Dream Instrument

This morning I had a dream (forgot most of it, as per usual) that my parents and I were staying at their friends' mansion. The wife of the family was the wife from Eastbound & Down, the husband was Ed Begley Jr., and their son was this guy I know named Alex Simko. Their mansion was pretty cool but that's not the point. In the dream I was walking through their living room and I noticed the case for this odd looking instrument, so I asked the wife about it. The case looked like it held an instrument like a shamisen or something of that nature, but when she took it out it was something totally different. I'm pretty sure this instrument doesn't exist in real life, but this is a quick sketch I made of it when I woke up (click for large view):
How it worked in the dream was there were three pedals, which i suppose operated hammers like in a piano. The hammers would strike strings, and you could adjust the tension of each string to raise or lower the note by pulling on a cord with a handle. Since the pitch is operated by pulling/releasing the cords the sound moves fluidly between notes, like an unfretted instrument would (as opposed to a guitar). The timbre of the instrument sounded like that of some sort of Indian or Chinese stringed instrument, almost like a sitar but not exactly. The instrument also had an amp attached to the front, which was pretty cool.

In the dream the wife was showing us how it worked, she played a little but nothing really impressive. My dad wanted to try and grabbed one of the handles, and he was fucking ripping it up! I shouted "hell yeah!" and just as I was about to grab another one of the handles and accompany him, my goddamn alarm clock went off and I woke up. =(

I think I need to invent this instrument in real life. The three handles doesn't really make sense since you only have two hands, but a two handle version could be possible. One string could be the bass and the other one could be the treble. I'll have to pursue this in the future.

Total Dream Insanity

I thought my last dream was crazy but the dream I had this morning blew it out of the fucking water. The dream seemed to go on forever and ever, but the earliest possible time I could have fallen asleep was 3:15 am (probably even later) and I awoke from the dream at 5:12 am. Once again, a good deal of the dream was forgotten upon waking up but I made sure to jot down some notes about it before going back to sleep.

The dream starts off at Matt's house in Scotch Plains, although the structure of the house in the dream is a little different than it is in real life. All the lights are off in his house, and what little light there is to see is coming off various stereos and other electronic equipment. All of it blue light. I try to turn on the lights in various rooms but there are so many different switches and knobs and slides connected to so many different pieces of electronic equipment that I can't figure it out and for some reason Matt won't help me. I accidentally turn on the stereo in his living room and suddenly become very drunk. Like overwhelmingly drunk. Then the door bell rings and Matt lets some people in that I can't see because of the dark and my drunkness. I try to walk over to greet them, take two steps and hit the floor hard. People stand around me for a while talking before I black out.
Upon coming to from my black out I notice most of the lights are on in the house. I walk around shakily and find Matt in the other room. I ask him what happened and where everyone is and he sounds pissed off. By the stairs I find a pool of red vomit with chunks in it that I can only assume I am the cause of. Beyond the stairs is another room that doesn't actually exist in Matt's house, its lights are off. It starts to flood with a glowing neon blue liquid and is rising fast. I get scared and ask Matt what's going on, and then I wake up.

Upon waking up, I sit up in confusion to think about what just happened. This is when I notice my comforter is on fire. For a second I panic, but then I touch it and notice I feel no heat at all. I haven't woken up for real, I've woken up from a dream within a dream. I instantly become lucid, get out of bed and walk out my dorm room. I'm not sure where I am, but it sort of resembles Matt's street. I'm in my sleeping wear (basketball shorts, t-shirt, and socks) but am not cold at all. I spend some time running around, flying, running on walls, doing shit in slow-motion. It was all pretty fun but nothing in particular from this section of the dream stands out.

The next scene of my dream takes place in a building that seems like a mix of a mall in the 80's and the food sections of a basketball stadium (is that the right word?). I'm wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and boots now and start walking around the mall. At this part of the dream I slip in and out of lucidity. I talk to some employees of the mall, do crazy jumps/fly, run on walls, etc. Suddenly the mall is empty except for a few lingering employees. One guy says he doesn't mind if I stay in the mall but if his manager catches me I'll have to leave. I run up a wall to the third floor and run straight into his manager. Turns out he's pretty cool and doesn't mind if I stick around. He even gives me some moon boots to hop around in. I'm not sure what else happens here, but at the end everyone who works there gets mad at me and I'm asked to leave. This pisses me off so before I leave I shatter a few windows with my boots, which makes everyone even more mad.

