Your Dearest Dream
So I went to this Chinese sushi buffet with my dad one day (I know, gross, a sushi buffet) and after we ate I got this fortune cookie fortune that said, "Your dearest dream is coming true. :)"
Drum and Bugle Corps competitions are a pretty strange scene. The crowd gathers in the stands of a lesser college football field. Sponsored by Dinkle's Marching Shoes, the event is mostly populated by obese Americans who "love listening to their favorite patriotic music," according to a fat bald man who approaches a stand on the field at the opening of the event. Stuttering, he salutes former drum and bugle corps players who have passed on in VA hospitals around the region. The musical production then begins with a group of buglers (bugle-ers?!) playing the national anthem. Seven corps will compete in the event. It is set up so that the worst ones go first, and the last ones are the best ones. What each corps' show is, is stranger than the fact that high school kids actually come to these events and get excited about them.
Basically, a marching band with lots of xylophones plays glorious, loud marching music while the "color guard," or the male and female dancers with flags, play with white-painted rifle and sword shaped objects and billowy flags in bright 1980's kite colors. I am not sure how this came to be, given the United States' militaristic disdain for any expression of questionable "abnormal" sexuality. The most narrative of the corps' shows often seem to be (if based on the dancing) about a girl who wants to play with a guy's weapon, but the guy turns out to be gay (which he expresses through a series of lyrical dance movements), and the girl falls into his arms out of exasperation, at which moment tubas blast the crowds' ears with harmonics, and a bunch of portly girls in tight jazzy unitards (the rest of the color guard) throw flags into the air. Applause erupts from the stands, and another drum and bugle corps "movement" of this sort ensues. The corps march and dance forward and backward and sideways around the field in flock-like formations, like birds on the air that are somehow able to make a perfect "V".
I was lucky enough to join my dad and his friend at one of these events recently during a short stay at my dad's place.
The next day, I went for a bike ride on some pastoral roads back near a farm someplace in the area where my dad lives. It was hot and super windy and I just wanted to burn a shitload of calories; as I had become concerned overnight about the obesity epidemic. As I was riding down a road flanked by midsummer corn fields on one side and wildflowers on the other, a gust blew in, and thousands of dandelions were adrift in the air, coming at my face, kissing my cheeks. The feathery seed flowers danced above the field in formation, and birds on the air swooped down and then rushed off together to a forest at the edge of the property. It was like that scene in Avatar where the guy realizes that we're one with nature, and it was so beautiful in all its gold and green and yellow and lavender summer hues. The seeds of the earth were flocking around me as I rushed through the wind on my bicycle, and I could have spent forever right then and there. I rode on through the tall grasses at the end of the wildflower field, knowing that the earth loved me and everything was right, knowing that I should and would continue and persevere and march on with life and all its glory.
I had lunch with my dad later that day, and that was when I received my fortune. "Your dearest dream is coming true. :)" I smiled and thought of romantic love; I thought of travel to distant fantasized lands, and maybe running away. I paused a moment and questioned it. "Maybe that isn't it. What is my dearest dream? Kids? Family? To write a great novel that reaches people through the great lost art of comic melodrama? Pure happiness? To be rich? For peace?" And I quickly realized that I had no idea what my dearest dream was, if I had one at all. "Do I want anything at all," I asked myself, "What do I dream of? Sex?" I summoned the dandelion cloud. It was my dearest dream. I was consumed by nature and the pure peace of my surroundings.
My dearest dream... it's to be in a field filled with flocking flowers and music- rock and roll music- with dandelion flower seeds flying all over the place and summer corn growing along the side of the road- corn that'll be eaten at a long supper table set up in the field. And strawberry fields forever and wildflowers and people who don't get caught up in their office jobs and their own shit and their fanatical, fundamentalist patriotism. And to be in this field and to know that I'm doing work that makes the world more like this field. And to be a musical animal. And to create and recreate and procreate with the person who knows my dream. And to saw a small hole in my skull, out of which will parade an endless rainbow of joy! And everything!
