I had this weird dream the other night. Actually, all my dreams are weird, and most of them are nonsensical. There are never narratives, just images, jumbles of words, sounds, situations. It’s a mess. One snippet of a dream I had, though, might be of interest to you fine devotees of this site–all four of you! I was not myself an actor in this dream. It was more like I was an invisible observer. There were these people–I have no idea who they were–who were disinterring some guys who had, years before, belonged to a jazz band. I don’t know WHY they were doing this. They just were. They popped the lids off the coffins and one by one the deceased musicians started to reanimate. The people who’d done the disinterring all screamed and took off running, but in true dream-speed fashion, the zombies, with their shuffling, were able to catch up to them.
Then one of the people yelled out, “He just wants his horn!” He then tosses a trumpet to the zombie in the lead. I don’t know where the trumpet came from, nor do I know where the OTHER musical instruments came from, that were passed out to the zombies by their intended victims. Once each of the zombies had an instrument, though–one of them was seated behind a drum set by this point, one had a guitar, and one a trombone, in addition to the one with the trumpet–they stopped chasing the people and started to jam. They did a rockin’ rendition of “Sultans of Swing” by Dire Straits before the dream ended.
I checked with one of those dream interpretation dictionaries, but it contained no mention of zombie musicians. The meaning of the dream, then, I fear, must remain unrevealed.
I’m betting, though, that if the zombies in the dream became real and then took their show on the road, they’d sell out every venue at which they appeared and have a number one album, to boot. They’d probably also get sued by Dire Straits for copyright infringement.