Almost instantaneously, as the Moon transited Leo in my third house, my lungs besottedly drank the warm and dank, dark air. Thus I effortlessly drowned into sleep. Whilst wintry winds howled outside the window, this cold early Saturday morning – November 18, 1989 – my lucid focus seamlessly shifted into the dreamtime.
I readily knew that I was dreaming.
Here, just as moments earlier whilst awake and meditating, Merlin was uppermost in my thoughts. I could sense his presence. The shift from one dimension to the other was seamless. Lucidly self-aware, I was immediately come to in a dream that was set in the bedroom where I slept.
I was in bed with the artist Olaf Nordstrom – a source of loving support at present in the waking state. I was lying in bed, leaning on his bony chest, as he sat up in bed. It was obvious from his body language that he did not want to be in bed with me. I felt a still and quiet vibration to this dream. The moment was truly serene and peaceful. This was not a sexual or post-sexual interlude. We were both reflective. It was obvious that we were on the cusp of something momentous. It was the sort of vibration that signalled that something extraordinary was about to unfold.
Olaf behaved as if he was uncomfortable being there – it was a grave moment. He wanted to be there, however, to merely lend his support. It was obvious that he was wary of my clinging. Clinging, however, was not my intention. The moment together was brief – just a preparation for things to come. With that we parted. It was time to get up and participate in the events of whatever was to unfold.
This dream was possessed of inordinate lucidity; its every detail and nuance my faculties absorbed with acuity beyond the norm.
In the second dream, this cold Saturday morning, I found myself in the familiar territory of the Cabbagetown streets where we lived. I went into a store which does not exist in the waking state. It sat just south of the Pet Menagerie store, on the east side of Parliament Street, between Amelia and Winchester Streets.
It was a tailor’s shop that carried rather high-end fabrics. I was there to pick out some fabric because I had a definite idea of what I wanted to wear to Merlin’s funeral. I knew that the only way, to get the look that I wanted, was to make the outfit myself. The kindly, gracious salesman was trying to get me interested in a rather conservative plaid fabric but it simply was not to my liking. My aversion was not because it was plaid; rather, the tone was too sombre.
He was not insistent but let me know that it was appropriate. However, I would have none of it; I simply did not like the fabric or the colours. I simply was not going to have it. Unable to make up my mind and not wanting to make a decision about fabric, as there were so many ramifications to what it all meant, I left the store stepping into the light of day. It had been a very dimly lit, nicely wood-panelled, stately shop.
Once outside, I became acutely aware of Merlin. I was now returned to the yard of Cabbagetown’s 20 Amelia Street, where we lived, and Merlin was present with me. Thoughts of Merlin, on leaving the store, had me immediately posited in the front yard of 20 Amelia Street where I happily joined him. We were watering the lawn even though it was wintertime. Next door at 18 Amelia Street, where at this point Club Monaco designer Alfred Sung no longer lived, there were lots of potted plants hanging from the lone, purple-leaved, sugar maple tree.
Merlin was telling me to water the plants. He then began telling me, rather matter-of-factly, that I had to start taking care of the apartment – I had to make it a home again. Merlin asked me to start preparing things. He meant that this was not the time for procrastination. Of course, moments earlier in the prior dream, I had been procrastinating when down on Parliament Street to pick out fabrics to wear to his funeral. By avoiding the matter altogether, I had chosen instead to forego the purchase. As Merlin spoke to me, I became so aware of him that I completely became self-aware – both in the dream and in my sleep whilst in bed at 20 Amelia Street.
I was standing there very intently looking at Merlin. He, too, was very intently looking at me. Whilst we were unflinchingly looking into each other, I thought aloud with quiet resignation, ‘Merlin has died.’
I knew, too, that Merlin had heard my thoughts in the dream.
At that moment my sister Pandora da Braga, with whom Merlin enjoyed the best relations of anyone else in my life, suddenly became a presence in the dream. She never fully became physically manifested but her energies became overwhelmingly strong. Her energies were just to my rear as she played a loving and supportive role.
Suddenly, introspectively, I recalled a dream which I had had earlier in the week. With everything moving so quickly, in the waking state – with little time to collect my thoughts, let alone overlong time to record any dreams- it had slipped by unrecalled on awakening. However, now it was not merely being recalled, it was being relived in its entirety. I stood there and as I recalled the dream, rather seamlessly, I actually entered the dream which was being reanimated as it was being holographically recalled.
Within the reanimated dream being recalled and relived, I was again on the lawn at 20 Amelia Street in the warmth of the Sun’s rays. Just as in today’s dream, I was on the front lawn facing due north and the house with 18 Amelia Street on the left to the west. As Merlin and I were visiting in the outer dream of today, I had turned my body. Being in the same physical position had triggered the recall and reanimation of the dream from the past week.
To my left, I saw an incredibly ancient-looking, wise being who progressed across the lawn. The slowness of his progression was so measured that one’s experience of time, in the reanimated and recalled dream, progressed outside of time itself. It was simply magical to experience the progression of the very ancient and mystical being. The millennia-ancient figure progressed across the lawn, of 18 Amelia Street, heading towards our home at 20 Amelia Street. The being was male and small in stature; he was hobbit-like. His head was large, disproportionately large, compared to his tiny, frail-bodied frame.
He could not have been more than four feet tall. His head was absolutely massive. His forehead arched up and was high like an African’s. Too, his head was elongated in the back, reminiscent of Pharaoh Akhenaten’s skull. More striking than the majesty with which the august being progressed outdoors, towards our home at 20 Amelia Street, was the look of his face.
It was simply magical. From beneath the translucent skin, soft yellow-white light escaped revealing his very visible aura. Nothing but pure love, along with the same nonjudgmental look that ever peered back from Merlin’s eyes to mine, radiated from this being. The love radiating from the being towards me was awesome, immense – intense. The great being’s progress was purposeful. He was on a mission; he was unstoppable. The process had begun.
I was struck by the uncanny resemblance, which the face of this being bore, to the planet-being in the skies of Sandy Point, St. Kitts in a momentous dream during September 1983. It was a dream whose potency and beauty would lay unfathomable for years to come. The being progressed as though levitating mere millimetres above the rather zingy, extra-green grass of the lawns at both 18 and 20 Amelia Street. Though he did not pause as he progressed, the radiant being did turn and look at me. As though he was familiar with me, he acknowledged me by slightly nodding. However, he continued on towards our home.
He moved past me as I stood there, still and silent, drinking in the majesty of the experience. At soul-centre we were familiar to each other. I knew him. He knew me. I stood, alone and awestruck, in the front yard being refamiliarised by the vibration of his beauty as the effect of his potent powers spatially affected the dream. As he moved past, I was reminded of the film The Dark Crystal, by Jim Henson – with whom Merlin had worked, directing two episodes of the Fraggle Rock television series in its inaugural season. This movie would for several months, after we saw it together in New York City, be our favourite film.
Thereafter for several weeks, whenever we looked at each other – even when not being intimate, we had hummed at each other as the rival beings in the film did when communicating. The being here was much like the good beings in the Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. The being progressed up the few stone steps, to the wooden veranda at 20 Amelia Street, and began making his way inside the house. As I watched him ascend, from the lawn to the veranda, it was clear to me that he was levitating. Though it was a dream and I too could have levitated and flown, he though had a power which surpassed mine.
This august-souled, mystical being clearly originated from a dimension which vibrationally and spiritually was of a higher plane than the astral, where the dream occurred, and the physical in which I am incarnate. Indeed, the same physical plane from which Merlin was rapidly taking his leave – it was that discernible. The moment the mystical being entered our home, being lost to view, I came to from the inner holographic dream which was a recall and reanimation of a dream that I had experienced within the last week. As I came to, I was about to go indoors to see what had become of the being that had clearly entered our home.
It was then, having returned to being fully focussed in the outer ‘shell’ dream of today November 18, 1989, that I saw Merlin anew. He was standing at the front door looking out at me. I stood there, in the front yard, transfixed whilst the bright daylight bathed my body throughout. The look on Merlin’s face was purely transcendent. He was perfectly still and perfectly radiant. Merlin stood in the midst of a nimbus of dazzling, blue-white light. As he lovingly glowed out at me, this splendid light only intensified.
Merlin was transformed and as his face lovingly lit up, at me, the light grew to more completely envelop his body. Whilst lovingly glowing at me with the warmest, most familiar knowing smile, Merlin slowly brought his right hand up with the palm facing me and more completely smiled. The radiance of his smile soon became lost in the glow of his aura’s light. The nimbus, enveloping his transformed body, radiated even more intensely at that point.
I was blown away. Arrested, I readily knew what I was experiencing; I could feel it. I knew that across dimensions, in the waking state, Merlin had just died.
However, as is my wont, I protested. I dropped the hose which was still bleeding its nurturing water onto the frozen, wintry lawn at my feet. I stood – paralysed. Determinedly, I then bolted for Merlin. I headed up to the veranda as my lover, as my mentor, as my friend stood transcendent in the doorway to what had been the most beautiful sense of home ever experienced. “Merlin!” shrieking in protest, I yelled out his name.
(Detail of oil on canvas by my sister Pandora of Toronto’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery where Merlin is buried.)
Suddenly, the thunder of my protesting breath abruptly drew me from sleep. I sat upright in bed, my arms outstretched and beyond, after having crashed back into my body and no longer astral-projected. From the foot of the bed both cats – Zora and Whoopi – knowingly, silently looked up. I was arrested by the frozen horror-struck face staring at me from the mirrored closet doors across the room.
In the near-darkness of the bedroom, a few rays of early morning light made it past the blood-red, velvet drapes heavily hung at the windows. Those rays starkly cast light on how horribly desolate my life now was. Merlin was gone. His spirit had taken leave from this world. It was that discernible as my world, my very universe, had experienced a massive vibrational shift.
I had been abruptly displaced from the astral plane. I had been lucidly dreaming a dream within a dream. I was being told so long as Merlin, transitioned from incarnate to astral plane habitué, bade farewell to our magically glorious union on the physical plane. I was heartened by the peace and knowingness in his transcendent face because I knew that it was a, “See you soon…” parting, for now.
I knew that there would be dreams aplenty up ahead. Just as he had pledged, he would magically weave in his indelible promise to me, before departing from the physical plane. There was such a cold silence, a stinging finality to the moment, as I sat there in bed. After having looked back at myself, silently waiting, I placed a call to the eighth storey nursing station at Wellesley Hospital.
I was immediately aware that the tone of the nurses, with whom I was by now long-familiar, had changed. In very little time, it was official… Merlin had indeed passed. Truth be told, it was not a surprise; I could sense it on awaking. He simply was not there. As always, I had reached out to sense him on awaking – his energies – just blocks away at Wellesley Hospital. Now, there was nothing.
Then, as if needing further proof, I thought about Merlin calling each morning. He would do so, to lovingly say hello and thereby, to lovingly wake me up. Merlin would then lovingly ask for a call-back, after I had audio-recorded the dreams. Merlin had, thus far, not called. Once again, I saw the stillness of my reflection across the room. I knew then, really knew… Merlin was gone.
Tonight my home is awash in the music of Jessye Norman… this brings me inordinate comfort at this time. Sweet and truly blissful dreams dear ennobled soul. As I am unable to do little else, owing to being emotionally overwhelmed, I pause here to republish this blog of earlier this year. So very glad that I was able to attend the Glenn Gould Prize Gala this past February.
As I work 7 days a week, I was debating whether or not to attend the Twelfth Glenn Gould Prize Gala at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. That morning en route home from some errands, I discovered that someone had jumped from a neighbourhood condo. I got in and realised that there was no more feet-dragging; to hell with being dog-tired. I got on the phone and called up Lucian Mann-Chomedy and said, “My darling, we are going to the Jessye Norman Gala!” As ever, always positive, Lucian chimed in, “Oh my, oh yes, how lovely. Well, I’ll be both honoured and delighted.” Indeed, life is for living!
Merlin and I met Friday, October 1, 1982 in a Hell’s Kitchen Walk-up, the following Monday evening, on his return to Toronto, Merlin called up crying. The man whom he had spent so much of our first evening together speaking of, had died; Glenn Gould had died. For the seven years that we were together, Merlin listened to Glenn Gould’s interpretation of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations at least thrice weekly. Indeed, the first gift I purchased Merlin, was a recently released recording of the Goldberg Variations at Christmas 1982: I think that it is safe to say that that gift sealed the deal, I was a keeper for sure.
As I had waited until the last minute to get seats, I was sat in Ring 4 rather than the usual Ring 3. This, alas, was my view of the stage and of course, the butterflies are from the set for Atom Egoyan’s masterful staging of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, which the moment I saw the set, I began chuckling to Lucian on recall of Tracy Dahl’s unsurpassed performance as Despina.
As I was too busy trying to throw something together for Instagram, I was heard gasping when it was announced that the head of the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Jury this twelfth prize was none other than the actor, Viggo Mortensen, who then walked out onto stage. He, indeed, who in a few days time will be attending the Governors Ball where he may or may not be holding an Oscar.
Out onto the stage arrived the Twelfth Prize Laureate, Jessye Norman. Truly, it was a shock to the very core to see Madame being ushered out in a wheelchair. Suddenly, I was reminded of the events of earlier which caused me to rush home and purchase two tickets for the event. That aside, there was no greater joy than drinking of her soul’s inspiring beauty.
This beautiful gala was so filled with touchstones for me, none more so than the moment that bass baritone, Ryan Speedo Green was in full song. When he sang, “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi” from Wolfgang A. Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.
Yes, indeed, this marvellous aria’s orchestration included a harpsichord. Straight away, I was teary-eyed as memories of the truly eccentric and delightful Milan Newcombe readily surfaced; Milan will ever remain a lover like no other.
During the intermission, I ran into two old friends not seen in at least 1.5 decades; we spoke of nothing but our surprise at Ms. Norman’s entrance. Life really does march full speed ahead.
After the intermission, it was the announcement of the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Progidy Prize with the recipient being none other than, Cécile McLorin-Salvant, the most fabulous Jazz singer on the planet. Is this not an evening to remember during Black History Month indeed.
This stunningly unforgettable gala was closed out by the final recitalist being the divinely gifted soprano and Glenn Gould Foundation Prize juror, Sondra Radvanovsky in full song, singing Verdi.
The gala concluded with Ms. Norman returning to the stage and singing a duet with Cécile McLorin-Salvant. This was a moving, emotionally intense evening and my life was greatly enriched for having chosen to attend. The gala was nothing short of magical.
As a tribute to this marvellous evening in the theatre, I will include herein two dreams, which were originally audio-cassette-recorded in the 1990s. Before each deam, one of Glenn Gould, the other Jessye Norman, I will include each individual’s Michael Overleaves.
Gould, Glenn Herbert 25/9/32 – 4/10/82, Toronto
This fragment was a sixth level mature artisan in the repression mode, with a goal of growth, an idealist in the moving part of intellectual centre. He had a Mercury/Saturn body type.
Glenn’s primary chief feature was self-destruction with a secondary of arrogance.
Glenn was third-cast in his cadence and his cadence is fourth in the greater cadence. He is a member of entity four, cadre five, greater cadre 17, pod/node 819.
This fragment has an artisan essence twin who was alive during Glenn’s life but there were no plans to meet. This fragment is still incarnate on the physical plane.
The fragment who was Glenn has a scholar task companion, who was in a previous life, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. They were not incarnate at the same time.
However, the fragment who was Glenn was exerting considerable influence on Carl Philip Emmanuel.
These two fragments had many lives together, once as luthiers, three times as court musicians, nine times as brothers of the cloth, twice as brothers in the flesh, as well as completing several important life monads, including student/mentor and master/slave.
In the immediate past life, the fragment who was Glenn had as his three primary needs: security, communion and exchange. Only the first of these was ever even partially satisfied.
So here we had a warrior-cast artisan who had seriously conflicting overleaves and a primary chief feature of self-destruction. He had a goal of growth but a repression mode which would not allow him to flourish.
He had a need for communion, but was sexually ambivalent and socially inept. Undeniably, he had great talent but took no pleasure from performing in public.
