CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #12: Whistling the "Ashokan Farewell"

I'm walking past a school building with Wife. For reasons I can no longer remember, I'm clutching a handful of documents.

It's close to dusk and the sky is growing red. I look up as we walk beneath the branches of a live oak and suddenly I'm lucid. I stop walking and look down at the papers in my hand. On top is a piece of sheet music that I can't read. I try to think of what I had intended to do and I (incorrectly) think that I wanted to perform a piece of music that I know from waking life.

I tell Wife that I'm going to whistle "a song from the Civil War" that I know from childhood. (I looked this up -- I meant Ashokan Farewell, a song that is actually from the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War. I had not thought of this song in many years.) Wife laughs, saying, "Only you would pick a song like that." She waits to listen. I whistle a few bars of "Ashokan Farewell" before I wind up accidentally turning it into "The First Noël".

Once I'm done with the chorus I decide that it's time to fly. I realize that I've completely forgotten to stabilize the dream and I feel myself losing my grip on the experience. Suddenly flustered, I'm frozen in place as the dream scene collapses around me.

I attempt to DEILD back into the dream scene but sleep won't come. My alarm clock rings a few minutes later.