Our subconscious is a powerful and telling thing. When we dream it usually has to do with something that is troubling us, that we are fixated on, or that is locked in our memory.

Which brings me to the dream that I had last night.

The troubling thing about the dream that I had last night is that it did not fit into any of the previously mentioned categories. For example…

It wasn’t a night terror - though, depending on your taste in music, one could ultimately argue that it was.

It wasn’t a dream based on past memories - and if it was, then, at some point in my life, I was abducted by aliens with extremely bad taste in music.

It wasn’t a dream that focused on anything that I am currently fixated on – unless Sara Jean Underwood happens to be a huge Night Ranger fan.

In my dream last night I traveled to far off lands, saw amazing and beautiful things, swam in the clearest and warmest of waters, stood on the highest of mountains, and walked through lush forests teeming with life. And through it all; the spice filled air of far distant bazaar’s, the lazy main streets of small towns wrapped in spring, was fucking Sister Christian by Night Ranger playing again and again and again and again and again in my head. It was like I was trapped on the chain swings at Playland in 1984 and they wouldn’t let me off.

Obviously, and I will not deny it, this morning I considered taking my own life. The reason? Because for all I know I could find myself in some fantastic paradise in my dreams tomorrow night only have November Rain trapped inside of my head like two ferrets shoved down the pants of some poor sap whose willy has been lathered with honey. And if that happens, God knows where it will end. For all I know, I could spend the rest of my life dreaming of the most beautiful things only to have Against All Odds stuck in my head like an ice pick. And seriously, who wouldn’t want to knock themselves off faced with that possibility?

I want to say this just to get it out of the way – I have never sucked my own dick for a case of beer.

That said; the Juno Awards are this weekend if I’m not mistaken. For those that have been speculating, no, I will not be attending them. To be honest, I won’t be winning the award that I’m up for either. While I have never sucked my own dick, I will admit to being a bit of a Juno psychic.

Here’s how it works…

Check to see who is up for the same award. Find out who has the most nominations. Then find out which of them is performing. If the artist with the most nominations also happens to be performing, chances are it’s a lock.

So I’m going to firmly put my money on Finger Eleven winning the award and congratulate them in advance.

My parents have all of my awards. Junos, Much Music Awards, and so forth. To be honest, they’re a total pain in the ass to actually have around your house. I used to have all my Gold and Platinum record awards, but I gave them to my folks and a few friends some years ago. Same thing – a pain in the ass to have to store, etc. Bare walls are much easier to deal with.

Given the state of the music industry – and let me tell you folks, it ain’t good – award shows are becoming even more of a joke than they already were. By the end of the year, iTunes may very well become the #1 retailer of music in the US, beating out all brick and mortar competition. Know what that means? The beginning of the end of actual hard copy sales. All one need do is look at the success that Reznor just had with the debut of the new NIN album as proof positive that those immovable record executives in their ivory towers are living in a fantasy world that they refuse to acknowledge is crumbling around them. In this country, A&R departments are disappearing like dinosaurs after a meteor strike, which means that the cultivation of Canadian acts by major labels is basically all but over. Thank God CTV is still willing to broadcast an award show that doesn’t betray that fact and makes things appear like all is well in the land of corporate music. That way they can continue to operate as little more than marketing mechanisms for foreign releases while still retaining the outward appearance that they have something to do with Canadian music.

Going to the doctor on Monday. Got some weird gurgling sound in my lungs that won’t go away. Haven’t had an MRI in two years – I’m supposed to have one every year to check on the condition. Been working since I got home and it hasn’t been bothering me when I’ve been laying down vocals, so who knows. I’m a walking fucking disaster; that much is for certain. I just don’t want to find out there are lesions, which would not be good, or that my lymph nodes have continued to enlarge, because then I’ll have to start taking Prednisone, and at that point I might as well just become the CEO of a pharmaceutical company given the amount of shit I have to take on a daily basis.

I used to dream about getting hit by a car and being dragged underneath it. Don’t ask me why, but it always terrified me. But since October 2006 I’ve not dreamed about it, nor does the prospect of it frighten me anymore. It’s weird, but I’ve actually become very comfortable with the idea of mortality. In fact, it’s actually rather comforting in a lot of ways to be honest. If you think about it, amongst all of life’s other unknowns, at least death is an eventuality that you can’t escape. I guess that frightens a lot of people, but for me for some reason it’s a really calming thought. The whole idea of life and death, and that it’s the one natural constant that is utterly unalterable, just seems profoundly reassuring. That might sound strange to most of you, and I’m not mentioning it to sound morose or depressive. In fact, I think it’s one of the few positive comforts in life if you can really wrap your head around it and view it from an unconventional perspective.