This fragment has a great deal of scholar energy that was used in the immediate past life to enable Glenn Herbert to painstakingly examine and interpret the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He was very interested in form and structure for all of his adult life. This fragment was, unfortunately, the victim of a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, also for all of his adult life, which worsened considerably during his third and fourth decades.
This fragment did not, as popular wisdom teaches, retire from public life because of any strong beliefs in the recording industry. Glenn Herbert retired from public life because he could no longer bear to be in crowds, even if he was distanced by a proscenium.
Needless to say, this fragment did not complete work on his fourth internal monad.
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Astral Plane Glenn Gould Recital!
Nothing is more uplifting than finding oneself at a great musical performance on the astral plane. This dream was about being richly inspired and by Glenn Herbert Gould, no less; it was truly marvellous an adventure for the spirit.
The dream occurred, on Tuesday, October 6, 1992, whilst the Moon transited both Aquarius and my ninth house.
I am in France where I leisurely browsed through a store; perhaps, it was somewhere in Paris. It seemed here like at nighttime. Whilst in one corner of the store, I noticed that there were all these big slabs of cheese in packaged containers. There was a woman coordinating the display of the cheeses. Sometimes the cheese was being grated and other times not. There and then, I decided that I was going to buy one slab of the cheese that was packaged in a rectangular box.
The cheese was about an inch thick and about eight inches long. The cardboard box that it was in was white and almost like the size of a box of Cream of Wheat. Surprisingly, the box was rather heavy. Though not unlike cheddar, it was a dark cheese. The smell of this cheese was really hard – quite the bite to it. It had seemingly been opened for too long as parts of it was growing hardened and turning colour. I knew straight off the bat that I wanted to have some to take home with me.
So, off I went to purchase the slab that I liked. Everyone here was, of course, speaking French which I quite so understood and liked. Interestingly, I too was speaking very competently in French. It was obvious that I was not too heavily accented as the others were pleasant-enough with me.
The second dream had me leaving the store; I then found myself hovering in the air. Whilst in flight, I went into a building which had a green – oxidised-copper – roof. It was part of a long set of buildings that had very, very tall stone chimneys. These were chimneys that were not unlike the ones at the Palais du Louvre. As a matter of fact, the building was similar to the Canadian Parliament buildings though it was not those buildings.
This complex was considerably longer. These were a series of complex buildings. Here, I was easily thirty storeys up whilst in flight. I looked down at the complex which at maximum could not have been more than five storeys tall. After having contemplatively observed the complex for awhile, I began very slowly gliding down through the air. I intently studied a procession of persons, way below, who were bailing out of very large buses; they were, as a matter of fact, tour buses.
This was all happening in a courtyard-like area and away from the bustle of the street. I next noticed some men who appeared; they seemed, in their long, flowing white robes, to be priests. They were not Arabic or Muslims in caftans; rather, they were definitely Whites. The buildings here were long on the order of Palais Richelieu in Paris. When I finally alighted, we had to go through this incredible entrance.
This led into a wonderful sandstone building; it was very modern with a neo-classical design. On the order of being imposing, the door to this place was massive. They seemed to be the doors to a temple. To get to the entrance, there were many steps which one had to climb. On entering, off to the right, there was a passage that one could take.
An aisle led along another passage; it seemed illumined by a skylight. The priestly men had all entered before me. They preceded a procession of adherents who had come to partake of some ritual. I had gone to explore, off to the left, because it was the wing of the building that had reminded me of the Palais du Louvre. Going there, I wandered about being fascinated by the place.
Some women were posing for artists in this particular wing. They wore modern garb but were very exceptionally beautiful. What was most intriguing about their look was that it was exactly as they would have appeared on the finished canvases. They were very nubile young women; they had to hold their poses for interminably long periods. Here several kids kept on going through the place; they were seemingly art students.
They were all very North American, middle class with their loud, snobbish bourgeois affectations. Right away, it was obvious that all the muses were still virgins. Theirs was an innocence that could never be affected. They were all teenage girls whose bodies were very voluptuous and full. These were not skinny people at all. There was one point at which one girl was holding different poses. Each girl would be painted by from three-to-five artists, at a time. Thus every pose would be captured from different perspectives.
At one point, they told her to take a break; they then reverted back to an earlier pose. This was so that they could return to that work and put some more work into finishing it up. When she changed the pose, she had also turned some 180 degrees. This particular model, whom I was studying, wore socks with Oriental-looking sandals. Inside her socks she kept little items of hers. Whilst she was making the transition, she simply reached up her foot and pulled up her right leg to reach down into the socks.
Hers was a pair of blue-coloured socks – pale blue. To just above the ankles was the extent to which the socks rose. Looking at her, she took out something from about her ankle which looked like a wafer. Not the least bit self-conscious, she ate it at once; it seemed like a chocolate wafer which she favoured. She seemingly needed it to get an energy boost so that she could stay focussed on the tedious work that she did. After having found it all very interesting, I moved on sufficiently knowledgeable of the goings on here. Walking along a corridor, I ended up going into a room where everyone was very strange.
A guy there was a lot like Galen Shim – my very beautiful, Hong Kong-born, Eurasian friend. He reclined on a bed with his head close to the door. When I came in, I noticed that he was naked. When giving him a massage, I began by oiling his body. It was quite fragrant oil. Rubbing down his body, I began working on his toes and feet. Afterwards, I got up to leave but he very silently began coming with me. So out we went and joined the procession of persons; among them this time were several kids. Mostly, they were teenagers – amongst whom I did not want to be.
Galen or the guy who seemed like him, here the guy was not wearing glasses as before nor would Galen for that matter, and I kept walking through the place. Pretty soon, after we had left the noisy kids, we started hearing the most beautiful music. This was one of the rare times that I found the music of the pipe organ to be beautiful. Within the complex, we happened on this wonderful cathedral inside which were most of the people from the procession. On entering the structure, it seemed more like a concert hall. We soon learnt that the hall was specifically built so that only Johannes Sebastian Bach’s music could be played there.
Never before had I heard classical music sound so beautiful. We stood there transfixed whilst listening together. Who then should I notice way at the front of the hall, at the pipe organ that sat high on the dais-like stage, but Glenn Gould. I could see his right profile as if in close-up. My god, this was rapture and then some. He was playing with such rapt abandon that I steadied myself and whispered more to myself than to Galen, “My god, what an incredible dream to be having…”
There seemed to be a skylight on the side of the high-ceilinged nave. Instead of there being stained glass windows, windows for that matter, there was only intense light raining down through what seemed to be a skylight system. The centre of the halved skylight was a wonderful neoclassical, oxidised, copper-looking, greenish flying buttress. Here the look, though modern, was more in the style of Islamic mosques or even Moorish architecture rather than the classic Gothic signatures.
A series of the most intricate and complex circles intertwined, like some riotous jungle vine, in the cathedral-like, concert hall’s stonework. Breathtakingly beautiful it was. I stood there, just inside the entrance to the hall, on the left of the wide aisle. This was a very wide-bodied structure. As you progressed down the aisle, there were different levels where one could go up and sit. These were either on the right or left. The central aisle was covered by the most beautifully designed red carpet.
This place was considerably wider than Notre Dame Cathedral. Unlike the Parisian Gothic structure, it was not a darkened affair. Here it was very intensely bright out. The light coming in on the right and left side of the flying buttress-like, central girder fell through a slightly frosted glass. The light was an intense – almost aquatic – blue. Interestingly, there were no beams or columns, supporting the unusual central, flying buttress-like beam. For looking at the light, one became slightly languorous. I felt paralysed with pleasure; there before me, down the massive hall, sat Glenn Gould.
He wore the most thick-fabricked garb; it seemed from an earlier age. All the men in the white gowns were up at the front. They were all transfixed – as well they should have been. Though I love Johannes Sebastian Bach, at the time, I had some reservations as I am not especially fond of pipe organs. I suppose that it is because it has always had too many religious associations during my childhood. The persons attending the concert were there simply to recharge their batteries. They seemed, all of them, as if not quite in their bodies for being so transfixed – they were otherwise-engaged.
Eerily, I had a sense that these were all persons who were between lives as is Glenn Gould. They were in a form of processing, a form of deep meditation on the order of sleep, as they prepared for the next incarnation. This fugue was the most complex music imaginable. Indeed, the music seemed designed for those between lives. The fugue was composed for astral plane habitués who, sans bodies, could best endure the music’s intensity. Getting a sense that I really shouldn’t be there, plus the fact that I finally couldn’t get into the pipe organ, I started taking my leave of the place.
Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, and I then went out front. There we waited for the specific tour buses to show up and take us away. Whilst I waited with Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, I was joined by Pandora. It seemed that most of the people who were here were very young-souled. They seemed to be on a pilgrimage, like visiting the original Gohonzon in Japan or going on the Hajj, at Mecca.
As the pipe organ played, I could hear in the tone of the place a faint whisper from the men in white robes. Their thoughts, it turned out, could be telepathically heard. Even earlier, when I had been hovering in flight high above the complex, I knew that this was more so a political institution rather than not. This was a structure which was just as colossal as the temple at Karnak and considerably older. This place was mind-bogglingly complex and massive. The temple was posited directly in the centre of it all.
Just like La Chapelle in Paris is comparably dwarfed, by its surroundings, so too the massive concert hall-like temple was dwarfed by the complex. This architectural marvel was simply soul-inspiring. Whilst all the buses were waiting, I took to one of the buses with Pandora. I had gotten impatient waiting to be assigned to one. We spoke in French because everyone else here did the same. This was not unlike a Parisian bus – the seats all faced each other. Seated close to the front, we were on the left side of the aisle behind the driver.
As though getting close to Saint-Sulpice Métro, I got up and said goodbye to Pandora. I wanted to get off there then walk back to her rue de Grenelle apartment. Pandora planned to go out then come home later so had asked me to wait for her at her place. Here it seemed as if nighttime coming on to dawn. Speaking guardedly in French, I made sure that I was speaking properly and not just fumbling partout. Really, I rather enjoyed this experience of being together with Pandora.
I was very serene enjoying the very beautiful experience. Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, had silently slipped from my side when Pandora came and joined me.
*Of course, it would turn out that the person in question was Louka Duplessis and not Galen. I would meet Louka, who accompanied me in this dream, the day following this dream. Just prior to meeting for the first time, it is not uncommon for me to dream of persons who will prove important in my life experience.
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Norman, Jessye 15.9.45 ✟ 30.9.2019, Georgia
Jessye is a first level old priest in the passion mode, with a goal of rejection – functioning for the most part in the positive pole of discrimination, a spiritualist, in the emotional part of intellectual centre.
She has a Jupiter/Saturn body type.
Jessye’s primary chief feature is arrogance, with a secondary of stubbornness.
This fragment was third-cast in her cadence and her cadence is fifth in the greater cadence. She is a member of entity five, cadre six, greater cadre 33, pod/node 212.
She has a discarnate priest essence twin whom she did know earlier in this life but this fragment died in Vietnam. She has a warrior task companion and they have worked together and continue to do so occasionally.
Her three primary needs are: freedom, expression and power.
The warrior energy gives Jessye tremendous organisational powers and her stubbornness has enabled her to stick in there when the going got very rough many times.
Jessye is a warrior-cast priest who has been a spiritual rebel in this life. This is, by the way, not the first time this fragment has sung professionally. This fragment was a well-known castrato in seventeenth century Italy and performed many times before the crowned heads of Europe.
Jessye has great need to serve her concept of the higher ideal and has done so admirably by combining the folk music of her people with her operatic repertoire.
She performs well, as do most entity five fragments. This fragment has always enjoyed her work. Singing has been an extension of her inner spirituality. It is, in fact, a form of meditation for her.
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Now that’s a Hollywood wife!
These rather lucidly awakened dreams were experienced with an intense sense of wonder and joy, on Monday, July 2, 1990. At the time, the Moon transited both Scorpio and my sixth house.
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This first dream found me in a very busy place. When going south towards the Danforth, it was not unlike being on Broadview Ave. It was at night-time. I came there and found that there were tons and tons of Black people. Even so, it seemed like Toronto and at Broadview Subway station because there are all these streetcars there. One of the streetcars was improperly parked, as a result, it was going to go and turn around.
Waiting for it to do what it had to do, there was another streetcar out in the street. It was really more like a red-rocket streetcar. It was not like one of the newer ones. Everyone here was Black. There were no Whites or other non-Blacks that I saw. Everybody was in the street which was very jam-packed. They were getting ready to cross, after the streetcar had passed, to go in.
There was now a system, where you paid your fare aboard the streetcar, so that you did not have to enter the front doors of the station on Broadview. When you got aboard the streetcar, it was mandatory that you pay a fare. So it did not matter whether you paid a fare at the proper entrance or not. There were many people queuing up to get aboard a streetcar.
Passing these people who were seated there, I went through the proper entrance. One of them seemed like Gabriella Vartan† and they were talking about me. I came around and began going down the steps, into the nether regions, en route to the trains. There was this little old lady who was taking her time, holding up things, so I pushed her to my right. I made my way down then had to go around taking another flight of stairs; I then kept on going. There were a whole lot of levels to this subway system.
When I got down, there was this little cul-de-sac where there were these Black guys – homeboys – hanging out. However, they were not Black American. I found one of them very attractive and smiled at him. He, however, was very homophobic. He went running upstairs to go call the police on me. The train then came into the subway and it was a very, very large train. It towered very high to the ceiling. It was like an Amtrak train which seemed like a double Decker train. It was mostly silver, however, it turned out not to have been double Decker.
When it stopped, I began running full speed because I did not want the guy to come back and board the same car as me. I ran to the front of the train only to find that one couldn’t board there. Instead, one could only enter this train where the cars joined each other. You could enter the front or backdoors of each car but not the front ones of the first car. It was very sleek, round and Deco like a train from the 1930s. The whole place did have a feel of the ‘30s to it. It was very neo-Gothic like the Chrysler or McGraw-Hill buildings in New York City, or for that matter, even the Empire State Building.
It was reminiscent of very early in the twentieth century which was all about great architecture – of things being large, mammoth and spiralling upwards, too, things getting faster and faster. That sense of adventure about the wonderful world of commerce that one had created. It was that time when people had not yet begun to see, as we now know, the consequences of things being bigger and better and faster and all the effects on nature. I got onto the train heading, again, towards the front. Somehow, I felt relieved because I had lost the guy. I was there and noticed a stout man who was either High-Yellow or, perhaps, even White.
The people here were very strange because they were just rather unusual. Even though they looked White, they seemed more bronzish, actual bronze, than the pinkish tonality of the waking state. This was not a place that I knew. It was very otherworldly here, I soon realised. I did not get a seat and as I stood there I then noticed a woman. She was standing at the very front of the train. The train progressed with unusual speeds, I immediately noticed. When the train had shaken, the stout man had tried to brace himself by putting out his foot that was already out in the aisle.
In the process, he had stomped me and I had had to pull my foot out from under his and pushed his away. He wore business attire, a suit and tie, as though en route to an office job. The woman who was standing up was playing on a wooden flute-like instrument that was less than a foot long. However, the thing about all this was that she had unusually short arms. They were fully functional hands with tiny little fingers that nimbly danced over the valves of the wooden, wind instrument. Her arms were like a Thalidomide-damaged child’s.
Then I noticed too that there were other people on the train, about three or four musicians, practicing as well. I soon realised that everyone on board had some sort of physical deformity. They were just ill-proportioned people with torsos that were too long or arms that were too short. Arms too long or what have you, moreover, this also applied to the legs. The most pronounced cases were always the musicians like the female flautist – two or three of the other musicians were male.
Someone else who was on the train began laughing and, out of nervousness, I joined in. The person was laughing at the woman. She, however, hadn’t paid them any mind. Nobody else was paying people, who were laughing, any mind. They did not see anything wrong with the people who were being laughed at. I then got off the train and was out in this concourse area, where the trains arrived, before I went upstairs. Before I would go upstairs I saw this child seated in the middle of this white blanket that seemed more like diaper material than flannel.
