I once had a crush on this guy. (Don’t ask why. Certainly not for his stunning good looks.) Actually, I was hopelessly hung up on him for about four years, and probably not as secretly as I thought at the time. He was a bass in choir, lead trumpet in band, and enrolled in all the same advanced classes I was in. His name is Matt, and this is his Senior picture, scanned right from the 1994 Buckeye High School yearbook.
I dreamed about him last night.
Allow me to digress for a moment. I believe (and some people think I’m way off-base) that in dreams, some people or places can and do represent aspects of the dreamer’s life. Some mistakes and triumphs, relived in different ways, can draw parallels between today and yesteryear. For instance, when I was about to graduate college (and had been for some time), and my grades were beyond slipping and my attitude was beyond sucking, I kept dreaming about aging out of drumcorps. I relived the final performance in a dozen different ways: forgetting the drill and having to step off the field, missing uniform parts, losing my mellophone, not knowing the music, all the typical terrors. Except in these dreams, I came away with the distinct knowledge that I had lost something I had worked hard toward for so long. I drew a waking parallel between the dream-disasters and my current sitation of almost not graduating. I’m not sure it actually helped my real-life situation any, but at least I knew what my brain was throwing out at me.
Last night, I dreamed about Matt. I forget the details, since it was a day ago and all, but I remember the gist. There was a choir/band get-together, or reunion, or something in the Music Room at my high school. Of course, everyone looked just as I remember them from eight years ago. The main thing I recall is that Matt and I shared the easy spontaneity of old friends (something we never experienced in real life — I was always too flustered by him). In the dream, we even traded innuendos: something about me liking sausage…? At any rate, it was clear that he knew that I had "liked" him. Maybe we’d even fooled around. In the dreamworld, it’s hard to be sure.
Without recapping all of my remembered dreams for the past several months, suffice it to say that I’ve dreamed about Matt before. No, it’s not some bizarro redhead fetish come to the surface. But putting these dreams together, and adding in my real-life thoughts, I think that Matt has come to represent a part of my psyche. I think Matt represents my former love of music. Not that I don’t love music anymore, but I’m no longer directly involved in it, and I think it filled a void that I didn’t realize at the time. But Matt helped me get into high school band when I didn’t play an instrument by vouching for my musicianship in choir, and he was one of my personal peer-heroes in high school. I think he represents my longing to return to performing, combined with my nostalgia for an era past. Not necessarily high school itself, but those years when I was immersed in music — choir, band, and drumcorps.
Some people will think this dream quasi-analysis is bullshit. You’re welcome to your opinion. This analysis is like Tarot for me, like meditation. Even if it’s bullshit in itself, it brings forth the things I need to think about. The things that matter to me, the things that need addressing. Music was once how I defined myself. Having that large of a chunk of my being unaccounted for is… disconcerting at best.
So… I wonder what Matt is doing these days?
I recall that being the most powerful experience in “oneness” with an ensemble… up until that point. In the Northern Aurora Drum and Bugle Corps, we had another tradition, one that transcended “Eyes With Pride” for me. At every corps dismissal, be it at camps, circled up after a show, or following rehearsal, the drum major or corps manager would call us up: “Corps — Ten-Hut!” We would snap to attention, horns snapping to shoulder-level, flags snapping straight, drumsticks snapping into position. The drum major would then call into the silence: “Corps! Dismissed!” and we would answer, “One!”
During every winter camp at NA, when potential new members would be attending, the corps manager would explain that this word referred not to a placement or a ranking, but a feeling of unity with our corpsmates. I refused to join in the response until the camp when I was officially signed as a member of Northern Aurora. At the dismissal of that camp, I answered the call as one member of a team, of a family. It was just as powerful then as it was through the two years I marched in NA, all the way through until our last dismissal at Division III Finals in Orlando, Florida in 1996.