I Was Not Listening to Stars

Photo by Sasha Grey

I had a dream, which is the start of every sentence nobody wants to hear unless it’s Martin Luther King Jr., that I was walking with a friend and art partner who I obviously fabricated for this scenario. I hate when the brain does that, so when you wake up you’re left trying to remember who they are and if any figment of them exists somewhere in reality.

But we were walking around this desolate vertical city area, picture sort of Santogold music video pre-paint explosion and this guy on a high up fire escape left of where we were going beckons us to look at the wide fire escape high up on the building across from his. He started explaining it as this paramount artwork, we were sure he was fucking high as shit because all we saw was a fire escape. Until a spark of fire seized up on it and was spreading to reach the whole landing and suddenly this girl emerged to set herself on fire. We shouted at her to stop, knowing like any person performing for any audience is going to do what they want and was devoured by flames like… well, the superhero The Flame.

Photo by Sasha Grey

She’s standing there like a fireball, when the guy who directed us to the sight, her collaborator, also lit a match to himself and unexpectedly jumped off the fire escape together. As they hit the ground, it burst into an explosion of molten lava like a spoon cannon balling into a cup of custard. My friend turned down the street in our original direction before this whole spectacle, and this collection of lava and sparks were popping out of the ground, bursting like nothing I will ever see.

We started running backwards but we were trapped and my mind flooded with the spectacle and the artists who had made some kind of profound statement you never remember when you wake up. All of their work was being compared to my own with my collaborator and some kind of epiphany of their superiority to martyr for this secret message to two strangers on the street. We couldn’t run back because the lava had spread there too, we were trapped in a frenzy of our survival adrenaline. As we were running and reflecting and panicking in unison, a gold nail from the lava drove into the back of my skull and some melted gold flecks that expanded on the back of my head. It was a blessing and utter pain fearing the nail would push further in my head and kill me.


I really hate my dreams.