Saturday, January 21, 2012

More Dreams -- a Seachange

Warning:  Contains rambling about dreams again.  Will likely be boring.


Background:  I'm a professional flutist/piccolo player.  I teach and perform.  One of my recurring dreams involves me holding a flute (for a performance, usually) and having it feel strange in my hands.  Like it doesn't fit.  My hands can't keep it balanced, or can't find the keys or whatnot.  I make a hash of some big performance as a result.

But.

Last night, I dreamed that I was going to perform on both flute and piccolo as a soloist with an orchestra.
However, both my flute and picc were falling apart.  Literally.  The keys were falling off, the pads were coming unglued, etc.  SO.  I sat down with my assistant (? what assistant?), found some screws from the garage toolbox and some airplane glue and fIXED them.  It looked kind of awful, but they both worked.  They felt very awkward (like they have in other dreams), but this time, I glued things on the sides of the flute/picc to make it fit me better.  I wasn't helpless.  And I got up and gave the performance!  It was great!

After the performance, another famous flutist (who had been in the audience) came up to congratulate me and saw the instruments and goggled at how awful they looked.  He handed me HIS flute (a gold something or other) and had me play it.  It was SO much easier to play than my cobbled-together repaired flute.  He laughed and said, "I have NO idea how you made this junked-up thing sound so good!"
And then the dream dissolved into other things.

This is THE FIRST time that I ever solved my problem!  (In my dream, that is.)

I see a pattern lately.  Empowerment, possibility, confidence.  And I have to say, it's exciting.

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