Nightmares

[ahmedito]

Its 1 am. I just woke up from a horrible nightmare, and I can't go to sleep again. I tend to get these kinds of nightmares often when I have a VERY important recital close... and in a week, I am going to travel to the other side of the world to start a whole new experience, guess my brain is playing tricks on me.

Its late, so I wont wake up my wife, but instead Ill post it here and ask What nightmares about performing have you had?

I'm playing at the national auditorium and I come out. I start to play, and its that creepy second movement from Ligeti's musica ricercatta. In the middle of it I forget what Im playing and just stop. So I look at the audience, because I realize there is an annoying buzzing. The theater is full of flies buzzing around. Sitting in the front row are my parents, who've been dead since I was 12. I run towards them, the buzzing is everywhere....  and then I wake up sweaty and pretty scared.

I keep having horrible nightmares before performance (When its actually something very important.) Does this sort of thing happen to you?

[Clare]

Woah!

OK. That is a lot worse than the recital-oriented nightmares I've had.

I commonly have nightmares about not being able to get to an exam in time. In fact, last week I had a nightmare about not realising a sonata I am going to play had a special secret other movement that I had to learn to play on the day of the exam, but for some reason, I don't really have nightmares about actually playing....

The flies..... the parents..... that's pretty heavy. Maybe it's all a sign for something else that will happen in your life.

[Tash]

yeah i once had a dream the week of a performance/assessment that i'd decided to change my piece to something i'd played a couple of years before and only realised 5 minutes before i was meant to perform that i hadn't acutally practiced it and couldn't remember how to play it. so asked my teacher if i could go to the music house and have a practice so i did, realised i couldn't play it and missed my performance. and then (in reality) i was so freaked out i was paranoid i'd forget the actual piece i was playing (i'd had it for memory for ages before) and so in the actual performance forgot what i was playing and completely stopped and thus didn't finish the piece. DON'T EVER DO THIS!!!! it was the worst thing in the world and i got really annoyed at not being able to finish it.

so damn nightmares. a tip is don't accidently leave your electric blanket on 'high' all night cos i swear that gives you nightmares!

[IllBeBach]

I once had a dream that Vladimir Horowitz showed up at my house and asked me to play Schumann's Traumerei for him.  I set down to play and all of the sudden I couldn't even figure which were the first two notes to play.  I kept trying different starting pitches and getting more and more frustrated....

[m1469]

I've had a few horrible performance dreams, but one that sticks out the most...

My husband and I went to a very formal and decadent pre-concert dinner full of other guests.  We were dishing up crab and other wonderful things and heard many people talking about the concerto soloist that was going to playing that evening.  Well, as my husband and I were there and overheard more and more people talking about it, I found out that the soloist was me!  It had been scheduled without me even knowing!  And somehow my husband and I came to that silly dinner intending to see a wonderful concert not knowing that I was to be the soloist for that very night.

Well, I ran away because the piece that was programmed was not in my repertoire.  I was hiding in a house talking with my teacher on the phone and crying.  Then, I saw people walking through the park outside the concert hall with instruments in hand (the soloist had not arrived (me ) so some of the people from the orchestra were leaving).  So, I decided to go back and completely fake the entire performance.  Which I did  , although, someone from the orchestra came over to me after the first movement wondering what the hell I was playing.  I told him that I just needed a page turner... I don't remember the rest....

m1469

[donjuan]

Sitting in the front row are my parents, who've been dead since I was 12. I run towards them

ohh that is so frightening and sad at the same time.  Once I had this dream the grand piano I was playing on in a competition had this stupid fallboard that kept slamming shut on my hands.  And every time it happened, some voice seemed to come up and say "no, you have been DENIED!!"
I lift up the fallboard and start to play again, so it happens again.  It seems like 3 hours of this happens, and I finally wake up, feeling as if I have been fighting a piano all night.  All during the performance at the competition that morning, all I could think about was if the damn fallboard was going to fall or not.

I guess that dream wasnt too bad- It wasnt as bad as the dream I had about the piano that tried to eat me..  
donjuan  

[Antnee]

 And every time it happened, some voice seemed to come up and say "no, you have been DENIED!!"

I guess that dream wasnt too bad- It wasnt as bad as the dream I had about the piano that tried to eat me..  
donjuan  

hahaha.. that's funny donjuan...