The child wore a salmon-coloured merino. He had little, white, cloth diapers on. The infant had, again, very unusually, unusually short, short legs that made it look almost like a child because it was seated upright on its bottom. However, it had a very big torso – matured, such that the child seemed like a very big, big child for its age. Its head was very large with a very developed large and soulful-looking face. At the time it made me thing of Jake Hudson. Jake does have a very large head and face. I was trying to connect with him. He reached out his short little arms, crying out and said, “Dad, I want to go.”
There was this youngish man, who was blond like the child, and he seemed not unlike the guy Olaf Knight. He picked up his son and used the blanket, on which the child sat, that had these straps and put him around his shoulder. Like an African mother would, carry her child when in the fields, thus he was carried on his father’s back. He walked off with the child, who was holding on to him, except that the child was really an adult male. It was all very strange here in this otherworldly place.
I ended up coming upstairs and going out in the outdoors. There were people here – again, mostly Black people. I was talking to them when I heard the strains of Richard Strauss‘s Four Last Songs beginning. I beamed and excused myself from the people, with whom I was interacting, and went running off up this plaza. It was a clay-tiled plaza and when I got there, I saw the symphony. I went and sat in lotus position and sat very close to the front. There was a gathering of persons in a semicircle and I was, as a matter of fact, the closest to the stage.
The stage was above on a dais and it was edged by old gold juniper. The juniper was really, really nice and quite fragrant, refreshingly so, to the smell. Along came, from around a corner walking, Jessye Norman – the high priestess herself. She had been preceded by her divine voice’s magic. She was, of course, singing Four Last Songs. She wore a beautiful, beautiful, glistening black dress that seemed almost organic with a life of its own. It was twinkling on and off but the lights were lifelike like fireflies.
They were sequins but they seemed, somehow, to be organic. It had hues of gold, silver, bronze, and dark green hues like pine and blue hues like lapis lazuli. It was very, very intensely rich a fabric. She started singing the first song, Frühling, and it was very hauntingly beautiful. She saw me and beamed down at me. It was so connected between us. I was so enthralled and overpowered; I was quite smitten by her. I thought very rapturously awakened,
‘Yes! I’m having a dream of Jessye Norman. So very good to see her again, my god here she is and performing Four Last Songs.’
She then came almost to the lip of the stage and stopped as though about to sneeze. Then she held her breath and started laughing because it was so hysterical. The look on my face was one of being truly horrified for her. This had actually caused her to crack up. Then she began singing again and began making gestures for me to move or be removed. I was stunned and thought this some sort of betrayal.
‘Why is she snubbing me like this?’ I wondered. Then these two huge, burly guys came to eject me out of the area. As I was leaving, I could hear her starting to sing again. I was very, very upset.
I was, in the second dream, in this large house that was a very many-storeyed place. It had many apartments. I came out and it had a very slanted roof that one could go out onto. This roof was, however, very dangerously precipitous. I was looking about and thinking of Carl Leroiderien because, somehow, someone was talking about him. This White man was talking to me and telling me that Carl had been enquiring after me.
He then went on to ask me if I smoked dope which I denied. I can’t think of it doing anything for me except, perhaps, to make me sneeze at the most. Sometimes if mixed with hashish, I then got a massive headache. “It doesn’t do anything for me, I don’t really like it. I don’t see the point to it and I don’t smoke it.”
At the time that he was saying this, we were climbing some very, very steep stairs. Then at that point, after she had given her performance, I encountered Jessye Norman again. She was seated on a bench and called me over. She said hello very warmly and apologised saying, “I hope you weren’t upset. You realise that it was a misunderstanding. I wasn’t laughing at you; it’s just that you don’t seem to realise where you were.
“You were, well there are certain degrees of protocol and you were ahead of the dignitaries. And you shouldn’t have been so close to the stage because one of the reasons why your nose started bleeding was, in this dimension, if you’re this close to the stage… when I’m singing, when I hit certain notes it can shatter your eardrums but also shatter your mind.
“So you see it was very crucial that I get you out of there. Also, I was having a very bad allergic reaction to the plants at the edge of the dais. They made me want to sneeze. It wasn’t at all you or exclusively you.” In having embraced me thus, she was being most healing. I did, in fact, have quite the nosebleed. As I was being hustled out of the place, by the burly guards, it was then that I realised that my nose was bleeding.
At the time, I had thought it strange. As this dream progressed very lucidly and linearly, there was no point at which either burly guard had so much as touched me. I was so upset. It was so very good, after the fact, to have had her explain as she did.
*This dream really does validate the notion that all persons encountered in the dreamtime, without exceptions, are separate entities and not figments of one’s imagination. END.
When I was being bounced by her, I was so stunned, upset and humiliated. Had she not explained as she had just done, I would have awakened from this dream with a totally different perception of events. I had also no way of knowing that she was having an allergic reaction to the juniper which, at the time, I found so wonderfully soothing. What’s more, I hadn’t a clue that I had thrown the Chi of the place by having disrespected protocol.
I would never have thought that my nosebleed was due to her singing. In fact, it is possible that I could have awakened and not recalled that, indeed, I had had a nosebleed which I had totally forgotten until she had mentioned it. Jessye Norman has indeed straddled, with great élan and diplomacy, many a dimension with great frequency and fluency.
I then began holding her hand and told her that there were times that I had dreams of her, in which there were sometimes cetacean-looking creatures that came and did formations around her as she sang hyper-dimensionally. She was just enthralled and pleased. She squeezed my hands and laughed a healthy, really wonderful laugh. She was quite smitten by me and encouraged me to write it all down.
Her eyes here were so very large, soulfully dark and focussed right into me. It gave me a high just to have experienced them. I was wearing, when close to the stage, a satin merino-like shirt. So at the time of being bounced out, I had passingly thought that I had been dressed too scantily for her liking.
In any event, it was quite interesting.
This third dream was truly hysterical. It seemed like on Eglinton Avenue East, between Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road. It was at nighttime. There was a lot of goings on. Shirley MacLaine was there, Warren Beatty and Madonna Ciccone, as well. Warren Beatty was the man of the hour and the centre of everybody’s attention. He had a great deal of sexual energy and magnetism. He had been performing for the camera and for everybody around. It felt very staid to me though.
One very interesting thing that happened was that he had been heavily drinking and, whilst laughing, had bent forward. He then began uncontrollably coughing and was holding his chest and faking a massive heart attack. Next thing you knew, we were in a very crowded area and it turned out that he had not been faking the heart attack. He had a very, massive, massive heart attack. He was dead just like that. He was gone within moments. It was just incredible. Shirley MacLaine became utterly hysterical. Her bawling was like from some Greek tragedy.
She went into a trance-like frenzied state and began calling on astral guides and her Pleiadean guides. Pulling out a very impressive clutch of crystals, she threw herself onto him and tried healing him of death. She was placing them all over his body – at the chakras and elsewhere. It was too humourous for words. Meanwhile, as Warren Beatty died, Madonna came rushing up to the scene. It had all been too late and they couldn’t rush him to a hospital. There was no way that he could have been revived.
They had been out in some desert area having a big party; there were no doctors around. There was nothing that they could do; he couldn’t be saved. He was dead… he was gone. Shirley MacLaine started cursing to the gods, saying, “This is so unfair. He hasn’t even been able to make the sequel to Dick Tracy. And right when he’s at the top of his career this is happening?”
“Well you know this will really immortalise him now. Definitely, this is great publicity, right at this point in his career.” someone had dryly said who was not attached to his whole entourage. I had heard this but Shirley MacLaine hadn’t heard it. Madonna came and whatever she thought about I could telepathically hear it. Her immediate response was, ‘Oh shit! This is just going to fuck up my goddamn career. If only I’d gotten a child by him. Shit why did I have to have that abortion of his child. Shit!’
She was thinking fast. She was someone who knew how to manipulate the media. She was really pissed off because it would have meant immediate Hollywood sainthood for her, were she to go on and have Warren Beatty’s only child, after he had tragically died. She was really pissed off because this was media manipulation beyond her wildest schemes, ‘I’ve got to get him out of here. I’ve got to have the best genetic engineers flown in immediately…’
I was stunned when I read her thoughts because, of course, she intended to harvest his seed and impregnate herself and then have a premature love child of Warren Beatty’s. I was stunned by this woman’s phenomenal megalomania. ‘During the autopsy, I’ll have his sperm taken out and I’ll have it copyrighted. It’ll be my possession. I’ll have it engineered so that I’ll have a child… a son. God we can even have twins…’ She, all the while, was cowering over his face… kissing him and doing the wailing widow number, ‘…Can you imagine, Madonna?’
She privately squealed to herself – unaware, of course, that she was broadcasting to someone like me. She was so triumphant at having had that idea because all she knew was that people who so loved Warren Beatty would take to her now. She was insecure as to whether or not she would endure through time. However, with this, she knew that she would automatically become iconic. She would become truly the virgin mother! She would be actually giving birth to some dead man’s child – he of course being, Warren Beatty. It was destiny. After all, she was ‘the’ Madonna.
She had this flash that this was why she had always been so drawn to crucifixes. She was going to capitalise on the whole drama by making sure that it would be a son. Of course, not to be outdone by that old, other Holy Mother with the virgin birth, she would eclipse that Madonna by having twin sons. Again, La Stupenda squealed with delight to herself. I passingly wondered if I were the only one to be privy to her thoughts. Then I realised that from my detachment, as everyone bawled and was truly horrified as though these were Olympians and not mere mortals, that I was the only one.
‘What could be better than having two Warren Beatty lookalikes crawling around the planet and who were his twins? And his only heirs! With today’s genetic engineering it will be a great coup. ‘Think of the press! I’ll be guaranteed perpetual immortality. I’ll be iconised for all history…’ I thought then and there, ‘My god, this woman is monstrous.’
In any event, the funeral was upon us and by some strange quirk of the dreamtime, I was very much so a part of the funeral. I was as though a fly on the wall, as it were, and aren’t you lucky? Why, was I participating? I do not know?
In any event, I was dressed to the nines. I had on a wonderful, lace outfit with a mantilla with my veil covering my face. I was part, somehow, of the funeral party. It turned out that Warren Beatty had had five wives and, at the point at which he died, his fifth wife was a High-Yellow woman. She was part Black, part White, partly Latina. He had had all these wives. They had always been paid and kept to remain silent. They were never brought out in the public or media. It was one of Hollywood’s biggest secrets.
People, obviously, never knew about it. It had never once been spoken about. There was an interesting turn to all of this… I had been going along Eglinton East on the south side. It was as though I was going towards Yonge Street; however, it was not Eglinton Avenue East. Madonna was going to be late because, luckily, it was that time of the month for her. She was off having herself impregnated, by way of a turkey baster, with Warren Beatty’s frozen sperm – the planet’s most expensively rare caviar fertiliser of sorts.
I was attending the funeral with a short woman who was the fifth wife’s mother. She seemed a lot like Sybil Ben-Daniel and wore a brown coat over her dress. I walked with my right arm embracing her as she was on my right. I had burly bodyguards all about me, before, beside and behind me. They were real Mossad-goon-cum-Wrestlemania types. My pants were those flare-legged Giorgio Armanis that allowed me to stride throwing my legs.
There was a lot of train to them and I had such utter style. I had enormous energies about me and great flare. My eyes were bedazzling even though mantilla-veiled. They were what were, of course, fuelling my high spirits. The onlookers were lapping up my entrance; I felt wonderful. We then went into the church and the mother was talking about, “We want the money to go to the Church because the Church is really the staple of society and civilisation. The Church does so much good.”
I just decided to let her babble on and kept my tongue in check. However, I cussed her under my breath saying, “You demented old fool. What Church are you talking about?”
The church had a metallic-silver front and it looked not unlike York Cinemas on Eglinton Avenue East. It was not a very big church on the inside. As we got inside, I turned around and hissed at one of the bodyguards because he had earlier stepped on my train. Of course, we were surrounded then by the paparazzi and the little people. His Bigfoot’s footprint was there on the pant’s train. I reached back and slapped his face real hard, calling him a fucking asshole.
Of course, I knew that it was safe to do it here because everyone here knew, only too well, that side of me. However, I couldn’t wreck my public image doing so outside. As we got closer to the church, I began striding firmer with each step in anticipation of getting his oafish arse. I was really careful not to show that side of me when in public. I started going down the aisle and there at the end was Warren Beatty’s corpse in the open casket. It was a pure black casket that glistened. It was a dark black wood and a really gorgeous casket.
Escorting the mother-in-law, I came all the way down the aisle. I decided that I would go into the first pew on the right. The first pew on the left actually went further down the aisle and did go past the casket. It held men in white flowing robes; they were priest of whatever denomination this was – very cream, ivory-coloured and obviously very Catholic. I went and sat down and immediately behind me was the fifth wife’s family. They were very Hispanic-looking more so than Black. They were very handsome in that family.
I turned around and smiled at one of the men and the energies coming from them weren’t as I had expected – I had thought that they would hate me. I knew Madonna; I was apparently part of her hangers on. Somehow, I had known her through dance. I thought that, for that association, they would hate me. However, they displayed no such hostilities towards me.
Finally, the fifth wife came and was walking very slowly, regally. She carried a globular bouquet consisting of tiny, little white roses that were sprinkled in amongst some baby’s breath. There were one or two little red roses as well. She wore a white, lace outfit. Deliberately dressed as though attending her wedding, she was not though veiled. She came down to the casket and knelt before it, like Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis at the rotunda, staking her claim on history by her performance.
She sobbed in a controlled breath and then got up and walked around to the right end of the casket. Facing the church, she was now behind it and up on the altar. She was before the pews on the left side of the aisle. She knelt down again and this time began wailing and ululating. She was doing ritual port de bras with her torso and head as well. She kept on holding on to the bouquet.
It was a very Latin; a very emotional display; definitely, not Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis. It was very soulful and moving. One really felt for her. Finally, Madonna made her entrance and began slowly progressing down the aisle. There was utter silence in the place because everybody was thinking, ‘Oh dear, poor Madonna was slutting with Warren Beatty at the point of his death. Here is the fifth wife and is she going to create a scene or not?’
Well, of course, she is. The fifth wife is Latin so, of course, there will be theatre. When the fifth wife had been crossing the casket, I took in her body which was very wide-beamed. I knew then, in a flash, that she was pregnant with Warren Beatty’s child and four months pregnant. It was clearly no Immaculate Conception as per Madonna’s little trick. She was a very big-boned woman. She got up when Madonna entered the church and stopped crying.
Madonna saw her and avoided her glance as I turned and watched this fascinating bit of theatre unfold. Everyone was really excited at the potential fireworks about to go off. She started coming down to confront Madonna. I immediately and intuitively knew that there was a gun inside the bouquet that the fifth wife so firmly clutched. Positioning the gun, the fifth wife began holding the bouquet to her stomach. Madonna, staying her ground, kept on proudly walking down the aisle.
She wore black; it was an outfit that was not dissimilar to mine. She wore a short veil and not a mantilla like I did. She came walking down towards the casket staying closer to the left pews. The fifth wife came around the right side of the casket and was walking down the right side of the aisle looking at Madonna. She had a very, very vexed and determined – an almost trance-like, expression of self-absorption on her face. All the energy in her body was directed at Madonna.
When she was about five feet away from Madonna, she held up the bouquet and callously said, “I’m going to blow your fucking brains out!” It was filled with so much venom that it reverberated throughout the very high-ceilinged-though-tiny church. It was also very Gothic an interior. Madonna stopped truly catatonically horrified. You could see it beyond the veil. She had no entourage or bodyguards. She showed up alone, so confident was she of the coup that she had just scored at the geneticist’s.
She was so flustered that she gallantly stuttered back, “I dare you…” She was very nervous and said very quickly with a weak, little laugh. She was also vamping à la Breathless Mahoney – the character she played in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy film. She was, however, visibly ashen. Madonna was visibly shaken with fear.
Those persons in the left pews automatically screamed out and crouched down for cover because the fifth wife had held up the bouquet in both her outstretched arms like the gun that it so obviously hid. “Come on. You wouldn’t want to do that. That’s just stupid…” Madonna bravely said. “…You can’t do that. Besides Warren’s already dead. What are you trying to prove? You can’t do this to me! Don’t be stupid.”
