non-lucid

So here is my first dream journal entry here. After starting a dream journal in real life I started achieving better memory recall. This is my first attempt at total recall, and I surprised myself when I remembered.

RealNon-lucidSemi-lucid

I got off the bus and stretched, yawning as I tried to take in my surroundings. The structure before me was a hotel of some sort, so I knew we were at the destination. I met up with a group of friends, we got our luggage out of the bottom compartment of the charter bus, and proceeded inside. (This is where the dream starts to skip ahead a bit. I vaguely recall spending some time inside the hotel, but it was nothing of importance, basically just looking around. My memory comes back as I'm eating lunch outside.) I sat down with another group of friends, who seemed to be gossiping about someone's new boyfriend.

"Who is the chick you're gossiping about this time?" I asked, only slightly caring about what they had to say.

The name they told me was unfamiliar with me. They claimed I knew who it was, but I could not recognize who they were talking about. Then, they described her. That's when I remembered who it was, and said her real name.

"Yeah, that's what we said, wasn't it?" they tell me.

This strikes me as odd, because the last name of the person was completely different from the one they were giving me. I started to question why they would be acting strange like that...

"No, you said something different," I told them. They must have accidentally said it.

"Oh, I'm sorry! My mistake, sometimes things come out differently than how I mean to say them," my friend says as she smiles and turns back to her food.

I finish eating my food relatively quickly; I felt no real urge for food at the time, I was nervous for the upcoming competition later that afternoon. Our school was up against some of the best bands in the state. I had to prepare quite a bit for the performance.

That's when one of the weirder kids in the band sat down in front of me. He was one of the reasons band got such a bad reputation. Freaks, weirdos, geeks.. this kid was the epitome of uncool. I had almost no room to talk since I was in band as well, but there are always black sheep in the flock that the regular ones exclude. The kid kept staring at me, with a freaky look in his face. I couldn't stand it too much longer.

"What are you looking at, Freshman?" I asked the kid. I had a tone of frustration to my voice that could not be masked. I was sure he would get the hint.

But no, he kept staring at me with that look. I got up from the table and walked away. I wasn't going to bear that any longer.

(My dream fast-forwards about ten minutes later, in my room in the hotel. This part was kind of weird.. I guess its just because I'm a guy, my subconscious acts weird.)

I'm on my iPod at this point, just browsing the internet and waiting for something to do. Someone a room over was having a debate with me about pornography, and nude images in general. She viewed every picture of a man or woman naked as "porno". I told her that that wasn't true; some people did those sorts of things for art.

"Look, if I see a picture of a girl - photograph or not - and she's naked but not engaging in intercourse, I can consider it as art. As long as its pre-labeled as such, and not as a porno. People want to see the body's natural beauty," I told her, with an affirmative tone to my voice.

"Whatever, men like you are the reason women have to subject themselves to those things," she said in a condescending manner.

Once again, I left an uncomfortable situation before it got out of hand. The main reason was that it was about time to set up for practice. The competition was in a little over 4 hours from now, by my approximation. So I needed to tune my bass guitar, fiddle with the amplifier, and warm up. I made my way to the makeshift bandroom downstairs.

As I'm fiddling around the amp, something strikes me as odd: Why was the whole band here? This is a jazz competition, hence the bass guitar.. but most of the people I've talked to today are in concert band. What was going on? This has to be a-

"Hey, Drew! Can you do me a favor during practice?" It was my band director. All suspicion had faded at this point and I turned my attention to him.

"Yeah, whatsup?" I asked, interested to what he needed.

"Well I'm going to be busy making sure the wind instruments are doing fine on all their parts. Can you make sure the percussion is doing fine, since you'll be back there with them and all? Shouldn't be a hard thing to do," he said. He was right: The percussion of our band wasn't one for messing up. The winds on the other hand.. I can understand his concern. Its in the best interest of the band to focus his attention on them.

"Sure, I'll do it," I proclaimed.

