Brad’s Dream | June 13, 2016

Wilco_MassMoca_AustinNelsonI was going to a Wilco concert with my friend Derek and we had to navigate to the roof of an MC Escher-like parking garage. From there we could see Wilco sound-checking on the other side of a giant canyon. They were sitting in folding chairs facing each other in a circle. I was upset because I had forgotten my binoculars. The venue owner offered to pay me $1,000 to run the merch table for the headlining band but I declined because I would not be able to see the stage from the merch table. Derek accepted the job. The venue owner then showed me to a metal storage cabinet the size of a building. He opened the door and I could see the Saddle Creek Records office on the middle shelf. The back wall of the office was a window looking into Scarlett Johanssen’s office. I began floating around the Saddle Creek office, high above everyone’s heads, looking down on cubicles and copiers. A brunette woman in a red dress and bright red lipstick flew up to meet me, pulled me close to her and said that she was very sorry that she had underestimated my possible contributions to the world and that she wanted to book me a tour to Kansas City. We suddenly dropped to the ground as if I had run out of flying power. The woman in red then grabbed my hand and led me across a busy city street. We began following a soldier whose face had been badly burned in battle and was on his way to the hospital for experimental surgery. The story had been all over the news and the woman in red wanted me to visit him in his hospital room for publicity. We entered a giant shopping mall and she stopped to order some Chinese food. When she returned we had lost the trail of the soldier. We ran to find out where he had gone when along the way an enthusiastic fan approached me and I agreed to let him hang out with me for the day. We found the hospital where the soldier ended up and sat in the waiting room. The fan sat next to me. He had a nervous tic and kept poking me in my right side with his index finger. I asked him to stop and he said “Stop what?” The next time he poked me I grabbed his hand but he only switched hands and continued poking me. This went back and forth from one hand to the other several times. I said “I’m sorry man, but this isn’t going to work out.” He looked very confused and continued to poke me in my side. I finally grabbed him by his head and flipped him over onto the coffee table and was going to drag him outside the hospital doors and lock him out. As I was struggling with him, Rob Nansel called for security…

PS. When I woke up I discovered my dog’s leg was twitching and poking me on my side.