I had a very strange dream last night. I wasn't in the dream at all, except as the subject of it. Strange to see myself like that- I mean, I'm usually in my dreams of course, but I'm not usually the subject. Well, of course, yes I am.. it's hard to explain. It was a dream about me, and I didn't seem to be the one having the dream. It was like watching a documentary about me- there was even a narrator who sounded like Leonard Nimoy. He talked about my work as a bell-maker, how I cast them in bronze, and how I went to a bell academy in Singapore and studied there for twenty years, supporting myself by drawing erotic comic books that were banned by the UN because they depicted bestiality and genocide. There were a lot of still photos shown,both of me and my work- none real, but all very believable. There were images of me in all the stages of my life, from memory I guess, except for the later ones, which showed me looking more distinguished than I probably will. There were frequent snippets of people- both famous and totally unknown- talking about me. Some of the famous people were Bob Dylan, Werner Herzog, and Ernest Hemingway. Dylan said I was a big influence on him, and that I played harpsichord better than anyone he ever heard. Later he told a story about me turning Joan Baez down for a date, and how that made him so mad he tried to punch me in the eye but I wouldn't fight and ran away laughing. Herzog said I taught him how to photograph the wind and took him sailing underwater. Later he remembered me making tea and sandwiches for him and his daughter in my hotel room in Switzerland, using a candle to boil the water, and I burned the curtains and got wax on the carpet. He said that when his daughter died, I mailed him a diaper to use for his tears, asking him to send it back without washing it. Hemingway said he always considered me a big phony politically, and thought I had a terrible sense of color, but he liked my taste in furniture. Later he claimed I stole one of his wives, but he seemed not believe his own story and his voice trailed off into uncomfortable silence, while the camera stayed on him until he blinked and lowered his gaze. Later yet he said there was no question I was influential, but that deep down I was a crook. He said I once threatened to slash his face with a giant shark tooth unless he signed over the rights to his non-fiction books, but that he refused and I backed down, and that another time I urinated in his convertible and left a stolen mailbox on his front porch.

I had no feelings about hearing any of these stories- or rather, I was fascinated and touched by hearing them, but not as myself, only as someone who didn't know me personally.