I was watching someone who I believed in context to be the musician who goes by POE. She was alternating between singing or writing, and lamenting. Her complaint was about being alone and seemed somewhat enraptured in what she was talking about--not really heeding my presence.
Though I didn't want to interrupt, I had something in my hands. When she completely covered herself under a blanket and was crying, I decided she'd stopped long enough to give it to her.
me: "Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt, but I did send you $666 once. I thought you might like this."
She came out from under the covers and looked at me, and smiled.
poe: "You are Brian, right?"
me: "Yes, that would be me."
poe: "Well let me see this that you've brought... it's a book?"
Note
For the sake of narrative clarity of who I'm talking about--I will use the label "poe" here as that is who it looked like. This does not have any bearing on relation to the real life musician, just my impression in the dreamstate.
She spoke aloud as she unwrapped the book and looked through it. This book had been heavily modified from whatever it was when originally printed...even to the point of having pieces cut out of it. There were rainbow patterns on parts.
Her first focus was on the inside front cover pages before the text started. There was an inscription at one flap in black writing on a plain white page.
Note
I was surprised to see this inscription, for some reason. It makes little sense--given that I have no knowledge of this book. But the impression I had in the moment, was that she had pried pages apart that I didn't realize could be pried apart. So what I thought was the first page of the book was not actually the first.
Skipping past the white and black writing page, she turned to a page that I found felt more familiar. It was brown in tone, and had one part that was faded more brown than the rest.
poe: "It's an added preface, and it has a section here, which seems to be rubbed out with a pencil..."
Note
I wanted to correct her for some reason--regarding how the off color patch had been created. My impulse was to say it had been a more complex process, involving staining with tea, or something else. Her interpretation of it being pencil rubbing thus was an underestimate of how difficult it had been to make.
Somehow the book grew to a larger size enough to accomodate reading the text inside the patch. The text was a lament about how someone was trying to use a recording device to take a picture of the book, but the blurring filter was crashing the camera.
poe: (excitedly) "Yes, and here it is. The purpose of the blurring filter is to deter making copies of the copyrighted portions of the image. But it's stopping the photography entirely. I know exactly this problem."
She seemed excited about this, and she wanted to show other people the camera-crashing book. We went and sat next to a group of people outdoors. She sat to my left, while a young asian man was seated to my right.
A cacophany of shouts ensued, with people yelling things like: "Tim is calling..." "Kathy isn't going to like this."
Things moved in fast-forward, as people around me whipped and pulled. The Asian man and another man next to him kept changing clothes, the man next to him seemed to be ever-increasingly adorned in purple items...purple jacket, purple hat, purple necklace. The Asian man seemed to be getting more blue clothing.
Somehow for most of this process the girl didn't leave my side, while everyone else was whipping around into and out of existence. Though she did at one point vanish, when I saw the asian man had on an all blue outfit and a red hat.
asian man: "I think that indicates this is a good place for us to stop."
The environment had changed significantly. I was able to look out a window to see an apartment complex, where a music video seemed to be playing on TVs in units on multiple floors of that building.
I wandered out to go closer to the building. When I did I noticed small animated statues that were narrating voice clips at accelerated speed on top of the music. The voice clips seemed to be recordings about people involved in a medical conspiracy of some kind.
All of this was making a cacophonous racket, and an older woman stopped by to complain and try to turn it off.
older woman: "Ugh, this is not music, I can't stand it."
me: "Maybe the point is for you to notice it's not meant to be like that; to pay attention to the recordings? It could be a signal."
I decided wandering to try and re-find the girl. Eventually I did, and I found her smiling at me, near a small item that looked somewhat sombrero-like with a blinking red light above something that was labeled "Portugal"
poe: (affectionately) "I am glad to have found you, my love. But what you need to understand is that our encounter doesn't change the fight, that I've been fighting for a very... long... time. What I need now is to know where I can find a canister of nitrogen, a canister of..."
Note
She seemed to be making a list of required chemicals--as if she was trying to make a bomb.
We were interrupted by some people including the older woman from earlier, who carried in her hand a cucumber and a plastic measuring cup.
poe: (pointing to the cup) "Why don't you handle the soft request first."
It turned out the woman with the measuring cup was asking for a knife to cut the cucumber with. A man with a knife said he would cut the cucumber for her, and somehow managed to cut it into a long flat continuous sheet of cucumber. The method of cutting would be impossible with a conventional knife.
The woman went away with the cucumber sheet, while another addressed me.
bystander: (suggestively) "You know what that's for, right?"
me: (sighing) "I know cucumbers have a sexual overtone to them when whole, as a simulated penis. But I don't know what you would do sexually with one once you cut it into a sheet like that."
bystander: "It's so that they can sit down on it and rub it in their butt crack and then lick their own butt with it."
me: (incredulously) "That sounds pretty much entirely made up. Though I guess there's always going to be someone..."
We wound up on something that was kind of an amusement park ride, where we were driving through a gallery of all the albums Poe had. They were all ones I hadn't heard of...it included compilations and one movie soundtrack for something that was kind of like "Tank Girl". (e.g. it was some kind of comic-inspired thing in which she had also a brief starring role with lots of kicking.
A bit of the movie played and people spoke to her.
commenter: "That look really worked for you."
poe: "Thank you. It's always nice when you try something on, and it fits. Like a 1950s smile."
We somehow got out of this tour ride and she pulled out a box.
poe: "Now it's my turn--I have a present for you. But don't look at the things on the top. They are not part of the present, I've never been good at decorating."
I stopped to examine the things she had just told me not to look at.
poe: "What did I just say!! I said look in the box, not at the packaging."
I obeyed and opened the box, and took out a hat, which said "Greatest American Hero" on it.
poe: "Who was the most famous celebrity you went to school with, who grew up to be a TV or movie star?"
me: "I changed schools a lot... um. I don't really know? I remember that John Sununu who was a political person in the news a lot. His son went to my school, and that was about the only thing I knew about anyone at the time. And I haven't kept up."
poe: "Well the guy who was in greatest american hero went to my school..."
me: "I watched that as a kid."
Note
Actor William Katt--who played the guy who received the alien power suit in Greatest American Hero--went to high school in the San Fernando Valley, and college in Carlsbad California. Annie Danielewski (musician who goes by Poe) went to high school in Utah and then undergraduate studies at Princeton. At least according to Wikipedia. Would have been pretty remarkable if the dream claim had checked out, though, eh?
I took the hat, and in the spirit of the show managed to get a running jump and kind of fly with it. I was trying to get someone to take a picture of me while I was in a temporarily horizontal position.
Landing back to speak to her, a strange tangential narrative unfolded, about how there was another girl who was jealous of her. There was scene unfolding where "poe" had kissed someone who the other girl knew wasn't her current relationship partner.
poe: "I understand, because of the drug... and your past relationship... you forgot."
other girl: (sarcastically, menacingly) "Yes, y'know, because I'm on the drug... or am I?"
The new adversarial girl seemed to be able to grow to a giant size relative to everyone. Somehow she managed to turn poe into a statue with a replaceable head, and removed her head and replaced it with the head of a pig. Then put the statue into a house, as if it was a dollhouse but started tampering with it in a number of ways.
One side of the house was left open. Then she started putting toilets on the exterior of the house. I somehow understood this as an attempt to create some kind of interference or exposure to noise that would stop the natural process of recovering from the named drug.