He left the room and I continued to mess around with the amp. At this point, no further adjustments were needed so I checked my Facebook Mobile. The most recent status was someone posting pictures of amps. How strange? Here I am, fiddling with my amp, and someone wants to compare theirs with other people! I get ready to take a picture, but I'm distracted by the masses of people moving in for practice.

(As if it hasn't already gotten weirder, the room changes at this point. I was previously in a bandroom that resembled the one from my school, and suddenly I was in an auditorium. However, there was not the stadium seating of normal auditoriums. It was one empty room with a stage, and the band had their chairs and stands set up in the empty area, with my band director on the stage.)

I moved over to the back row of the band. My previous job was brushed out of my mind when I saw two of my friends, Anthony and Courtney. They were seated in the back row. Hm, the band director must have changed things up! Saxophones in the back? Weird! And Anthony and Courtney are talking and getting along? Last I checked they hated each other. Good for them.

I sat down in between Anthony and Courtney, and started warming up. I remembered that I was supposed to watch the percussion, but I figured that I could still do so in the back row. They were right behind me, I could hear them perfectly.

The real practice began, and we proceeded to run through our song list. After what seemed like an hour, we were finished. However, one of the band members pointed out that we spent too much time on some of the songs and we haven't even covered the Theme from Avatar. Wait, Theme From Avatar? Yet another thing that didn't make sense.

We played that theme for marching band, not concert. So I'm playing my jazz band instrument in a concert band that is playing marching band pieces? That's it.. I'm drea-

"Oh yeah! Sorry about that. Get out Theme from Avatar and we'll hit a few of the trickier parts," my band director said. Groans were heard throughout the band - we had been practicing for an hour! We needed to conserve our energy for the competition.

We all got out our music. We ran through the song, but then I noticed something odd. Courtney kept looking over at my music. I don't know why, but it was frustrating me. This happened every 10 seconds through the whole song, and I was getting very annoyed.

As if she seemed to have detected my annoyance, she looked at me. "I'm just checking to make sure nothing's wrong with your music," she said.

"Why would anything be wrong with it?" I asked. But there was something wrong with it. Upon closer look, I realized it wasn't sheet music. It was just several pictures, set up like comics. Each square for the picture were the same: 2 inch by 4 inch boxes with a picture of an empty field - empty except for one weeping willow tree. The sky above the field was an almost night sky: a slight shade of pink near the horizon, and as it got higher into the sky it went from a shade of pink to a purple, to pitch black. Yellow stars twinkled against the night sky. The only difference between the pictures were the organization of the stars.

It was like this for everyone's music. This must have been some experimental music notation. The stars represented notes. Man, my memory is going bad. Wait, it can't be my memory. I would remember something like this. All these stars as music notes? That's absurd. Only in a dream... a dream... a dream? Was I in a dream?

"Drew! What are you doing sitting there?" I was brought back to life by my band director's voice. He was angry. I had become aware that the music stopped. All eyes were on me.

"You wanted me to be by the percussion and make sure they sounded okay. I figured I'd hear them better in the back row," I said to him, fearing any punishment that may happen.

"That's absurd. I wouldn't tell you to listen to the percussion. I can do that myself," he said, still angry with me.

"But you came up to me and asked me before rehearsal! I swear..." I said, noticing that everyone was still watching me. Except for the percussion, Courtney, and Anthony. They were all looking at my music.

"Get back to your spot NOW," the director said, and he turned around and got back on stage to direct the band.

I got up from my chair and turned around. For some reason, there were no empty spots where I could go in the percussion area. There were cymbals, drums, and mallet instruments everywhere. There was one open spot that a friend pointed out to me. But in the back of my head, I realized the guy sitting near there wouldn't allow me to.

My fears were confirmed. "No, you can't sit here. Go away," the guy said, without me even asking.

So I turned around and went back to sit down where I was at, in the saxophone section. The band director's threat seemed to fade away. I didn't care at that point. We started playing again. My vision became blurrier, blurrier, blurrier... and everything was beginning to fade out...

That's when I woke up. I didn't remember anything except the last few parts of the dream at first, then as I proceeded through my day the memories came back. By the time I had access to my real life Dream Journal, I remembered most of the dream that I wrote here for you guys.