The invasion was televised

As far back as I can remember I thought that joke about dreaming that one ate a giant marshmallow and waking to discover one's pillow consumed was pretty stupid. Not only because pillows taste nothing like marshmallows (don't ask how I know) and therefore the logic behind the joke falls flat, but because I saw a fairly solid line between what was happening outside the dream (i.e., in the so-called "real" world) and the content of a dream. Sure, dreaming about something could elicit some physiological reactions (talking in one's sleep, for example, or having an erotic dream and waking aroused), but it was a one-way street; the body was reacting to the dream, not the dream to what the body was experiencing.

Anyway, let's move on.

This morning, I was having a dream that took place in a field of trees, and involved people undoubtedly influenced by me having seen an episode of the John Adams mini-series on HBO. One of the people was referred to as George Washington I recall. So, at least on the surface the setting was the 18th century. At some point a helicopter appeared, hovering in the sky above the tree line. Even in the context of the dream I remember thinking it incongruous with what was going on.

When I awoke, the sound of a helicopter in the sky above the apartment was immediately discernible. Frankly, I'm surprised it didn't wake me immediately, with as loud as it was. It certainly prevented me from returning to sleep and figuring out how the father of our country would tackle this flying contraption.

Turning on the TV, the nature of why the copters were hovering was revealed: a "landmark" building in Hollywood was engulfed in flames at the famous intersection of Hollywood and Vine, and being less than two miles away put us under where the aerial shots of the firefighters battling the blaze were being taken. An empty nightclub had caught fire in the very early morning hours, and the two helicopter for the local Fox and CW affiliates (which have morning shows) had been covering it since dawn.

And thus the appearance of the helicopter in the dream was explained.

The veil between the two worlds is thinner than I thought. The pillow joke is still stupid, however.

~

Speaking of the fire: I did eventually get up and go outside and see some smoke mingled with the morning hazy clouds, and see the two helicopters (but by this point they'd moved to a different vantage point and were now a few miles to the east, and not directly overhead (and hence not as loud).

But by this point it was too late to try to go back to sleep.

Here's the thing: The story was not important enough for the local ABC, CBS, or NBC stations to interrupt their national broadcasts, but both the local channels (KTTV and KTLA) covered the story with the same intensity as the OJ Bronco chase; they did not go to commercial, they did not go to whatever pieces and guests they may have had scheduled.

Even after the fire was clearly pretty well under control, or at least when it wasn't changing, they kept showing pictures from the hovering helicopters of hoses shooting water on a smoke-covered building.

Even though there was no one in the building.

Even though the surrounding structures were not in significant danger of going up (at least by the time I was watching).

Even though the hosts and the reporters on the scene and in the copter had nothing new to say about what was happening, and grasped at anything to say to fill time.

Which would be all fine and dandy as far as I was concerned were it not for the fact that their obsequious coverage had gotten into my dream, and then woke me up long before I would have otherwise done so.

I know if the building in question had not been in the heart of historic Hollywood but in a less famous neighborhood, it would have gotten maybe two minutes of air time. But some place where the first few minutes of Ocean's Eleven were filmed surely deserves hours of continuous coverage. And obviously that deserves to interrupt my sleeping.

I gotta get out of this town.

If you could only see inside my mind, you'd be disappointed

A few years ago a friend* and I were in the car and a song came on the radio. It was the mid-'90s pseudo-alternative rock hit "If You Could Only See." We both remembered it. However, she was convinced the artist who recorded it was Duncan Sheik, and I was certain that it was not. I could not remember the name of the band at that moment, but I knew it wasn't Duncan Sheik for a simple reason: I had a copy of the album on which said track appeared.

(I am not saying I bought the album—which I recalled was called Lemon Parade. I am saying that I acquired a copy of it, because I knew someone who had bought it. Generally speaking, if I plop down some of my own money for something I can recall who it is. However, sometimes the brain is unwilling to give up its information, for reasons that are never clear.)

Undaunted by my assurances that the artist was not, in fact, Duncan Sheik, and probably emboldened by my failure to recall who it actually was, she challenged me to a bet. I declined over and over because this was not something over which I should be winning anything, but eventually I agreed just to get her to stop harping on it.

Of course I won the bet. That was never in question. When we got home and I could find the disc copy in question and prove that it was Tonic, not Duncan Sheik, she graciously conceded. (Or at least for the purposes of this story we will say she did.) Suffice it to say she has not challenged me on musical knowledge since that day.

My point, however, is not to tout my prowess in the realm of music. It is actually the opposite.

It's not that I know everything. It's not that I know even a majority of things. It's simply that I know what I know; with what I have some experience I have knowledge, but that is so far from general expertise that I actively refute even a glib association with the term. The most that can be said is that, for whatever reason, bits of such trivia do tend to stick with me (although not necessarily in a manner that allows me instant recollection), and perhaps that is more than the so-called average person would do. And by virtue of knowing a few bits of trivia that other people do not, that seems to indicate to them that I must possess a vast cache of information that they do not, despite the fact that I have only demonstrated knowing the specific bits.

Why does this matter? Almost invariably, when someone who has seen me exhibit knowing something (that I didn't even mean to be impressive but just something my brain didn't have the good sense to let go), they will start using me as some kind of source for reference material. And depending on the specifics of what they wish to know, it is only a matter of time until their grandiose expectations of me are hideously disappointed; it doesn't take too much effort to find something I don't know.

Not that I ever claimed to know it.

