Monday 20 March 2017

Dream: Music for codes and a seaweed baguette

This is a rather short but very strange dream.

I am the hospital pianist. What is a hospital pianist? I wonder to myself in the dream. Is it someone who plays the piano for the patients all day long? I contemplate whether this is a good job for me. At that moment I get called to the ICU and I have a rolling-wheels piano, just like the one at the Sinai ICU, which I push along.

When I arrive in the ICU I am told that there is a dying man who is about to be transferred to another hospital. To die perhaps? I am to supply the music for the trip, and so I sit down and start to play a Chopin nocturne - the Op. 9 no. 3 which is very merry and lighthearted. (much unlike the other two Op. 9 nocturnes) Some doctor comes up to the patient and starts discussing what will happen once he is transferred, and he is told that he is likely to die shortly after the transfer. The code status comes up in the discussion, and the doctor says rather empathically (almost like a show) I know that you want to have a natural death and not have life-prolonging interventions at the end of life. 

At that moment the patient sits bolt upright in bed and stares at the doctor. He looks away and catches my eye. I stop in the middle of a bar and wonder what sort of music to play for a code discussion. I play a few bars of the Flight of the Bumblebee and realise that sounds too clumsy! Then I return to the Chopin nocturnes, but start with Op 48. no. 1 in C minor. Much better, I think to myself. But then the patient starts to cry for the mood in the room turns sombre. The doctor rushes out of the room and the patient cries alone. I keep playing and spy out of the corner of my eye the doctor conversing with another doctor.

The patient and I are wheeled along the corridor and into the service lift. During the ride down the patient continues to cry, and I continue to play Chopin nocturnes (which one was next? I cannot remember) We reach the floor we want which is a giant fridge room. I am told that I must pick out some snacks for the ride for the patient, in case there is a delay and we get hungry. There are so many options that my eyes hurt. The patient points to a large basket of baguettes and I pull them down to show him. He selects a black baguette and holds onto it - it is a light black like charcoal, and sprinkled with speckles of seaweed.

What music should I play now, for the seaweed baguette? I wonder to myself, then I wake up. 

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