The next and last part that I remember, I'm riding around in a semi-mountainous region on my bike. During this last portion it feels like my jaw is really tight and stiff as though I'm wearing really tight braces for the first time. It makes it difficult to speak. Anyway I ride for a while and then Karina rides up next to me. I'm at my least lucid to not lucid at all at this point. We talk about random stuff, ride off jumps and fly around a bit, the usual. Nearing the very end it becomes extremely difficult for me to speak. In the last part of the dream, we ride off a ramp, go flying into the atmosphere and then land at a county fair. The stiffness in my jaw becomes unbearable and I suddenly wake up, for real this time.

When I woke up I had no idea if I was still dreaming or not, everything still felt surreal. In addition in the real world my jaw felt extremely stiff for a few moments. This leads me to believe that when I was talking in the dream I was probably also talking in my bed. Thank god I live alone. Anyway there was way more to that dream that I can't really remember. I know my aunt was in one part but I don't remember the context at all. This lucid dreaming business is pretty crazy.

Longest Lucid Dream Ever

And it sucks that as soon as I wake up I forget half of it. Ridiculous.

What I remember:
Unlike most of my dreams which are in third person and I know are not real, this dream was in first person and for quite a while I thought it was real. I became aware that I was in a dream when I realized that what was troubling me (this black guy was being such a douchebag to me, and for some reason he lived on a new floor in my house. I called him a gay Theo Huxtable in the dream lol) was pretty unrealistic. The black guy and also the fact that for some reason my mom had ordered a ton of plants from nursery and the guy they sent was doing shady shit in my lawn. I started walking down my street because I think I thought I was in trouble about something (that I can't remember) and then I was like "oh yeah... dream."

I've become pretty good at flying in dreams now, only a couple times will I jump into fly position and hit the ground. In this dream when I wanted to fly I had to catch a certain wind. I could tell the wind was coming because I would look at the horizon (which was in a permanent pinkish sunset) and the clouds would start to squiggle and smear. When I saw that I would run with the wind and jump head first with arms out and soar into the sky. At first I just flew around my house, over hearing conversations going on inside, saying hello to my neighbor (who no longer lives there), doing random things.

After the initial flying around the house I thought to myself, "I need to take better advantage of this dream." I ran down my street again, waited for the wind, and flew up into the sky, destination: new york city. I accidentally flew into a flock of birds at one point but then they let me fly peacefully with them. It only took like a minute to fly to NYC from my house which I guess is pretty convenient. I landed in Greenwich Village and went down some stairs from the street level into an unusual bakery. I think I might have known a few of the customers sitting at the tables or at the counter but I didn't talk to them. This Asian girl with neck length hair worked at the bakery and she seemed a little annoyed at first, I don't know at what. I saw this one small like one-person sized caked that had vanilla frosting and was the shape of a shooting star and asked her to see it, but when she pulled it out it was in the shape of a full-sized rifle. She told me it was 3 dollars but I could only find 2 in my pocket (it seemed like I was slipping in and out of lucidity at this point). She gave me the cake anyway.

The dream skipped to the next scene (or I can't remember what happened in between) and I was at the Asian girl's apartment. For some reason her apartment was only one room and it was my parent's room at my house. At her apartment we were basically doing shit like that one episode in the Animatrix, you know, the one with the kids in the factory. We were talking about one thing or another and the middle of conversation she said the word "shazalla". I said to her "What does that even mean? That's not a word." and she smiled and nodded. This made me think about the fact that it was my own brain that had made this Asian girl that exists in my dream world say a word that doesn't exist and that I was actively questioning a creation of my mind as though it were a seperate entity. This woke me up instantly.

I feel like there was a lot more to the dream than I can remember, but that has to be the longest and most interesting lucid dream I've ever had.