In Dreams Begin Urination, or How Pissing Myself in Hospital Led to my Current Frank Zappa Phase

In the dream, I was on Vancouver Island. There was some mystery, some controversy, some problems to solve, maybe related (at least tangentially, by dream-logic) to a couple of unvaxxed relatives. I was trying to solve the problem, but there was some danger, and - mostly I remember dark, forested landscape and what seemed like stormy weather on the rise.

I realized that, in the dream, I needed to pee. I am not sure if I asked someone, or talked to myself, but I was told by way of reply not to worry about it. I don't recall having the lucidity to ask, "What will it do to my bed, back in the real world?" But part of me answered - I do recall having this thought: "Don't worry, you're on catheter."

I was at Surrey Memorial Hospital at that point, and came to in bed with my bladder already half-emptied. I had come off catheter two days before, but either my dreaming self forgot that detail, or lied. I had an enormous visual in my head - maybe the last image of my dream, as I swum up into the awareness of a spreading warm puddle - of my penis, nestled in its furry pocket, spouting piss everywhere. And so I rang for a nurse.

"Oh, my," one of them said, as she went about removing my bedding. "There's a lot of it." She and her partner dove into removing the sheets, wiping down the plastic bed. "Has this happened to you before?"

"No," I said embarrassedly. But as the word left my mouth, I realized that in fact, one previous dream incident led to my wetting the bed a little, many years previously. It involved Frank Zappa - this image of him, in particular:

Y'see, in that dream, maybe ten or fifteen years ago, I was Frank Zappa. And I was sitting on the toilet. And it's okay to pee if you are sitting on a toilet, so I began to pee, only to realize as the urine started out of me that a) I was not, in fact, Frank Zappa and b) I was not on the toilet. I stopped that time before any sizeable amount of urine could soil my futon (the former "bed of pain," as Erika called it, back in my apartment in Maple Ridge). But I did set a precedent, so I knew not to trust any dreamed directives to go ahead and pee.

Various things went wrong with that self-caution when I was in hospital, the most pressing of which was no doubt a UTI, that came from my having been on a catheter for the first week or so, but which was not diagnosed or medicated until I checked out. I would pee myself two more times while there: once because I couldn't get my dick into the portable urinal (because I hadn't opened it, but thought I had, and literally could not hold back any longer) and once because even though I did get myself into the urinal in time, the pee just ricocheted back out (sometimes you just can't win). Between being weak and groggy and medicated and having a UTI, I don't make too much of it - didn't go down any dark roads of shame - though Erika felt it all alarming enough to buy a supply of puppy pads to put under our fitted sheet (they're still there, with 0 urinary accidents since I got home, mostly thanks to the treatment of my UTI; the puppy pads, meantime, did come in handy as a drool catcher, when my head was down on the pillow, because sometimes my mouth did runneth over). 

The upshot of all that pissing, in any case, was I felt a bit bad for Frank Zappa, like the association with my bedwetting was undeserved and insulting. I mean, as an artist, he was a bit on the obnoxious side sometimes - a bit misanthropic in some of his lyrics - but he was a brilliant musician, and didn't deserve to be associated with people pissing themselves in the night. Then came the SLPs - the Speech Language Pathologists - to help me with my speaking and assess my swallowing, and I discovered that the easiest way for me to swallow fluids was by sort of tossing my head like a brandy snifter, to create a (Zappa fans will immediately get it) CIRCULAR MOTION that swished the water to my strong side (the right, where I have some of my "old tongue" remaining), where I could just open my hole and have it go down. That circular motion (and the use of centrifugal force) put me in mind of Frank Zappa's Apostrophe, an amazingly musical (but lyrically obnoxious) album, best remembered for the song "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," and its follow up, "Nanook Rubs It," wherein Nanook rubs said snow, tainted by Huskies, into someone else's face, "with a vigorous circular motion heretofore unknown to the people in this area"  (Zappa illustrates the motion with a guitar solo). I spent the next week in hospital thinking of "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" every time I drank fluid with recourse to my own circular motion. I guess there's a common theme of piss between images, but it seemed a little more respectful of Frank to associate him with taking IN liquids, rather than ridding myself of them.