The woman, however, started slowly walking towards her not buying her bullshit. At that, Madonna turned around and started to bolt and she fell down over her long-trained dress. She had already made it to the back of the pews on the left. She was much too vain, to run outside and possibly be murdered in front of the little people. So she got up and began running around the far side of the pews. Of course, as she ran away, the fifth wife could easily have shot her in the back.
Then Madonna got really pissed off, stopped against the far left wall of the church, holding out her palm at her attacker saying, “Stop it! You don’t want to do this. This is stupid. You can’t kill me. I’m Madonna!” She was just winded; the expression on her face was unbridled rage, fear, terror, chutzpah, all in one. Then the fifth wife pulled the trigger, which was the only sound in the place, releasing the magazine.
Madonna cried out and began pleading with her. It was truly a spectacle. It was really pathetic. The fifth wife then pulled on the trigger and there was a loud plopping sound. Everybody just screamed and the place became flooded with blinding blue light. It turned out to have been an older-model camera and the flashbulb from the camera as it went off.
At that, the fifth wife laughed this loud, truly callous, heavy-from-the-womb, ripe, wicked, vindictive, victorious-all-in-one laugh. It echoed throughout the church. When her echo collapsed, as Madonna stood there truly disempowered, the fifth wife uttered in a weary breath, “I always said to Warren that you’re an ugly slut. This picture will prove it.”
At that the fifth wife turned and came and sat down on the pew next to me. Her Latina family members were just going wild clapping and hysterically shrieking. Now that’s a Hollywood wife! Poor Madonna was still standing there involuntarily shaking. She was holding her chest and gasping for air like an asthmatic. Her left hand placed on her chest, with her right hand holding on to the pew, thus she stayed her ground.
Although her hand was on her chest, she was being most clever. However I knew that really where it should have been was at her pussy because what the fifth wife instinctively knew, as did I, was that she had just miscarried. Madonna was profusely bleeding. Poor Madonna was so humiliated. The look on her face was truly sad; she was sweaty and runny-nosed. She soon collapsed and had to be taken away. Of course, she would be beaten out of having Warren Beatty’s heir by the fifth wife.
The whole thing was so funny and hysterical. I was so stunned that the fifth wife was going to pull this stunt. I really thought that it was a gun; I had, at least, gotten this flash that it was a gun. The idea to have a bolt release, affecting a gun, was truly ingenious. The picture turned out to be truly horrific. It was all a joke being played on Madonna by Hollywood’s film elites who could not have cared less about her and her parvenu ambitions.
The whole affair was so very wickedly political. The whole thing was so hysterical. I wondered as to what next was going to happen. Is the fifth wife going to come forward and produce the first Warren Beatty heir – the true child? A child that would look like Warren Beatty – more like a child of the future being of multiracial heritage and a bronzed version of Warren Beatty would the fifth wife bear.
What then will she do about Madonna’s copyright of Warren Beatty’s sperm? Will the fifth wife, for producing the heir, win the legal rights to them and have them destroyed if she chooses to? Will this not, in fact, begin a Pop Religion rivalling the King, Elvis Presley’s, if Madonna had won custody of the sperm and gone on to impregnate herself and bear those miscarried twin sons because of her bonds to Warren Beatty and his two pseudo-virgin-birthed children – sons at that?
Truly, this is iconography for the new millennium, indeed.
*A very, very interesting dream. Certainly, that I would be dreaming about these people is interesting enough. I don’t pay much attention to any of them beyond the passing. I had seen Dick Tracy three weeks ago. That the whole thing would evolve the way it did was rather insightful. I was totally surprised, as much so, as was Madonna in the church.
I really did think that she was going to be shot. I thought that it would be so messy. You know, I just did not want having anybody’s can’t-wash-out bloodstains on my Giorgio Armani pants. A truly, truly funny dream this was.
*What can I say, dreams are purely experiential. I dream it and awaken, immediately bringing forth the dream experiences, committing those experiences to audio-cassette tapes. I rather enjoyed being alone and visiting with Jessye Norman in the earlier dream. Clearly, those dreams were set on a parallel Earth in another dimension and one in which the mostly Black population is differently proportioned than we humans of waking state Earth are.
On the eve of the Oscars, I thought this a fitting offering. I could never have fathomed the outcome of the fifth wife’s agendum until it unfolded. Ingenious, to say the least, was her use of the bouquet. As ever, sweet dreams and don’t forget to push off and start flying… and so what if you bump into a wall, just attempt doing so again and this time believe that you can effortless transcend the barrier. Perception is, alas, everything.
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As ever my dear sweet ennobled friends, I am ever grateful for your continued support. Please do spread the word, far and wide about this happening dream joint on the cosmic wide web. Always remember to push off and start flying… I love you more.
This past week, I made the most glorious discovery whilst enjoying the BBC’s coverage of the Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey. As if the gospel choir were not enough or the Indian drummers rapturous, there in the middle of both performances was William Barton This extraordinary shaman with his didgeridoo weaved the most sublime magic; it was the music of cetaceans as experienced in the most elevated dreams. Truth be told, it was the music of a culture of the highest order.
Despite the horror which unfolded on the Ides of March elsewhere in the Commonwealth, this service served to remind and inspire us of what it is about our humanity that binds rather that separates us. Music is the language which moves, inspires, reflects and spiritually binds us as humankind. Shaman Barton’s music proved the most healing balm after the horrific events of the Ides of March.
Dream dear shamanic dreamers as never before you’ve dreamt, for I am you and you are me in this shared ocean called humanity. May William Barton’s magical whalesong inspire you to push off whilst lucidly awakened in the dream realms and start flying. I love you more… well, why not! No seriously, though, I sincerely do.
As I work 7 days a week, I was debating whether or not to attend the Twelfth Glenn Gould Prize Gala at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. That morning en route home from some errands, I discovered that someone had jumped from a neighbourhood condo. I got in and realised that there was no more feet-dragging; to hell with being dog-tired. I got on the phone and called up Lucian Mann-Chomedy and said, “My darling, we are going to the Jessye Norman Gala!” As ever, always positive, Lucian chimed in, “Oh my, oh yes, how lovely. Well, I’ll be both honoured and delighted.” Indeed, life is for living!
Merlin and I met Friday, October 1, 1982 in a Hell’s Kitchen Walk-up, the following Monday evening, on his return to Toronto, Merlin called up crying. The man whom he had spent so much of our first evening together speaking of, had died; Glenn Gould had died. For the seven years that we were together, Merlin listened to Glenn Gould’s interpretation of J. S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations at least thrice weekly. Indeed, the first gift I purchased Merlin, was a recently released recording of the Goldberg Variations at Christmas 1982: I think that it is safe to say that that gift sealed the deal, I was a keeper for sure.
As I had waited until the last minute to get seats, I was sat in Ring 4 rather than the usual Ring 3. This, alas, was my view of the stage and of course, the butterflies are from the set for Atom Egoyan’s masterful staging of Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte, which the moment I saw the set, I began chuckling to Lucian on recall of Tracy Dahl’s unsurpassed performance as Despina.
As I was too busy trying to throw something together for Instagram, I was heard gasping when it was announced that the head of the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Jury this twelfth prize was none other than the actor, Viggo Mortensen, who then walked out onto stage. He, indeed, who in a few days time will be attending the Governors Ball where he may or may not be holding an Oscar.
Out onto the stage arrived the Twelfth Prize Laureate, Jessye Norman. Truly, it was a shock to the very core to see Madame being ushered out in a wheelchair. Suddenly, I was reminded of the events of earlier which caused me to rush home and purchase two tickets for the event. That aside, there was no greater joy than drinking of her soul’s inspiring beauty.
This beautiful gala was so filled with touchstones for me, none more so than the moment that bass baritone, Ryan Speedo Green was in full song. When he sang, “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi” from Wolfgang A. Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.
Yes, indeed, this marvellous aria’s orchestration included a harpsichord. Straight away, I was teary-eyed as memories of the truly eccentric and delightful Milan Newcombe readily surfaced; Milan will ever remain a lover like no other.
During the intermission, I ran into two old friends not seen in at least 1.5 decades; we spoke of nothing but our surprise at Ms. Norman’s entrance. Life really does march full speed ahead.
After the intermission, it was the announcement of the Glenn Gould Foundation’s Progidy Prize with the recipient being none other than, Cécile McLorin-Salvant, the most fabulous Jazz singer on the planet. Is this not an evening to remember during Black History Month indeed.
This stunningly unforgettable gala was closed out by the final recitalist being the divinely gifted soprano and Glenn Gould Foundation Prize juror, Sondra Radvanovsky in full song, singing Verdi.
The gala concluded with Ms. Norman returning to the stage and singing a duet with Cécile McLorin-Salvant. This was a moving, emotionally intense evening and my life was greatly enriched for having chosen to attend. The gala was nothing short of magical.
As a tribute to this marvellous evening in the theatre, I will include herein two dreams, which were originally audio-cassette-recorded in the 1990s. Before each deam, one of Glenn Gould, the other Jessye Norman, I will include each individual’s Michael Overleaves.
Gould, Glenn Herbert 25/9/32 – 4/10/82, Toronto
This fragment was a sixth level mature artisan in the repression mode, with a goal of growth, an idealist in the moving part of intellectual centre. He had a Mercury/Saturn body type.
Glenn’s primary chief feature was self-destruction with a secondary of arrogance.
Glenn was third-cast in his cadence and his cadence is fourth in the greater cadence. He is a member of entity four, cadre five, greater cadre 17, pod/node 819.
This fragment has an artisan essence twin who was alive during Glenn’s life but there were no plans to meet. This fragment is still incarnate on the physical plane.
The fragment who was Glenn has a scholar task companion, who was in a previous life, Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach. They were not incarnate at the same time.
However, the fragment who was Glenn was exerting considerable influence on Carl Philip Emmanuel.
These two fragments had many lives together, once as luthiers, three times as court musicians, nine times as brothers of the cloth, twice as brothers in the flesh, as well as completing several important life monads, including student/mentor and master/slave.
In the immediate past life, the fragment who was Glenn had as his three primary needs: security, communion and exchange. Only the first of these was ever even partially satisfied.
So here we had a warrior-cast artisan who had seriously conflicting overleaves and a primary chief feature of self-destruction. He had a goal of growth but a repression mode which would not allow him to flourish.
He had a need for communion, but was sexually ambivalent and socially inept. Undeniably, he had great talent but took no pleasure from performing in public.
This fragment has a great deal of scholar energy that was used in the immediate past life to enable Glenn Herbert to painstakingly examine and interpret the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.
He was very interested in form and structure for all of his adult life. This fragment was, unfortunately, the victim of a severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, also for all of his adult life, which worsened considerably during his third and fourth decades.
This fragment did not, as popular wisdom teaches, retire from public life because of any strong beliefs in the recording industry. Glenn Herbert retired from public life because he could no longer bear to be in crowds, even if he was distanced by a proscenium.
Needless to say, this fragment did not complete work on his fourth internal monad.
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Astral Plane Glenn Gould Recital!
Nothing is more uplifting than finding oneself at a great musical performance on the astral plane. This dream was about being richly inspired and by Glenn Herbert Gould, no less; it was truly marvellous an adventure for the spirit.
The dream occurred, on Tuesday, October 6, 1992, whilst the Moon transited both Aquarius and my ninth house.
I am in France where I leisurely browsed through a store; perhaps, it was somewhere in Paris. It seemed here like at nighttime. Whilst in one corner of the store, I noticed that there were all these big slabs of cheese in packaged containers.
There was a woman coordinating the display of the cheeses. Sometimes the cheese was being grated and other times not. There and then, I decided that I was going to buy one slab of the cheese that was packaged in a rectangular box.
The cheese was about an inch thick and about eight inches long. The cardboard box that it was in was white and almost like the size of a box of Cream of Wheat.
Surprisingly, the box was rather heavy. Though not unlike cheddar, it was a dark cheese. The smell of this cheese was really hard – quite the bite to it.
It had seemingly been opened for too long as parts of it was growing hardened and turning colour. I knew straight off the bat that I wanted to have some to take home with me.
So, off I went to purchase the slab that I liked. Everyone here was, of course, speaking French which I quite so understood and liked. Interestingly, I too was speaking very competently in French.
It was obvious that I was not too heavily accented as the others were pleasant-enough with me.
The second dream had me leaving the store; I then found myself hovering in the air. Whilst in flight, I went into a building which had a green – oxidised-copper – roof. It was part of a long set of buildings that had very, very tall stone chimneys.
These were chimneys that were not unlike the ones at the Palais du Louvre. As a matter of fact, the building was similar to the Canadian Parliament buildings though it was not those buildings.
This complex was considerably longer. These were a series of complex buildings. Here, I was easily thirty storeys up whilst in flight. I looked down at the complex which at maximum could not have been more than five storeys tall.
After having contemplatively observed the complex for awhile, I began very slowly gliding down through the air. I intently studied a procession of persons, way below, who were bailing out of very large buses; they were, as a matter of fact, tour buses.
This was all happening in a courtyard-like area and away from the bustle of the street. I next noticed some men who appeared; they seemed, in their long, flowing white robes, to be priests.
They were not Arabic or Muslims in caftans; rather, they were definitely Whites. The buildings here were long on the order of Palais Richelieu in Paris. When I finally alighted, we had to go through this incredible entrance.
This led into a wonderful sandstone building; it was very modern with a neo-classical design. On the order of being imposing, the door to this place was massive. They seemed to be the doors to a temple.
To get to the entrance, there were many steps which one had to climb. On entering, off to the right, there was a passage that one could take.
An aisle led along another passage; it seemed illumined by a skylight. The priestly men had all entered before me. They preceded a procession of adherents who had come to partake of some ritual.
I had gone to explore, off to the left, because it was the wing of the building that had reminded me of the Palais du Louvre. Going there, I wandered about being fascinated by the place.
Some women were posing for artists in this particular wing. They wore modern garb but were very exceptionally beautiful. What was most intriguing about their look was that it was exactly as they would have appeared on the finished canvases.
They were very nubile young women; they had to hold their poses for interminably long periods. Here several kids kept on going through the place; they were seemingly art students.
They were all very North American, middle class with their loud, snobbish bourgeois affectations. Right away, it was obvious that all the muses were still virgins.
Theirs was an innocence that could never be affected. They were all teenage girls whose bodies were very voluptuous and full. These were not skinny people at all.
There was one point at which one girl was holding different poses. Each girl would be painted by from three-to-five artists, at a time. Thus every pose would be captured from different perspectives.
At one point, they told her to take a break; they then reverted back to an earlier pose. This was so that they could return to that work and put some more work into finishing it up.
When she changed the pose, she had also turned some 180 degrees. This particular model, whom I was studying, wore socks with Oriental-looking sandals.
Inside her socks she kept little items of hers. Whilst she was making the transition, she simply reached up her foot and pulled up her right leg to reach down into the socks.
Hers was a pair of blue-coloured socks – pale blue. To just above the ankles was the extent to which the socks rose. Looking at her, she took out something from about her ankle which looked like a wafer.
Not the least bit self-conscious, she ate it at once; it seemed like a chocolate wafer which she favoured. She seemingly needed it to get an energy boost so that she could stay focussed on the tedious work that she did.
After having found it all very interesting, I moved on sufficiently knowledgeable of the goings on here. Walking along a corridor, I ended up going into a room where everyone was very strange.
A guy there was a lot like Galen Shim – my very beautiful, Hong Kong-born, Eurasian friend. He reclined on a bed with his head close to the door. When I came in, I noticed that he was naked. When giving him a massage, I began by oiling his body.
It was quite fragrant oil. Rubbing down his body, I began working on his toes and feet. Afterwards, I got up to leave but he very silently began coming with me.
So out we went and joined the procession of persons; among them this time were several kids. Mostly, they were teenagers – amongst whom I did not want to be.
Galen or the guy who seemed like him, here the guy was not wearing glasses as before nor would Galen for that matter, and I kept walking through the place. Pretty soon, after we had left the noisy kids, we started hearing the most beautiful music.
