There's no use for rock and roll—it died for the digital age
I recognized the problems with the timeline as soon as I woke up, but any dream in which an experimental director adapts a short story of mine into a short surreal film starring Anthony Perkins is a good dream. I wish I remembered enough about the story to write it. I wish I had the time to write.
It was a small Thanksgiving this year: immediate family and no really fancy side dishes except for a new style of pie and the squash it turned out there was nothing to be done with except full military honors, but the turkey was a pearl among birds and my niece brought her new Elsa doll and demonstrated her cat meow for me and fortunately the sudden outbreak of baby spiders in the living room (which we had just vacuumed that morning, of course) held off until after she had left with her family. There are lots of baked apples left over. I foresee a pleasant frequency of Turkey Terrifics in my future.
I did not know that "behind the sofa" was a cultural trope. That is exactly how my fifth grade class watched Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Everybody started off on or in front of the peeling, faux-leather sofa that was part of the classroom furniture, and gradually migrated behind it over the course of the film. I include myself in this group. I always assumed other people spoke from equally literal experience.
I just like this image very much: Cornelius Ary Renan, "Les Voix de la Mer" (1899). Courtesy of![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
handful_ofdust.
It was a small Thanksgiving this year: immediate family and no really fancy side dishes except for a new style of pie and the squash it turned out there was nothing to be done with except full military honors, but the turkey was a pearl among birds and my niece brought her new Elsa doll and demonstrated her cat meow for me and fortunately the sudden outbreak of baby spiders in the living room (which we had just vacuumed that morning, of course) held off until after she had left with her family. There are lots of baked apples left over. I foresee a pleasant frequency of Turkey Terrifics in my future.
I did not know that "behind the sofa" was a cultural trope. That is exactly how my fifth grade class watched Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Everybody started off on or in front of the peeling, faux-leather sofa that was part of the classroom furniture, and gradually migrated behind it over the course of the film. I include myself in this group. I always assumed other people spoke from equally literal experience.
I just like this image very much: Cornelius Ary Renan, "Les Voix de la Mer" (1899). Courtesy of
handful_ofdust.
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I would believe it. I wonder which way the journalists who popularized the phrase meant it.
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Aww. (My subconcious tends to recognise the problems inherent in a dream while I'm dreaming it, which ruins everything. I'd like to think I'm not much like Arnold Rimmer, but apparently my subconcious also finds it hard to believe in too much good stuff happening to me and intervenes to stop it. On the plus side, it also intervenes in a lot of nightmares to prevent them going to the worst places, so probably I'm okay.)
I did not know that "behind the sofa" was a cultural trope.
Ha. (Sorry, Brit and DW fan; I don't know if I've ever been unaware of it except as a cliche.) I've never seen it literally done, I have to say, but everyone has their own equivalent. (I used to hide behind a cushion. A much more comfortable way to cower! And I once watched modern Who with a teenager who kept disappearing to watch it from behind the doorway.)
I do hope you get much more time to write soon, though.
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I very rarely know I'm dreaming. This generally leads to me being wistful when I wake up. (I don't seem to feel relieved about waking up from nightmares, which are honestly the dominant form of my dreams these days. Every now and then something is so heartrendingly awful that it is comforting to be awake. This is probably more of an indictment of the waking state of my brain than anything.)
(I used to hide behind a cushion. A much more comfortable way to cower! And I once watched modern Who with a teenager who kept disappearing to watch it from behind the doorway.)
That takes commitment!
Maybe it depends on whether you grow up in a house with the kind of couch you can peer out from behind.
I do hope you get much more time to write soon, though.
Thank you. I spent most of yesterday writing about a movie, which at least involves my brain.
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Yes, that always is rotten, when the nightmare and the reality are the same, or have too much in common to be got over. I'm sorry - and I'm sorry that reality is proving so persistently rotten at the moment, too. :-/
I don't know if it's so much knowing I'm dreaming as that my subconscious seems to have set a limit on how much good fortune I can have before I then do know I'm dreaming, or too much terror. (I blame it on the stress-train dream I used to have: whenever I was due to travel or stressed, I missed endless trains in my sleep until one day I managed to catch the train and somewhere in my sleeping mind, clearly, some sort of lightbulb went on and I never missed a train again until the dream went away, and it does the same thing with other bad things sometimes. Although it's also an officious spoilsport too! I have no idea how or why or what, but there I am.)
That takes commitment!
The episode was Blink on its first showing. I started off with two teenagers (visiting my friend) who'd come upstairs to watch it with me, lost one v quickly and the other spent most of the time on the landing, but she said she'd enjoyed it.
Maybe it depends on whether you grow up in a house with the kind of couch you can peer out from behind.
Yes, that occurred to me afterwards, too - as ours was up against the wall, it would have taken some determination on our part to hide behind it! (A cushion or a stuffed (soft) dinosaur are perfectly good alternatives, though, I can attest.)
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Did it work? I feel like it would be difficult to fit an apple in a cocktail glass, unless it was a crabapple.
Strangely, the bottle of vodka I picked up to mix the drinks was the most vivid part of the dream — it was Grey Goose, which is even a waking-world brand, though not one I’ve ever purchased.
The last time something like that happened to me, I watched the movie, but I don't know that Grey Goose vodka would be as rewarding an experience!
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I didn't know that! That's adorable. I have seen him only and briefly as flashback-child Norman Bates in Psycho II (1983).
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This is true on all points. It is encouraging of my subconscious to think so, in any case; awake I am going through a protracted phase of feeling that I have done nothing of any value that will last.
Speaking of the Perkinses, did you see that Elvis is performing in Boston on December 16th? I have a family commitment that night and cannot bilocate, but I feel you should know.
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As for that bilocating, you should keep working on it. Practice makes perfect.
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I don't think I've ever watched a movie from behind a sofa, though the weekend Scanners came out, a couple of friends dragged me to a midnight showing and I was so freaked out by the head-exploding scene, I sat through the rest of the movie with my eyes closed. I could have used a sofa just then.
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I resent having so few memories of the story/film. I want to write it just for the sympathetic magic!
I don't think I've ever watched a movie from behind a sofa, though the weekend Scanners came out, a couple of friends dragged me to a midnight showing and I was so freaked out by the head-exploding scene, I sat through the rest of the movie with my eyes closed. I could have used a sofa just then.
I understand that! I knew how the exploding head effects were done by the time I saw Scanners, but it is exactly the sort of image that would have stuck with me nightmarishly as a child and almost certainly upset me if seen cold as an adult. I have always loved this production photo from Shaun of the Dead (2004) because I find David's death scene so emotionally upsetting, it was very useful to see Dylan Moran looking at most skeptical and mildly annoyed:
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We have a lot of practice vacuuming baby spiders off the ceiling, which I realize is a sad thing to say.