Writing this down before it wanes

[I’m writing this down because every dream I’ve had involving Richard Armitage the person (as opposed to one of his characters) up until now has involved him yelling at me.

Background: Last night, after posting and just before I left my office I got a very angry message from a student in my modern Germany class, the same class in which yesterday’s student is enrolled. I cite: “I was put off that you extended the deadlines for papers. Furthermore, I felt like my third paper was done well- and then I received a C-, which killed any chance of me getting a good grade in this course. I wrote exactly what was asked by the paper options. I feel like the grading in this class is a little too subjective, which I feel is a result of your advanced levels of professional debating skills as a historian. […] I feel like I put way more effort, time, and reading into this course than all the negative feedback I was given in my grades.” I left, ate a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich at a local diner, went home, and crawled into bed. Shortly before 8:00 a.m. I dreamed the dream below. Other info: My friend and colleague the former Cambridge professor is 74, lives here in separation from his (by his estimation difficult) family in England, and has the office next door. He’s a curmudgeon, we both spend a lot of time writing in our offices on weekends, and for most of this year we’ve been drinking a glass of wine in my office once a week or so and chewing through things. Last night it was dual: the results of an FOIA request that a local newspaper filed to obtain information about measures of faculty productivity at my university, and what he thinks I should do with my life (continue teaching). In real life, Servetus never engages in prophylactic tidying. Ever.

For comparison: Skully, who seems to dream about him a lot more, writes about her latest Armitage dream.]

***

As the dream opens, I am married to my friend and colleague the former Cambridge professor. We are living in Cambridge, in two separate, very modern, very sleek apartments, i.e., we are married but do not live together. (There’s no visual indication this is Cambridge but I feel that I am living in Cambridge.) The apartments are across the hall from each other on the upper floor of a modest building. They have a surprising number of windows. The abundant sunlight feels brittle and cold but I only experience it from the inside of the apartment. There is a very specific ritual as to when we may disturb each other, what we may expect from each other, what must be said during every encounter. Mostly, we write all day and then get together for very healthy meals that I make and a glass of wine in the evening. We talk about music, books, and how rotten the world is. I am writing a great deal, but I am tense. I live for these evening conversations and when I am talking to him I feel how much I love him, but I feel when I see him that I have to put on a mask in order to be loved, i.e., I have to perform the role of the person he loves, not just to be loved myself, but also because he needs to see that performance so badly.

Eventually (no rationale for this decision emerges in the dream) we gather our luggage and exit the building we are living in. As we leave, we see that we are not in Cambridge, but instead in a city that I recognize (not a real city — one that has features of Berlin and Chicago but also of the city in which I currently live). All that I can see from my position on the ground is extremely large, heavily occupied parking lots with occasional skyscrapers here and there. I recognize that some of these skyscrapers are very famous buildings by architects whose work I know. He and I are disproportionately small in comparison to the landscape, probably about fifty percent “shorter” than we are in real life. The sun is beating down on us oppressively and we don’t want to risk walking the wrong way because the weather makes moving so laborious. I say, “if we want to get there we are walking in the wrong direction,” but he is gone, and I walk alone with all of my stuff, into a hotel.

In the hotel, it is very dark in the lobby. (The hotel seems like the one I stayed in January, but now I do not know where I am at all except in this very large, very dark mid-range hotel.) I am wearing desert camo and extremely stylish sunglasses and carrying a heavy army-issue backpack and an automatic rifle. As the staff of the hotel rush to help me with my stuff, I realize that I am an actress who has been cast in a major motion picture with a medieval theme and a number of actors and actresses who are well known, among them Richard Armitage. I feel that I am a natural peer or member of this group, i.e., I am also a respected thespian. All through the hotel it is very dark. I shake off the porters, check in, and take my stuff up to the room and as I put it down I realize I am covered with dust and pollen, but I do not shower. I toss the backpack in a corner and change clothes to go to a lounge that the film production company has arranged for the actors to use in order to socialize with each other. Now I am about six inches taller and much thinner and wearing black pants, a button front shirt, and sensible pumps. As I walk there I think, “I hope that I finally get to meet Richard Armitage because we are doing a lot of scenes together.” In the lounge many of the other actors and actresses are there talking to each other and I go in. There’s a drinks bar and some kind of reception is going on. I get involved in a conversation with an important actress and I never notice whether Armitage is there. Eventually a person comes in, yells to get our attention, and tells us that we need to go down into the lobby for a photo op for the beginning of the filming, and then we are all going to dinner together. In the elevator going down I find myself talking about professional matters to Jonas Armstrong. We do the picture taking.

Richard Armitage, Aidan Turner at The Hobbit press conference, Wellington, NZ, February 11, 2011. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

The dream omits what happens at dinner and the action resumes afterwards, when we are again all in this lounge where we’ll be socializing with each other for the length of the shoot. Gradually the actresses and actors all pair off and leave the lounge. I perceive that they are all leaving to have sex with each other. At some point I am alone in the lounge and then Richard Armitage is also there in his The Hobbit press conference guise: bushy brown hair and beard, jeans and short sleeve button front shirt. The lounge is littered with all kinds of things the actors and actresses have left there — books and garments and empty dishes and cups and scripts and so on. I say to Armitage, who already seems to know who I am, without self-introduction or preface, “what a mess, I have to clean this up.” Armitage says, “don’t you want to run lines together before tomorrow?” and I say, “I don’t think I was ever sent the last iteration of the script,” and I start picking stuff up from the lounge. I realize that much of the stuff I am picking up is my own: my favorite Norwegian sweater, purchased in 1999, turned inside out, a blue silk blouse I had in grad school but haven’t seen in years, a cheap gray fleece hoodie I just bought at Walmart two weeks ago. “I have to get this stuff picked up or I won’t be able to think.” Armitage looks like he’s about to say something, but …

… the scene shifts and I am walking out of the hotel. As soon as I get out, I am walking across the same parking lot from earlier and I have on my commencement regalia, and I am gradually stripping it off as throw it on the ground. I kick off my shoes as I enter the building where I give my modern German history lectures and I still have on the kneelength sleeveless black sundress that I have been wearing this whole week but I peel it off too and I enter the auditorium. It’s my modern Germany lecture and both students (the grateful one and the angry one) are present. I am now completely naked. No one including me or my TA seems to find this very strange. I tell the students that I am here to teach them that they must do what they love. Many appear to be sleeping. I start gesturing with my arms.

Alarm clock goes off.

~ by Servetus on May 14, 2011.