This was one of the rare times that I found the music of the pipe organ to be beautiful. Within the complex, we happened on this wonderful cathedral inside which were most of the people from the procession.
On entering the structure, it seemed more like a concert hall. We soon learnt that the hall was specifically built so that only Johannes Sebastian Bach’s music could be played there.
Never before had I heard classical music sound so beautiful. We stood there transfixed whilst listening together. Who then should I notice way at the front of the hall, at the pipe organ that sat high on the dais-like stage, but Glenn Gould. I could see his right profile as if in close-up.
My god, this was rapture and then some. He was playing with such rapt abandon that I steadied myself and whispered more to myself than to Galen,
“My god, what an incredible dream to be having…”
There seemed to be a skylight on the side of the high-ceilinged nave. Instead of there being stained glass windows, windows for that matter, there was only intense light raining down through what seemed to be a skylight system.
The centre of the halved skylight was a wonderful neoclassical, oxidised, copper-looking, greenish flying buttress. Here the look, though modern, was more in the style of Islamic mosques or even Moorish architecture rather than the classic Gothic signatures.
A series of the most intricate and complex circles intertwined, like some riotous jungle vine, in the cathedral-like, concert hall’s stonework. Breathtakingly beautiful it was. I stood there, just inside the entrance to the hall, on the left of the wide aisle.
This was a very wide-bodied structure. As you progressed down the aisle, there were different levels where one could go up and sit. These were either on the right or left. The central aisle was covered by the most beautifully designed red carpet.
This place was considerably wider than Notre Dame Cathedral. Unlike the Parisian Gothic structure, it was not a darkened affair. Here it was very intensely bright out. The light coming in on the right and left side of the flying buttress-like, central girder fell through a slightly frosted glass.
The light was an intense – almost aquatic – blue. Interestingly, there were no beams or columns, supporting the unusual central, flying buttress-like beam. For looking at the light, one became slightly languorous. I felt paralysed with pleasure; there before me, down the massive hall, sat Glenn Gould.
He wore the most thick-fabricked garb; it seemed from an earlier age. All the men in the white gowns were up at the front. They were all transfixed – as well they should have been.
Though I love Johannes Sebastian Bach, at the time, I had some reservations as I am not especially fond of pipe organs. I suppose that it is because it has always had too many religious associations during my childhood.
The persons attending the concert were there simply to recharge their batteries. They seemed, all of them, as if not quite in their bodies for being so transfixed – they were otherwise-engaged.
Eerily, I had a sense that these were all persons who were between lives as is Glenn Gould. They were in a form of processing, a form of deep meditation on the order of sleep, as they prepared for the next incarnation.
This fugue was the most complex music imaginable. Indeed, the music seemed designed for those between lives. The fugue was composed for astral plane habitués who, sans bodies, could best endure the music’s intensity.
Getting a sense that I really shouldn’t be there, plus the fact that I finally couldn’t get into the pipe organ, I started taking my leave of the place.
Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, and I then went out front. There we waited for the specific tour buses to show up and take us away. Whilst I waited with Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, I was joined by Pandora.
It seemed that most of the people who were here were very young-souled. They seemed to be on a pilgrimage, like visiting the original Gohonzon in Japan or going on the Hajj, at Mecca.
As the pipe organ played, I could hear in the tone of the place a faint whisper from the men in white robes. Their thoughts, it turned out, could be telepathically heard. Even earlier, when I had been hovering in flight high above the complex, I knew that this was more so a political institution rather than not.
This was a structure which was just as colossal as the temple at Karnak and considerably older. This place was mind-bogglingly complex and massive. The temple was posited directly in the centre of it all.
Just like La Chapelle in Paris is comparably dwarfed, by its surroundings, so too the massive concert hall-like temple was dwarfed by the complex. This architectural marvel was simply soul-inspiring.
Whilst all the buses were waiting, I took to one of the buses with Pandora. I had gotten impatient waiting to be assigned to one. We spoke in French because everyone else here did the same.
This was not unlike a Parisian bus – the seats all faced each other. Seated close to the front, we were on the left side of the aisle behind the driver.
As though getting close to Saint-Sulpice Métro, I got up and said goodbye to Pandora. I wanted to get off there then walk back to her rue de Grenelle apartment.
Pandora planned to go out then come home later so had asked me to wait for her at her place. Here it seemed as if nighttime coming on to dawn.
Speaking guardedly in French, I made sure that I was speaking properly and not just fumbling partout. Really, I rather enjoyed this experience of being together with Pandora.
I was very serene enjoying the very beautiful experience. Galen, or the person who seemed a lot like him, had silently slipped from my side when Pandora came and joined me.
*Of course, it would turn out that the person in question was Louka Duplessis and not Galen. I would meet Louka, who accompanied me in this dream, the day following this dream.
Just prior to meeting for the first time, it is not uncommon for me to dream of persons.
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Norman, Jessye 15/9/45, Georgia
Jessye is a first level old priest in the passion mode, with a goal of rejection – functioning for the most part in the positive pole of discrimination, a spiritualist, in the emotional part of intellectual centre.
She has a Jupiter/Saturn body type.
Jessye’s primary chief feature is arrogance, with a secondary of stubbornness.
This fragment was third-cast in her cadence and her cadence is fifth in the greater cadence. She is a member of entity five, cadre six, greater cadre 33, pod/node 212.
She has a discarnate priest essence twin whom she did know earlier in this life but this fragment died in Vietnam. She has a warrior task companion and they have worked together and continue to do so occasionally.
Her three primary needs are: freedom, expression and power.
The warrior energy gives Jessye tremendous organisational powers and her stubbornness has enabled her to stick in there when the going got very rough many times.
Jessye is a warrior-cast priest who has been a spiritual rebel in this life. This is, by the way, not the first time this fragment has sung professionally. This fragment was a well-known castrato in seventeenth century Italy and performed many times before the crowned heads of Europe.
Jessye has great need to serve her concept of the higher ideal and has done so admirably by combining the folk music of her people with her operatic repertoire.
She performs well, as do most entity five fragments. This fragment has always enjoyed her work. Singing has been an extension of her inner spirituality. It is, in fact, a form of meditation for her.
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Now that’s a Hollywood wife!
These rather lucidly awakened dreams were experienced with an intense sense of wonder and joy, on Monday, July 2, 1990. At the time, the Moon transited both Scorpio and my sixth house.
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This first dream found me in a very busy place. When going south towards the Danforth, it was not unlike being on Broadview Ave. It was at nighttime. I came there and found that there were tons and tons of Black people.
Even so, it seemed like Toronto and at Broadview Subway station because there are all these streetcars there. One of the streetcars was improperly parked, as a result, it was going to go and turn around.
Waiting for it to do what it had to do, there was another streetcar out in the street. It was really more like a red-rocket streetcar. It was not like one of the newer ones.
Everyone here was Black. There were no Whites or other non-Blacks that I saw. Everybody was in the street which was very jam-packed. They were getting ready to cross, after the streetcar had passed, to go in.
There was now a system, where you paid your fare aboard the streetcar, so that you did not have to enter the front doors of the station on Broadview.
When you got aboard the streetcar, it was mandatory that you pay a fare. So it did not matter whether you paid a fare at the proper entrance or not. There were many people queuing up to get aboard a streetcar.
Passing these people who were seated there, I went through the proper entrance. One of them seemed like Gabriella Vartan† and they were talking about me.
I came around and began going down the steps, into the nether regions, en route to the trains. There was this little old lady who was taking her time, holding up things, so I pushed her to my right.
I made my way down then had to go around taking another flight of stairs; I then kept on going. There were a whole lot of levels to this subway system.
When I got down, there was this little cul-de-sac where there were these Black guys – homeboys – hanging out. However, they were not Black American.
I found one of them very attractive and smiled at him. He, however, was very homophobic. He went running upstairs to go call the police on me.
The train then came into the subway and it was a very, very large train. It towered very high to the ceiling. It was like an Amtrak train which seemed like a double Decker train. It was mostly silver, however, it turned out not to have been double Decker.
When it stopped, I began running full speed because I did not want the guy to come back and board the same car as me. I ran to the front of the train only to find that one couldn’t board there. Instead, one could only enter this train where the cars joined each other.
You could enter the front or backdoors of each car but not the front ones of the first car. It was very sleek, round and Deco like a train from the 1930s.
The whole place did have a feel of the ‘30s to it. It was very neo-Gothic like the Chrysler or McGraw-Hill buildings in New York City, or for that matter, even the Empire State Building.
It was reminiscent of very early in the twentieth century which was all about great architecture – of things being large, mammoth and spiralling upwards, too, things getting faster and faster.
That sense of adventure about the wonderful world of commerce that one had created. It was that time when people had not yet begun to see, as we now know, the consequences of things being bigger and better and faster and all the effects on nature.
I got onto the train heading, again, towards the front. Somehow, I felt relieved because I had lost the guy. I was there and noticed a stout man who was either High-Yellow or, perhaps, even White.
The people here were very strange because they were just rather unusual. Even though they looked White, they seemed more bronzish, actual bronze, than the pinkish tonality of the waking state.
This was not a place that I knew. It was very otherworldly here, I soon realised. I did not get a seat and as I stood there I then noticed a woman. She was standing at the very front of the train.
The train progressed with unusual speeds, I immediately noticed. When the train had shaken, the stout man had tried to brace himself by putting out his foot that was already out in the aisle.
In the process, he had stomped me and I had had to pull my foot out from under his and pushed his away. He wore business attire, a suit and tie, as though en route to an office job.
The woman who was standing up was playing on a wooden flute-like instrument that was less than a foot long. However, the thing about all this was that she had unusually short arms.
They were fully functional hands with tiny little fingers that nimbly danced over the valves of the wooden, wind instrument. Her arms were like a Thalidomide-damaged child’s.
Then I noticed too that there were other people on the train, about three or four musicians, practicing as well. I soon realised that everyone on board had some sort of physical deformity.
They were just ill-proportioned people with torsos that were too long or arms that were too short. Arms too long or what have you, moreover, this also applied to the legs.
The most pronounced cases were always the musicians like the female flautist – two or three of the other musicians were male.
Someone else who was on the train began laughing and, out of nervousness, I joined in. The person was laughing at the woman. She, however, hadn’t paid them any mind.
Nobody else was paying people, who were laughing, any mind. They did not see anything wrong with the people who were being laughed at.
I then got off the train and was out in this concourse area, where the trains arrived, before I went upstairs. Before I would go upstairs I saw this child seated in the middle of this white blanket that seemed more like diaper material than flannel.
The child wore a salmon-coloured merino. He had little, white, cloth diapers on. The infant had, again, very unusually, unusually short, short legs that made it look almost like a child because it was seated upright on its bottom.
However, it had a very big torso – matured, such that the child seemed like a very big, big child for its age. Its head was very large with a very developed large and soulful-looking face.
At the time it made me thing of Jake Hudson. Jake does have a very large head and face. I was trying to connect with him. He reached out his short little arms, crying out and said,
“Dad, I want to go.”
There was this youngish man, who was blond like the child, and he seemed not unlike the guy Olaf Knight. He picked up his son and used the blanket, on which the child sat, that had these straps and put him around his shoulder.
Like an African mother would, carry her child when in the fields, thus he was carried on his father’s back. He walked off with the child, who was holding on to him, except that the child was really an adult male.
It was all very strange here in this otherworldly place.
I ended up coming upstairs and going out in the outdoors. There were people here – again, mostly Black people. I was talking to them when I heard the strains of Richard Strauss‘s Four Last Songs beginning.
I beamed and excused myself from the people, with whom I was interacting, and went running off up this plaza. It was a clay-tiled plaza and when I got there, I saw the symphony.
I went and sat in lotus position and sat very close to the front. There was a gathering of persons in a semicircle and I was, as a matter of fact, the closest to the stage.
The stage was above on a dais and it was edged by old gold juniper. The juniper was really, really nice and quite fragrant, refreshingly so, to the smell.
Along came, from around a corner walking, Jessye Norman – the high priestess herself. She had been preceded by her divine voice’s magic. She was, of course, singing Four Last Songs.
She wore a beautiful, beautiful, glistening black dress that seemed almost organic with a life of its own. It was twinkling on and off but the lights were lifelike like fireflies.
They were sequins but they seemed, somehow, to be organic. It had hues of gold, silver, bronze, and dark green hues like pine and blue hues like lapis lazuli. It was very, very intensely rich a fabric.
She started singing the first song, Frühling, and it was very hauntingly beautiful. She saw me and beamed down at me. It was so connected between us. I was so enthralled and overpowered; I was quite smitten by her.
I thought very rapturously awakened,
‘Yes! I’m having a dream of Jessye Norman. So very good to see her again, my god here she is and performing Four Last Songs.’
She then came almost to the lip of the stage and stopped as though about to sneeze. Then she held her breath and started laughing because it was so hysterical.
The look on my face was one of being truly horrified for her. This had actually caused her to crack up. Then she began singing again and began making gestures for me to move or be removed.
I was stunned and thought this some sort of betrayal.
‘Why is she snubbing me like this?’ I wondered.
Then these two huge, burly guys came to eject me out of the area. As I was leaving, I could hear her starting to sing again. I was very, very upset.
I was, in the second dream, in this large house that was a very many-storeyed place. It had many apartments. I came out and it had a very slanted roof that one could go out onto. This roof was, however, very dangerously precipitous.
I was looking about and thinking of Carl Leroiderien because, somehow, someone was talking about him. This White man was talking to me and telling me that Carl had been enquiring after me.
He then went on to ask me if I smoked dope which I denied. I can’t think of it doing anything for me except, perhaps, to make me sneeze at the most. Sometimes if mixed with hashish, I then got a massive headache.
“It doesn’t do anything for me, I don’t really like it. I don’t see the point to it and I don’t smoke it.”
At the time that he was saying this, we were climbing some very, very steep stairs. Then at that point, after she had given her performance, I encountered Jessye Norman again. She was seated on a bench and called me over.
She said hello very warmly and apologised saying,
“I hope you weren’t upset. You realise that it was a misunderstanding. I wasn’t laughing at you; it’s just that you don’t seem to realise where you were.
“You were, well there are certain degrees of protocol and you were ahead of the dignitaries.
“And you shouldn’t have been so close to the stage because one of the reasons why your nose started bleeding was, in this dimension, if you’re this close to the stage… when I’m singing, when I hit certain notes it can shatter your eardrums but also shatter your mind.
“So you see it was very crucial that I get you out of there. Also, I was having a very bad allergic reaction to the plants at the edge of the dais. They made me want to sneeze. It wasn’t at all you or exclusively you.”
In having embraced me thus, she was being most healing. I did, in fact, have quite the nosebleed. As I was being hustled out of the place, by the burly guards, it was then that I realised that my nose was bleeding.
At the time, I had thought it strange. As this dream progressed very lucidly and linearly, there was no point at which either burly guard had so much as touched me.
I was so upset. It was so very good, after the fact, to have had her explain as she did.
*This dream really does validate the notion that all persons encountered in the dreamtime, without exceptions, are separate entities and not figments of one’s imagination. END.
When I was being bounced by her, I was so stunned, upset and humiliated. Had she not explained as she had just done, I would have awakened from this dream with a totally different perception of events.
I had also no way of knowing that she was having an allergic reaction to the juniper which, at the time, I found so wonderfully soothing. What’s more, I hadn’t a clue that I had thrown the Chi of the place by having disrespected protocol.
I would never have thought that my nosebleed was due to her singing. In fact, it is possible that I could have awakened and not recalled that, indeed, I had had a nosebleed which I had totally forgotten until she had mentioned it.
Jessye Norman has indeed straddled, with great élan and diplomacy, many a dimension with great frequency and fluency.
I then began holding her hand and told her that there were times that I had dreams of her, in which there were sometimes cetacean-looking creatures that came and did formations around her as she sang hyper-dimensionally.
She was just enthralled and pleased. She squeezed my hands and laughed a healthy, really wonderful laugh. She was quite smitten by me and encouraged me to write it all down.
