I just awoke from a dream. I came home one night to a party. As I walked in and deftly manuevered through the din of tinkling glasses and buzz of conversation I see 2 people sitting on the couch. It is Nelson Mandela and a bespeckeled film or diminutive height and is not Woody Allen. We greet each other as old friends in an uncharacteristically warm manner. I shake hands with Mr. Mandela.
I unburden myself of my books and computer bag and sit down. There is that commonly awkward silence you get when some people are not quite sure what to say to one another.
Spike ask me what I am working on. And I answered it is is a story a bout a book and it is really too emotional a subject for me to talk about.
Mr. Mandela, intrigued, says, “A Book? Really At least tell us something!”
I realize at that point I have not even fully developed the story. But my foot was already in my mouth for even mentioning it. Thus began a tale that literally has come to me in a dream. A tale from a time after the Riots following the death of Martin Luther King, a boy; a book; a bookselling elderly merchant seaman who worked on the Manhattan project with a false degree in mathematics and physics from the Sorbonne and MIT, a close friend of Einsteins; people who piss on a young boys dream of being an astronaut in the rubble of America’s discontent; a marginal who comes to the aid of the boy and the conflict with the merchant seaman bookseller. It is a tales of struggle, redemption and triumph. The kids gets in the rocket. He does not fall prey to…the Dream Snatchers.
The story continued to unfold in my head as I awoke from the dream with clear recollection. I lie still for 5 minutes and replayed it as I continued to work on the story.
Where did this all come from? What a dream, vivid and in color, the smell of alcohol, the plush couch giving way as I sat down. The most interesting thing was the way my mind held a conversation with itself and made commentary while the dream took place, like a hundred voices in a cacophony of calculation.
I am dredging up personal demons with this documentary for sure. But angels are holding them at bay. Thus it is with every life, right out of the blues, the eternal battle between the sacred and the profane. Hell I was born in Mississippi, I guess I was born to a blues motif.
Folks who dream are probably more prone to the blues I guess.
So now I am beginning to think of how I construct this documentary. A blues tale. Great young talent gone arwry. With lyrical refrains from the poet Dante and the Tao te Ching. The Master, enlightened, chooses the material path. A sho nuff blues theme.
What a night.
