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“Tim Ebner’s Regalia”, Dream from May 16, 2012

I was talking to Tim Ebner in his studio which was in a detached garage. It was packed with various art materials. He had a huge variety of ongoing projects from paintings to sculptures of fish hanging from the ceiling.  Tim was chipper and happy to show me what he was working on. At one point he giddily said “hold on a minute!..” He disappeared into the back area of the studio and he when he emerged he was wearing a bright-red, pompous uniform. It was jumbo-sized like David Byrne’s suit in “Stop Making Sense”. Tim was grinning and posing like a demented Nazi, and I thought there where insignias of the WWII German army on it, but I can’t totally recall.  Overall, it gave the look and regalia of a British guard. Except it was floppy and even more over-the-top. Tim’s head looked like a turtle’s grinning over its big, baggy, colorful shell. I laughed and he seemed to act out a role for his project. I seemed to recognize the role and said..”Hey Tim, could you draw what that other uniform looked like? (I am not sure what I was thinking about) He obliged and went to his drawing table. With an feathered ink brush he drew a incredibly fast yet tack sharp graphic image of a multi-headed creature. It was almost as if the image appeared on the page as he touched his brush over the paper. The drawing resembled a symbolic illustration of something as well as a graphic figure. The multiple heads of the creature, and the connecting flourishes looked similar to parts of Chinese writing. I wondered how he drew it so crisply and quickly. I was very impressed.

At one point, I asked Tim, “I meant to ask you earlier…How did the operation go?..” (somehow I understood that he was to have a planned operation recently) Apparently this must have been a huge secret. Tim did not answer me at all. His demeanor completely changed, and he looked extremely upset and deflated. He would not say another word to me again.

Later, I met Tim’s mother and a few other relatives who entered the garage. We were to go to an art opening somewhere. At first I was confused because I felt it was so late, and somehow I saw a clock that said it was past midnight, yet it was light outside.  We all got into a long white limousine. Tim did not speak to me still but he was talking to his mother in the seats in front of me, while I sat near the back. He was agitated and nearly arguing with her. I definitely felt like a third wheel (or fifth). We arrived at a very large pure dirt improvised parking lot. There were many other cars there roughly parked in rows. The gallery was like a modern, case study house: squarish, low and flat, like the Schindler house in Los Angeles, but very long. There were many people already inside, and looked to be elegantly dressed like a upscale 1930’s cocktail party with fur scarves and fanciful hats; most were pimped out in white.

At some point my cell phone rang. I looked at the phone and it said “Nicole” was calling. When I picked it up, however, I heard a man’s voice. He said “I have kidnapped your wife…I have her…” As I listened closely, I instantly recognized the voice. He spoke with a pushy and over-precise diction. It was the voice of a guy that we randomly met with a friend of Nicole’s at an event at Griffith Park the previous weekend.  I remembered that Nicole’s friend said that this guy was a stranger who was randomly talking to her during the event (concert?)..and that he was annoying and creepy, and warned us about him. Armed with this knowledge, I told him that I knew who he was. He was quieted at first, but then he rolled with it, into another kind of threat. I had placed a face to his voice as well. (For some reason) it was the guy in that Errol Morris documentary on self-professed geniuses. (His actual name is Rick Rosner). And he has really huge pillowy lips and dark curly beard. I could visualize his lips moving like a puckering fish as he talked. I urgently felt like I could figure out how to find him very quickly.

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Dream from March 26, 2012 “Open Freeway, AA at Hendy’s”

I can’t remember too much detail. I did not write the dream down or sketch it, until a day later.  The feeling/or spirit in the dream was an ethereal one.  One of pioneering,  commanding, and traversing space. Ironically, the pioneering space was a California freeway.

I was able to slightly float above a freeway system. There were absolutely no cars and there was a winter sun shining with long blue shadows across the road. It seems like I was a giant, taking huge steps and traversing a half-mile with each bound. Yet when I looked down at my feet, they were normal sized and touching the ground. Then I figured I must have special rollers on my shoes, like magic skates, but I could never spot them. It occurred to me that I had the mission of traveling to Texas, and that I could magically get there on foot by my special powers. My powers felt quite natural though, and I wondered why more people do not take advantage of this amazing form of walking, and why did they use noisy polluting cars?