Her eyes here were so very large, soulfully dark and focussed right into me. It gave me a high just to have experienced them.
I was wearing, when close to the stage, a satin merino-like shirt. So at the time of being bounced out, I had passingly thought that I had been dressed too scantily for her liking.
In any event, it was quite interesting.
This third dream was truly hysterical. It seemed like on Eglinton Avenue East, between Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road. It was at nighttime. There was a lot of goings on.
Shirley MacLaine was there, Warren Beatty and Madonna Ciccone, as well. Warren Beatty was the man of the hour and the centre of everybody’s attention.
He had a great deal of sexual energy and magnetism. He had been performing for the camera and for everybody around. It felt very staid to me though.
One very interesting thing that happened was that he had been heavily drinking and, whilst laughing, had bent forward. He then began uncontrollably coughing and was holding his chest and faking a massive heart attack.
Next thing you knew, we were in a very crowded area and it turned out that he had not been faking the heart attack. He had a very, massive, massive heart attack.
He was dead just like that. He was gone within moments. It was just incredible. Shirley MacLaine became utterly hysterical. Her bawling was like from some Greek tragedy.
She went into a trance-like frenzied state and began calling on astral guides and her Pleiadean guides. Pulling out a very impressive clutch of crystals, she threw herself onto him and tried healing him of death.
She was placing them all over his body – at the chakras and elsewhere. It was too humourous for words.
Meanwhile, as Warren Beatty died, Madonna came rushing up to the scene. It had all been too late and they couldn’t rush him to a hospital. There was no way that he could have been revived.
They had been out in some desert area having a big party; there were no doctors around. There was nothing that they could do; he couldn’t be saved. He was dead… he was gone.
Shirley MacLaine started cursing to the gods, saying,
“This is so unfair.
“He hasn’t even been able to make the sequel to Dick Tracy. And right when he’s at the top of his career this is happening?”
“Well you know this will really immortalise him now. Definitely, this is great publicity, right at this point in his career.” someone had dryly said who was not attached to his whole entourage.
I had heard this but Shirley MacLaine hadn’t heard it. Madonna came and whatever she thought about I could telepathically hear it. Her immediate response was,
‘Oh shit! This is just going to fuck up my goddamn career.
‘If only I’d gotten a child by him. Shit why did I have to have that abortion of his child. Shit!’
She was thinking fast. She was someone who knew how to manipulate the media. She was really pissed off because it would have meant immediate Hollywood sainthood for her, were she to go on and have Warren Beatty’s only child, after he had tragically died.
She was really pissed off because this was media manipulation beyond her wildest schemes,
‘I’ve got to get him out of here. I’ve got to have the best genetic engineers flown in immediately…’
I was stunned when I read her thoughts because, of course, she intended to harvest his seed and impregnate herself and then have a premature love child of Warren Beatty’s.
I was stunned by this woman’s phenomenal megalomania.
‘During the autopsy, I’ll have his sperm taken out and I’ll have it copyrighted. It’ll be my possession. I’ll have it engineered so that I’ll have a child… a son. God we can even have twins…’
She, all the while, was cowering over his face… kissing him and doing the wailing widow number,
‘…Can you imagine, Madonna?’
She privately squealed to herself – unaware, of course, that she was broadcasting to someone like me. She was so triumphant at having had that idea because all she knew was that people who so loved Warren Beatty would take to her now.
She was insecure as to whether or not she would endure through time. However, with this, she knew that she would automatically become iconic. She would become truly the virgin mother!
She would be actually giving birth to some dead man’s child – he of course being, Warren Beatty. It was destiny. After all, she was ‘the’ Madonna.
She had this flash that this was why she had always been so drawn to crucifixes. She was going to capitalise on the whole drama by making sure that it would be a son.
Of course, not to be outdone by that old, other Holy Mother with the virgin birth, she would eclipse that Madonna by having twin sons. Again, La Stupenda squealed with delight to herself.
I passingly wondered if I were the only one to be privy to her thoughts. Then I realised that from my detachment, as everyone bawled and was truly horrified as though these were Olympians and not mere mortals, that I was the only one.
‘What could be better than having two Warren Beatty lookalikes crawling around the planet and who were his twins? And his only heirs! With today’s genetic engineering it will be a great coup.
‘Think of the press! I’ll be guaranteed perpetual immortality. I’ll be iconised for all history…’
I thought then and there,
‘My god, this woman is monstrous.’
In any event, the funeral was upon us and by some strange quirk of the dreamtime, I was very much so a part of the funeral. I was as though a fly on the wall, as it were, and aren’t you lucky?
Why, was I participating? I do not know?
In any event, I was dressed to the nines. I had on a wonderful, lace outfit with a mantilla with my veil covering my face. I was part, somehow, of the funeral party.
It turned out that Warren Beatty had had five wives and, at the point at which he died, his fifth wife was a High-Yellow woman. She was part Black, part White, partly Latina.
He had had all these wives. They had always been paid and kept to remain silent. They were never brought out in the public or media. It was one of Hollywood’s biggest secrets.
People, obviously, never knew about it. It had never once been spoken about. There was an interesting turn to all of this… I had been going along Eglinton East on the south side. It was as though I was going towards Yonge Street; however, it was not Eglinton Avenue East.
Madonna was going to be late because, luckily, it was that time of the month for her. She was off having herself impregnated, by way of a turkey baster, with Warren Beatty’s frozen sperm – the planet’s most expensively rare caviar fertiliser of sorts.
I was attending the funeral with a short woman who was the fifth wife’s mother. She seemed a lot like Sybil Ben-Daniel and wore a brown coat over her dress. I walked with my right arm embracing her as she was on my right.
I had burly bodyguards all about me, before, beside and behind me. They were real Mossad-goon-cum-Wrestlemania types. My pants were those flare-legged Giorgio Armanis that allowed me to stride throwing my legs.
There was a lot of train to them and I had such utter style. I had enormous energies about me and great flare. My eyes were bedazzling even though mantilla-veiled.
They were what were, of course, fuelling my high spirits. The onlookers were lapping up my entrance; I felt wonderful.
We then went into the church and the mother was talking about,
“We want the money to go to the Church because the Church is really the staple of society and civilisation. The Church does so much good.”
I just decided to let her babble on and kept my tongue in check. However, I cussed her under my breath saying,
“You demented old fool. What Church are you talking about?”
The church had a metallic-silver front and it looked not unlike York Cinemas on Eglinton Avenue East. It was not a very big church on the inside. As we got inside, I turned around and hissed at one of the bodyguards because he had earlier stepped on my train.
Of course, we were surrounded then by the paparazzi and the little people. His Bigfoot’s footprint was there on the pant’s train. I reached back and slapped his face real hard calling him a fucking asshole.
Of course, I knew that it was safe to do it here because everyone here knew, only too well, that side of me. However, I couldn’t wreck my public image doing so outside.
As we got closer to the church, I began striding firmer with each step in anticipation of getting his oafish arse. I was really careful not to show that side of me when in public.
I started going down the aisle and there at the end was Warren Beatty’s corpse in the open casket. It was a pure black casket that glistened. It was a dark black wood and a really gorgeous casket.
Escorting the mother-in-law, I came all the way down the aisle. I decided that I would go into the first pew on the right. The first pew on the left actually went further down the aisle and did go past the casket.
It held men in white flowing robes; they were priest of whatever denomination this was – very cream, ivory-coloured and obviously very Catholic.
I went and sat down and immediately behind me was the fifth wife’s family. They were very Hispanic-looking more so than Black. They were very handsome in that family.
I turned around and smiled at one of the men and the energies coming from them weren’t as I had expected – I had thought that they would hate me.
I knew Madonna; I was apparently part of her hangers on. Somehow, I had known her through dance. I thought that, for that association, they would hate me. However, they displayed no such hostilities towards me.
Finally, the fifth wife came and was walking very slowly, regally. She carried a globular bouquet consisting of tiny, little white roses that were sprinkled in amongst some baby’s breath. There were one or two little red roses as well.
She wore a white, lace outfit. Deliberately dressed as though attending her wedding, she was not though veiled. She came down to the casket and knelt before it, like Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis at the rotunda, staking her claim on history by her performance.
She sobbed in a controlled breath and then got up and walked around to the right end of the casket. Facing the church, she was now behind it and up on the altar. She was before the pews on the left side of the aisle.
She knelt down again and this time began wailing and ululating. She was doing ritual port de bras with her torso and head as well. She kept on holding on to the bouquet.
It was a very Latin; a very emotional display; definitely, not Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis. It was very soulful and moving. One really felt for her.
Finally, Madonna made her entrance and began slowly progressing down the aisle. There was utter silence in the place because everybody was thinking,
‘Oh dear, poor Madonna was slutting with Warren Beatty at the point of his death. Here is the fifth wife and is she going to create a scene or not?’
Well, of course, she is. The fifth wife is Latin so, of course, there will be theatre.
When the fifth wife had been crossing the casket, I took in her body which was very wide-beamed. I knew then, in a flash, that she was pregnant with Warren Beatty’s child and four months pregnant.
It was clearly no Immaculate Conception as per Madonna’s little trick. She was a very big-boned woman. She got up when Madonna entered the church and stopped crying.
Madonna saw her and avoided her glance as I turned and watched this fascinating bit of theatre unfold. Everyone was really excited at the potential fireworks about to go off.
She started coming down to confront Madonna. I immediately and intuitively knew that there was a gun inside the bouquet that the fifth wife so firmly clutched.
Positioning the gun, the fifth wife began holding the bouquet to her stomach. Madonna, staying her ground, kept on proudly walking down the aisle.
She wore black; it was an outfit that was not dissimilar to mine. She wore a short veil and not a mantilla like I did.
She came walking down towards the casket staying closer to the left pews. The fifth wife came around the right side of the casket and was walking down the right side of the aisle looking at Madonna.
She had a very, very vexed and determined – an almost trance-like, expression of self-absorption on her face. All the energy in her body was directed at Madonna.
When she was about five feet away from Madonna, she held up the bouquet and callously said,
“I’m going to blow your fucking brains out!”
It was filled with so much venom that it reverberated throughout the very high-ceilinged-though-tiny church. It was also very Gothic an interior.
Madonna stopped truly catatonically horrified. You could see it beyond the veil. She had no entourage or bodyguards. She showed up alone, so confident was she of the coup that she had just scored at the geneticist’s.
She was so flustered that she gallantly stuttered back,
“I dare you…”
She was very nervous and said very quickly with a weak, little laugh. She was also vamping à la Breathless Mahoney – the character she played in Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy film.
She was, however, visibly ashen. Madonna was visibly shaken with fear.
Those persons in the left pews automatically screamed out and crouched down for cover because the fifth wife had held up the bouquet in both her outstretched arms like the gun that it so obviously hid.
“Come on. You wouldn’t want to do that. That’s just stupid…” Madonna bravely said.
“…You can’t do that. Besides Warren’s already dead. What are you trying to prove? You can’t do this to me! Don’t be stupid.”
The woman, however, started slowly walking towards her not buying her bullshit. At that, Madonna turned around and started to bolt and she fell down over her long-trained dress.
She had already made it to the back of the pews on the left. She was much too vain, to run outside and possibly be murdered in front of the little people. So she got up and began running around the far side of the pews.
Of course, as she ran away, the fifth wife could easily have shot her in the back. Then Madonna got really pissed off, stopped against the far left wall of the church, holding out her palm at her attacker saying,
“Stop it! You don’t want to do this. This is stupid. You can’t kill me. I’m Madonna!”
She was just winded; the expression on her face was unbridled rage, fear, terror, chutzpah, all in one. Then the fifth wife pulled the trigger, which was the only sound in the place, releasing the magazine.
Madonna cried out and began pleading with her. It was truly a spectacle. It was really pathetic. The fifth wife then pulled on the trigger and there was a loud plopping sound.
Everybody just screamed and the place became flooded with blinding blue light. It turned out to have been an older-model camera and the flashbulb from the camera as it went off.
At that, the fifth wife laughed this loud, truly callous, heavy-from-the-womb, ripe, wicked, vindictive, victorious-all-in-one laugh. It echoed throughout the church.
When her echo collapsed, as Madonna stood there truly disempowered, the fifth wife uttered in a weary breath,
“I always said to Warren that you’re an ugly slut. This picture will prove it.”
At that the fifth wife turned and came and sat down on the pew next to me. Her Latina family members were just going wild clapping and hysterically shrieking.
Now that’s a Hollywood wife!
Poor Madonna was still standing there involuntarily shaking. She was holding her chest and gasping for air like an asthmatic. Her left hand placed on her chest, with her right hand holding on to the pew, thus she stayed her ground.
Although her hand was on her chest, she was being most clever. However I knew that really where it should have been was at her pussy because what the fifth wife instinctively knew, as did I, was that she had just miscarried. Madonna was profusely bleeding.
Poor Madonna was so humiliated. The look on her face was truly sad; she was sweaty and runny-nosed. She soon collapsed and had to be taken away. Of course, she would be beaten out of having Warren Beatty’s heir by the fifth wife.
The whole thing was so funny and hysterical. I was so stunned that the fifth wife was going to pull this stunt. I really thought that it was a gun; I had, at least, gotten this flash that it was a gun.
The idea to have a bolt release, affecting a gun, was truly ingenious. The picture turned out to be truly horrific. It was all a joke being played on Madonna by Hollywood’s film elites who could not have cared less about her and her parvenu ambitions.
The whole affair was so very wickedly political. The whole thing was so hysterical. I wondered as to what next was going to happen.
Is the fifth wife going to come forward and produce the first Warren Beatty heir – the true child? A child that would look like Warren Beatty – more like a child of the future being of multiracial heritage and a bronzed version of Warren Beatty would the fifth wife bear.
What then will she do about Madonna’s copyright of Warren Beatty’s sperm? Will the fifth wife, for producing the heir, win the legal rights to them and have them destroyed if she chooses to?
Will this not, in fact, begin a Pop Religion rivalling the King, Elvis Presley’s, if Madonna had won custody of the sperm and gone on to impregnate herself and bear those miscarried twin sons because of her bonds to Warren Beatty and his two pseudo-virgin-birthed children – sons at that?
Truly, this is iconography for the new millennium, indeed.
*A very, very interesting dream. Certainly, that I would be dreaming about these people is interesting enough. I don’t pay much attention to any of them beyond the passing.
I had seen Dick Tracy three weeks ago. That the whole thing would evolve the way it did was rather insightful. I was totally surprised, as much so, as was Madonna in the church.
I really did think that she was going to be shot. I thought that it would be so messy.
You know, I just did not want having anybody’s can’t-wash-out bloodstains on my Giorgio Armani pants.
*What can I say, dreams are purely experiential. I dream it and awaken, immediately bringing forth the dream experiences, committing those experiences to audio-cassette tapes.
I rather enjoyed being alone and visiting with Jessye Norman in the earlier dream. Clearly, those dreams were set on a parallel Earth in another dimension and one in which the mostly Black population is differently proportioned than we humans of waking state Earth are.
On the eve of the Oscars, I thought this a fitting offering. I could never have fathomed the outcome of the fifth wife’s agendum until it unfolded. Ingenious, to say the least, was her use of the bouquet.
As ever, sweet dreams and don’t forget to push off and start flying… and so what if you bump into a wall, just attempt doing so again and this time believe that you can effortless transcend the barrier. Perception is, alas, everything.
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As ever my dear sweet ennobled friends, I am ever grateful for your continued support. Please do spread the word, far and wide about this happening dream joint on the cosmic wide web. Always remember to push off and start flying… I love you more.
Opening nights are always such fun… Tuesday night past, I was reminded of all the opening nights that I would attend with a slightly neurotic Merlin as some show or other that he had directed was being presented to the world… As ever, it was great to see my plus one, Lucian Mann-Chomedy as the ideal partner for these occasions. Always reserved, pleasant and just the right amount of chatter and wit.
Whilst Lucian enjoyed the pre-show lecture in the Four Seasons Centre Amphitheatre, I slipped next door into the warmth of the Sheraton Centre Hotel and warmed myself on a glass of sherry whilst finishing off 2018’s Scotiabank Giller Prize winner on my KOBO.
