San Francisco poet Candy Shue reading her poem, set to music by Jerry Gerber using VSL instruments and synths.
"Remember—I'm not paying to listen to your dreams, you're paying me." Her voice is stringent, but sensuous, a honey-lemon cough drop. "Is that my only option?" I ask, hoping to get on her sliding scale. "Nope," she says cheerfully. "I could teach you to listen to your own dreams. But that will take a while—what do you say?" After centuries of leeches and lobotomies, alchemy and the hangman's noose, we were getting somewhere! I was finally starting to see it—the sheer over everything, even my own eyes. No matter I had woven it with hands helpless to do otherwise. On mountaintops and in coffee shops, monks were levitating in the lotus position; The Book of the Dead was playing on movie screens all over town. The moment hushed, an orchestra settling before the start of a symphony. I closed my eyes to let my ears take over. My body was oscillating on wavelengths owls could hear, every atom vibrating in its orbit, utterly at home. "Hallelujah," I whisper to my therapist as we buckle down to begin the hard work at hand.