As I could see well above the freeway for miles, I could see that there was an oasis coming up. It reminded me of the 5 freeway going north as you are coming up to McBean Parkway for CalArts.  It was a time that the commercial sprawl was just starting to fill in sides. I could see from my bird-view a red-roofed building, ubiquitous as a fast food place like a Pizza Hut or a Wendy’s.

This building wtas being used for a special purpose meeting like Alcoholics Anonymous, and I felt a happiness that it was used for a good purpose this way. I “floated/skated” up the the parking lot of the place in one or two incredible bounds. As I came closer I noticed the sign said “Hendy’s” but identical to “Wendy’s”. It felt exciting to witness the social transformation going on inside the Hendy’s, and I also felt very thirsty. A nice twist on drinking and fast food addictions I thought. I can’t remember what happened just after this. I still felt an urgency that I was expected to “skate” to Texas, and was was eager to walk the different freeways after my Hendy’s visit.

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Dream from May 13, 2012

“The Ashton Kutcher Cereals, Lessons Learned in Blood”

I was in supermarket with a huge variety of dry breakfast cereal. It looked more like a wood-shelved library with rows of cereal identified in inane classifications…like “slogum midroxinate”, “flaxseed smegmanate”, “flohoe pixelpoint”..all with a scientific yet absurd names written in plain lettering. There were red-plastic hanging signs with white lettering identifying sections of the isle. One sign said “Ashton Kutcher Cereals”.  Apparently, Ashton Kutcher not only created his own breakfast cereal, he created multiple varieties enough to fill half of an isle. After a double take, I looked to my left, and right there was Ashton Kutcher pulling a box off a high shelf. With his sneery smile he looked at me chummy and boyishly and talked to me like he knew me.  I can’t remember what he said. I kept looking at the cereal in the section in front of me. It felt like we were both looking for something specific, but I can’t remember what. Every box look so wildly different from one another. One box caught my eye and I pulled it out. It said “New Big Mac Cereal” with a huge picture of a MacDonald’s Big Mac. I laughed at the bizarre American market but not surprised. There seemed to be a directly mocking aspect of it though, as on part of the box said something like “Lessons to be Learned in Blood”. I was both repulsed and amused by it. Somehow I had some of the Big Mac Cereal in the corner of a ripped open plastic bag in my pocket. I don’t know or don’t remember how it got there.  It was like dried meat crushed in to what looked liked bacon bits that is put on salads. I poured some of the cereal into my hand, like meat soaked granola. Suddenly I could taste crunchy bacons bits and felt myself chewing, although I did not put any into my mouth. It seemed like I was having a vivid memory of eating bacon bits.

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Dream from 12/06/11 “This is Dramaturgy!”

Part of this was a recurring dream. I am about 19 years old and I am using all the money I ever earned to pay for a whirlwind trip to several art schools on the east coast. I wanted to find a school that was right for me, although I had not applied yet.

I had an incredibly excited feeling about being in a different place, different city, and felt I wanted to go to Brooklyn/NYC.  It was chilly outside.  From a busy city street, I entered a glass building of a private art school.  (felt more like Chicago Art Institute). Inside was bustling activity; students and teachers freely mingled yet were all concentrating on various works. There was a wild mixture of activities from sculpture making, to drawing, to performance art, and video. It seems to all happen in one large atrium. There were many free-standing walls, sectioned areas, and the ceiling was high and raftered. Overhead spotlights could be aimed to light different areas.  I could walk around freely, as everyone was focused. It felt warm and was welcoming from the cold outside. The thick feeling returned (the recurring dream)  It was an artistic education moment where pure direction and inspiration begins.  I do not know why I felt so moved. More often, I was concerned or felt it dubious, but this was a moment that I utterly “believed” in art school. I did not know anything about it, and was an “art school tourist” just the same. It’s at that point I worry that I still need to apply and that I might not get accepted. I was already thinking of alternatives if that were the case. There were posters around for other schools. I had a sketchbook with me. I wrote down information that looked promising.

