On 23 July 2020, I wrote a prophetic post here on this weblog. Today I shall explain its only true meaning.
Dear diary,
I repeat: yesterday I wrote a post called “My dream from Nov. 12, told as a diary entry”; and now I’d like to explain what I might have been thinking.
First, the idea appealed to me to name my post the opposite of what it really was — so its title implies that I dreamt something and now I’m transcribing it, when the truth is that I’m consciously composing what would be regular diary-material in a way that impersonates a night-vison.
In other words, instead of a dream told as a diary entry, it’s a diary entry fabricated into a dream. (Now that I’ve stated it so plainly, it seems like a stupid idea, but, at the time, it really appealed to me — please remember, I’m living in hell.)
The reason I began by riding my “air-powered scooter” is simple: When I think of motorized vehicles, I imagine that they’re either powered by gas or electricity. Therefore I thot it would be fun to pilot a scooter that requires an air-compressor to operate. That way, there would be a long cord extending from my vehicle’s air-valve (in place of the gas-tank or battery) and ultimately attaching to some ovoid machine that is plugged into an outlet on the wall of my garage. Thus, this cord would need to be long enough to reach to “the public square” at the “center of town” because that’s where I went.
Another reason I often reference air power is that it reminds me of the Apostle Paul’s remark about the Devil, whom he nicknames “the prince of the power of the air” in his epistle to the Ephesians (2:2)...
In time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
Now, regarding the initial clash of my diary-dream, the onslaught of the “Modern Bureaucrats” against the “Ancient Saxophonists” was obviously just a thinly veiled reference to the online videos that I’d been watching on Wednesday evening, showing state goons versus peaceful protesters. – I wanted to reference the violence that the militarized Homeland Security guards (or whatever they’re called) and other officers were inflicting upon the assemblage of citizens, but I didn’t want to indulge in grotesque descriptions — I didn’t wanna write about bloodshed and broken bones; so I chose to make the people into “damsels” and “nymphs”, which I classed as “Ancients” to emphasize the common folk’s long struggle against authoritarianism, which I guess predates even the Age of Kings, and I made them all saxophonists because that instrument seems to me to be a hybrid of old and new, and it was nice to have them all playing a free jazz song on-beat and in harmony, so that the armed guards could be enticed by something pleasant and invited to participate in it. I wanted to emphasize that the crux of all the present turmoil is that “every thing that lives is holy”, even Homeland Security cops; so it’ll be nice when they take off their helmets, show their face and join humanity — and we will welcome them when they do.
(If I’m naive to think this way, then I’m naive: that’s OK with me. However, read on, gentle reader, for I also have many contradictory attitudes to offer: just you wait!)
So instead of portraying the Bureaucrats as beating up the river-nymphs, I had them knock their saxophones out of their arms.
And the reason that I wrote myself into the story and portrayed my own character as saving the day is that I’m a showboat and conceited beyond measure. I like this about myself. It also tickled me to defy my idol Emerson’s idea about arguments never convincing anyone: so I forced myself to read Moral Philosophy aloud to all the cops, and I paid the cops to actually listen and repent when they hear my message. Even stating the concept drily in this present explanation makes me laugh a little — I always wondered what type of person would ever be persuaded to act differently after reading the abstract statements and convoluted reasoning of a given philosopher on the topic of so-called morality. I also portrayed myself as showing the troops of armed guards the social-media feed from my portable smart-phone, cuz it makes me laugh even harder to think that such memes, micro-blogs, and status updates would ever change any person’s mind in actual existence, out in the real world, in the weeds during warfare.
Now, since I’ve been working on binding all my previous journals into book-form of late, I’ve needed to refresh my mind about how book covers look — front, back, and spine — and I wanted a reference point, so that I could have a model to work from; because this area is decidedly not my forte; moreover I wished to know how such a work could or should be titled — do I call my project simply Bryan Ray: Blogs, or how about Collected Essays (ooh, that sounds prestigious!), or The Muckraking Journalism of Bryan Ray? — So, for this purpose of having an exemplar to rebel against, I had fetched from my bookshelf and placed on my desk my paperback copy of Franz Kafka’s Diaries (edited by Max Brod; published by Schocken Books; copyright 1988 Random House, Inc.); and, contrary to my habit (which is to write from my mind alone and use nothing as a springboard), before I began to compose my post from yesterday, I opened Mr. Kafka’s book at random and began to read one of his entries; and it happened to be the one dated 12 November, 1911. So that’s the reason I named the entry “My dream from Nov. 12” — cuz I tried to make a lying dream that would dance with his account.
That’s why I said “there was an event in a nearby building that I was planning to catch.” Cuz his entry starts by describing a lecture by Richepin that Kafka attended in the Rudolphinum. And I substituted Oliver Stone for K’s lecturer, because I had recently watched an interview with Stone that affected me similarly to how Kafka describes responding to Richepin’s speech:
. . . Richepin had an effect upon me such as Solomon must have felt when he took young girls into his bed.