Somehow in there, for no other reason I can name, I emerged from hospital with a serious hankering for the music of Frank Zappa. I've never been a committed Zappa fan; there are people I know who are so sold on his genius that they have all his albums and don't seem to mind that at least in some of his performances, he comes across as a bit of an asshole, maybe. I'm sure the band Angel think so! 

Now, artists who are assholes (or whatnot) are a hot topic lately, and some people feel like we're not supposed to consume their art, but I try not to trouble myself with this too much. I just watched a Roman Polanski movie the other day, even. I didn't sell my two Marilyn Manson CDs when (duh) it came out that he was abusive to women. I barely even read the recent article on Joss Whedon. We live in scandal-ridden times, and I have no doubt all of us at some point or other have done questionable things - it's part of being human; as my friend David M. has observed, on some level, "We're all monsters." Sometimes some people do shittier things than others. Sometimes they repent, recant, can be redeemed, and in other cases, it is simply too hard to forgive them. I have a few on the latter list, but more often than not, I am able to say,  "Damn, I love this Polanski film - shame he seems to be some sort of predator/ rapist" - and try to keep the two things separate. Which I'm generally prepared to do AS LONG AS WHATEVER MONSTROSITIES THE PERSON HAS ALLEGEDLY PERPETRATED are far removed from their art.

What I don't want to take part in, however, is ART THAT ITSELF PARTICIPATES in the monstrous. Polanski may have put plenty of his perversions into his cinema, but he's never made a film (not even the very twisted, strangely enjoyable breast-fest What?, which I am glad is finally out on a nice blu-ray thanks to Severin) that had any direct bearings on his having been predatory towards at least one, and maybe more than one, young woman. (At least that I've seen - I haven't seen Tess, which does seem to have an erotic interest in teenagers, in the form of Ms. Kinski, but... I haven't seen it, so...). On the other hand - while I don't know what the truth is about Woody Allen, I ain't leaping to revisit his own overt confessional about underaged girls, Manhattan. Whatever Woody has or hasn't done, Manhattan invites our complicity in it, asks us to participate either in absolving him, or licensing him, which may be the same thing. 

That I'm not down for. 

Anyhow, I don't really know if there is dirt on Zappa out there, but there are plenty of songs of his - the virulently homophobic/ misanthropic "Bobby Brown Goes Down" is a good example, that are just so fucking ugly (and smug!) in their intent and execution that they kinda ruin the albums they are on. Sheik Yerbouti is a brilliant Zappa album, with some delightful moments, and "Bobby Brown" is actually really catchy and funny... but I just don't wanna hear it, you know? (Or find myself in public singing about taking an hour on the tower of power "as long as I gets me some golden shower," or about how "I'm gonna ram it up your poop chute," from another tune on the same album). It's just yucky, a little pool of human fugliness/ smugliness that I don't need to step in, and these pop up in Zappa's world from time to time. So I've never delved deep into Frank; I've allowed myself to be stopped short, and the list of Zappa albums I have never owned or heard is longer than the list of Zappa albums that I presently have - even including my recent purchases.

But I'm making amends, and have heard some just incredible music as a result -  like, for example. "Watermelon in Easter Hay," which my friend James shared on Facebook, surprising me with the gentle emotiveness of Zappa's solos, or the whole of Zoot Allures - with its incredible centerpiece of "The Torture Never Stops," but many other great moments besides. I've acquired about a dozen used Zappas over the course of the week, making runs to Audiopile, Zulu, Red Cat and Neptoon, and am off to Redrum Records in New West in a moment to pick up another, One Size Fits All - a nice new vinyl reissue - and to see what else they might have. I've never even owned One Size Fits All before, but having checked it out online, I am really excited to sit down to it later this afternoon... 

And the funny thing here is that it all got started because I pissed myself in hospital! (Some friends on Facebook helped with recommendations, too). Never before has a musical kick of mine been spurred by urination, that I can remember. Go figure.