Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts

Friday, August 29, 2008

What's my first line?

I had a dream last night. An annoying, recurring dream. Different characters, same plot.

I'm in a play - last night it was The Sound of Music - and I'm woefully ill-prepared. I know none of my lines and the curtain is about to rise. My fellow actors think I'm joking or that it's just a spectacular case of stage fright, but they don't understand that I truly don't know a single word. In most of these dreams I'm pretty sure I haven't even seen the script, let alone read it.

They carry on completely unaware of the true nature of my panic, and I desperately ransack the backstage area looking for a script that I can somehow tuck into my costume and read from while I'm on stage. Allegedly acting.

I never actually get to the stage. I wake up searching for a script and worrying that I don't have single clue what I'm doing. That I'm going to ruin everything for everyone and look like a collosal fool in the process.

I would like to think that these dreams that see me ill-prepared for a scripted performance mean that I'm living my life day by day, not obsessing about the future, not trying to orchestrate things that are simply beyond my control.

But from my state of panic in these stress-ridden dreams, I know this is not the case.

I think instead they're reflecting my anxiety at feeling like I'm the only one who doesn't seem to know what the hell is going on. Kind of ever.

I'm watching other organized lives around me as they follow the plans they made and somehow managed to stick to, fate and happenstance aside. And there's no way I can keep up with them. There's no way I can be as prepared or as calm or as sure as they are.

I've lost my script.

Goddamn it, I've lost my script.