Bob Dylan, Indie Writing and the Flight to Freedom

I love dreams and I had a fascinating one last night.

I dreamt that I was working in a school and was setting out seating prior to the arrival of a visiting speaker.  He was going to give some form of presentation to one of the classes; Steve Milward’s group.

After a while I found out that the visitor was Bob Dylan and went along with some other people to meet him. He was very affable and I told him that I had once met him when he performed with Rolf Harris.  He recalled the incident and said that he remembered meeting me then.

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Bob Dylan (album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Dylan asked me what I was doing and I said that I was an indie writer and also trying to escape from this place which now began to seem rather less like a school and rather more like a Gulag.

‘I have the escape all planned,’ I told him.

The scene switched to where I was inspecting my fellow-escapees, all wearing fake uniforms, with Dylan looking on.  One skinny, forlorn-looking man with a beard was wearing carpet-slippers, or rather he was standing on the carpet-slippers with his feet attached to them by string.

We’ll never get away with him looking like that, I thought.  ‘I’m going to have to leave you behind,’ I told him.  ‘Otherwise the rest of us will never escaped.’

The man nodded, he understood, but there was tragedy in his eyes.

Dylan came across to me and told me I had done the right thing.  ‘It is the sign of real leadership to make tough decisions for the greater good,’ he said.  ‘In fact you can all come out with my party because it will be safer for you that way.’

And then I woke up.

So what does this dream mean to me?  In what ways was my unconscious trying to make sense of the world?

I used to teach in a school and taught Steve Milward’s tutor group.  It was to this class that I read my ‘The Guy Fawkes Contest’, my first short story, telling them it had been written by a friend.  They were silent as I read, something which rarely happened with them.  I saw that they were as enthralled as they had been by only two other stories, ‘To Light a Fire’ by Jack London and a story, I think it was called ‘Power’ about a child who frees a bird caught on an electricity wire.

I can write I thought, and this cemented my ambition to become a writer.

I was also a fan of Bob Dylan, having been told about him by my oldest friend, Brian who was then at Art College and is a very gifted artist.

As a child I loved Rolf Harris and ‘I’ve Lost My Mummy,’ was the first record I ever bought for myself.

I have never, to the best of my knowledge, been in a Gulag.

So what does it all mean?

My best guess is that it is my unconscious dealing with our leaving England and moving to France and with coming to terms with my new life as a writer.