Interlude: Two Dreams

2023 Reflection. This post was originally published on March 20, 2021. I do not remember the two dreams, so I am very thankful that I thought to journal them during the next day or so. Two years have passed, and I am able to comment, from a distance. 

The life of my dreams - operating a local music studio basically inspired and founded by my daughters - was about to come unglued. By early 2021, the daughter that started the business with me would be completely separated from it, and I would be left to run it on my own. In ten years of running a non-profit, my board members had mostly been of little value to it. One board member, in particular, was a great support, especially financially. But a performing arts business needs people in the audience. A non-profit needs people that will do more than just donate funds. I never had a board member, of some twenty total, that showed up to anything, let alone help promote our events. There was one exception - Warren McArthur. Perhaps I will devote an entire post to him some day. 

In 2021, The Hudson Music Center was rapidly dwindling down to a virtual one-man operation. And I am not cut out for that. I had a succession of paid administrative assistants that started off great but did not last long. And what little they did, they did however they wanted to, without consulting me or my board. They presented our team and our business mostly unfavorably to our client base. 

Our team of teachers began as a well-coordinated unit, which propelled us to our best year in 2020. During 2021, they dissipated and I was left with a team that did not perform well as a unit. 

This sense of isolation permeates all of society. You want to do the right thing. You want to connect with others. But you keep finding yourself, mostly, alone. In the end . . . you will always have your family. Perhaps the unseen root cause that is most behind the apparent collapse of modern society, is the breakdown of the family as the basic hub of everything. 

And I will have more to write about that . . . 

I had two dreams this week, in successive nights. The first was two nights ago. The second was last night. 

In the first, I had reached an advanced age but was still of sound mind and body. I was living in a bright, well-lit and windowed home by myself. It felt like it was in the Southern US, maybe the Carolinas. 

It was a sunny, warm, spring day. I sat in a room facing the back of the property, and looked across a large undeveloped field, acres and acres, which I believe I owned. Beyond the field were the roofs of a few houses in the distance. 

Three women came into view, walking towards my house. I could only make out their silhouettes through the morning mist and sunlight behind them. As they got closer, I could see that two of them were daughters of my uncle's step-daughter; the uncle that I see the most, in the coffee shop where he and my Dad met regularly, every morning, for almost twenty years. 

I let the three women into my house, and only then could I see that the third was my daughter - the one doing her graduate studies off-shore. She had wisely avoided travel during the covid period, and I had not seen her in almost a year. It warmed my heart to see her. I held her and could not let her go. 

===

In the second dream, last night. I was in the home of my parents, and went down to the basement, where my other daughter had been. But she was her eight-year old self, and was holding something - a stuffed animal or doll. I looked, and an electric toy musical keyboard had smoke coming from it. It had been left on and there was another electrical device plugged in and standing on the keys. A flame came forth from one of the keys and I sent my daughter upstairs while I unplugged it. By the time I got back to it, the entire device was in full flames and the cabinet it was on began to burn. 

I called for help. Soon my two brothers were helping, as during the entire ordeal my daughter stood off to the side, watching. 

One by one, we were removing flaming items from the house, in hopes of getting ahead of it. 

===

The dreams magnify some major themes in my life - themes that have given me an understanding of the world today; of the world that began to change in rapid succession, in the Year 2020. As I go along with the narrative, the tie-in of what troubles me in March 2021, to my life before, to these dreams and how it all clarifies the world for me, will become clear. 

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