I wandered until I entered an area where a performance was happening on a short stage. There were some fold-out bleachers near a back wall. I sat with my sketchbook. There was an instructor standing and giving direction to actors on the stage. There was a glitzy gold curtain on one side. Spotlights hit the sequins and reflected lines of white light that spotted the floor.  On the other side was what looked to be a large man dressed in cardboard or brown paper skins. He looked like a friend of mine who dressed completely in paper grocery bags for his Halloween costume. The man looked and moved clumsily, and danced and jostled to look (unconvincingly) like he was being tugged from invisible strings.

Intrigued I walked closer.  I turned my head to look at something else, but when I turned back and looked at the dancing figure, it changed form. Now it did not look like a costumed man, it looked like a taller, man-sized puppet made of sectioned tubes. The head was skinny, and impossible for a human head to fit into. Now I wondered how it could be that it moved and walked to the edge of the stage.  I saw long thick marionette strings that attached the limbs of the “puppet”. They were more like cables. The cables shot all they way up to the highest rafters and disappeared into dark.

The instructor was still talking to the “puppet” as if it were human, giving him directions and guidance. I was thinking that this was remarkable performance and play with perception. That this was actually a marionette (controlled by a human) that acted as if it were a human that was trying to act like a marionette! Was the instructor also an actor that is used to heighten this illusion? I finally noticed someone was video taping the whole thing.

I remained in a state of excitement for this activity. I felt there was no shown distinction between performance art, theater and sculpture. I wrote down the words “this is dramaturgy!” in my notebook, and underlined the word “this”.  I am not sure why I wrote this, and I thought it was corny.   I wanted to write the words “Cabaret Voltaire!”, but when I looked down again at my sketchbook, it was not there.

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Dream from 11/19/11 “Dorm Hall Morning and Bergen”

I was visiting a recreation room of a college dormitory or just a large house shared by a group of 20-somethings. It was morning and the main room was filled with yellow light. I came down a short flight of stairs thinking no one else was up yet. There were large arched windows all along, lighting the room. There was a slightly cathedral-like feeling. I noticed a ping pong table in the center of the room. The table looked strange with extra square panels flanking the sides as if modified to be wider and longer. I walked to the table and ran my finger on the edge and it completely collapsed like a house of cards, with a big noise.  A voice from behind me called out “Don’t worry about it dude, they don’t ever play that thing anyway”. The voice came from someone apparently sleeping on a couch I didn’t see before. I still felt clumsy and tried to reconstruct the table. It had many legs holding the different surfaces up. One large flat leg needed to slide in a groove; others just to support other legs. It was almost impossible for one person to do, as one leg got propped up, other legs would fall down. Nothing was attached.

Some time passed, I was upstairs for something and I came downstairs again, and was surprised this time to see a musician friend of mine laying on a thin matress, with a very petite girl straddling him. They looked like they were having sex at first, but she was wearing red panties and denim miniskirt. He didn’t see me, but I startled the girl and she popped up and ran away like a scared squirrel. She went around the corner and hid in an adjacent room that somehow I knew was a kitchen. 

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Dream from 12/10/11 “Biker Down”

A bicyclist was involved in an accident. I did not witness it, but saw the immediate aftermath. He lay on the ground, dressed in bicyclist outfit and gear. When I looked closer, it was a motorcycle and not a bicycle. He was struck by a bus. He seemed to be alright but his motorcycle was destroyed and there was scattered debris and damage to the front of the bus.  It seemed like he should have been badly injured or killed, and he was very lucky. He slowly started to get up and a few people got out of their cars to investigate. No one got out of the bus.

Then, a tiger out of nowhere approached the man from behind. It clearly had the intention of eating him. He was in fact, not so lucky today.

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Dream from 11/5/11 “Cats Occupy Cold”

 ”…Although they are apprehensive of the cold, these common cats are perfectly accustomed to standing out the harshest snows of winter…”

-A narrator’s voice from nowhere explains.

