A DISTINCTLY ODD DREAM

(I don't usually recall dreams at such length and in such detail. This one mystifies me, but here it is anyway. For the record...)

We are in a foreign capital, somewhat exotic, waterside. I think my parents might be with me. We enter the lobby of a fancy hotel and I have the idea to go to the top floor to look out over the city lights. In an adjacent room, we find the entrance to an elevator—big, wooden double doors with heavy handles. The attendant is not present, and I wonder about taking things into my own hands and using the elevator anyway. The attendant returns, however, and refuses us access: the elevator is a private one. To see the city lights from above, he tells us there is access to some kind fof a dome, a half mile north.

We start out through darkened streets and soon find ourselves climbing up amongst ancient ruins and monuments to forgotten deities.

At this point, the whole story shifts. We are at a concert—in the dome?—and I find myself responsible for attending to the needs of David Hockney, not a painter, now, but seemingly a conductor. I escort him back to the hotel, where I have already drawn a bath for him—a large, old-fashioned, claw-foot bath which is placed inappropriately in the lobby, in the window next to the street. Although the water has now cooled, I persuade Hockney to get in. When he complains of the cold, and starts to shrink, I urge him to stay in and drain out some of the cold water, adding plenty of hot from the faucet at the same time. He continues to shrink every smaller, and complain.

Later, we climb the stairs to his palatial room. Still complaining about everything, he takes off his high black, laced boots and puts on a pair of very fancily constructed, feminine-looking slippers. I have the sense that things are turning erotic, and seem to remember having had some kind of sexual rapport with Hockney in the past; I seem to be hoping for a return to that relationship, but he shows no interest. Instead, he whines a bit about wanting to hear a particular record, and nothing else. I search all over for the record, and fail to find it. I take a narrow stairway to a little attic room, where I find a hi-tech record player with the turntable still turning, the needle caught in the tracks of a small long-playing record but emitting no sound. I lift the arm and remove the disc, but do not replace it. I look for the record that Hockey is demanding to hear, but still fail to find it.

The following morning, I have to get Hockney to the airport in time to catch his plane for a return to England, but he is not co-operating. He’s become a bit of a diva, and I’m clearly annoyed with him. I tell him I must get him to the airport in good time, because I myself have to catch my own flight to Moscow the following Tuesday. The dream ends with Hockney continuing to dilly-dally, and myself feeling irritated and frustrated.