Morning of March 4, 2014. Tuesday.
I am at the airport in Brisbane, I believe. The seats are far more comfortable, almost like couches. My wife is with me. Our children may be there but not immediately present.
A man of about seventy-five years of age is there and he somehow has all kinds of musical instruments in various locations around the area, most of them guitar-like. He does not play much at first, but I enjoy seeing the various items. Some are in a case, others on their own. He seems very friendly, but I do not know who he is.
One of the instruments is a three-string bass (electric, I think). Another is never taken out of the soft case but may be a miniature violin (about half the size of one in real life) and I ask him about it and the answer seems to be yes. There are a couple music books which have very simple tunes, possibly melody lines only, for folk music.
Later on, I am on another seat in a perpendicular location from the first but probably not that far away from the other location. It is probably aligned east/west, with the back to the north. We talk about different types of guitars and experiences with them. I play a brief, random “song” on one which seems to have seven strings instead of six - playing mostly one note per beat but three on one beat, which seems somewhat discordant. I also note that there are letters to indicate tuning on one, which appears to have too large a gap in the mid-range area, although it may create interesting chords or be made that way as a real-time EQ “notch” for other instruments that fit that range. (This would be more viable for anything other than a guitar, I should think, such as a flute or especially a recorder. Two recorders playing at the same basic pitch, for example, make absolutely horrid dynamics - similar to when two people sustain a loud whistle at the same pitch on each side of you and a very unpleasant swirling “roaring” is heard in the middle of your head.)
There is a point where he has some sort of small accordion or concertina but, for quite some time, plays only the bass side (roots only) as a melody, yet it sounds beautiful and orchestral, almost like a brass band. He plays about three longer songs like this. I ask him if he has seen or heard the bass setting where a very high note is added to the bass root which gives a very intriguing sound to the overall song (when the full chords are played on the bass side) and he acknowledges this fact. I tell him about my father and the number of popular waltzes and polkas he wrote. The old man smiles but does not seem as interested in waltzes (or one-two-three) as straight one-two patterns as found in almost all modern music, other than songs like “Top of the World” by Plant P (Tony Carey), which is a breathtaking waltz mostly on synths, yet almost 1700s ballroom-like and epic, one of my favorite recordings of all time.
Later, he lets me hold a very large guitar, apparently acoustic, and also very old. It is of a very unusual design. The entire neck is deeply indented almost like a series of enclosed backgammon sections (relating to each otherwise implied fret wire, which in this case is actually a higher “wall” for each note range change) all the way to the body. The neck is also too wide to play chords with the left hand. This poses two problems. In addition, I do not see how you could play a chord unless pressing more down over one side of the “wall” from the top and while mostly on the lap (rather than a real chord position grip), but it would not seem to possess the same dynamics at all, as a proper ridge/fret wire would create. I ask him about this, but he seems to know how to play it efficiently, but does not actually demonstrate.
In a very loose association, my mind starts connecting the seeming backgammon wells series on the weird fretboard of the guitar. There is also the hopscotch reference again. Somehow the idea is triggered by the guitar’s double markers on the twelfth fret and how sections change from one square to two side-by-side squares as in the hopscotch court. At one point, the older man appears to pass out from a medical problem, but recovers and seems to be okay. The people he is with make comments on his declining health due to his age, but he seems to be doing okay thus far and I believe even has a concert to go to in another country.
In an additional dream, I am in a kitchen. I think it is our present kitchen, although I sense the orientation is exactly perpendicular to how it really is. This has extreme vividness and clarity for the most part other than not fully grasping a prop to my right at first. I am not certain if it is a cylindrical pencil holder or if it is holding asparagus stalks. It is probably the latter as I cannot see a reason for having a pencil holder that close to the sink. While thinking on that, I move to wash a muffin tray with twelve wells. This is the second time in two consecutive nights that I have focused on the possibly important meaning of an array (the other was eighteen “wells” or facets).
The muffin tin ends up exactly covering the bottom of the sink in a fairly snug and even fashion, though I am able to retrieve it by gripping with fingers in two wells (something similar had happened in real life years ago). I soon notice that the perfectly round and reflective drain is really large (it actually changes size, it seems, getting bigger a few times), up to almost eighty percent of the sink’s bottom in area. It seems to imply bottomlessness or at least a very distant point down into what is somewhat like a “light at the end of the tunnel” kind of presentation. There is a golden glow from way down below. A silvery light also encircles the implied route down in various swirling events. It is actually so large that there is a thought that I could go headfirst into it (yet not in a threatening or dangerous way), but do not, and there is no stronger vertigo, just a sense that I am very close to the portal between “here” and the space of “all light”. Although “down the drain” has a negative connotation, this is actually quite the opposite in what is sensed and felt about the potential portal into universality. It vaguely reminds me of a previous dream where vivid whale-song was emerging from the drain as the water in the sink was moving in a spiral somewhat - with a very blissful awareness.
