I have never yet, in waking life, been to Ireland. When I lived in Manhattan in the 1990's I knew many, many Irish-Americans. I felt very comfortable in and around some of Catholic church buildings on the island. Perhaps most of the others in and around those buildings were of Irish heritage, or perhaps I gravitated to the Irish for some reason.
How Irish is Manhattan? Well, in addition to Irish immigrants, people who had moved there from Ireland, I met some people, adults, who had been born in New York City and lived in the city all their lives, who still spoke with Irish accents.
Or maybe they only sounded that way to me. There is an upper class in the United States, most of whose members kindly shun the public eye so as not to shatter the illusions of those who believe that America has no upper class, some of whom speak in accents which sound English to Americans and American to English people.
Last night I dreamed I was in a large city which was almost all Irish Catholic. Dublin, perhaps. The city wasn't specified. It seemed to be the 1950's. But for all I know, some regions of Dublin might look, sound, smell and feel like the 1950's. On the other hand, it was just a dream.
I had pleasant, non-meaningful conversations with strangers on the crowded sidewalks. I like that part of Louis Armstrong's hit record "What a Wonderful World" where he sings, "I see friends shaking hands, saying 'how do you do?' They're really saying, 'I love you.'" That's pretty deep, I think.
In the dream there was no sign of COVID.
Some of the Irish Catholics surrounding me were self-righteous, rigid, dogmatic, judgmental and just thoroughly unpleasant. Others were wide-eyed, wild, alert, gentle, good humoured, generous, sensuous and loving. Most of us in the dream were somewhere in between.
A storm was coming, and many of us moved into an enormous church building. Lightning lit up the stained-glass windows. Strong wind rattled them. Rain was coming down in torrents outside. I stood in a portico watching it, until there was no staying out there without getting wet.
It was getting to be too crowded in the nave, so most of us moved down to the less formal basement.
Some went into the kitchen and began to cook for the huge crowd. Some basement windows were crushed by the rain and water began to pour in. I joined some people who attempted to bail all of the water out, but it was quickly getting deeper.
We managed at least to keep the kitchen relatively dry. I was drawn there by the smell of bread fresh from the oven. I picked up a loaf as big as a suitcase, with a golden-brown crust. I tore off a corner. Inside it was white, and fluffy, and tasted as good as bread rarely tastes.
I walked around the basement handing out pieces of bread to wet people. One girl who looked and acted angelic complained, although with a sweet smile and utterly without malice, that I had only given her a little, so I tore off an enormous piece for her.
The bailers had become channelers and had managed to dry out parts of the basement. People who looked most vulnerable were bundled up in blankets and sent upstairs.
Then suddenly the storm was over, and I was in a restaurant, still in the same city, just a few minutes' walk from that large church building, where a young woman was directing a scene from a movie. Now the movie equipment and people's clothes and other things made it clear that it was the present day. I was one of the actors. In the scene, a young couple, a fair-skinned blue-eyed blonde-haired woman and a dark-skinned black man, were being harassed by racist thugs, until the other people in the restaurant banded together to protect the couple. I was playing one of the restaurant patrons who stopped the thugs. My character had several lines, and was supposed to be Irish. I was very unsure of my character's accent. The director said my accent was just fine, nothing to worry about. I was unconvinced, but she was the director, which meant that it was her call, and that if she said something was okay, it was part of my job description to stop bothering her about it. I thought to myself, maybe they'll just edit my voice out of it.
After the scene was finished, the fair-skinned blue-eyed blonde-haired woman burst into tears, and said -- in an American accent which caught me by surprise, because her character was Irish and her accent had fooled me into assuming she was Irish as well -- that the scene stirred up a lot of emotions for her because she had experienced similar harassment in real life. Several of us shared frightening experiences we had had while in interracial relationships. We expressed the hope that the movie we were making might help in some way. I thought again about that Louis Armstrong song, and it felt to me that what everyone was saying to everybody else was, "I love you and I want to protect you." I thought to myself, as I often have in waking life, that show business people can be pretty awesome sometimes. That it's not always all just crap. Then I woke up.
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