The other internet...

In the early 1980's, I had a tremendously vivid dream immediately before awakening one Monday morning.  I was floating above an operating table, watching a surgical staff operate upon a patient.

Not long after I woke up that morning, inspiration hit and I wrote a song, Doctor Moses, the lyrics of which I present for your consideration:

I got this thing about modern art
When I grow up, I want to be a part of the process
I'm gonna travel to a sandy beach
And read each grain of sand like it was a page in a guidebook
Or be a line in a TV screen
A single colored line that becomes part of an image
That's a privilege

Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast

I might just grow up to be a peach
Sitting in a tin can on a shelf out of reach of the children
I want to live to be a ballpoint pen
A hand will pick me up and then set ideas on paper
Or merchandise on a showroom floor
A single giftwrapped item which can be purchased and taken
Or forsaken

Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast

I got a yearning for the conga drums
That will be played as part of a movie's soundtrack
I might evolve into a pane of glass
Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning
Or turn myself into the planet Earth
Spending twenty-four hours giving birth and knowledge to everyone
That would sure be fun

Doctor Moses prepares for the test
He rubs lotion on the forehead and blood on the breast

Anyway, the following weekend I called my best friend from college and his girlfriend picked up the phone.  She told me that he had been seriously injured in an automobile accident the previous Sunday night and had been operated upon early Monday morning...which was the same morning that I had the surgery dream.

I was taken aback, not only by the synchronous timing of that dream, but also by the fact that I wrote a song that morning in which nearly every line refers to some sort of transition from the human form into something else.  The line, "Flags at half-mast, I'll be peered through on a day of mourning," felt particularly poignant months later when my friend died after being in a coma or near-coma since the accident.

The seeming communication between myself and my friend during the morning of the accident and operation was the first hint I received that mind, soul, or consciousness can transcend the physical world and touch something else entirely.  The lyrics written that morning took a highlighter pen to that concept, so to speak, as well as providing me with an unexpected glimpse into the workings of the artistic process.

Marshall McLuhan was right.  The medium is the message.