I got in the car today, turned on the engine, and in come the opening guitar riffs to Wake Up by Arcade Fire.
What the fuck, I said, under my breath.
This song is following me.
Have you ever had one of those dreams where you really have to pee, and you go to the bathroom and either you can’t get your pants off so you’re afraid you’re going to pee in your pants, or you have the longest, most amazing pee, yet it doesn’t assuage the urgent feeling of needing to pee? Then you slowly realize you’re dreaming and what your dream is actually trying to tell you is that you need to wake up and pee.
Am I being told to wake up? Awakening. It’s something I’m always moving towards. But I secretly wonder if truly waking up in this world means physically dying. Can you fully wake yet retain your tie to this plane of reality? Or does transcendence require extrication from unrealities? Is this song a messenger into my dream world to tell me to wake up from this plane of existence? Once you learn to willfully maneuver in your dreams, you find you’re able to maneuver the world of waking life with much more ease. So much of this world is projection and illusion. But to wake up from a dream means ejecting from the dream world. Would the same happen if I were to wake up from this world? Can I be awake and remain here, as one can in a lucid dream? I’m not ready to leave my identity in this world before I finish what I started.
Last night, I had disjointed dreams where I knew I was laying in a bed and dreaming, but I didn’t know where the bed was (LA, Seattle, Fremont, Florida, a boat, etc), and I kept chanting something that I thought was Korean…e-sun…e-sun…e-sun…e-sun…
Then I realized “e-sun” is Chinese for “doctor.” I woke up with a start, checked myself. Felt fine. Did someone need a doctor? I listened to the breathing of the house. My brother coughed softly in his sleep from the next room, but other than that, only that corporeal silence that pervades the darkness shortly before dawn.
A few hours later, my dad, eating oatmeal in the dining room, would report hearing my brother yell out my name in anger while submerged in a dream.