Morning Open Thread is a daily, copyrighted post from a host of editors and guest writers. We support our community, invite and share ideas, and encourage thoughtful, respectful dialogue in an open forum.
I’ve come to think of this post as one where you come for the music and stay for the conversation—so feel free to drop a note. The diarist gets to sleep in if she so desires and can show up long after the post is published. So you know, it's a feature, not a bug.
Join us, please.
Good morning everyone.,
I have only a few rules about writing that I try to adhere to whenever possible and one deals with dreams. Because I find the employment of dreams in fiction over-used and often a shortcut for a writer who just can’t be bothered to come up with a better way to show psychological growth or confusion or conflict. That and I can’t usually make heads nor tails of what the hell they’re supposed to mean. There are a few exceptions, of course—like their use in Crime and Punishment and some of Shakespeare’s and Philip K. Dick’s works—but mostly they aren’t my thing.
But I just have to tell you (I’ll keep it mercifully short) about my dream last night. Not only do I rarely remember my dreams (we’re talking fewer than a half dozen) but this one was just so odd.
First of all, I should note that it was entirely in black and white and the style (based on the clothes) sort of switches from the 1920s to the present seemingly without reference to what is happening. Well, I’ve been brought in to consult with a team but what they are doing beyond tracking down a serial murderer is lost to me and, more strange, is that I can’t for the life of me figure out why they would want me there. The woman who heads the project just sort of waves me off with a “we thought you could bring a fresh perspective to the matter,” sort of statement and tells me to get to work.
So I say I’m going to the library and wander off next door and enter what is clearly the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale and at the desk ask for two books: The Letters of James Joyce and Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s work on Developmental Psychology. A woman emerges from the shadows of a large column and says she’ll help me. She looks a little like Anaïs Nin and I’m a bit taken aback. She’s very professional and there is a quiet nature about her—almost shy but with an aura of confidence and knowing. She is dressed in a matronly sort of way but is wearing a large, man’s overcoat of an unassuming tweed (greys and muted browns, if I had to guess).
Anyway, she gets my books and meets me in the reading room, which somehow changes to an alcove near a wide staircase. And for some reason, at this point, I ask her if I can buy her a cup of coffee. The question strikes me as completely out of character (in the dream and otherwise) and she is slightly taken aback. I quickly try to explain that I’m only asking if she would like to have coffee with me—nothing more. She’s a bit wary, but agrees.
Then, mercifully, I wake; but I wake with a feeling that this day is filled with promise and hope.
There is a popular theory that dreams are our unconscious mind working out problems. Thing is, though, that my problem right now is words. I have an assignment (for a Zoom class) that requires me to turn in an essay of 5,000-6,000 words (hard limit) and have been working on it since last Thursday (when I turned in the first 2,500 words). On Monday night I recognized that I had some serious editing to do: my draft stood at 8,424 words. I worked on it that night and the following and the following. Changing this and that, cutting, burning, shredding, and making minor adjustments to it here and there. Night before last—after all that work—the essay was at 10,040 words.
When I explained my issue, my love didn’t even hesitate.
“Well, you’re sort of wordy sometimes,” she tells me.
All this makes me think that coffee is sometimes more than just a drink to be shared by two people over an interesting conversation.
Do enjoy your Friday, and may you have a relaxing and fulfilling weekend.
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From Rolling Stone: Super Fly is not only a superior, imaginative soundtrack, but fine funky music as well and the best of Curtis Mayfield’s four albums made since he left the Impressions. Equal credit of course goes to arranger — orchestrator and long-time Mayfield collaborator Johnny Pate, who’s written charts for Curtis and the Impressions since the “Gypsy Woman” days. The Mayfield-Pate team dipped into three distinct musical satchels to pull out this lovely and energetic song cycle — the established Shaft system of dramatic, heaving chords and souped-up, insectine guitar and synthesizer chops devised by Isaac Hayes; the lyrical power of the song style and orchestration of Marvin Gaye and David Van de-Pitte; and, certainly not least, the amazing emotive skill of Curtis Mayfield, whose technique is honed and carried to strange extremes.
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Grab your coffee or tea and join us, please.
What's on your mind this morning?
