The orchestra playing in a castle that might blow over. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm at a concert of orchestral music. I'm inside what appears to be some kind of irregularly-shaped castle. The walls are made of stone bricks, and it's dark inside with dramatic rays of sunlight highlighting important things like the stage and the audience. But the audience is placed in irregular clumps all around the orchestra pit based on the strange angles of the walls. 

As the music plays, I go to my seat, which is at the very top of an extremely, extremely tall, narrow tower that only barely has enough space for me to climb up a rickety bamboo and rope ladder, which buckles, creaks, and sways with every step up. 

I get to the "bird's nest" where the seats are, and it's full. There are dozens of people in it, listening to the music. But I can still see over the edge, and it looks like a bottomless pit down there. 

I feel terrified, but I also know that it's a real privilege to be at this concert, so I suck it up and have a seat. I know I'll feel better once I sit down. 

Then the concert is over, and I see dozens of cats all over the castle jumping up on the stairs and other stones like little mountain goats. They love it. 

Someone starts playing choir music on a CD player that I find kind of creepy. I put on some other music that's more neutral. It's about tomatoes. I like it a lot better. It's not cheerful, but it's not grandiosely gloomy either. I don't know why more people don't like the tomato music. I feel as though it doesn't go one way or the other enough to be popular.

INTERPRETATION

Do you ever feel as though life is a beautiful nightmare? That's what I feel when I think of this dream. Life and the situation with the wobbly tower are terrifying. They're confusing. They're unsettling. But it's all very beautiful. And you realize you're lucky to be witnessing it.

With the tomato music, it makes me think of how tomato juice is supposed to neutralize skunk odor. My dad used to listen to this really creepy choir music that made me feel really upset when I was a child, and I would ask him to change it, and he would refuse. That went on for two decades. To me, that grandiosely gloomy choral sound is very similar to his worldview. And as someone who is well-medicated and relatively happy, I think of life as being much more neutral than that. I mean, the cats are having a great time. It's mainly a matter of where your focus is.