When in Rome...

Last night I had another weird dream. In the beginning I was walking along a beautiful beach in Rome, all white sand and blue water. The waves were rolling in, soaking my feet as I was walking along. The strange thing was, I was the only person on this beach as far as I could see. It made me wonder (in my dream) if people were actually allowed there. And then I could see this giant wave coming towards me. I was half-trying to run away from it, but with the soft sand I couldn't get anywhere. And then I was swept away by it and landed in a sort of museum. I was having a bit of a look around, I mainly remember corridors and other people rather than any objects. After a while I walked down some stairs into a little yard-type place, all stone with palm trees. It was half underground, and there were other people there waiting for something. From this half underground yard there was a lift at one end, and two sets of stairs; the one that I'd walked down to get there and one that led to the street outside the museum. I was waiting there for a while, nodding casually at the guard by the lift, whilst trying to figure out how I was going to get back to my hotel. I had my backpack with me, and in it I had a guidebook, complete with a map, and enough money to get a taxi if I'd want to. I was thinking about getting the tube (the lift led to the station), but realised that I wouldn't know what to do once I got to the station. So I tried walking. At first I ended up in some sort of jungle amongst other people on some sort of safari trip. I realised I'd walked the wrong way, so I went back to the yard. I made another attempt at walking, reading the name of the street outside, but somehow not thinking about looking it up on my map. In the end I just waited in the yard until I woke up.

What is strange with this dream is that I had all the means to get away, and even in the dream I thought about going to the subway station and ask someone to help me get a ticket and get on the right train. But even though I knew all these things I just didn't get anywhere.

Today (apart from doing a zillion other things), I've met up with a person who could probably most rightly be described as the Daughter to Friends of the Family. She's 16 years old or something like that. We play music together, on the initiative of our mothers. This girl apparently wanted to play folk music, but no one her age wanted to play that kind of music with her. So that's where I come in. Any old how, we've met up a few times, and I really really get on with her. The first playdates (pun intended) were pretty awkward, but since we've taken to drinking tea together and sort of just talking for hours on end. And playing music aswell, obviously. She's got a weird musical gift that I desperately struggle to understand. Playing with her is different from anyone else I played with. I mean, she is terribly gifted. She plays three instruments and has got a kick-ass singing voice. She can read music, no worries. But it's like something's missing when it comes to rhytm. For some reason it takes a lot of practice for us to be able to get through a piece of music together. It's really weird, I've never experienced this with anyone else. Usually you can sort of freestyle a bit, you know, you'll find the key and the beat no worries. But this just doesn't work with this girl. It's tempting to bring up that old klichee about feeling and technical skills being somehow opposing forces, but 1) I don't think that's true, and 2) it's obviously not the case with this girl. I will have to think more about this. Main thing is I enjoy spending time with her and I hope it's mutual.