I was alone in a new apartment, sorting out some things before S. arrived. The Super Bowl was on, between the Cowboys and the Broncos. I suddenly felt very tired, and with some regret fell asleep at the beginning of the game. When I awoke it was late in the fourth and the Cowboys were up 75-10. Then I was at a large outdoor party where the band was playing, at the sprawling compound that belonged to our friends. We created an enormous pile of dirty dishes and I felt compelled to help with the washing. I grew aware that I’d played with another band, with a friend on drums, at the party earlier. What song had we played? I tried to remember. It was “Green Eyed Lady,” echoing a dream one of my bandmates actually had, long ago. Word came that there’d been an accident out on the road. A woman who’d just arrived had witnessed it and was shaken. Someone died, someone she knew.

Some jazz piano was playing and I identified it as Thelonious Monk. He played a characteristically heavy-handed, off-kilter note: donk. “Monk’s playing is funny, but in a good way,” I remarked to no one in particular—or maybe someone was there, or I imagined they were there. Then I said, “Also funny in a bad way. But funny in a good way, too.” 

We got together to play like we usually do but we were seated around a dining table. I was trying so hard to remember this one tune I’d learned that I was going to play that night. It was a fun tune, interesting, somewhat unexpected; those were the contours of it in my mind but I could not grasp the title. Someone laid out a huge pile of blow. “Whitey,” I stated, remembering what those California people called it. Lines were cut and a fussy little strip of paper, not quite wide enough to roll into a proper straw, was passed around. There was sugar everywhere, too, mixed up with the coke. As I got ready to do mine I wondered if it was OK if I snorted all this sugar. Was it bad for you? For the delicate tissues of the nose and sinus? I still couldn’t remember what the song was but I remembered it after I woke up, a song I planned to play in real life: Sultans of Swing.

We were charging up a hill, shouting over and over, “There is no God! There is no name!”

I was in a kind of musical congregation, not a band but a kind of club, everyone setting up and getting ready to play. The leader was a guru type. “There is no ego in what we do!” he said, gritting his teeth. I looked around and thought it couldn’t be true. I was getting ready to play a Tom Waits tune, testing my guitar. They were sure gonna be impressed.

I was with a dear old friend, watching David Bowie perform in a large indoor venue. At a certain point he walked offstage and wandered through the crowd, smiling and greeting fans. I believe he was performing “Moonage Daydream” at the time, and taking breaks between verses to interact with us. Suddenly he was in front of me, almost as if he’d sought me out. We had a brief conversation. I declared that he looked good for his age, better than me, and I was younger by the way. I was embarrassed by the mundanity of my remarks and struggled to think of something better, something clever. I wanted to clasp his hand but he held me by the wrist, a gesture both of intimacy and rebuke. After he wandered off I turned to my friend and noted that Bowie, quite androgynous at this stage, resembled my aunt. They shared a similar gaunt, bony face, and thin lips. And something in their personalities too—but only in the dream. Bowie continued performing and meandering through the crowd. At the end, as we exited, my friend pointed out that Bowie had sung “Ashes to Ashes” after interacting with me and I was puzzled and dismayed that I hadn’t even noticed. In fact I could hardly remember anything he’d played. What was wrong with me?

Bowie was outside too, performing to a small group on a concrete plaza. Again I was near him, and he addressed me from time to time. He lay on large, ornate cushions of Middle Eastern or Arabian design. He twisted and gyrated, posing for us, singing some and talking some. We were all in awe that such a star would share his space like this, would make himself available to us. I wanted a picture of him up close to prove this really happened, something I could show people. But I sensed he would object. Finally I raised my phone and tried to press the button. Nothing seemed to happen. Bowie looked at me unhappily. Disappointedly. I shook my head and told him no, no, I didn’t do it! I didn’t take your picture, I swear!

