...Not Even In My Dreams

I had the weirdest dream yesterday. I am in some kind of a weird school dorm that resembles my old bedroom (when I lived with my mom). Things are strewn about the place and it's uncomfortably warm. Hardly any room to move or breathe in the oppressive midday humidity. In the dream my room is on the first floor. The main door to the house school is wide open and students and people are wandering through, standing in loose circles and talking, smoking cigarettes or reading paperback novels on the rug by the door.

Suddenly, Scott Weiland pulls up in a low, loud and fast car (I'm thinking a Camero or something). He gets out; he's wearing intensely dark shades. His leather pants are shiny, slick with sweat. He's (heroin junkie) thin and his ribs show through the unbuttoned pale blue shirt he's barely wearing. His hair is wild and funky with streaks of red and blond. He flicks away a cigarette, patiently approaching my room in psychedelic slow motion.

"Here ya go," he drawls and passes me a sexy acoustic guitar with weird cutout body.

My fingers are trembling, little earthquakes in my arm veins. Weiland is silent, calm. And he doesn't take the glasses off. So I set the guitar on my lap, thumping the bottom of it against the floor in the process. This slip up creates a soft cacophony of noise from the bowl of the guitar. A few people shift on the rug by the door and glance indifferently in my direction. I begin to play. And I play horribly. The notes are sounding right at all. The chords fall flat, they make absolutely no sense to the human ear. I'm playing gibberish.

Scott lets me get through a tattered version of "The One I Love" by REM before he grips the guitar by the neck, flips a cigarette casually into his mouth and walks away. I sit there, stinging with embarrassment and then grab my own guitar after a few moments. I awkwardly strum out "Amazing Grace" and suddenly half of the community is standing in front of the house school, humming and singing along. I'm playing badly, but it is recognizable as "Amazing Grace". When the song is done some people applaud, others wipe their eyes, some cough and shuffle away with a gentle smile. But for one glorious moment, I had connected with these people. My bad playing held those people at rapt attention for 2 and a half minutes and even though Scott Weiland doesn't want me in his band, I've made a tiny, brief difference in the world.

How zen and weird is that?