Friday, February 10, 2012
That old abandoned warehouse. What are blogs for but for relating your boring dreams that your friends don't give a shit about. Anyhoo! Last night I had a disturbing dream. In the dream, my family were holidaying at a beachside location somewhere near Sydney (perhaps one of those northern beaches suburbs) and I was meant to be joining them, but I had recently moved house and still hadn't cleaned out all my stuff.
The beach where everyone was hanging out was quite an urban beach, which had a very high concrete promenade that also acted as a windbreak for those on the beach. At one end of the promenade was a kiosk; at the other it sort of petered out into a residential area. The beach felt familiar to me, as if I'd dreamed of it before.
It wasn't at all like most of the Victorian beaches I know, where to reach the sand you have to either beetle along a narrow dirt path through thickets of ti-tree, or descend down long wooden stairways built into massive sand dunes. It was more like I imagine an English seaside resort to be, although I've never been to one.
Anyway, so I went back to my old house, which mysteriously was accessible from this beach. It wasn't any of my real-life houses; set back from the street, it was a dilapidated Californian bungalow with a terrace to the side and back with outdoor furniture and unwelcoming pebbles and spiky native shrubs selected to be easy for tenants to maintain.
While I was trying to tidy away my remaining possessions into boxes, I was seized by a feeling of nostalgia and lost safety, as if I'd been happy in this house and was now cast into an unfriendly future. I felt that even though I was supposed to have moved out, if I could just stay here in the house everything would be okay.
I must have fallen asleep, because the new tenant was standing over me, trying to move in and very surprised to see me still there. He was a nerdy guy about my own age who looked as if he worked in IT. We fell to chatting and I started welcoming him to the house, showing him around and explaining how we had had our furniture set up and how we liked to use our free time in the house.
I realised I quite liked the new tenant and would like to be friends with him, but I realised I had to go back to the beach. I was on the train back there (mysteriously, I now needed to use public transport) and I had the sudden horrible realisation WHERE IS STAM? I had left my bag on the beach with all my stuff in it!
A sick feeling began to seize me and it suddenly became very important to get back to the beach. Some random person on the train said, "Oh yes, I think a bag like that was handed in at the kiosk…" but in my haste I got off the train at the wrong station, and then there were no more trains for ages.
At this point I woke up, but then I dozed off again and retconned the dream so that I had my phone on me, so I was able to make phone calls to find out what happened to Stam. But as it ended a second time, I was still stuck on the station platform.
In other news, you may have realised that one of my key personality traits is making throwaway lines come true, which is why I wasted half an hour yesterday designing this teaser poster for Whores of War, the exploitation film we jokingly brainstormed after seeing The Whistleblower, and which contained Anthony Morris's immortal line of dialogue, "I heard there were some whores in that old abandoned warehouse."
Today Anthony said the poster only makes sense if you know the line of dialogue, but I had an entire teaser campaign worked out where people would visit the website www.thatoldabandonedwarehouse.com and gradually learn more about the film.
The beach where everyone was hanging out was quite an urban beach, which had a very high concrete promenade that also acted as a windbreak for those on the beach. At one end of the promenade was a kiosk; at the other it sort of petered out into a residential area. The beach felt familiar to me, as if I'd dreamed of it before.
It wasn't at all like most of the Victorian beaches I know, where to reach the sand you have to either beetle along a narrow dirt path through thickets of ti-tree, or descend down long wooden stairways built into massive sand dunes. It was more like I imagine an English seaside resort to be, although I've never been to one.
Anyway, so I went back to my old house, which mysteriously was accessible from this beach. It wasn't any of my real-life houses; set back from the street, it was a dilapidated Californian bungalow with a terrace to the side and back with outdoor furniture and unwelcoming pebbles and spiky native shrubs selected to be easy for tenants to maintain.
While I was trying to tidy away my remaining possessions into boxes, I was seized by a feeling of nostalgia and lost safety, as if I'd been happy in this house and was now cast into an unfriendly future. I felt that even though I was supposed to have moved out, if I could just stay here in the house everything would be okay.
I must have fallen asleep, because the new tenant was standing over me, trying to move in and very surprised to see me still there. He was a nerdy guy about my own age who looked as if he worked in IT. We fell to chatting and I started welcoming him to the house, showing him around and explaining how we had had our furniture set up and how we liked to use our free time in the house.
I realised I quite liked the new tenant and would like to be friends with him, but I realised I had to go back to the beach. I was on the train back there (mysteriously, I now needed to use public transport) and I had the sudden horrible realisation WHERE IS STAM? I had left my bag on the beach with all my stuff in it!
A sick feeling began to seize me and it suddenly became very important to get back to the beach. Some random person on the train said, "Oh yes, I think a bag like that was handed in at the kiosk…" but in my haste I got off the train at the wrong station, and then there were no more trains for ages.
At this point I woke up, but then I dozed off again and retconned the dream so that I had my phone on me, so I was able to make phone calls to find out what happened to Stam. But as it ended a second time, I was still stuck on the station platform.
In other news, you may have realised that one of my key personality traits is making throwaway lines come true, which is why I wasted half an hour yesterday designing this teaser poster for Whores of War, the exploitation film we jokingly brainstormed after seeing The Whistleblower, and which contained Anthony Morris's immortal line of dialogue, "I heard there were some whores in that old abandoned warehouse."
Today Anthony said the poster only makes sense if you know the line of dialogue, but I had an entire teaser campaign worked out where people would visit the website www.thatoldabandonedwarehouse.com and gradually learn more about the film.
