Dream Log: Nashville

Last night I dreamed I was in Nashville. I've only been in Nashville once, just passing through, and I didn't go downtown, and last night night's dream was all in downtown Nashville, and I have no idea whether what I dreamed resembled the real downtown Nashville at all. In my dream there were a lot of new buildings and newly-built broad sidewalks which looked much like what is in many downtowns. In this city I dreamed, there was a lot of positive energy. I suppose this is because I've heard many people, by no means all of them hard-care country and western fans, say that they like Nashville.

In the beginning of the dream I was in a darkened conference room in the midst of a bunch of people in suits attending a PowerPoint presentation. I, too, had a suit, but my clothes were scattered over several chairs, and I was having some difficulty putting them on. I didn't look like myself, but like a small wiry man with a receding hairline and wire-rimmed glasses and a moustache. After I had finally gotten dressed, a women executive sitting behind me asked me how I, as a talented writer, would address the issues currently facing the world. I only knew one person at this meeting, and I assumed that he must have told some of the other that I was a writer. I answered the woman, saying that my writing contained many more questions than answers, and that I hoped at least that some of the questions were interesting.

After talking with several of the executives about my writing for a while, I was in a mall. There were several bookstores in this mall which concentrated on books about art. I looked at some of these books in several of these stores, until, in a very small bookstore, a shelf-load of these art books came crashing down to the floor, and I ran away because I was afraid someone might think the accident was my fault.

There was a chapel in the mall, which had stained-glass windows which reminded me of the art books.

I went from the mall to another building, in which I was afraid the building security might throw me out if they thought I didn't belong there. I went running up and down the halls and did a lot of calisthenics. In the dream, this made me think I would appear less suspicious to the building's security.

My brother appeared and we both did a bunch of crunches. Then we walked around a corner in the hallway and stood before a big mirror. My brother said that he had been just going and going for decades and that he was exhausted. I said, "So stop." I meant: take a little rest. The way anybody would say to anybody who'd said they were exhausted. Whatever my brother thought I meant, he got angry, cussed me out and left.

I went outside and stood on a broad sidewalk, surrounded by big glass skyscrapers on a cool cloudy day. Then I woke up.