The town was covered in florid graffiti. Some of it was abstract. Some was numbers and symbols from a math problem or proof. We ventured out in groups to create video projects.

I was in some lair in the middle of a casino entertainment complex, indoor-outdoor, possibly situated on an island. I peered across the way at the concert hall and its old-fashioned marquee ringed with light bulbs. It read “LUCIANO PAVAROTTI.” I thought, the fat man must be around here somewhere. Doing what he does when he’s not on stage.

It was a bleak dream of lost opportunities and wasted time.

Dreadful dreams. I was watching a car race, and I was in it too. It was in the past, part of some underground, semi-legal racing culture, like maybe what stock car racing used to be. Different kinds of cars raced pell-mell; open-wheel, GT. A maniacal driver chased down another and crashed into him from behind, somehow pinning the driver’s body against the rear bumper. Blood and gore emerged and covered the tail of the car, which kept racing in a zigzag. There was real malice in what the attacking driver did, a bloodlust. It seemed related to current politics.

I’d been fired from the band but was still living in the house, wondering what I should do next. Move away to a random town? Reconnect with an old girlfriend?

I was visiting Paris. Mom was there, Dad too. There were big stacks of big, old French money, those Francs the color of turned leaves. Mom wanted to dance.

It was the last day of high school. I felt melancholy of knowing I’d never see it all again.

The boxes from Amazon were piling up at our door. I was trying to balance working at my desk with stepping outside to cut them open, remove the contents, break them down. Then my desk was on a sidewalk. I was drinking—a rocks glass with whiskey or something, and a shot glass with something else. It struck me as a bit reckless to drink while working like this, but there seemed to be a good reason, like these were stressful times. I worried that a passerby would drop something toxic in the drinks.

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.