Dreams

I dream a lot. And generally pretty vividly. Sometimes I wonder if my dream life is my real life and my real life is a dream.

Last night I had an unreal dream that, while I was dreaming it, was as real as my life. I even said to myself inside the dream, "this is only a dream" but not waking up at that point seemed to prove to me it was real. Even though I seemed to know I was sweating out the flu and my throat was sore. What did I dream that was so real to me even when I was coming out of my sleep? I was at a hotel somewhere, not sure what I was doing there, the details were fuzzy and not relevant. Somehow I ran into a female singer. She was Alanis Morrisette even though she didn't look like her. I played a tape of a song I'd written to see if she wanted to cover it. She did but also wanted another song that I had also written called "We Can." I could even hear the songs in my dream. The music and the lyrics. The second song was climbing the charts and was at #18 when I woke up and slowly realized that I wasn't going to be collecting any royalties off my song.

Bummer. What's worse is I can't remember the songs. If I could, I'd write them down. No matter that I'm not a musician, having only dabbled in poetry back in the day and barely played the flute.

Stranger yet, I happened to catch Stephanie Meyer (Twilight series author) on Oprah today. Turns out the idea for the first book came to her in a dream. She saw the Edward and Bella characters talking to each other in a forest. She remembered every word they said to each other. The vampire and the innocent. Even though she had no experience as a writer and had no interest in vampires or the horror genre, she felt compelled to write down what she had dreamed and figure out what happened to the characters. Her first word was written in 2003 and the first book hit the shelves in 2005. Even though she had never written before. Even though she had no connections in the publishing world. If you know anything about publishing you know that is break-neck speed.

On one hand I was really happy for her. On another I was wondering why I couldn't remember the songs. Other than the fact that they were really good. Or maybe they weren't. I've dreamed whole script scenarios before only to realize that they weren't quite as fantastic in my real world as they were in my dream world. Or maybe I just didn't give them a chance to breathe. Either way, I think it's time to keep a pad of paper next to the bed.

What do you dream? Any #1 bestsellers or hit songs lurking in your sub conscious?