I frickin' hate nightmares. They scare the sh*t outta me...
The only bad piano dreams I've had were the usual I-can't- play- right kind. I have had nightmares involving the world coming to a sudden end. Many times. Scary stuff. They just rub off this mental slime on you. It puts you in a haze and you won't feel right until morning. I hate it...  :-/

[donjuan]

Ever have that dream where you feel like you are falling-sometimes it happens when you are awake and lying in bad..then, your muscles have a sudden convulsion and you regain control?  

[maxy]

Ever have that dream where you feel like you are falling-sometimes it happens when you are awake and lying in bad..then, your muscles have a sudden convulsion and you regain control?  

yup...  
anyhow to get out of a dream, close your eyes in the dream... it works! but you do have to figure you are in a dream...

[Rob47]

Has anyone ever had a reoccuring "dream" - really a nightmare - possibly as a child, wherein nothing really "scary" is happening, yet it is extremely eerie and unsettling?  I used to have a dream like this over and over again for years as a youth.  I cannot fully explain what it was.....something about floating around with these robots from a TV show I used to watch and every hour they would change positions and transform according to the sun or something...I think it was in space.....

Anyway to anyone reading it may not seem scary but let me just say as a child....it was very creepy.  Not scary when I'm awake only when it is happening in my dreams.  

your friend
Rob

[donjuan]

Has anyone ever had a reoccuring "dream" - really a nightmare - possibly as a child, wherein nothing really "scary" is happening, yet it is extremely eerie and unsettling?  I used to have a dream like this over and over again for years as a youth.  I cannot fully explain what it was.....something about floating around with these robots from a TV show I used to watch and every hour they would change positions and transform according to the sun or something...I think it was in space.....

Anyway to anyone reading it may not seem scary but let me just say as a child....it was very creepy.  Not scary when I'm awake only when it is happening in my dreams.  

your friend
Rob

I bet you wouldnt like that medical movie from the 70's called "coma".  Ever seen it?

[ahmedito]

I read the book.

By the way, those recurring creepy nightmares happened to me too. Not really downright scary, just creepy.

Id be in a full car, and an aunt would be drunk (she doesnt drink) and everyone would be talking with the worst languaje you can imagine... and my cousins would sit on my dads head, hed be sleeping on the back seat. I found it so horribly creepy.

[donjuan]

I read the book.

By the way, those recurring creepy nightmares happened to me too. Not really downright scary, just creepy.

Id be in a full car, and an aunt would be drunk (she doesnt drink) and everyone would be talking with the worst languaje you can imagine... and my cousins would sit on my dads head, hed be sleeping on the back seat. I found it so horribly creepy.

so, you find obscurity and confusion disturbing.  Are you familiar with the artwork of Salvador Dali?  

https://www.dali-gallery.com/

I studied his style in my art class, and I find his work sadisticly fascinating.  If you are in tune with what is going on, it is scarier than any horror movie.
donjuan

[rph108]

Interesting. What are so scary about his paintings? I dont understand.

[rph108]

Wow. There is some really weird crap going on in some of those pictures. You have to be pretty messed up to draw something like that.

[ahmedito]

I actually go at least once a week to the Museo Reina Sofia, where most of Dalis work is in permanent exhibit. The symblism in his work is fascinating. You should look at Goyas works from his black period as well. Its disturbing.

[donjuan]

Ill check that out! thanks!!

[CC]

I have a section on dreams at

https://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm

where I explain why dreams tend to be nightmares, how many of them are generated, and even how to control them (get rid of them).  In your case, look for some mechanism, such as getting tangled in your sheets or some physical restriction or other problems such as sleep apnea, that might induce such dreams.  Go to Chapter three, section 5.

[Spatula]

Ever have that dream where you feel like you are falling-sometimes it happens when you are awake and lying in bad..then, your muscles have a sudden convulsion and you regain control?  

That happens when you fall into a deep sleep too fast, your body immediately zips to REM sleep without the gradual increase in the deepness of sleep so the body is in some sort of "shock" to make sure both the brain and the body are still in sync.

Yeah usually it happens and I dreamt I fell of my bike or off a ladder.

[tomclear]

Interesting topic. I've never had any piano themed nightmares (watch out--now they start!).
However, I once dreamt I was having dinner with Stravinsky in Instanbul. He was jotting down ideas on the table cloth. I asked, does it ever come all at once? He said, Once. Then he gave me a $10,000 bill.
My mother, who was unaccountably doing laundry, urged suspicion.