Category: blog

Earlier this year, I became completely hooked on the podcast Serial. I wasn’t alone, as it rocketed to the top of the charts in every podcast directory, and became A Thing for about three months.

Ever since it ended, I’ve been looking for something to pick up where it left off, in terms of pacing, compelling subject matter, production quality, and intellectual stimulation. I expected that podcast directories like Stitcher and iTunes would be the place to find what I was looking for, but other than recommending This American Life, they weren’t very helpful.

Enter my friend Ed. Ed is a writer who is currently doing a magnificent comic about the early years of Hollywood called The Fadeout. Ed turned me on to a podcast called ​You Must Remember This, which is about Hollywood’s first century.

For the last couple of months, You Must Remember This has been looking back at ​the Manson Murders, unpacking where Charles Manson came from (both physically and spiritually), and how the changing scene within Hollywood (as a geographic location and an industry) in the 1960s created an environment where he and his followers could find each other.

This season, You Must Remember This will explore the murders committed in the summer of 1969 by followers of Charles Manson, and the Hollywood music and movie scene surrounding the killings. Throughout the series, we’ll learn how a single sociopath’s thwarted dreams of fame and fortune led to the gruesome events which became the symbolic “end of the sixties.” Future episodes will explore the various celebrities, musicians, movie stars and filmmakers (including Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, The Beach Boys, Dennis Hopper, Doris Day and more) whose paths crossed with Manson’s in meaningful ways, both leading up to the murders and in their aftermath.

I love this podcast, and once I get caught up on the Manson episodes, I’m going to go back to the beginning and binge the whole series. I think some of you will like it, too.

My sleep tracker says that I slept for 8 hours last night, but it’s lying. I slept for about 3 minutes, because I spent the rest of the time I was in bed trapped in a stress dream that touched nightmare territory from time to time, but was so weird it’s worth sharing.

I was in a play, but I didn’t know my lines, or what I was supposed to do. This is a very common theme in my stress dreams.

The play was being performed in a pop-up banquet tent at my Aunt Val’s house in the valley. The geography of the house was distorted in that weird way that dreams distort things to make them fit together in ways that would never work in our waking world. In this case, her back yard was big enough to hold about two hundred audience members in the tent.

So far, this is just a standard stress dream, and this is where it gets weird and worth writing about.

• The play was a version of Star Wars.
• This version of Star Wars had been adapted to fit inside the Welcome to Night Vale universe.
• The entire cast was playing characters from Welcome to Night Vale, but none of them were the actual Night Vale cast members.
• I was playing R2-D2. My costume was a blue hoodie.

In the dream, we had one rehearsal, while the tents were being set up. I saw my lines in the script, but I couldn’t get them to stay in my head. I don’t know why R2-D2 spoke instead of beeping in this version of Star Wars, but I suspect that it had something to do with it being set in Night Vale.

Time shifted, like it does in dreams, and the tent was full. The play was happening, and I was waiting to go on stage with two other actors. I think one of them was playing a version of Yoda or a Luke/Yoda hybrid for some reason. Again: Night Vale. The plastic wall of the tent (I’ve just now realized that the tent may have been selected by my brain because I’ve been reading The Martian) parted, and the three of us entered the scene together.

Only I was supposed to be on my knees, so I was, and I couldn’t move. You know, the way you can’t move in dreams sometimes.

So I’m R2-D2, in a Star Wars play that’s set in the  Welcome to Night Vale universe, being performed at my dead great aunt’s house for an audience that’s far too big to fit in her back yard, and I’m stuck in the curtain, unable to move.

One of the other actors whispers to me that I need to follow her, and I’m doing my best to shuffle along on my knees, keeping my arms straight to look like R2’s legs, and I realize that the other actors are just standing there, waiting for me. I don’t know my lines, I don’t know when I’m supposed to say them, but I recognize the scene from the movie. We’re in the blockade runner, waiting for the Empire to board the ship. We’re in the end of a corridor … and that’s all I know. The other actors say their lines, look at me expectantly when I’m supposed to say mine, and I improvise whatever I think is supposed to go there. The scene lurches along for a few minutes, until I just decide that I’m done with it, and exit right through the back wall of the stage.

Once I get backstage, I take off my hoodie, and I make a decision: I’m going to just disappear. R2 isn’t that important to this version of the story, and it’s going to be better without me in it. So I stand up, and I walk down the side of my great aunt’s house toward the street, and I find myself on the side yard of the house I grew up in. According to the rules and physics of dreams, this makes complete sense, so I start walking around the house, pacing, as I try to talk myself into staying off the stage. Somehow, I end up inside my great aunt’s kitchen without actually walking into the house, and I realize that I can just find a script, put whatever my lines are into my short term memory, and muddle through the show. I can hear the other actors on the stage. The audience is silent. In fact, I realize now, that maybe the audience is entirely dead people (though that may be my awake version of making the story better, not like it needs help being weird).

But I can’t find a script, so I keep walking, and I’m starting to really freak out. I should be on the stage because I owe it to the other actors, but I really don’t want to go out there and embarrass myself and not know what I’m supposed to do. But I basically know the story, so maybe I can just go out there and say , “Beep beep boop” when I have lines. It will probably throw the other actors off a bit, but the audience won’t know and maybe it’ll even be funny.

I’m in the driveway of the house I grew up in. The car my mom drove in 1978 is parked in front of me. It’s hot and there’s a lot of dust everywhere. I can hear the actors on the stage improvising a scene because I’m not there. I’ve missed my cue. I panic and run toward the back yard. I go into the backstage area, which is in the side yard of my great aunt’s house. A stage manager is there, and she says, “you are supposed to be in this scene! You’re supposed to be on stage! They’re waiting for you! Go! Go! Go!”

I realize that I’m only wearing white underwear briefs, because that was the last element that was missing from my stress dream.

I don’t go onstage, because the actors move to the next scene without me. They come off stage, and I try not to make eye contact with them. I feel terrible. I know I messed up. I want to apologize, but I’m ashamed and embarrassed. They walk past me, and I see a big poster board, like the ones you use to make projects in elementary school. It has an invitation to the wrap party, and everyone’s name is on it, except mine.

The scene changes, and I’m in a park near my childhood home. It’s present day, and the whole thing has been developed. There are lots of condos and offices and other buildings along the perimeter of the park. This is a place my brain takes me in my dreams all the time, and it never looks the same, even though I know where I am.

Something is wrong. Something is sinister. Something is profoundly scary about this place, but I’m in a car or something, so I can at least drive past it in relative safety … but there is something or someone in almost every building, looking at me, and I’m terrified of whatever it is.

I wake up, because the alarm is going off. The weirdness and unsettled feeling of the dream is going to stay with me all day, like it always does.