We were watching Mark Mothersbaugh play a solo gig at a very small venue upstate, maybe the dining room of a bed and breakfast. His name wasn’t his actual name in the dream, it was Phil I think, but it was that guy from Devo. He and his band played a set of four songs, each one long and distinctive and represented in a row abstract visual panels, maybe projected on the wall or maybe in my mind. When the set was over he declared he’d play them again in reverse order, and the panels were reversed. He did something else to them too, played them slower, or played them country, or something. S., J. and I were in an adjoining room but we could still hear. I went out into the main space to see. The crowd was mostly kids, as at a birthday party, and they were dancing in circles as kids might do. A few parents ringed the space. When the set was over everybody cleared out except the band taking down their gear. I looked for Phil. He approached me. I felt awkward to be prone in bed, in my bathrobe, as I was in real life. But he sat beside me, apparently not noticing. I was proud that here he was, talking to me. He addressed me with some familiarity, as though he’d seen me before and expected me to be there. He spoke sadly of a woman who’d just died, a musician. He assumed I knew who she was but I’d never heard her name, and felt foolish. I nodded solemnly. I wanted to tell Phil I’d seen him do that weird show at the New Music University—it was actually NYU, a few years ago—but I forgot his name was Phil. Was it Phil? It wouldn’t seem right to tell this anecdote without addressing him by name. We walked in silence through the room and I left to rejoin my family.

I hung out with Jerry Garcia at some house with people I knew milling around, a kind of communal place of the type we all used to live in. He made a reference to the Kinks at one point and I tried to engage him about them, saying they really were great, weren’t they? He responded distractedly, and I felt foolish. I was afraid I was boring him. I wondered whether he might like to play some tunes on guitars, wondered in fact whether that’s the only thing he might want to do. I never did get around to asking him.

There was a school bus waiting and Jimmy Page was the driver. You could optionally purchase a Led Zeppelin CD box set before climbing aboard but I declined. There weren’t many people there yet. I sat in the first row on the other side from Jimmy. I wasn’t quite myself. I settled in with my right foot resting on the sloping front of the wheel well and thought to myself what a pleasure it is to sit in this type of bus and put your foot on the wheel well. Jimmy sat lackadaisically, his knee up against the big steering wheel, waiting for the bus to fill up. He had long blond hair and seemed young.

Toward the end of the party my foot began to bleed. The cut must have come from stepping on glass. It didn’t seem too bad. A few crimson streaks on the bathroom floor. I tried to wipe them all with toilet paper but I couldn’t quite do it. It was an indoor-outside party. Someone playfully jumped on my back and hung on around my neck for a while. I bounced up and down like you would for a little kid. I didn’t know this person. Someone else complained that they’d bought a new “spec version” of a MacBook. It was alright except it kept playing country music and it was driving them mad. “No fucking way!” I exclaimed. “There has got to be a setting for that!”

I went to a concert on the afternoon of a workday but my boss was there too so it seemed OK. It was a pop act in a big coliseum, a female star. I sat in a great section that had been reserved by the agency. At intermission a group of New Orleans all stars took the stage, led by Dr. John. He launched into a slow “Friend of the Devil” with a shuffling New Orleans beat. It was remarkable how well suited the song was to it. There was another musician acting as the emcee and lead singer but before the first verse he walked into the crowd asking for volunteers to sing it. I wanted to but hesitated a moment. What if I couldn’t remember the words? I thought them through in my mind, I lit out of Reno, everything. But by then he’d chosen someone right beside me. I regretted not being more confident. The person did a so-so job, I was sure I would’ve done better. Then the emcee sang a great, powerful gospel tune.

I was at a high school reunion, an event outdoors. Things had proceeded normally. Innocuous chats with long-ago friends and acquaintances. Then a group of men gathered at the far end. They were singing a song in honor of a friend who had died, a fraternity brother in college, not from our school, and weeping. The emotions were raw, as though this had only happened recently. The rest of us observed respectfully, at a remove. I felt clueless and out of it for not being aware of this tragedy. Everyone else seemed to be in the know. Apparently the man had died at a party, maybe similar to this one. And yet that party had continued after. This fact accentuated the sorrow somehow. Still they sang, and they wept, evoking his life, his personality. We were indoors now, a large living space. I was opening a fridge to get a beer when one of the men, P. M., passed by. I said, “How do you feel?” I thought this was appropriately sensitive. But he replied indignantly: “Well not that good, right?”

I was invited to record some music for a tech startup in Russia, in St. Petersburg. I took a train, with my guitar. I imagined it would be a long ride, overnight maybe, but suddenly we were there. I saw my contact from the Russian company through his office window. I hurried off at the stop. When I arrived I told everyone who I was and they were surprised and delighted I had made it. But I’d forgotten my guitar. We discussed how I might retrieve it but there was no way. It had to be halfway across Russia now. We still thought there’d be a way to record something, so we started planning to.