What an utterly stunning tour de force. It was a moment to reflect, this Black History Month on just where we blacks are in the scheme of things. God only knows, it has been bruising to watch Meghan, HRH Duchess of Sussex become the print media’s most reviled and hunted fugitive from justice of that most vile creature, the racial predator.
I was still smarting at the events of a week earlier during the winter season’s first major snowstorm. I had been recalling to friends how strange it now was, compared to my first winter in Canada. December 1, 1974 and it snowed that day more than 8 inches. Back then it generally was guaranteed to snow once if not twice weekly. Now at end of January, 2019 and we were finally having our first major snow. This was not like snow from years past… Now it was a dirty, sooty-looking hard mess that lingered, largely in part because the city has contracted out its snow removal services.
As there are no windows in my apartment – Sol’s too damn bright by far and besides, boarded up windows afford me more art-hanging space – I got down in the early afternoon that Monday with my bike, only to be met by falling snow and several accumulated inches. Back up I went, retired the trusty chrome steed and returned and hopped into a snazzy Audi A6 Uber ride with a Macedonian whose spirit was as smooth and elegant as matchingly was his car. The mood set the tone for my day. As I am known to work 16-hr days, I called another Uber at the end of gig one whilst hoping to get to gig 2 in good time. The snow was still coming down; it was also bitterly cold and windy.
When finally, Uber #2 arrived, cold and dark with icy pellets mixed in with the snow, the driver rolled down his passenger side window and declared, “Sorry Buddy but I am going to have to cancel this ride…” Already running late, with my wheeled suitcase at the ready, he edged along as I tried to open the door and raised his voice, his eyes almost feral-looking beneath his turbanned, narrow skull. “I said I am cancelling you. One: I never take people like you in my car. Two: you have a shitty rating… Sorry, not sorry. Fuck you Buddy.” With that, he stepped on the gas and I had to swiftly haul me and suitcase out of the way as the rear of his red older model car whose interior did have that blasted malodorous melange of curry, dirty armpit, dirty arse, smegma and whatever the fuck else that passes for immigrants of choice these days. Finally, after having struggled out onto a still-not-ploughed Bay Street, I managed to hail the fourth cab whose West African driver insisted that I call Uber and report him… Days later, I was afforded assurances that the racist Dravidian was no longer part of Uber’s fleet. Similarly, when calling a Beck Taxi with a fairly generic name as Arvin, on coming downstairs the Indo-Canadian drivers on several occasions as though staying on script would feign obsequiousness and state that they were deeply sorry but owing to a family emergency, they were having to take the cab out of service. No sooner than having refused me a ride, they would then be observed heading out to Wellesley, turning on their unoccupied light and picking up a fare off the road. As if the blasted motherfuck, the likes of your overbred arse invented Jazz.
Each and every time that one experiences racial animus, is preyed on racially, it always harks back to that first winter in Toronto. My best mate from two summers earlier, when I would come to Canada to visit with my dad during school break, had been sick. After Sunday church service at Knox Presbyterian at Harbord and Spadina before returning to our beautiful home at 122 Mortimer Avenue, I would visit – my dad and I – with Tommy who was holding up at Toronto Sick Kids Hospital on University Avenue. My father explained that Tommy was sick with the winter flu, which sometimes could last for months and well beyond winter. I was a scrawny little fourteen-year-old who looked like most ten-year-old Canadian kids as I crawled the halls at Harbord Collegiate where among my mostly Italian-Canadian chums was future lawyer, Rocco Galati. As Tommy, who was a couple of years older than me, had gladly shared books with me the two summers prior that I would take to Knox summer camp and read then have a good stroke off, lusting after my inamorato, Tommy, I readily agreed to do his newspaper route for him until he came home. My first Saturday, the cart was overflowing with the thick Toronto Star newspaper and there was a good foot of snow everywhere. It was hellish but for Tommy, I was game to go the distance – who knows what hot frottage, docking and more was in the offing for having done his route for him! When I got to the northeast corner of Floyd and Bater Avenues that first Saturday to collect the funds, the door opened to a woman whose response to me was the most hideous display of the displaced madness that is white bigotry. Screaming at the top of her lungs, the woman in her upper seventies, vituperatively cursed my black bugger arse off and laid down the law. Never again, “you dirty little nigger” was I to set foot on her verandah.., I was to put the paper between her screen and front doors, knock then return to the top of her steps and wait for her to pay the bill. That first Saturday, she ripped the paper from my hand, flung the money at me. She was terrifying, in her faded blue A-line dress, black spectacles that had those upturned pointed edges at the sides; she wore faux pearls. Most of all, she wore the most hideously terrifying eyes. I remember how much they looked like eyes of a rooster, especially so for being such puffy eyes. Like the evolved, winged and feathered reptilians that roosters are, her eyes truly did look not the least bit human. She was so consumed with racial animus that it was truly frightening. By the time I made it home, I found myself regurgitating. Thereafter, every Saturday, I would take my spot at the top of the steps and consistently she would hurl out pennies mostly at me rather than the verandah where that first winter I had to suffer the indignity of picking through inches of snow on the verandah, steps and lawn to collect my money. Naturally, without fail she called most Saturdays to the Toronto Star, complaining of either not having received her paper on time or that it was missing altogether. This would mean having to buy her a replacement at the corner store, take it and only to be fed on by the hideous-of-spirit racial predator. Like a true cockhound many an indignity I suffered in hopes of my spectacled, full-lipped and scholarly inamorato, Tommy hooking up with me for having been so loyal to him. The summer prior, I had ventured to the public pool on Broadview at Riverdale Park with him and a couple of others and thrilled beyond belief was I to spy his large pendulous balls and that hammer-headed girthsome salami that pummelled his bikinis. Indeed, for Tommy I would suffer much indignity. There was a low-rise apartment building at 1111 Broadview where on the ground floor, there was another predator, this one equally septuagenarian who lived alone, smoked incessantly and always answered the door in various stages of undress, mostly ever only wearing a soiled merino. He was always a generous tipper; a whole 2$ bill in 1974/75 was serious cash. Naturally, in the pre-Ciaslis epoch old anorexic, drunken paunched predator would sometimes tug on the old bulbous semi-flaccid/semi-tumescent, though, pendulous but perfectly useless appendage, trying to lure me in. Sitting there in all that squalor and acting as though he was sugar daddy material… indeed. He was always keen on trying to grab me when giving me the “tip” and I was ever sly and crafty enough to get away from him each time. He, too, lead me to regurgitate, which I had not done since age nine and suffering my first racial attack. Of course, to this day, neither academia nor medicine will concede that there is any such a thing as the racial predator and the effects it has on those preyed on – mostly blacks – and the psyche/mental illness of those who prey on others chiefly non-blacks in varying degrees of severity based on otherness.
Finally, the house lights went down and I was met by the whimsical vista of the COC’s production of W. A. Mozart’s glorious opera, Cosi Fan Tutte. Previously, I had caught productions of this Mozart gem in Chicago, Montréal and New York City. I was not expecting much at this rate. The Frida Kahlo connection was a bit of a stretch but the butterflies fast won me over.
From the moment that she stepped onto stage, my spirit soared aloft higher than Mozart’s glorious music to that point had spirited me. Never before had there been so captivating a Despina. My eyes teared up and I was ever on the cusp of explosive giggles. Then what made me truly come undone was the moment Tracy Dahl took to the stage as the notary… by now, I was losing tears and beginning to emit choked snorted chuckles. Each Saturday back in 1974/75 when doing Tommy’s newspaper route, I would end off taking the Saturday Star to Giovanna an octogenarian Italian, who was plump, charming and more adorable than any mere mortal ought to be. Soon, we were fast lovers and she loved fussing over me, baking me each Saturday nice, warm, oven-fresh biscotti washed down with a glass of ice-cold “gingah raleh”… her thick Italian accent was part of her charm. Hers was a large black and white cat, simply known as pussy gatto, who always sat nesting on the armchair. Each week, Giovanna sat transfixed as I read her the newspaper; her vision was to that point fairly deteriorated. As a way of better forging our bond and because most of my mates at Harbord were Italian, for three years, I studied Italian and that really impressed Giovanna, who was simply known as “Mama Mia.”
As the opera progressed, Ms. Dahl as the notary, dashed and took cover beneath the table at which point, I buried my face in the program with explosive laughter. Straight away, I was reminded of each Saturday when the ever silent pussy gatto would bolt from the armchair and take cover beneath the sofa where I sat as Giovanna began an explosion of long-winded farts. Even the singer’s voice sounded much like Giovanna’s as she sang the role of notary. Remarkably, it was as though she was channelling Giovanna. In that moment, I was healed of the bile, which the recent Uber incident had caused to surface, bile that dated as far back as 1974.
In the end, Tommy’s parents sold their house and it was not until a couple years later that I discovered from the neighbour next-door that Tommy, who had never returned to their Mortimer and Logan home, had died of Leukaemia. Indeed, the winter flu was my dad’s way of protecting me from the callousness of having to lose a friend so early in life.
Apart from the catharsis that Tracy Dahl’s performance personally effected, I don’t think that it would be biased of me to state that hers was the runaway performance in the COC’s fantastic, and fast-paced I might add, production of Cosi Fan Tutte.
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As ever, mischievously push down and melt with laughter in celebration of the joy that is life and start having yourselves a most glorious of flying dreams. Thanks for your ongoing support of this happening astral joint on this side of the astral plane. I love you more.
Michael: This fragment is a fifth level mature artisan – second life thereat. George is in the power mode with a goal of growth. An idealist, he is in the moving part of intellectual centre.
Body type is Venus/Mars.
George’s primary chief feature is subdued arrogance and the secondary impatience.
The fragment George is fifth-cast in third cadence; he is a member of greater cadence four. George’s entity is five, cadre one, greater cadre 7, pod 414 – this is a cadre mate of Arvin’s and Merlin’s.
George’s essence twin is also an artisan and he has a sage task companion.
George’s primary needs are: expression, communion and power.
There are 10 past-life associations with Arvin and 14 with Merlin.
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Music is a language and Jazz is the language of a people; it speaks to no one else like it does us. No other music readily restores one’s humanity and sense of self like Jazz does. Interestingly, when a student at ballet school, I lived the most famous quote uttered by Diana, Princess of Wales in that Panorama interview that she gave to Martin Bashir: “There is no better way to dismantle a personality than to isolate it.”
That is why during my two hellish years in Winnipeg, the music of Jazz is what saved me. Interestingly enough, three musicians I looked to during that time more than any others; years later, I would discover that they are all cadre mates: Natalie Cole, John Coltrane and George Benson.
With the passing of cadre mates Natalie Cole and Roy Hargrove, it is high time to celebrate and pay homage to George Benson while he remains focussed here and now.
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Keep on flying right whether in the most blissful of dreams or the waking state’s unforgiving grittiness… then again, it is also maddeningly beautiful!
Whilst Lucian Mann-Chomedy took in the pre-opera lecture, I sat on a bench in the middle of University Avenue, enjoying a rather exquisite four-cheese macaroni and cheese baked to perfection as I read a very good biography of Tudor matriarch, Margaret Beaufort. Before me was the glass palace to the city’s high arts, beautifully lit. There were no doubt in my mind that I was shortly going to be enjoying a beautiful night at the theatre.
Once inside, I got situated next to Lucian who chatted away in that way that scholar souls tend to drone on about all manner of data that others may find tedious at best but, for having a scholar task companion (Merlin), I have grown comfortably accustomed. Close by, a tall silver-haired man kept on admiring me, even none too discreetly making bodily contact as legs relaxed and splayed open wide; in years past, I would gladly have explored and indulged.
After having made the obligatory Instagram post, I turned off the phone as the house lights faded into nothingness and the magic was begun. Tchaikovsky, you say, how could one go wrong there. The curtain ascended and the most glorious lucid dream this side of the dreamtime then unfolded. The sparse set design courtesy of Michel Levin’s creative genius was both stark and beautiful. Just the right lighting and the desired mood readily effected.
Leaves leaves leaves everywhere, the lighting of which matched the set and costumes. Last week’s production lacked melody, apart from the fact that Tchaikovsky’s music was well-known, there was nothing to that soulless, dissonant affair that drew you in or proved memorable – save it was really god-awfully bad.
During intermission, I stepped outdoors into the cool autumn air to return a couple of calls and pre-order an Uber meal. On my return, Lucian rightly so remarked on what a changed vibe there was in the house to the week prior. Indeed, there was stillness that hung in the air after each aria before the house would break into applause.
The prince’s aria was especially sublime a performance. The familiarity of glorious Tchaikovsky music, melodies long associated with the world of dance were welcome in the world of opera as Alexander Pushkin’s vision was handsomely realised.
After intermission the stark scene was beautifully animated as chairs, costumes and dancing ruled during the ball scene. The ball scene was dominated by classic Tchaikovsky music that choreographers the past century have relished celebrating in dance.
In the final act, one of things that struck me was how void of emotion the opera, Hadrian, the week prior was. Watching Onegin’s love finally profess her love for him after all these years, yet, insisting that she had to carry on with her life, her comfortable life and not leave it all for the man who pined for her was truly captivating. Ahead of me, two rows, were a couple of ladies who during that duet looked at each other, one even wiped her eyes.
This duet totally captured the human condition; it was about love, passion, longing, loss and dashed dreams. We could all relate to it. The passion and emotion tugged at your heart centre. Last week, not only was the music the most irritatingly banal but there was emperor Hadrian seemingly love struck, yet there was never any passion and emotion in scenes between him and Antinous. If you had no clue that this was one of the greatest love stories in gay history, you could be forgiven in assuming that it was an emperor bereft at the loss of his only son and heir, leaving him without the will to carry on. There simply was no connection, between them and by extension the audience… no passion whatsoever. Regardless their homoerotic love, the opera failed to have aroused emotion, passion and thereby causing you to lose yourself and identify completely with Hadrian, Antinous… or both.
That’s what one goes to the theatre for. At curtain call, rather than jump up and flee the theatre horrified as last week, I shot to my feet, clapped and howled my face off. Everyone leaving the theatre was enrobed in warmth and had been inspired to believe anew in love… that’s what great art does. What a truly memorable night in the theatre, this beautiful, passionate opera is with great melodies to spirit you along, long after you headed out into the world in the cool autumnal night air.
As ever, dream with the greatest passion for it is a true love affair indulged with self each and every day. Love yourself with new abandon and push off and start flying because you really are a truly spectacular work of art. As ever, thanks for your ongoing support. I love you more than you know.
For standing up to the absurd indignity of the racial predator with their absurd construct, Apartheid, in your homeland, Winnie Mandela thank you so much; were it not for you, Nelson Mandela would never have made it out of Robben Island alive. Amandla! Sweet and blissful dreams be yours… you were nothing short of an African Queen in full; you were not perfect but triumphant leaders are never without their flaws! Amandla! You were unwavering in your conviction that your noble people would be free of the absurd indignity that was Apartheid, in your lifetime.. and that they were, in very large part to your able leadership. Amandla!
Well, after having been dazzled by Natalia Osipova, there was no doubt what next adventure my soul had to devour. I arrived at Pimlico Station and enjoyed the cool brisk walk to the red and white gorgeousness of the neighbourhood architecture. I arrived at 08:50, a good hour ahead of the opening. I took the time to place my palm on as many of the august sycamore trees in the neighbourhood as I could. There were some high-end cars waiting out front of the Tate Britain Museum to take in All Too Human as yet another jetliner roared towards London Heathrow. Definitely bulletproof, a stately Benz sat closest to the entrance with a smoky grey Bentley, SUV no less, parked furthest of the cars.
Eventually, persons began turning up and the engaging West African security agent who had the same strong, proud, full-lipped mouth as Leontyne Price’s closed one of the two heavy black doors to protect me as I waited outside the main glass sliding doors as a private event was underway — thus one couldn’t be allowed inside. Finally, persons began leaving, one of whom — in a beautifully vivid red coat — was Cherie Blair CBE, QC. She was proud-looking and had the kind of broad body that as I child was so familiar when growing up in the West Indies. She had that air about her that bespoke a life in the public eye; someone made a curt remark and she was quick on the rebuttal. I was much humoured and reminded of Saddam Hussein trading insults with the men who moments later gladly terminated his life.