Anyway, back to reworking a demo. For some reason, whenever I get off the road, I tell myself that I’m going to spend a few days taking it easy, but I always end up back at work the next day. Fucking creativity.

People talk about dreams all the time. When it comes to dreams there are two types – those that we view as attainable through our own hard work and those that we just ‘wish’ would happen. This isn’t an entry about the first type, as anyone who puts their mind to something, if they have the talent and the perseverance, can make things happen. This is an entry about the second, the ‘what if’ dreams, the dreams that are totally off the scale.

First things first, let’s get the standard beauty pageant answer out of the way – world peace. Of course we’d all love it. And if it could be dreamed into existence, someone would have done it by now. So that aside, let’s be a little selfish today.

My father has dreamed of winning the lottery my entire life. In fact, he knows, down to the last detail, what he would do were it to happen, and even has variants of his plans depending on the sum. My mother, of course, schemes right along side of him. My family hasn’t ever enjoyed real financial security, so that’s obviously something that they dream about. Having been through the mud, we know, as a family, that we can take just about anything that comes our way, and that we’re there for one another no matter what, but I have to admit that it would be nice to see my dad get to make that dream list of his happen. He knows that it won’t, and he’s content no matter, but it’s fun to dream about it.

When it comes right down to it, there are a lot of things we’re not really willing to admit when it comes to dreams, as most of them are, if we’re being brutally honest, rather selfish. Who doesn’t want to marry a drop dead gorgeous girl or guy, have loads of cash, a big house, be able to travel the world, find true love, be famous, be powerful, or a laundry list of other things? If we’re being brutally honest, those are the sorts of things that we all secretly wish for because, let’s face it, we’ve been brought up to believe that they make our problems disappear. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish, and I’m not going to get into that right now.

My dream is a bizarre one, though just as selfish as those stated above. In a perfect world I would have an entire symphony orchestra at my disposal 24 hours a day, a massive and completely staffed studio in which to record them (and whatever else), and living quarters attached to it. It would be in the country, probably in Europe, and also include an authentic replica of a small Roman spa.

That’s it. Have a symphony at my disposal to record with, a moderate house, and an authentic Roman spa. Create, sleep, eat, soak.

Heaven.

Girls are a headache, so no girls. Though I might, ala Keith Moon, also have a small pub on the property so that friends could come by and enjoy themselves. But nothing ridiculous. Just a nice little pub, a big stone fireplace, some guest rooms upstairs, and big plush chairs for people to relax in.

Every year, in a different city each year, I would play one show in support of the record that I had released that year. I would not have a record company. It being a dream, I wouldn’t need one. I would simply use revenues generated from online sales and ticket sales to pay for show costs. And, of course, I would bring the symphony with me.

The Beatles, after they stopped touring, had 365 days a year to do nothing but create. Can you imagine what that would be like? To have the ability to write and record music 365 days a year with everything that you required at your disposal? If heaven exists, that’s what you’d get to do there I’d wager.

So that’s my selfish dream. What’s yours?

After coming across this article this afternoon, a flood of memories rushed through me and the remembrance of a picture now long since deleted that proved that I had done what I had, my entire life, promised myself that I would do.

When I got there I was sick. She tried to convince me it was jetlag, but having been to Europe a dozen times before, and her never having been, I knew that it wasn’t.

It first hit me on the plane from Vancouver to London. I woke up and felt like my body was melting. I went to the bathroom and spent an hour throwing up before some of the cabin crew asked me to open the door and then assisted in trying to cool me down. My only choice at the time was to take 200mg of Gravol and pray that it both stopped the vomiting and knocked me out – which it thankfully did.

When we landed in London I did my best to put on a brave face, and for a time I felt a little better. I had a shower, as we had a six hour layover, and tried to eat something. But it wouldn’t last. I spent the rest of the time in the toilet vomiting and pacing around trying to keep my wits about me. I don’t remember what she did, probably read magazines and thought me an inconvenience.

