I’m Alright

Watching Rope, a Hitchcock film. Thinking of death and life instinct, as is my wont. Diffused? As Freud wrote. More like blended, intertwined, bonded. Two characters loom over a body they’ve just strangled, their heads nearly touching; their bodies almost inseparable. They are breathless, fearful, yet still excited. One lights a cigarette, like he just came.

I’m alright, don’t nobody worry about me. Why you gotta give me a fight? Why don’t you just set me free. I woke up with those words swimming in my head, leftover from a dream about which I’m still chuckling. My wife rises with me, picks up her thought from the night before, about my aged dad and his chuckling, teasing ways. He mumbles like Popeye, dribbles asides that few around him hear. I’m distracted. He wasn’t in my dream, I say. Jason was. Again. Really? My wife asks, like she’s surprised. It is surprising, actually—the clarity of the scene anyway. It was like the kind of political rally I don’t attend: boisterous, right-wingish, congested with people, specifically people who look ill in mind and body. They’re excessively round, swollen, circumscribed by bad body odor, and with their words they emit bile.

Ostensibly, this is a light hearted gathering, eliciting daisy smiles and cheerleader glee. On stage there’s an entourage of performers surrounding a protected, totemic figure. A pocket of circus freaks, including thwarted dancers treading tiny steps in tight spaces, lumpen musicians protruding brass above heads, consumes a platform. There are tiers to this cake-like riser, as if this band/invading force is atop a battleship that has impaled an arena that is vast yet closeted, spurring claustrophobic feeling. A victorious troupe is onstage, rousing the population with a triumphant song that boasts of something untrue: we’re all alright. For some reason that dreams don’t bother explaining, my back is to the stage, not a part of all this. I don’t wish to be part of all this, I should amend, if I am to accurately, theoretically reflect my conscious mind.

My unconscious friend. Where is he? Oh, that’s right. He’s not here. He’s gone now. But wait, is he here? In coded form, condensed or transformed, repressed but still living in this scene. About this totemic figure on stage: where’s he at? When is he going to show his face, reveal his identity? I see him finally, as I glance over my shoulder at the stage and look up. I am in the front row, like I’d gotten there early (as is my wont), like I’d been eager to attend this monster-truck atrocity. Now I can’t look at all the ugliness I chose. I glimpse the figure’s image through bodies, smiling at me, catching my eye, like he’s spying. He’s also singing, albeit lightly, barely above the crowd, despite being the only one with a microphone. Kenny Loggins. Eighties icon, only just. The song suggests Kenny Loggins, though the figure I see in slivers is a hybrid of Jabba the Hut and John Sebastien, a sixties willow who sang of love, magic and, I don’t know…hippy shit.

What are you looking for? Hard to say, but that might have been the pissy, quarreling question I’d directed at my wife. She is also in the front row, looking down, fussing with her purse, looking for something, attending to a detail I might have overlooked. It may have been important, but it distracted me from something important. Within a compressed, discontinuous moment the Kenny Loggins figure was away from the stage, leaving the arena through a giant door that suggested a fortress. I become excited as I glance around again, regarding the bemused looks of the assembled trolls, the disappointed, professional wrestling crowd of which I was not a part. Me? No way do I belong here, with these people.

I’m alive. I think that’s what I want to say. That’s why I shouldn’t be here, having this dream. It’s not happening. Well, what happens next is the return of the repressed. The guy, the totem, the Kenny Loggins whatever: he’s back; back in black, as Jason might have quipped, singing a different tune. Da-nuh, Da-nuh, Da-nuh: wish I knew how to write the chord sequence. Jay might have known, though he’d have preferred his amendment of lyrics. Fuck chicks, drink beer, do cool thing with the guys, yeah!: the screeching essence of classic rock, he’d opine. Or would that have been me analyzing his bit? That would be me trying to keep up. When he was truly on, Jay’s quips and other jests fell like rainfall. With him, droplets dashed at you, made you laugh and follow along, but were too numerous to retain. That’s one reason Jason didn’t write, actually. He had too much to try and capture in print. Anyway, back to my dream. Kenny L re-entered the arena, dressed in formal black attire, flanked by a posse of similarly dressed roadies. They form a phalanx at the base of the stage, clear a path for the totem to rise again and seize his ceremonial role. Who knows why he left in the first place. Perhaps he was dissatisfied—disgusted even, like I was—by the obnoxious brays, the fascist “We Will Rock You” atmosphere.

Now he is back with dignity, portending a solemn requiem, something that would be in keeping with his status, at last. I waited, I think, in the temporal blur of dream space, for him to ascend the tiers of the battleship stage. At the summit is a cloudy white surface, puffy and smooth, like a parody of cartoon heaven, with brass pillars framing its shape. A bed. Brass of another kind, trumpets, sound out from the bloated figures below. The dancers spread out, find their feet as their limbs come alive and the music swells. Then, at its climax, the totem lays himself down upon the bed and sinks into its mist. A deputy steps up with a speaker and in a moment’s silence as the music lulls into a false ending, he says the following, “And now, ……. (the figure is not identified in the dream) will perform an impersonation of a man in an ICU”. I woke up, laughing darkly. I’m alright, I think.