Finally, it was on to the business in hand and what a beautifully stunning exhibition; one of the best contemporary art exhibitions that I have attended in years. The greatest discovery was the lush, richness of the Lucian Freud still-life, Two Plants. Thoroughly layered, engrossing and lyrical in its deft vividness. I was left teary eyed by its sublime beauty.
Of course, I was moments earlier moved to dewy-eyed focus when drinking in the rich tableau of the portrait of creative artist and true eccentric, Leigh Bowery whom many years earlier I had seen perform in New York City. I was reminded, of course, in Leigh’s passing of the countless many whom I have lost along the way to AIDS.
The poster for the show at Russell Square Tube Station in Bloomsbury. A wonderful tribute to Leigh who covered a fair bit of ground during his lifetime… sweet and blissful dreams be yours…
Naturally, I booked my flight based on two things: one, Giselle with Osipova and secondly, a joint exhibition featuring Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon. For that, I would gladly hop a Tesla to Iapetus. Of course, this exhibition was a pilgrimage of sorts for me and it was a way of paying homage to the artistic accomplishments of cadre mates.
As per the portrait of Lucian Freud above, these two artists are cadre mates of mine and Merlin’s. Lucian Freud is a mature priest in our entity (6). Along with Rudolf Nureyev and Grace Jones, Francis Bacon is next-door in entity 5 of our cadre. Francis is a mature artisan, Grace Jones a mature warrior and Rudolf Nureyev a mature sage… and how. I was thoroughly warmed to have drunk of their spirits.
This particular portrait, Isabel Rawsthrone, I especially loved. Raw, primal and emotionally intense there is something decidedly operatic about the focussed intensity of this portrait. After initially getting over the intensity of it, it proves rather warm and enveloping.
This was a thoroughly arresting and soul-stirring adage; it was a beautiful way to have begun the day’s adventures.
After walking past the noise of the construction/renovations taking place on the first floor — one of the workers was a real pulse-racer, looking as he did like no end of hot, rough sex and in work gear no less! Then it was downstairs to take in the Impressionists in London exhibition. I did not buy the catalogue. I always am a bit put-off by the association of the word “dream” when describing the works of impressionists. There is nothing unfocussed or diffused about dreams. Trust you me, as someone who recalls at least half a dozen dreams on average, oftentimes, dreams prove the most lucid part of any given day. Perhaps, it was all the wine the French impressionists consumed but the maudlin-feeling lighting just doesn’t do it for me… most times.
Having had my fill, off I went from Pimlico to Nothing Hill Gate in the wet snow and made the long trek to Kensington Palace where one of the most glorious flying dreams in this lifetime was set — also, in that dream was a then incarnate, Diana, Princess of Wales with her two beautiful-spirited sons, the future HRH Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and HRH Prince Henry of Wales and Duke of as-yet-known after he marries his beautiful bride, Ms. Meghan Markle — a mature artisan, to his mature warrior and an entity mate of his no less.
On the long trek along Broad Walk in Kensington Gardens from the high street, I enjoyed the look of snow everywhere. The odd flake fell from time to time as joggers braved the fierce wind off the park. One brave soul with a shock of close-cropped red hair, sported the greatest thighs as he jogged strictly in a pair of wrestler’s shorts. He proved warming for my blood, indeed.
As I got towards the edge of Kensington Palace the handsome raven above swooped in from off my rear right and towards the palace. He alighted, cocked the head at me and kept taking to the wind to come closer, all the while fixing me with a hard gaze. “Yes, of course, you can see my heart. Love is the password” I said aloud to the totemic creature as it kept on calling at me and edging ever closer, though, not being confrontational. Satisfied with my password, seemingly, it bobbed and took to the air never to alight again. I rather appreciated the warm welcome.
I loved the sparse beauty of the King’s Gallery at Kensington Palace, which — for me at least — was lauded over by the Equestrian Portrait of HM King Charles I by Sir Anthony van Dyck, who happens to be in entity 1 of my cadre; he, presently incarnate and one of my oldest friends, shortly is about to return from his winter stay at his Acapulco penthouse; I will be visiting him later this spring on the Canadian west coast.
A truly beautifully tailored, handsome suit, this one. I am not a big fashion person — I believe that one is best dressed when naked and preferably tumescent. I did, though, rather enjoyed the movement through the Diana, Princess of Wales exhibition.
A very beautiful second-level mature artisan, she was too.
Having been inspired by Diana, Princess of Wales’ portrait, I made my way to Charing Cross Station in Trafalgar Square and cut across the street where there was a broken water main flooding the street. As usual, Yoda was there doing his routine and, no doubt, earning a pretty quid. I took in the HRH Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge-curated exhibition, which had opened two nights earlier on my arrival. Though, I had stood outside the National Portrait Gallery to catch a glimpse of her arrival, I soon dashed off in the increasing snowfall, if I were to make my Jazz at Lincoln Center performance across town at the Barbican Center. So, having missed seeing her in person, the next best thing was to go gaze at the portrait of HRH Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. I love it as it is so layered and complex; she is a late-mature warrior soul.
As I move very, very quickly, I was out of there and soon grabbing a take-away fish and chips at Ben’s on Shaftesbury. I then headed back to my hotel, ate, napped and got ready for a night at Royal Albert Hall to see OVO.
Never before had I taken in a Cirque du Soleil performance — I have my reasons… Nonetheless, I just wanted to enjoy anew the ambiance and acoustics of the marvellous auditorium.
The show was no more engaging or exciting than bad bathhouse sex, which if it weren’t so late, one would never have bothered engaging in. A perfectly forgettable tourist sort of thing to indulge when there was no other nighttime entertainment going that was worthwhile. I could have taken in 42nd Street in the West End but I had already seen it at least a dozen times when then living and dancing in New York City in the early 1980s. The idea of taking in 42nd Street was only slightly less irritating than the thought of messy bathhouse sex… options… choices, indeed!
After the show, on the long walk from Royal Albert Hall to South Kensington Station, a young mesomorph asked me for a fag — I don’t smoke — but it was obvious what he was after. He sat across the narrow aisle on the eastbound Piccadilly Line ride and the rest proved a rather memorable night.
The morning after the night before, it was off to Windsor Castle, of which I will next blog.
Second night in London and there was still lots of snow — at least, by London standards; after Montréal where three feet of snow is no horror, 1.5 inches seemed to have arrested London in its tracks — I was all excited to see David Hallberg whose recent memoir I read on the flight over and carried in my custom Ruben Mack messenger bag, to have it signed after the performance. Enjoyed my glass of champagne and being in the balcony at Royal Opera house was magical. My seat was smack in the middle of three Japanese young ladies who were being chaperoned by their lovely teacher. I negotiated and they excitedly expressed their appreciation at being able to switch with me being on the end so that that they could all sit together. The closest two sat on their coats and I even offered the tinier future Gisellemy coat to sit on.
Naturally, I was returned to London as last June, I had pleasantly discovered Natalia Osipova dancing in Marguerite and Armand and was instantly a fan. There was no way that I was going to miss her Giselle. Midway through Act I of Giselle, David whom I had never previously seen perform, failed to have impressed. He seemed not to be dancing full out and the partnership seemed strained; it was as though they had not had enough rehearsals. Then after intermission and really good champagne, the company’s artistic director came to the stage to announce that Mr. Hallberg had been injured during Act I and would not be proceeding; he then announced that the youngster, Matthew Ball would dance the role of Prince Albrecht in Act II — the house went wild as he had days earlier made his debut in the ballet.
What then unfolded was the most glorious of evenings in the theatre. Ms. Osipova, who has the most phenomenal ballon ever witnessed on any ballerina — to say nothing of her turns — danced as if truly overjoyed. Mr. Ball was also fantastic and I howled for joy at their curtain calls. Heck, I, who never go backstage, went in hopes of having Mr. Hallberg sign my copy of his book; however, he was a no-show. Ms. Osipova, inordinately gracious and an ecstatic Mr. Ball, who had had to dash back to the theatre that evening, was only too happy to sign my copy of the program as a steady drizzle fell beyond the double, glass stage doors.
Of course, the night prior, I had trekked in even more snow out to Barbican Centre to catch yet another performance of the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra led by the unparallelled genius, Wynton Marsalis. The programme was exclusively Leonard Bernstein in a celebration of his centenary… and what a phenomenal show it was. London’s Jews were out in force to be sure. I sat next to a princely 93-year-old Jew whose energies were rather like those of Yehudi Menuhin and boy was this man gracious of spirit. To say the least, I had a ball.
Naturally, one goes to a Wynton Marsalis performance for the encores! And boy, he did not disappoint. As always, I unashamedly howled like mad at the end of all that. This musical genius’s fabulousness is out of this world. This truly was a marvellous way to celebrate a homecoming of sorts; London truly does feel like another West Indian isle. As Merlin and I shared a rather accomplished life as court musicians in late 18th century London, it is always great to be in London.
Though I had downloaded the app and had planned on biking whilst in London, the snow everywhere precluded any such adventure. So there was I next morning — the night of which I attended Giselle, leaving my hotel in Bloomsbury and making it from Russell Square to Piccadilly Circus to, of course, look at art.
Naturally, I had arrived at the Royal Academy at Burlington House to see what for me was the most eagerly anticipated art exhibition in years: Charles I, King and Collector. I was the first to have arrived for the show, slipped inside from the snow before being asked to wait outside by security. Whilst waiting at the head of the queue, there were three gentlemen who arrived, all on the other side of 70 years of age and they were the most urbane aristocrats whom I had ever encountered. The way they spoke; there was no denying that they were posh. Moreover, it was more than their accents; their use of language made it sound as though they were speaking a form of English which was mannered, musical and as though another language entirely.
Finally, once inside the exhibition, I was truly enthralled, moving from salon to salon as though in the most lucidly captivating dream. Here were all my favourite Sir Anthony van Dyck paintings in one place — plus, there were some which previously I had not seen… at least, in this lifetime. Naturally, there were also some rather intimate Sir Peter Paul Rubens in the exhibition, which featured the art from the impressive collection of HM King Charles I… that ode to swaggerliciousness and a young sage to boot.
I had managed to snap four paintings whilst moving through the first of ten salons when a kindly security agent asked that I obey the rules and refrain from taking photographs. This truly was as though caught in a flying dream as I moved intoxicated of spirit from salon to salon, I managed whilst looking at murals in one of the larger salons, to make my way to the inner sanctum where the most glorious Sir Anthony van Dycks were hung — the two equestrian portraits one from the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square the other, which previously was hung at Buckingham Palace; there was also that most striking portrait Charles at the hunt which normally is hung at Musée du Louvre. A lovely henna-braided African security agent informed me that I had progressed improperly and ought to retrace my steps and view the art in the salons on the periphery of the three large internal salons where murals, tapestries and the prized, aforementioned van Dycks of the Royal Collection collected by HM King Charles I were hung.
At the point at which I was about to leave one salon for the next, I suddenly and distinctly thought of Kritika Bhatt the Michael channeller who had been trained by Sarah J. Chambers one of the original channellers in the Michael group. I thought it odd at the time as I only ever would think of her when a request for overleaves are outstanding and my impatience is having her surface to mind as I wonder if I would be receiving the requested overleaves that day. Since this was not the case, I thought per chance, that I was thinking of her as she is known to have King Charles spaniels. Yes, that must be the out-of-nowhere association, I concluded.
On entering the next salon, I immediately moved towards the largest masterpiece and was struck by its depth and impressive use of strong bold colours. What’s more, I had never seen the painting before. Fascinating, I whispered before heading to the title to see the title and artist. I was struck dead in my tracks when reading, Esther before Ahaseuras by Jacopo Tintoretto. Wow! I exclaimed. Years earlier, in an email regarding the overleaves for other artists, Kritika had made mention that her current son had previously been the 16th century Italian artist, Jacopo Tintoretto! I was floored and for me that out-of-nowhere associative thought of Kritika was validation of the overleaves and information shared years earlier.
Earlier, whilst moving through the first salon, I had never come so close to Sir Anthony van Dyck’s Self-Portrait with Sunflower before. Taking the time to really study the painting, I was struck by my response; suddenly, at my solar plexus, I began experiencing a — not though rare — thumping which was independent of my cardio rhythm. Never before had I been able to so closely inspect the eyes in the self-portrait. What was really interesting was the look of the artist’s left eye in the painting; it really was a darker version of my Dutch born and oldest friend, Joop who previously had been Sir Anthony van Dyck. Though Joop’s eyes are a strong, soulful blue in this lifetime, they truly are the same eyes as Sir Anthony van Dyck’s in the self portrait. Different colour, same vibration… same intensity. I had not been expecting that and just as later whilst moving from one salon to the next, I was not expecting to have the Michael Teachings and overleaves validated. Nonetheless, there is was, two instances of overleaves validated and that was the kind of bonus that one could not have anticipated whilst planning this trip.
After purchasing my lovely catalogue of the exhibition, I moved across the street and did some shopping at the grand old dame, Fortnum & Mason. Let’s face it, I was there to slip into the eatery and score myself the best free lunch in London… and as ever, the bites on offer did not disappoint. I bought marvellous teas as only can be found at Fortnum & Mason then hopped onto a double decker, driving westerly along Piccadilly. Making my way up the stairs, I soon had to double back on myself when realising that the upper deck was packed with a sprinkling of London’s homeless, who obviously had been afforded refuge out of the cold and what for London was unheard of snows. God it smelt atrocious. As the bus made a right onto Buckingham Palace Road, I hopped off and made my way past the Royal Mews which were closed owing to snow and made it for the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace.
I was there to be wowed, though, sadly was not by the Restoration exhibition. Naturally, how could it have been a show to rival that at the Royal Academy when most of that art had been sold off by the time of HM King Charles II’s coronation. I would have been rather underwhelmed, had I gone to London just to take in this show. As it was, it served as ample reason to have appreciated the Royal Academy show even more.
Really got off on the vibration exuded by HM King James II as he held court in all his glory in the portrait in the same show at the Queen’s Gallery Buckingham Palace (following painting).
Well having had my fill of the Restoration art or the paucity thereof, I enjoyed trekking in the snows along Buckingham Palace Road to Victoria Station and descended into the depths of London’s Underground for yet another adventure.
Emerging from the bowels of London, I made it to the soul of the nation to pay homage, yet again, at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
I wanted to go and light a candle, I lit two actually, in homage to the ennobled lives that both Merlin and I enjoyed in this glorious city three centuries earlier — the memories of which readily surface in the dreamtime.
Before one gets too old to be able to make the trek, I managed my way to the whispering gallery, sat down and caught my wind back whilst reflecting on my life.
This place so rich in history, is also the sacred shrine where entity mates have left their mark. Henry Moore is an old artisan in my entity.
Of course, no visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral would be complete without paying a visit to the soul of the nation at its crypt and paying homage to ennobled souls who’ve made an indelible mark on London… on history. There is great and fittingly so, grandeur in the tomb of Arthur, Duke of Wellington’s resting place.
Of course, the other tomb which dominates the crypt at St. Paul’s Cathedral is that of Admiral Nelson, whom both Merlin and I knew during that incarnation. Doubtless, it was his passion and tales for and about Nevis, which planted that seed that sparked three lifetimes later with my soul’s choice to reincarnate into Nevis; indeed, it has proven an isle no less magical than his captivating anecdotes then must have been. Days later, of course, I would see the bullet which felled this great man whilst visiting Windsor Castle; that is for another post. For now, I rushed home, took a dream-filled nap before heading to Covent Garden and being wowed by two not one Albrechts and the most exciting prima ballerina on the planet… at least, as far as I am concerned.
As ever, thanks for your ongoing support and look forward in coming months to book three of my dream-filled memoirs, mandated by Merlin and which prove human civilisation’s first dream memoirs.
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Dreams are the poetic expression of the soul. 