M.R. was all alone in Montreal in a recording studio. The rest of the band commemorated the event by hanging a picture of him in the vocal booth there. The track had big, sustainy power chords.

I was in a music store and impulsively bought a guitar, an Epiphone Les Paul. The cashier was Will Ferrell. “Does it come with a case?” I asked. Indeed it did. Will produced a soft gig bag from behind the counter. I oohed and ahed like it was something beautiful, amazing. The total was $177 and something cents. I handed him $180. He fumbled around the drawer, looking for change. He didn’t seem to have the correct denominations of bills and coins. “Am I overpaying for this guitar?” I asked, thinking it was a fabulous joke. “I am not going to overpay for this guitar!” On my way home with it I wondered what I was going to tell S. What the hell did I need another guitar for anyway? I didn’t imagine choosing to play it over my regular one.

Vexing dreams about some intractable problem with a clumsy workaround. Then I was playing the bass in a big room with lots of people. Getting ready to record or perform or who really knows. I sat at a table with some people, weeping as I described what the song “Don’t Worry About the Government” means to me. “It’s so…optimistic,” I said. Then I was outside with people, sitting at a round table, and it began to rain. The pockets of my shorts were heavy with spare change, keys, other things.

P. L. was playing some dark indie-rock song, by himself on a labyrinthine indoor stage. Later I discovered that my guitar was severed where the neck meets the body. I pulled it out of the gig bag in two pieces and examined the fissure, wondering if there might be some way to glue it.

Had an elaborate dream about Brian Jones. It was clear that he’d taught Keith how to play the way he does, that slashing, concussive style. I was hearing Brian and it was true, he sounded just like Keith. It was sad no one recognized that or gave him credit.

It was my turn to present my song parody concept to the breakout group that would be singing it with me. Larry David was in it, as well as a couple others. The idea was “Why Am I Always Eating Food That’s at War?” sung to the tune of the doo-wop classic “A Teenager in Love.” The catchy opening line would be “babaganoush,” and the song would catalog Israeli and Palestinian foods and how they’re both delicious and if you live in Israel, how hard it must be to love these foods from two sides of a conflict. I hadn’t sorted out the specifics but I figured, falafel, hummus, couscous on one side, shawarma, tabouli on the other. I’d do some research. I thought I was doing a good job explaining, singing the Dion & the Belmonts original and making sure they remembered it. But they were distracted by something on the array of televisions hanging around the space. A soccer game of some importance. I had to abandon their attention. I found myself looking up, too.

I observed the city of Hartford, near where I grew up. I was watching it, like a film. I thought of its past. The old department store, G. Fox. You had the feeling of a living city.

In a maze of shops and restaurants in a vast mall, I lost Jackie in the crowd. I’d been distracted by some pointless, narcissistic thought. Now I was plunged into panic and guilt.

I was watching a movie. It had been billed as a thriller but it was actually a self-referential Hollywood tale. Famous actors and directors playing themselves. S. appeared as a drug addict. I was stunned—when did she have time to do this? To make the connections, get the gig, learn her lines, rehearse?

I was on a cruise ship with S. and Jackie. We drew close to some beach hotels and restaurants and I could see us, the three of us, sitting at a table. I said, “Look, that’s us!”

I went for Easter brunch at a diner, a place I knew from better days. I remembered going there with friends I don’t see much anymore, a rousing song on the jukebox. I told a waitress I was meeting people and wanted to check if they were there. She pointed me to a long line outside. There were lines to other lines, separated so passersby could get through. People sat and mingled, forming a spontaneous community. A drug dealer conducted business in one corner of the lawn.

I was watching a movie, and I was in it, and I was watching it, and I was in it. A classic I recognized. I tried hard to fix it in my mind so I’d remember it when I awoke—I somehow knew it was a dream. The thing that I knew would identify it was that Albert Brooks was in it. When I did wake up I realized it wasn’t a real movie—not “Broadcast News,” not “Lost in America,” not whatever. It was a madcap road movie in which a group of friends play banjos in cars as they head down the highway. It was playful and poignant. Other things happened that I can’t remember. Later, I was given heroin gumballs. A handful of them: red, blue, white, yellow, green. I chewed one and began to get high.