Then came the flight to Rome, which was a horrible experience as well, one during which I felt as though I would die. Arriving in Italy we got into a taxi and I pulled up the information regarding our hotel on my laptop. Unfortunately, the email had been saved in one of my .Mac folders and I couldn’t access it without going online. I knew the name of the hotel and I knew that it was basically feet from the Spanish Steps, but given the tension that the situation produced, and the obvious anger bubbling under the exterior of my traveling companion about not just my health putting a damper on the trip, but my putting the information in the wrong place, we decided to try and find somewhere in the center of Rome where I could access the internet. The taxi driver thus took us to the hotel of a friend and I used their computer to get the address. Of course, as I had initially told him, the name was accurate and the location was as well. But because it was a small hotel, one represented by a single door off of a street, he had no idea it existed.

At around 3 am local time we finally got into the room and I spent the night traveling back and forth between the toilet and the bed. I didn’t really sleep, and as was becoming more the case, my traveling companion’s anger over the situation was becoming more and more amplified – which, of course, only made matters worse.

But I was there, you see, in the city that, since childhood, I had dreamed of seeing. I wanted to run my hands along the rough bricks of the Colosseum, walk up Palatine, walk through the ruins of a civilization that I had long studied and been fascinated by. But in the three days that followed it was like trying to walk with knives being shoved in my stomach. We visited all of those places, the pictures taken and video shot now in some landfill, part of a life that I would rather forget. But even though it was of little to no import to my traveling companion, not so much as the Gucci store was, I got to see it, to run my hands over it, to smell the air around it and contemplate what had taken place there, thousands of years before.

In my mind I have tried to paint her out of the pictures in my memory, to see it all as if I were alone, as if there wasn’t this weight on my shoulders that refused to let me forget that how I was feeling was somehow ruining everything. Eventually I just wasn’t able to eat at all or really get out of bed. And that, after days of being told it was nothing and to buck up, is when a doctor was finally called.

As it turned out, my intestines were swollen and I was suffering from an internal infection. I was then prescribed numerous antibiotics and told to stay in bed. At that point, after days of questioning my complaints, my traveling companion suddenly wasn’t as vocal as she had been about the fact that our vacation was being ruined by my poor health. We moved from our hotel to something more accommodating and spent the rest of our time in Rome operating at a snail’s pace. And then, rather than taking the train up the coast as was planned, through north-western Italy and through southern France into Spain, we simply flew from Rome to Barcelona, where we remained for 48 hours before deciding to fly to London, where I hoped that my recovery would be easier.

Looking back on it, I’m thankful that, despite the circumstances, I was able to see that place with my own eyes. Obviously, given everything, I wish it would have been with someone else, someone a little more understanding of my passion for it, someone who actually believed that I was ill rather than placing the onus on me not ruining what to her was a vacation and to me was a place that I insisted we go so that I could fulfill a lifelong dream.

In the end, what we do in this life comes full circle. I’ll get mine just as all of you will get yours. Just make sure that no matter what happens in-between, that you get to touch your wall.

Last night I had a dream, one that stirred me from my sleep. In it I was in a clearing set within the rocky climbs of some foreign landscape. In its center was a small stand of trees in which a man was sitting, almost as if an ancient statue, his eyes barren and wasted, his beard matted and dirt ridden, his clothes deteriorated.

Striding a few feet closer I saw that there was a rusted Kalashnikov cradled in his arms and a smattering of grenades in front of him, half buried in the earth, as if left there for decades to dissipate and rot. And as I ventured toward him he picked up the rifle, pointed it at me, and pulled trigger. But the weapon was spent, producing nothing more than a faint clicking sound whenever he frustratingly pulled the trigger.

“It hasn’t worked in years,”? he said in a quiet voice, “I have disregarded it for too long”?.

Setting the rifle down, I paused to see if he would attempt to dig one of the grenades out of the ground, but he simply sat there dejected, as if resigned to something that I presumed he thought I had come to deliver.

Moving closer I realized who it was, though said nothing. There was nothing to be said. His face had been burned into the minds of billions over the years, one that had come to represent both evil and piety. In the darkness behind him there were numerous medical apparatuses, all of them in disrepair, all of them swept by the same dirt and dust that now covered his clothes, beard, hands, and face.

Rising slowly he looked at me in a way that I never thought such a man would, with the countenance of one that had come to the realization of immense human failure, one resigned to a greater defeat than his own personal undoing. And in those brief seconds I saw that there was a greater power to those reflections, one that kept him from moving, detaining him and keeping him from leaving that place.

Looking down I saw that there was a great shackle bound to his ankle that had been chained to a massive ring. And seeing that I had noticed it he said -

“You will tell them, won’t you? That this is where we will all end up”?.

“Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.”
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn