Powerful Voices

At 6am this morning, I awoke with a start, having experienced a dream so vivid, so detailed, it felt real. It upset me to the point, I thought today was Monday (It’s Sunday) and that I had barely escaped death. What?

In my dream, I was in Minnesota and there was heavy snow everywhere, the time perhaps three months from the present. I had been picked up by secret police and taken to a fortress-like building where I was detained and interrogated. Elements of this part of the dream suggested Nazi Germany. Who was being detained?

I was in a cell with other musical theater performers. We were being detained because of our powerful voices which we had used against the current president leading up to the election. We were being interrogated, tortured to give up our fellow singers (shades of 1950’s blacklisting). Those who didn’t cooperate simply disappeared ...

I remember one of the performers detained was Sutton Foster (who I don’t know personally). She dazzled the secret police with an ironic performance of “I Don’t Want to Show Off” from “The Drowsy Chaperone”. Sutton was spectacular, but soon disappeared because she wouldn’t betray her fellow actors.

When I experience a dream such as this one, I have a secret power. In order to escape faceless monsters or dangerous situations, I can fly.  In last night’s nightmare, I refused to give up any of my friends’ names to the secret police. As I was about to be hauled off, the police were distracted by another performance; I took to the air and flew out a window.

Once outside, I was mysteriously joined by hundreds of other detainees (shades of Portland). Alarms sounded and we were being chased, having escaped the confines of the fortress. I kept telling the panicked people around me we had to fly to safety and no one would believe me. In the chaos, my sister was suddenly in the dream; she was holding a baby. It wasn’t clear if the baby was a family member or if Colleen was simply trying to save someone else’s child (so like her). I begged Colleen to take to the air with me, but she insisted she couldn’t fly. Sis passed the baby to me and told me to protect it with my life. I swore I would. I was crying ... She was crying ...

I began a series of sliding from snow-covered roof top to snow-covered roof top, baby in my arms. Once we safely floated to the ground, I was frantically looked for a place to hide while I got out the message that secret police were deliberately silencing creative voices. Who to trust? Where to go? I woke up from this nightmare with a start, a dream so filled with fear over the coming election, I was in despair. 

In the light of day, my mind is racing with questions: How will powerful voices be used going forward? For good or evil? Will the ideas in this dream become reality? Could I remain strong, as a voice for the innocent and invisible, or would I remain silent and complicit? How can I make my powerful voice heard? 

You might label this dream as part of an overactive imagination ... perhaps indigestion ... even misguided projection; but I believe many other people will see the same parallels to the past laid out in my dream, this nightmare, as we move toward an uncertain future. Please vote.