Nonetheless, it is similarly inevitable that as soon as the people who deluded themselves with ideas about my prowess hit that point where I don't know something their expectations would have me know, they feel an unconscious compulsion to direct at me the full brunt of their disappointment. I have come to believe it's nothing they can control; they have this negative reaction which they attribute to being my fault, and whether it is or is not is of little importance at that moment. ("What do you mean you don't know?!" Then an exasperated and indignant shake of the head.)

While I try to dismiss it as the simple projection, it's difficult to not feel at least a twinge of having let them down.

It's hard enough for me to be right about anything as it is, and frankly, with as many times as that scenario has occurred, there are times when I think it's better to feign ignorance (or intentionally be wrong) up front; it is not admirable, but clearly being admired is fraught with its own dangers.

I am the first to admit when I'm not sure. I equivocate in answers to questions at work all the time; I employ phrases like "it should do this" and avoid "it will do this" at all costs, so I don't have to put up with "you said it would do this" crap when things don't go as they should (which happens daily). I am an awful poker player; the only time I win is early on, before the others have figured out that I am rarely bluffing.

I don't want to let the idiots drag me down, but these people aren't idiots; if they were, I wouldn't care. These people kind of believe in me, and that's flattering, but I know it's only temporary. And the real thing is this: Their first impression persists in their mind, despite the incident that revealed the exaggeration in their expectation; the next time I don't know something is met with the same vitriolic reaction as the previous time. They don't pull back their expectations to a reasonable level; they simply overlook the evidence that should have caused the re-evaluation of the expectations, so I get to experience it all over again.

So, to sum up, when I tell you that it's not Duncan Sheik, just accept that it's not Duncan Sheik. It may or may not be Tonic, but it's definitely not Duncan Sheik. And accept that the entirety of which I'm certain is exclusively that, in that particular case, it's not Duncan Sheik.

~

You only get one chance to make a first impression, but sometimes a good one can be just as bad as a bad one. It just takes longer to realize it.

~

No, I couldn't name a Duncan Sheik song if someone held a gun to my head. I never had his album.

I admit his sound, to the extent I have any familiarity with it, was not unlike that of Tonic. I understand how they could be confused.

~

Oh, and when it comes to music: I assure you there's thousands of people who know more about what's going on now than I could even pretend to know. I can't compete with the college student who's in his heyday. That I can find new music I like, whether I'm keeping up with a scene or not, is cause for tiny celebration in my book.


* Possibly a euphemism.

Song lyrics du jour

She stares at the screen
At the little words of green
Tries to remember what to do next
A trace of frustration
That crosses her face
Searching for the key she should press

And I would help her if I only knew how
But these things, they are a mystery to me too

And it seems that the corporate eyes, they are watching
She fears for her job, and the moments are passing

I stare at her name tag
I think to myself
Both you and I
We never asked
For any of this

- New Model Army, "225"

Mixed up more

From the Um-get-to-the-point-Doug department:

I suppose a basic thesis I have at least implied in some posts here is this: I like music. I aspire to get more of it because there’s more out there that’s good than what I could possibly possess. I’m not content merely listening over and over to what I have already. Were I a better writer, that much would have been obvious from the aforementioned entries, with no sense of obligation on my part to clarify it today. Big shock, eh? (And people wonder why I don’t do this for a living.)

It’s too pithy to declare a general like for music; I do appreciate the artform, in my humble opinion, but that means little in and of itself. I haven’t studied it well enough to write about it skillfully (I know what 4/4 time is, and I can still vaguely recall what the sonata form in a symphony is—what could at best be described as a dilettante’s intelligence); that’s probably why I still like it. I have no particular interest in picking apart how it works, to look too deeply under the hood. I can appreciate it sufficiently well with what I know. I don’t mind learning more, of course—my favorite classes at college were the music appreciation lectures about the Romantic period (classical) and about the history of jazz—but those weren’t hardcore deconstruction of music; they were what non-music majors were supposed to understand.

It’s not lost on me how that could seem incongruous, given how I overanalyze myself in these pages, but really it makes perfect sense; the reason I can still like music is because I haven’t taken it to that level, but I have long since abandoned the notion of liking myself (at least in the same way I like music), so there’s no room to lose in that arena. (The self-analysis seeks to find some modicum of explanation for why I am what I am, to draw conclusions—logical or not—that allow me to not despise myself, which it does reasonably well.)

(Get over it, people. I love myself, but I don’t always like myself. You knew what I meant if you’ve read this far. Yeesh. If I haven’t offed myself by this point, it sure as hell ain’t gonna happen now.)

Anyway, I am familiar with more music, and know a certain level of trivia about it, than (as far as I can tell) does the average person. The average person, in this scenario, however, is one who will never fill a 20 GB iPod in his/her lifetime. I probably could have done that before I was old enough to drink. Still, relative to the people who are really into music (the journalists, the critics, the DJs, the guys like the main character in High Fidelity, etc.), I know barely enough to get into the stadium, much less compete on the field. However, those average people around me assume I must know anything they might wish to know or be familiar with whatever song/artist to which they may allude, and the reality is that I know what I know. That may be more than you in certain areas, but what you really like may be something where you possess infinitely more knowledge.

Besides, when it comes to music, the determining factor of whether something is good is whether it appeals to you; you don’t have to understand why you like it, just that you do. There’s no better way to attempt to explain a piece of music than to play it for someone; unlike other art, descriptions always fall short of capturing its essence.

That’s why I like it. And don’t wish to study it too deeply.

Gone to the dogs

It's true that I rarely post pictures of people, but I have posted some shots of puppies on the photo site. (Dogs, like flowers and sunsets and buildings, never get embarrassed about how they look.)