Erwa's Dream Log - January 2012

Last night, I dreamed that it was shopping period - the week and a half at the beginning of each semester where schedules are not finalized yet and students can sit in on any class they want. I was excited to go up Science Hill with my friend Dennis Mou to Advanced Classical Mechanics, a class taught by the legendary physics professor, Ravi Shankar. For some reason, we both had skateboards, so we skated, instead of walking, up the hill. When we got to the top of Science Hill, we had to scale up this giant structure made of balanced rocks in order to reach the classrooms, which were on top of the giant structure.

The huge structure reminded me of an enlarged version of Stonehenge, with a giant plate-like rock balanced on top of all the pillars. Apparently, there was a staircase-like ramp along one side of the structure that you were supposed to use to climb to the top. I believe Dennis used this and got to class on time. However, I kept skating around and ended up underneath the plate-like rock. I thought this was a shortcut, so I kept scrambling over rocks, higher and higher, thinking I would sooner or later pop out on top of the plate-like rock. However, I kept climbing, but the minutes ticked by and soon class was over and I hadn't even gotten to the top of the structure yet.

I saw Dennis on my way down and we cruised down Science Hill together on our skateboards. During our ride, he told me about the staircase on the right side of the structure that I was supposed to use to climb to the top. "Ohhh," I said. "See, you knew that because you're a science major and trek up every day. I haven't been up to Science Hill since freshman year. They must have added that staircase recently."

I went to Music 210 - Studies in Analysis and Composition I - next. Matthew Schullman, my grad student teacher for Music 205 - Tonal Form and Harmony - was the teacher again. The class was pretty crowded, with even more students than there were in Music 205. I looked around and saw that most of the students were my classmates from Whippany Park High School. We started off the class with some interval exercises. He played an interval and then asked someone to identify it. The first interval he played was a perfect fourth (C to F). Matt had been playing some chords before, so our ears already heard C as the tonic, and the student who volunteered sang "One (C) four (F). Perfect fourth."

Next, Matt played a sequence of notes and asked someone to sing it back to him on scale degrees. He played do re mi fa sol fa mi re do, and for some reason, I knew it was in A major even though I don't have perfect pitch. In the dream, I could identify the C#, so that's how I knew. We were all facing the back of the classroom so that we couldn't cheat and see what keys Matt was playing. I raised by hand and Matt called on me. I sang back "One two three four five four three two one." Except I sung it in a lower octave, and the low A and B came out as a grumble. My voice wasn't really warmed up yet. (Though in reality, the low A and B should be pretty easy to hit, since I can sing down to a low F pretty comfortably.)

That's all I remember before waking up.

A bunch of us were sleeping over at Dan Malzone's house after his holiday party. Originally, we were all sleeping downstairs, scattered in various rooms. I started heading upstairs to find a place to sleep, but Dan stopped me. He said the upstairs were off-limits. Hmm, strange, I thought. Is Dan trying to hide something? Of course, suddenly, my perspective changed, and now I was viewing the world through the X-Men character Iceman's eyes. And Iceman was upstairs in some secret chamber hidden inside one of the walls. Naturally, since we're talking about Ice-Man here, the chamber was full of ice stalactites and stalagmites. Iceman used his ice superpowers to clear a path through these obstacles. Then he saw an Icewoman and it was love at first sight. Except next to Icewoman was a short, witch-like woman. Once she saw that Iceman was entranced, she removed the disguise from Icewoman to reveal He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, who looked sort of like a young version of Bibidi from the Dragon Ball Z series.

Source: Dragon Ball Wikia

Except Voldemort had white skin, was bald without a skullcap on, and did not have those long whisker thingies that Bibidi has. Apparently, Voldemort had been slowly regaining his strength in this secret chamber, and now he was back to his old powers. A few seconds later, Iceman was no more.

Now the dream shifted back to my own body. I now knew Voldemort was lurking somewhere upstairs. I thought we were screwed. Sandeep Mopuru, one of my Google co-workers last summer, also happened to be at the party. He was lying on the guest bed in an adjacent room. Suddenly, he told us all to "Shh". We did and we heard a faint telephone ring come from upstairs. Sandeep had a phone in his hand and dialed a number again, and we heard the telephone ring again. Sandeep said there was definitely some hidden compartment upstairs. He was going to go investigate. Knowing that Voldemort was up there, I tried to stop him. I announced to everyone that Voldemort was hidden away upstairs. That's when Voldemort appeared at the top of the stairs. We were screwed.

