One finds roots in unexpected places.
Perhaps the news is that my week of external living, of administration and people and students and responsibilities, has also sounded some deeper places, unexpectedly.
The body of the dream is mostly forgotten – perhaps it's summed up as a vacation that goes wrong – a room in a Spanish villa, some sort of gay bed and breakfast, but midway through the vacation I decide that this is all pointless and I will go home.
But for some reason I change my mind, and come back to the villa, without any luggage, for one last day: and I arrive to unlock my otherwise bare room, the one I'd already left, just as a young man whom I know is delivering the mail – and for some reason my mail includes papers, photocopies, rare materials from my Darmstadt researches, especially related to Schnebel (and that suggests a symbolic connection, as Schnebel is certainly the kindest and wisest, the most supportive, of the composers I've worked with – it's not trivial that he was a minister before he was an artist). When I go into the room, which should be empty, there is another box on the bed of similar materials, which were delivered by people who thought I'd still be there – I realize how lucky it is that I came back, that these precious papers didn't go astray in the international mails, and then am explaining to someone just why they are precious to me....
Strange. And it may seem dull, to a non-scholar; but it had the nimbus of a good dream, of the dream that reminds you what you love, what you do. And it is a clear response to the frustrations of the past week – not to mention a clear answer to last night's frantic exchange of e-mails, where we learned that our Darmstadt collection must be finished in the next ten days....
[Artwork by Polish artist Jacek Yerka.]
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