Good morning, everybody.
Dream #1
I was possibly watching a documentary about the history of movies. But I may have been seeing scenes from movies while I myself "narrated" my own thoughts over them. The main theme of the scenes I watched appeared to be that in talkies, there was a period where the acting was really bad and overly improvised, but that this bad quality got better over time.
There was a question as to why this occurred. The narrator gave some really complex reason. I don't remember the reason anymore. But it may have had something to do with the fact that people were still coping with the complexity of the technology, sothat they couldn't act intelligently in front of it.
An illustration was given. Some silent film, which looked like a German Expressionist film, except that it seemed to star Buster Keaton, was shown. Two characters stood in front of a wall. The wall was bare, but sooty and grimy. The Buster Keaton character stood on the left. Another character, completely clad in black, as if wrapped and wound in a black sheet, stood on the right. This character, which was like a shadow-monster, but had possibly disguised itself as someone Buster Keaton loved, now made a lunge at Buster Keaton. This scene was supposed to illustrate the emotional intelligence of silent-era films.
The next scene was a very early talkie, and one of the first films that Orson Welles had ever appeared in. It was supposed to be a retelling of some famous historical moment, maybe as far back as ancient Roman times. The scene showed all the characters up in the tower of some castle, which may have hung over some sharp precipice. The characters all stood out on some balcony.
Orson Welles was giving a reenactment of some great speech. But he was made up to look fat and old, like his Hank Quinlan character, and he was dressed only in a pair of pants and a ribbed undershirt. His speech was horrible, overimprovised, and rambling. And all the other characters were dressed in average evening wear from the 1940s.
I now took over the role of the narrator. I was explaining the idea to my friend, possibly my friend T, as if she were watching the documentary with me. But my view now actually faded into color. And it was like I was now walking in the balcony with the actors. It was like we had finished our takes for this scene. We were now heading downstairs for a break. The cast was mostly young women. I may have been a young woman, too.
I was telling my friend that the real reason acting was so bad when talkies first came into being was that people still didn't think of film as a serious art. So most of the actors didn't take their acting seriously. I made the point that it wasn't like nowadays, when actors are like royalty. It took a while to get that way. And as it got that way, people took acting in films more seriously, and acting got better.
I had been walking down the stairwell of some mansion or castle with all the cast. But now I was walking down a stairway in some nice, but modern, upper middle class house. I grabbed onto the railing of the stairway. I began to slide down the railing, holding my head and chest close to the railing, and bending the rest of my body up and away from the railing. I eventually landed down in the living room, which was kind of small, but nice, with grey carpet and puffy, white furniture.
As I did this I explained to my friend (who was still in that other place where I was, too, still watching the documentary) that in the first days of film, if an actress tried to be in the company of a duchess, she would --
I don't think I finished this idea. Instead, I now got sidetracked by a bowl of candies on the coffee table in a u-shaped area made by the furniture. My sister (into whom my friend may have changed?) was now standing with me. My sister mentioned the candies. So we both had some.
I chose some sucker which was green and dotted with some kind of salt. My sister cooed a bit as she saw that, as if I'd made a really good choice. The sucker was apparently a nice mix of sweet, hot, and salty. But I looked closer at the ingredients of the sucker. The sucker was all made out of some weird chemical insead of sugar. The chemical had just two letters, a hyphen, then two numbers for its name. I thought that couldn't be good.
I was now reading a letter. There may now have been a third person in the room with us: a man who looked like the founder of the company I work for IWL. He was playing the role of some kind of FBI agent.
The letter was from some woman who was worried about her husband. The husband was some average guy. But he had gone out on some kind of errand, after his family's safety had been threatened in some way. He had to take care of things. But he knew he might possibly never come back. It had been a certain amount of time since the husband had left. The wife, according to the husband's instructions, was now to assume that the man was dead. But the wife would not assume this. She was asking for someone's help in finding the husband.
The FBI agent now stood out on a black road with a young agent. The FBI agent told the younger agent that he believed neither the wife's nor the husband's story. There was no danger. In fact, the FBI agent said, the husband was probably using the story to cover up some kind of trouble the husband himself was brewing up.
The whole scare now had to do with a UFO the family had seen. But the FBI agent insisted the object seen had not been a UFO. One argument of the object's being a UFO was its size and closeness. But the FBI said that objects could often appear to be very close at night. A bright light appeared before the man. The FBI agent said that just proved his fact.
The bright light was now behind the agents, over the back of a house. They got a look at it. It was shaped like an upright can of shaving cream, except that it had something coming out of its top, like a straw. The FBI agent said, "See? The husband thought that was a cannon. But look closer."
The object coming out of the larger object was taped round with an advertisement for a radio station. The sign said "70s, 80s, and 90s."
The FBI agent said, "If that's a cannon, I guess it must be some kind of time cannon."
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