Stella by Starlight
I have recently realized that the link between dreams and quiet voices – the messages I get from my subconscious self, or what people call intuition – is actually a two-way enterprise. I can tell my subconscious what to work on, in a manner of speaking, as I lay sleeping.
Stella
The song in my mind, as I passed in and out of dreamland in the morning, was ‘Stella by Starlight’ The Charlie Parker tune. I have been listening to it on Spotify nearly every day for the last week, as I learn the solo on my saxophone. This in itself isn’t remarkable, I have been learning Bird solos for 5 or 6 tunes for the last few months. I have started to go play outside. Yikes, it has only been 8 years since I had a saxophone, and another 10 before that since I practiced. Been awhile…
The Muse(ic)
I have never woken up dreaming in music like I did this morning. All of my other DQV posts were written while I was playing the sax again, so nothing outward has changed in my behavior. However, I am pretty inspired by Stella. It’s a heart-wrenching, beautiful, sorrowful, unforgettable tune and Parker’s solo is the passionate cry of a vulnerable and beautiful soul. The Romantic Soul. I am in love with it, and I’ve been trying to learn it for over a week, the same way I have learned a few others (Now’s the Time, Billie’s Bounce) but I was literally practicing and singing simultaneously in my dreams
When I took some first and second year Cognitive Science courses in college (undergrad), the primary working theory of cognition was that it takes place on a spectrum between word and image (though what we mean by image has changed with technology). This was something else. This was thinking in pure melody. I heard it in my mind, I sang it silently. My fingers were likely moving in my sleep though I can’t know that for sure.
It wasn’t even particularly about anything I did yesterday, since it was my one day off practicing saxophone each week. I didn’t even play yesterday. But the music was real, as if it was coming from my speakers and I were playing it at the same time.
In this way, I can see how to program my subconscious. I just finished practice today and I was far better than I left off two days ago, specifically at Stella. How did that happen if I wasn’t playing?
In my dreams
Which begs the question: how much of my quiet voce, my intuitive truth, the remainder inside when all else is still… How much of that is under my active control? I think this is at least a different take on the phenomenon of visualization that athletes and new age coach’s practice. The one in the seminal ‘Think and grow rich’ by Napoleon Hill and many other echoes of the ‘be successful’ lifehacking promises in pop marketing and self-help circles. Some is legit but most is poorly communicated, and much to the point of being less than useless. I tend to ignore things like that, and have never read ‘The Secret’. It seems a bit wishy-wishy. My mentors showed me that sweat and suffering were part of success and that hard work separates those who find it from those who don’t.
The thing is, I’ve worked hard, for years, to varying success. And I’ve had success that looks like it was luck.
So, which is it?
I’m not sure. But I do know I’m having fun playing fantasy, and that I have been working every day for a long time now, and am still motivated and enthusiastic to keep going.
The most beautiful part, the music came into my dream last night as I was chasing dream-criminals with my father. Hi Paul! Thanks for the gifts.