Drum and Bugle Corps competitions are a pretty strange scene. The crowd gathers in the stands of a lesser college football field. Sponsored by Dinkle's Marching Shoes, the event is mostly populated by obese Americans who "love listening to their favorite patriotic music," according to a fat bald man who approaches a stand on the field at the opening of the event. Stuttering, he salutes former drum and bugle corps players who have passed on in VA hospitals around the region. The musical production then begins with a group of buglers (bugle-ers?!) playing the national anthem. Seven corps will compete in the event. It is set up so that the worst ones go first, and the last ones are the best ones. What each corps' show is, is stranger than the fact that high school kids actually come to these events and get excited about them.
Basically, a marching band with lots of xylophones plays glorious, loud marching music while the "color guard," or the male and female dancers with flags, play with white-painted rifle and sword shaped objects and billowy flags in bright 1980's kite colors. I am not sure how this came to be, given the United States' militaristic disdain for any expression of questionable "abnormal" sexuality. The most narrative of the corps' shows often seem to be (if based on the dancing) about a girl who wants to play with a guy's weapon, but the guy turns out to be gay (which he expresses through a series of lyrical dance movements), and the girl falls into his arms out of exasperation, at which moment tubas blast the crowds' ears with harmonics, and a bunch of portly girls in tight jazzy unitards (the rest of the color guard) throw flags into the air. Applause erupts from the stands, and another drum and bugle corps "movement" of this sort ensues. The corps march and dance forward and backward and sideways around the field in flock-like formations, like birds on the air that are somehow able to make a perfect "V".
I was lucky enough to join my dad and his friend at one of these events recently during a short stay at my dad's place.
The next day, I went for a bike ride on some pastoral roads back near a farm someplace in the area where my dad lives. It was hot and super windy and I just wanted to burn a shitload of calories; as I had become concerned overnight about the obesity epidemic. As I was riding down a road flanked by midsummer corn fields on one side and wildflowers on the other, a gust blew in, and thousands of dandelions were adrift in the air, coming at my face, kissing my cheeks. The feathery seed flowers danced above the field in formation, and birds on the air swooped down and then rushed off together to a forest at the edge of the property. It was like that scene in Avatar where the guy realizes that we're one with nature, and it was so beautiful in all its gold and green and yellow and lavender summer hues. The seeds of the earth were flocking around me as I rushed through the wind on my bicycle, and I could have spent forever right then and there. I rode on through the tall grasses at the end of the wildflower field, knowing that the earth loved me and everything was right, knowing that I should and would continue and persevere and march on with life and all its glory.
I had lunch with my dad later that day, and that was when I received my fortune. "Your dearest dream is coming true. :)" I smiled and thought of romantic love; I thought of travel to distant fantasized lands, and maybe running away. I paused a moment and questioned it. "Maybe that isn't it. What is my dearest dream? Kids? Family? To write a great novel that reaches people through the great lost art of comic melodrama? Pure happiness? To be rich? For peace?" And I quickly realized that I had no idea what my dearest dream was, if I had one at all. "Do I want anything at all," I asked myself, "What do I dream of? Sex?" I summoned the dandelion cloud. It was my dearest dream. I was consumed by nature and the pure peace of my surroundings.
My dearest dream... it's to be in a field filled with flocking flowers and music- rock and roll music- with dandelion flower seeds flying all over the place and summer corn growing along the side of the road- corn that'll be eaten at a long supper table set up in the field. And strawberry fields forever and wildflowers and people who don't get caught up in their office jobs and their own shit and their fanatical, fundamentalist patriotism. And to be in this field and to know that I'm doing work that makes the world more like this field. And to be a musical animal. And to create and recreate and procreate with the person who knows my dream. And to saw a small hole in my skull, out of which will parade an endless rainbow of joy! And everything!
posted by Kir at 9:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home