Also I said that “someone had placed a grand piano directly in front of the entryway”; then I compelled Mr. Stone to climb over it, to get to center stage — this was me reacting to the following lines from K:
As though on sudden inspiration to test the manners of the lecturer, a large piano is standing in the way between the small entrance door and the lecturer’s table. The lecturer enters: He wants, with his eyes on the audience, to reach his table by the shortest route, therefore comes close to the piano, is startled, steps back and walks around it softly without looking at the audience again.
And the reason that I leaped onstage, in my own affidavit, and physically attacked the piano, causing the instrument to split down the middle, just like the Red Sea, is that I wanted to take vengeance against this object for assaulting Mr. Stone by allowing him to walk into it accidentally — this was all partly my reaction to the rest of K’s passage:
In the enthusiasm at the end of his speech and in the loud applause, he naturally forgot the piano, as it did not call attention to itself during the lecture. With his hands on his chest, he wants to turn his back on the audience as late as possible, therefore takes several elegant steps to the side, naturally bumps gently into the piano and, on tiptoe, must arch his back a little before he gets into the clear again.
And the reason I had my character summon up two donkeys from Sheol and order them to go onstage and clear away the two halves of the piano so that the Passion Play could begin was because they do the exact same thing in Un Chien Andalou (“An Andalusian Dog”) the 1929 film by Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí. Here’s a quote of the part that I’m referring to, taken from the encyclopedia’s recap (emphasis mine):
TWO nameless protagonists (played by Bryan & Buñuel) pick up TWO ropes & drag TWO grand pianos across TWO stages; each instrument being topped by TWIN marvels, including TWO sleeping donkeys, TWO stone tablets (on which are written TWO Commandments by the SECOND Jehovah (Master Jesus): “Love all life, proportionate to its possession of the Poetic Genius” — Matthew 22:35-40), TWO pumpkins, & TWO mock-bewildered priests (played by Kafka & Dalí).
And the reason that I portrayed the thespians as “swinging toward the stage on vines” is that I was thinking of Tarzan, the “feral child raised in the African jungle by great apes, who later experiences civilization only to reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer.” Here’s another excerpt from the encyclopedia:
The movie version of Tarzan as a savage (“Me Tarzan, You Jane”), does not reflect the original character from the scriptures, who is gracious and highly sophisticated.
And the reason I had my play turn out so good is that Kafka claims that his play was badly performed — “I no longer have much confidence in this theatre,” he sez — and I just wanted to go in the opposite direction. Tho perhaps he & I are actually watching the same performance & then each simply having our own unique reactions. (K’s play is from his 19 November entry, I now realize, which recounts a dream.) This is also why I have Kafka sitting “diagonally behind me” — for he sez:
I sit right up at the front, think I am sitting in the first row until it finally appears that it is the second.
That’s cuz I appeared; and the last shall be first. K also sez:
The author is somewhere near by, I can’t hold back my poor opinion of the play which I seem to know from before…
So this also may explain why I shush him. And you’ll recall that my announcer announces every player’s name and role with absolute perfection, which is to say: 100% accuracy; and the star is Mary who plays herself. This is a reaction to the following passage by K.
...the play is not well rehearsed, either. Thus, an actress named Hackelberg has just entered; an actor, leaning back in his chair like a man of the world, addresses her as ‘Hackel’, then becomes aware of his mistake and corrects himself. Now a girl enters whom I know (her name is Frankel, I think), she climbs over the back of the seat right where I am sitting; her back, when she climbs over, is entirely naked…
This idea of climbing onstage from out of the audience might also have informed my decision to enter the story at various points; but it’s also true that I do this type of thing frequently, so I don’t think I needed Kafka’s permission to go wherever I want in my own scenery.
And I have Mary the mother of God becoming a prostitute and then wedding her natural son, as a callback to my 17 July 2020 entry, where I have the twin brothers of Columbia (goddess of America, according to the U.S. so-called Founding Fathers) combine the Sophoclean Gospel of Oedipus with the Pauline Myth of Christ.
I should probably add that the reason my character collects torpedoes in his apartment is that it reminds me of the way that the United States stockpiles nuclear arms: and all the doors that lead to the adjacent apartments of my neighbors are like the fact that all the countries share the same globe, so it’s not safe for any single one of us to store explosives even within our imaginary borderlines — it’ll only kill us all.
And a few of the entries that Kafka wrote during that same month between the 12th and his dream on the 19th are sorta included in my post, too. So the part in his diary which begins “It seems so dreadful to be a bachelor…” worked itself in, but only in an obscure and abstract way. For instance, K talks about lying in sickness, alone and uncared for, as an old, unmarried man, and
having only the solace of the view from one’s window when one can sit up, to have only side-doors in one’s room leading into other people’s living-rooms [etc…]
— all this sparked my imagination.
Lastly, the reason that I ordered my alter ego to polish his torpedo collection “proudly with a soft cloth” is that I remember reading instruction manuals for various electronic devices, most of which contain delicate exteriors, and these pamphlets usually have a “care and maintenance” section, which tells about how to keep your new possession looking attractive, so that it can remain presentable in the event that another device decides to court it: & the writers of such booklets usually say something like:
Caress your computing device gently with a soft cloth, making circular motions in a clockwise direction only. Never use abrasive pads or corrosive substances to clean your private property; & refrain from pouring hydrofluoric acid over everything you own.
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