in and play along. Meanwhile, Shawn Spencer is also here, and is his usual insane self, and is coming up with all sorts of ideas on how to make the concert or opera or whatever it is supposed to be, and somehow the strict, demanding, controlling professor finds almost all of his insane ideas to be interesting, and is largely giving him free reign, and thereby allowing chaos to spread incredibly.

So the people are wandering in and out, music is played, Shawn is rewriting both the show and bits of music on the fly (at one point he walks by the piano player, throws in a hand, and adds a small riff mid-song before walking off) and though I expect both the flamboyant pianist and the controlling director to be furious, they seem much more bemused, almost sort of "Yes, that does work nicely."

The girl is complaining that she isn't being allowed to do anything, and it's just not right! Ron Howard is having fun, but confused as can be about what is happening, and Shawn is getting more and more wild in his ideas, which doesn't bother the controlling professor at all, though it certainly ought to! Things are getting more and more surreal, and the audience is just laughing hysterically and taking it all in. It is chaos ... brilliantly orchestrated chaos!

Finally things end and we all start filing out. I want to tell the professor how much I liked the concert, and also I still want to comment on that brass behind the barrier thing, but there is no way to get near him at the moment, and the press of the crowd more or less forces me into the practice room that we'd visited earlier. It seems that other students, not part of the group performing, but inspired by the concert's madness, have run rampant in here, and trashed the place.

The college staff have been working at cleaning the place up, and are somehow deciding to blame me for all this, but I am not having any part of it. I tell them they want the prestige of having this big name person in charge, and to keep him from walking off in a huff they give him complete and absolute control ... if he goes mad and his students destroy the place, the blame is completely theirs. They can't blame it on a random passing stranger! They don't like hearing this, and are swarming at me, trying to pull me down, but all they manage to do is to pull down all the materials blocking the door, and create an exit for me. I climb out of the room, and back into the main hall, where I find the crowds thinning.

I run into Dale, who I haven't seen in a while, and he is now late for his plane, but he feels the concert was well-worth it, and he isn't worried about it anymore. I start helping him grab all his luggage, and am sort of shrinking it to a small size, and causing it to all float around us (ala Harry Potter) while Kevin is complaining about everything, and saying he doesn't know what is going on.

We hurry toward the car, but as the crowds continue to thin, I practically run right in to the professor, and decide I have to speak to him for a moment. But now he is tired, and winding down, and has been talking to people for quite a while, and may be starting to second guess himself a little, and he seems really iffy about talking to me.

I tell him something like "That was crazy, and insane, and hilarious, and absolutely brilliant, but I have to tell you two things. The first is a quote from one of the Superman movies: 'You can't ...' I mean, 'You don't ...' 'If you think you can ....' Never mind. It's not important." Now he is starting to smirk, and seems to be getting to be in a better mood.

"The second thing is this. I used to be a music student ... never again!" I insist, worried that he'll think I want to ask him for lessons or something. Then I start to mention the constant warnings to the brass not to blare, and everybody else to be louder, but after the first couple of words, he is repeating back what I am saying, just a split second after me, then saying it with me, then saying is just an instant before me, like that odd monster out of the Doctor Who episode Midnight. Before I can get too frightened and freak too much, he breaks it off to make a comment about how the strange thing is, they don't have that segregated bit here in the performance hall, only in the practice room.

About this point, I woke up chuckling to myself about the madness of the dream.