I finally got to sleep last night and had a new dream. As a forward note, I really, really want a vibraphone, badly, which is relevant. In the dream I was on the sidewalk in front of my house, and I found that by holding an imaginary mallet and striking in the direction of the sidewalk, I could get tones from it - as if I was playing a vibraphone. I had no mallets, but by acting as though I did, pretending, making the same movements - my imaginary mallets pulled quick round tones from the sidewalk. Moving down the block there was a manhole to the stormsewers, under which the sidewalk was empty, and the resonant sounds that came from my new cavernous concrete glockenspiel rang high and hung in the air with a vibrato not generated by motors but by the echoing tone reaching new branches in the tunnel and reflecting back to street level. I ran down the sidewalk like a little kid madly waving and dragging my invisible mallets, a subterranean glissando rising behind. My footsteps did nothing - only when I willed it did the concrete sound. I guess it was probably about more than wanting a vibraphone.
