I have a dream

I sometimes have some weird dreams, just like many people do, I suppose, but it's rare that I make any special effort to remember them. And to be honest, I haven't had any worthwhile ones for some time. But the one from this morning was funny. I woke up and wrote it down in detail, because I knew it was fading fast. Here it is.


I'm in a classroom, in which people are singing and performing songs one at a time for their peers. Some guy gets up to do "Peggy Sue Got Married" by Buddy Holly... on the clarinet... singing at the same time. It's an interrupted performance at best, and the lyrics are all wrong, so I say, "Dude, let me help you out," and I go up to sing with him. The classroom contains several people who know me (1), and I hear one guy say, "Can you believe the balls on this guy?" (2), meaning me.

So I get to the front of the class, and I pick up the lyric sheet (even though I know it's wrong), and I say, "Okay, give me the intro." He does, and I start singing, keeping half an eye on his lyric sheet. Fortunately I know the lyrics, so I don't have to rely on his "interpretation". (3)

Before long, I turn the page to continue singing, and there are no longer any song words; instead, there is a comic strip (4) set in a jungle. (5) A bunch of guys with beards are fishing from a boat. They catch some big spiky-toothed fish and cook them over a camp fire.

I say to the guy, "Stop, stop, stop. What's going on here? Firstly, the lyrics aren't right, man." And he (he's Dutch) says, "It doesn't matter what words I sing, as long as it sounds right."

"But, dude," I say, "this is a really really really famous song and the words are really really really badly wrong. People will know. And what's with this comic strip? Who are these people?" I look at their faces again; there's not a bespectacled one among them, so clearly it's nothing to do with Buddy Holly.

He points to one of them and says, "That's Tonky" -- I'm perplexed now -- and he points to another and says, "And that's Beckmann," and I'm like ?!?. We get to the end of the comic strip, and it says in the final panel something like "This is the true story of how 'Jungle River Trip' was written." Now everything falls into place. I turn to the guy and I say, "Dude, this is The Monkees, (6) not Buddy Holly," and he replies, "Oh yeah, The Monkees. That's who I meant."


Footnotes
1. People with whom I've never actually shared a class, though.
2. Clearly this is from my most recent Lebanon post.
3. The only bit of his words that I remember is: "Red red rose that's been in almost all the songs", instead of "You recall a girl that's been in nearly every song".
4. In Italy I've been reading almost nothing but comic books. More on that later...
5. Bizarrely, just after typing this bit, I had an e-mail from eBay, saying, "I'm writing to you from the depths of the jungle." Seriously.
6. I have no idea whether The Monkees ever wrote such a song, or went to the jungle, or counted Tonky and Beckmann among their numbers, but I doubt it.