I was at a dog park that looked like the one near Silverlake resevior.  It was freezing winter with hard drifts of snow. The dog park was occupied by cats, each holding his own post, trying to withstand the weather and covered with frost. I could feel a soft blanket in my hands. I was slightly aware I was dreaming and was holding the blanket that actually covered me, feeling its softness. I wanted to carry the warm blanket to try to cover some of the freezing cats. Maybe I could at least swaddle a couple of them. But the ground and the surrounding snow was completely covered in cat shit. There was no clean space anywhere around each cat that I could lay down the blanket. 

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Dream from 10/19/11: “Horse Delivery”

I was at a large intersection somewhere in Los Angeles. I was with my friend Darrin.

I was to deliver a horse to a distant city by riding it. (Kansas City, was our destination, I think). Darrin and I were part of a service that delivered horses, that were ordered from a business in LA. We picked up our horse but it looked stocky like a donkey. I tried to grab ahold of it at some point and it felt slick and slipped out of my hands.  Darrin seemed to be getting agitated. I reminded Darrin that we both knew nothing about horses and this job was a stretch for us. Looking again at the intersection there were dozens of horses crossing the street. There seemed to be many other people that were delivering horses as well. Although we had only one. There was someone who put their horse in the back of a pick-up truck. It seems that this is the kind of planning that we should have been doing. I looked back at our horse, and it still looked goofy. But now it seemed to have harnesses on it that I could grab. The animal jerked forward and followed other horses crossing the street and the strap slipped out of my hands. Darrin, more frustrated, now complained to me: “Why didn’t we check earlier!?”…meaning that if we called in earlier before we picked up our horse, we would have not got a donkey instead.  It all did not make sense, of course, as we were supposed to be simply delivering.

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Dream from 10/5/11 “Super Simian Runs Amok”

I was witnessing a movie-like spectacle. A giant ape-like creature was running amok through city. It was like an hybrid orangutan-gorilla, but 10 feet tall. He was running through the city with great speed and mass -like a NFL fullback plowing through field of kindergartners. The ape would bowl over street lights and signs, knock over telephone poles, and swat away cars like empty boxes or leap on them like skateboards. He traversed a city block in seconds.  My view was like a low-flying helicopter camera closely tracking the ape on his rapid path. At one point, the ape grabs the back fender of a taxi that is turning the corner. He lifts it off the ground, with spinning wheels; the car’s a toy. He is unstoppable. Fueled by an unknown manic rage. Yet, he also seemed to be enjoying himself in some comic way. The scene reminded me of an animation a student of mine once did, where a gorilla-like creature bounds through a city, and destroys cars.

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Dream from 10/4/11 “Sum Up Broke”

I was in the house I grew up. I heard music coming from a room off the hallway. The room was my bedroom until I was about 12. After that, I slept in the basement, and my father turned it into his workshop for building balsa model airplanes. (that is, in reality). I heard ”Sum Up Broke” a song from the Byrds coming from the room. I went to investigate. The door was open a crack and yellowish light and music were pouring out. I was eager to see the source. I still imagined the room as my father’s workshop, where the door was always shut firm and we kids dare not disturb.  The door being already ajar, I gently pushed. The tiny yellow room was revealed. I was surprised to see an old asian lady, with a tired smile, seated at my dad’s table looking right at me. She was wearing the jump suit of a Chinese factory worker.  The workshop was filled with balsa-wood airplane wings and hobby-modeling tools. But the table in which she sat also included dozens of baked products. It was a strange mix of sawdust, skeletons of half-built models, bottles of glue and lacquer, …and girly chocolate cupcakes. The more I looked, the more I saw wild varieties of cakes and snacks.  There was a very elegant looking white pastry stacked in a tall decorative hat-box. They looked like pasty white roses. She looked at me maternally and knowingly, but I had no clue who she was. She just smiled, and looked fatigued as if she had been there all night. I could not tell if any of the baked things were for sale or why she was sitting there. I am not sure where the music I heard earlier was coming from. I think I forgot about it, or I was not hearing it anymore.

I can’t remember what happened just after this encounter. Yet I had an urgent feeling that I was wasting precious time. I was supposed to be in class somewhere. I was taking a class at local college, and I had no idea the time. I was sure that I have already missed half the class.