Dreams?

[Rurudyne]

While I'm no Disney freak I've had some interesting dreams.

I used to have "technocolor big budget productions" all the time until this one night in college when I was having this swashbuckling dream where I seemed to always enter the scene swinging on a rope E.Flynn style (I should note I have sometimes had high "production values" — zip pans between scenes so I don't have to deal with the boring stuff, actual dialog ... plot ...).

Anyhoo, at the climax of this dream there was a brawl of swordplay going on with hundreds of extras on the deck of an improbably large frigate. I was up near the wheel fighting when I noticed the fray on the main deck grind to a rapid and puzzled stop. The crowd parted up the steps to where I was and three men in very expensive and yet boring business attire approached. The one in the middle was nondescript, balding, wore glasses and carried a briefcase.

He said: "Mr. (my name), while I do appreciate the artistic value of this and the rest, and I do appreciate that you are having fun, if we let you continue like this soon everyone will want the same and then we'll be out of a job. So I'm going to wake you up now."

And I was stone cold sober awake (I'd not been drinking, but I was just AWAKE in no uncertain terms).

Oddly, or not so oddly, after this encounter with the "Dream Bureau" as I came to call it the "budgets" I had decreased dramatically. For some time color was gone (or I'd only access to something like 2-color as with early film efforts), I obviously lacked budget for writing and set pieces or extras (in one memorable low budget affair I was dreaming about being in Jerusalem 70 AD ... but I couldn't apparently afford a real set and so I had to do with the SMU campus and a burned out Perkins Chapel for the destroyed Temple ... oh, and I had to RUN between scenes ... no zip pans or fancy dissolves), and so forth.

I've slowly regained the "budget" over the years but for sheer scale of lavish production ... it just isn't there anymore.

Any wonder I don't like bureaucrats?