Of Dreams and Ear Infections and Harry Smith

Just was awakened from a dream by a bizarre phone call -- someone asking for the "Alan McGavin Sports Center" - a real facility for sports medicine at UBC, whose phone number in no way resembles mine. The name of this supposed sports center is close enough to mine that, I suppose, in theory, someone might have gotten the two names mixed up when looking in a directory; except, heheh, if it were the name of a center, it would be listed under A, while I'd be listed under M - if I were listed, which I'm not. That means no one could make that mistake; but it surely can't be a coincidence - a wrong number for Alan McGavin for Allan MacInnis - can it? Was someone pretending to make that mistake - someone was calling me, then copped out at the last minute, substituing names, hoping I'd buy it as a wrong number? WTF?

Do I seem paranoid?

Went to bed last night with an ear infection, dosed on amoxcil and codeine and Advil. Woke up and it's still there - there's pressure and a persistent ringing in my left ear. I get 'em periodically - connected to my use of a CPAP machine, I think; scares the hell out of me, since I seem to be incrementally losing my hearing in that ear (tho' sometimes I can "blow out" my eustachean tube and get some of it back...). Was dreaming that I was at some sort of conference involving music, and there were all these people interested in pop music; I'd brought my buddy Michael along. And then suddenly Harry Smith turned up, and I got to hang out with him a bit. No one knew who he was, and he had body odor and was a little eccentric-seeming, so he was being left alone; he was more than grateful to have me fawning over him. I wrote down (in the dream) some of the more entertaining exchanges between us, but I don't remember what they were - there was something about how he still listens to music now, except when his wife called him to the phone. Anyhow, I got to introduce him to Michael - "You remember the Harry Smith Anthology?" Then at some point, Harry had gone away, and I was talking with some woman who was playing me a Sonic Youth song. I snuck off during the song to see if I could find Smith again, so maybe I could arrange a phone interview, thinking I'd ask him some questions pertaining to an article that (in real life) my friend Dan sent me. Trouble was, the article was about Al Neil, mentioning that he'd played in Vancouver with Don Cherry; my dreaming self seemed to get Al Neil and Harry Smith confused...

I've got too much work to do today. Sigh. I think I'll start by going for breakfast.