I happened to be standing closest to the stairs and thus closest to Voldemort at the time. He turned his attention to me and cast a killing curse. Somehow, I didn't die. Apparently, Voldemort was made up of lots and lots of White Castle burgers, which we had made ourselves about a year ago, and we had all eaten several of these burgers, too. So, I think because there were White Castle burgers inside of us, and Voldemort was made out of White Castle burgers, we shared a similar substance and that prevented him from being able to kill us. In fact, all of a sudden, Voldemort started disintegrating into a pile of White Castle burgers. It seemed like the curse had backfired and killed him instead.

It was winter break. However, we still had optional band practices and performances. I was on stage at Whippany Park High School. We were about to start the concert. However, neither I nor my stand partner Kate Carter knew what the concert order was except for the first song. We played the first song, and then we looked around to see if we could figure out what the second song was. It seemed like nobody else really knew what the song was either. Before we could figure it out, Mr. Duffy, our conductor, had already cued the downbeat. We started. Immediately, Kate and I realized we had the wrong song up. The flutes were playing the right song, and we both knew which song it was. I couldn't quite remember the exact name of it, but I knew what the cover page of the song looked like - it had large, bold letters on it. I flipped through our massive amount of music and caught a glance of the correct song. Kate saw it, too, and pulled it out. The song was called Epic. We opened it up but had trouble figuring out where we were in the piece. We started playing somewhere, and I think it sounded okay.

Suddenly, I was back home. My tooth in the back of the bottom right side of my mouth really hurt while I played clarinet. I thought it was because my wisdom teeth were coming in. However, when I looked at my right cheek in the mirror, I saw that there was a hole in my cheek straight into my mouth! I asked my dad to look at it, and he said it had been partially bandaged up, and on the bandage was written something about "MTV" or Mountview Road School, where I attended elementary school.

Now I was sitting in the Whippany Park auditorium, in back of the center section, listening to a concert. Ken was next to me, and I showed him the hole in my cheek. I told him that I definitely did not have this hole before playing the concert, but when I went home, the hole had appeared. I asked him if he had any idea how I got it. After thinking for a bit, he told me that he thought Sam probably did it. Sam was a bit of a mischievous child, and he's been going around sticking small twigs in the back of people's mouths, so maybe he stuck one in while I was napping on the band bus, and maybe the twig punctured my cheek.

Now I was in the band parking lot. Sam, Mike Mayans, and Lauren Rochat were getting out of a car. I was afraid Sam was going to attack me, so I started running toward the door to the band hallway. I looked behind me and saw that Sam was running in the same direction. He got fairly close to me but he turned his attention to another student. "Hey ______!" said Sam. "I haven't caught up with you in a while." Then Sam punched the kid. I was inside the band hallway now and there was a swarm of bandies. However, Sam still noticed me trying to distance myself from him and he came after me. I ran into the band room and looking back, I saw Sam was headed straight for me. I turned around in time to see Sam jump kicking toward me. By reflex, I leapt up myself and also did a jump kick. My jump kick was more powerful than Sam's and I landed my kick on his face. I was unharmed. [Thinking back, this reminds of how in Street Fighter, the video game, certain characters' kicks trump other characters' kicks, so if both characters do the same kick simultaneously, one character's attack will always prevail over the other's.]

Now we were at Greg Andre's house, gathered around the dining table. Ken was there as well. We were all eating dinner before an upcoming band event. While eating, the doorbell rang, so I ran out of the room to see who it was. Strangely, the dining room was on the second floor of the house. I ran to the second floor banister and looked down to see who had entered. Seeing Mark Hansen, Justin Toomey, and other familiar faces, I ran downstairs to greet them. After saying hi to Mark, I turned to the older lady and man next to him, and said, "Good to see you again." At first, I thought they were Mark's parents, but then I realized they looked nothing like his parents and I actually had no idea who they were. We had wandered into the living room at this point, and though I meant to go greet Justin, something else caught my attention. There was an escalator in the room! Being very spatially-oriented and interested in visualizing things, my immediate thought was to create a picture in my mind of how the second floor fit together and where this escalator might lead to. After pondering this, I realized the dining room was probably right above the living room, and that the escalator probably leads up to the dining room.

I woke up soon after and regretted not having greeted Justin, who I haven't seen in a while.