Dreams

..religiously
writing down your every dream, especially since dreams are by their nature exceptionally
elusive and easily forgotten, and you really have to do it hot off the press.
But the writing down or relating of it is the important part – because
another thing I’ve noticed is that the dreams are often visual puns, which
feature doesn’t become evident until it’s put into words. I suppose
you want an example now, but I can’t think of one off-hand.
Anyway, it’s interesting and maybe comforting to know that you’re
equipped with an unconscious self that seems every bit as clever as your overloaded
and predictable conscious self. Maybe by paying it more attention, (i.e.
recording your dreams), it can be encouraged to contribute more meaningfully
to your everyday experience, much in the same way as learning to brush one’s
teeth left-handed, (and wiping one’s arse left-handed for that matter*)
might have more benefits than a hedge against a possible stroke – although
I haven’t noticed any ancillary benefits so far and I would advise the
unwary that it takes an extremely long time to gain proficiency in either activity
and you wouldn’t want to get them mixed up..
* OK – I’m officially weird..

Presumably I/we dream most mornings, but as I say, unless you write them
down almost immediately, they simply evaporate. So, in the spirit of pseudo-scientific
argument I give you This Morning’s Dream. (Mind you, because I left it
for a few minutes, this is only the latter part of the dream).
I was hastening through the city (which felt like the Melbourne CBD), walking
down a narrow street that resembled the section of Little Collins St that descends
quite steeply to Swanston St. The street was cobbled and stepped, and it was
wet, as though it had just been raining.
I saw my late wife Helen coming up the steps from the opposite direction and
watched in surprise as she hurried right past me.
I turned and said something, perhaps to the effect she’d walked right
past me, and she stopped, clearly annoyed, and said she hadn’t seen me.
I felt it wasn’t worth continuing the conversation and proceeded walking
down the street – and she said something quite uncomplimentary to my back, including
‘you fuck’, which I can’t remember her ever calling me.
I was full of recrimination at this point, and thought I could’ve handled
the situation differently, but I was apparently on an urgent mission and hadn’t
time to waste.
By now it was so wet I took off my shoes. It seems I was heading back to where
I’d parked the van, but although I had a fairly clear picture in my head
of where I’d parked it, I had no specific recollection of where that was..
I entered a dark tunnel, which might have been a disused section of the underground
railway. There was a man’s body lying not far from the entrance, which
I didn’t think was a good sign, and as my eyes became accustomed to the
dark I saw some potentially threatening groups of (male) figures darting about,
but I thought that if I kept on walking purposefully they were unlikely to attack
me.
To my relief, I came to a section of the tunnel where the wall opened to the
outside world. There, sitting on a chair, was a skinny red-headed young man
in a blue singlet holding a couple of hand weights. As I walked towards the
exit he abruptly stood up and moved mechanically towards me.
He stopped a couple of feet away from me just as abruptly and it was only then
I realised he couldn’t see me. When I saw he wasn’t actually trying
to impede my way to the outside world I thankfully stepped through the opening
in the tunnel wall.
I’d calculated that I must be pretty adjacent to where I’d parked
the van, but when I emerged from the tunnel I found myself in some unrecognisable
rural landscape of rolling hills and the city appeared to be quite some distance
way.
I remember feeling quite desperately lost and helpless at this point –
and then I woke up..

There you go. If there’s anything more tedious than transcribing one
of your own dreams, it’s reading about somebody else’s, but if
it amuses you, you might send me your interpretation.

I saw The Small Faces episode of the British Invasion series the other night
on the ABC. The title of the series is a little misleading in The Small Faces’
case – one usually assumes the British Invasion refers to the wave of
British acts that conquered the US in the ‘60s and ‘70s, but one
of the interesting things that came up on the show was that The Small Faces
never toured the States, although Itchycoo Park and Tin Soldier were big hits
there.
I saw them at Festival Hall with headliners The Who when they toured Australia
back in 1967, but I can’t remember much about their performance in truth.
It seems they weren’t happy with their performances on that tour, especially
in comparison with The Who, who were riding on the wave of their successful
appearance at the Monterey Pop Festival, whereas the Small Faces had just
emerged from the studio and hadn’t thought about how they were going
to present their music in a concert situation.
The disappointment of that tour proved to be pivotal in some respects and
The Small Faces never became the huge international act they deserved to be.
I really liked them at the time – apart from admiring their hairstyles
and mod clothing sense I thought the combination of Marriott’s strained
vocals, the guitar and Hammond sounds and most particularly the drum sounds,
(courtesy of producer Glynn Johns), and their three or four killer singles
made them one of the more interesting English bands around.
Funnily enough I just took a break, (my knees get a bit uncomfortable after
a while on this ergonomic chair, but I’d rather have that than a crook
back), and turned on the TV to find the Ronnie Lane doco, The Passing Show,
was playing on the ABC. This followed the career of The Small Faces’
founding member, bassist Ronnie Lane, through the disappointment of the Small
Faces’ largely unrealised international career to the meteorically successful
rise and rise of The Faces, who weren’t so small and were fronted by
Rod Stewart, (or Rod Stupid as my son Chris called him), and who not only
came and saw the US but conquered it as well.
When they started being billed as Rod Stewart and the Faces, Ronnie anticipated
Rod Stewart’s departure for a solo career and prematurely left the band
in 1975, which effectively ended The Faces and, incidentally, was a decision
that he later regretted..
The rest of the story is probably legend in the UK, but was a revelation to
me, and followed Ronnie’s slow decline in profile and health, the doomed
experiment with The Passing Show, which was modelled on a travelling circus,
and the stirring rallying around him by his fellow musicians when his health
started to become an issue, until his death in 1979 from MS.

I guess if you were looking for an echo of The Small Faces in Australia,
you’d probably pick the Masters Apprentices, but there’s something
in their story for all rock musicians attempting to cut it in the music biz.
(Or is that just the sad musings of a ‘70’s dinosaur? Is there
in fact nothing in it for the contemporary equivalent of a rock musician?)
Anyway, if you’re judged by your musical legacy, The Small Faces’
music still thrills me, so they had something honest and durable to say –
to me, at least. And Ronnie Lane’s story proves there is life after
fame. Perhaps that’s the part of the story that means more to me in
the end.