Just a Dream
by Michelle Dockrey

      Based on the story "The Minotaur" by Bill Kte'pi
      
      Vocals: Michelle Dockrey
      Backing vocals: Molly Lewis
      Guitar, Bass: Tony Fabris
      Cellos: Betsy Tinney
      Violas: Sunnie Larsen
      Drums: Brian Richardson
      Minotaur: Sunnie's Viola

Dancing girls and caribou and men who climb the wall
You never know whose dreams are yours, you wake among them all
Shadows, colors, crawling, flying, follow where you go
You'll never be alone again, not since New Mexico

The dreams of men came out to play for all the world to see
But the accident that brought them out left just a few like me
We few who when we dream a flame, the fire really burns
We fewer still keep dreams inside so no one ever learns

Dreams can't hurt you, that's what parents used to say
But they changed the world forever in New Mexico that day
No one lived to tell the story of the vanished research team
All that's left to tell the tale is just a dream, just a dream
All that's left of them is just a dream

The bats are mine, the faces too, I know which come from me
I look for all the artifacts that no one else can see
When you can dream a meal, a woman, real without a doubt
You hold your dreams and hold your breath and hope they don't find out

The paper headlines rise to claim the dead & nightmare-scarred
Sometimes someone dreams too real, or someone dreams too hard
When hands can bleed and houses burn, when dreaming goes astray
They come for you, they send you North, for safety so they say

Dreams can't hurt you, that's what parents used to say
But they changed the world forever in New Mexico that day
No one sleeps and no one wakens, no one's ever what they seem
And the one you thought you knew was just a dream, just a dream
Yes the one you knew was just a dream

The television static shadows horns behind its glare
The magnets on the fridge have changed and all spell out "beware"
Some days you can't escape your dreams, some days you can't quite wake
Though the ringing is insistent, and the anger's growing louder
I am sure the voice is only in my mind

The rain is falling inside and the carpet's getting wet
But I'm sure I'm only tired and control's not failed me yet
I wake from dreams of monsters caged and raging horn and claw
To the grim, official knocking of the agents of the law

They ask if I know anyone with hyperlucid dreams
They ask if I've been home alone, and did I hear the screams?
They say that I'm the only one alive in building three
They say they've got the dream contained and now they've come for me

Dreams can't hurt you, that's what parents used to say
But they changed the world forever in New Mexico that day
Someone else's dream can bite you, you imagine that you scream
But the pain you feel is still just a dream, just a dream
Yes the pain you feel is just a dream

About the Song

Vixy:
This song is based on the short story "The Minotaur", by Bill Kte'pi. (Yes, the author of "The Cheshire", on which "The Girl That's Never Been" is based. I don't own this one, though.)

Ages ago, Tep used to post his fiction on his Livejournal sometimes. He wrote a series of stories set in a world where a strange accident had caused everyone's dreams to become publicly visible. Mostly. But the dreams were still just dreams; even though weird stuff was now floating and crawling around everywhere, they were still not real. Mostly.

I remember that at the time, we (his bunch of internet friends) affectionately and unofficially called these the Slumberland Stories. Only two of them ever got published that I know of; "The Minotaur", which was the first story he wrote and the introduction to this world, and "Start with Color", which is, in a way, an ending.

"Just a Dream" mostly tells the story of "The Minotaur", with only one reference to "Start with Color".

About the Songwriting

Vixy:
The Slumberland Stories had always grabbed me. I'd even made fan art (but I'm not showing you, it's terrible). So, as with "The Cheshire", I wanted to find a way to do it justice in song.

Amusingly, I couldn't seem to find a way to get the actual word "minotaur" into the song. There are a couple of pronunciations of the word, and none of them sound very good when sung. And no rhyme scheme wanted to fit it without sounding torturously contrived. But the Minotaur himself wasn't exactly the main point of the story I wanted to tell anyway. He's still hidden in there, if you know where to look.

Tony:
This is one of the songs Vixy had already written when we started collaborating, but she wanted me to improve upon it. My contribution was to improve some sections of the song by adding the implied melody in the bass/root notes of each chord. On the chord chart you can see these marked with the "slash notation", indicating a chord played with a different bass note (Dm/F, Dm/E etc.). In the recording, I had the bass and strings join me on those parts to emphasize them.

About the Recording

Tony:
This song always felt to me like it was missing something, so it was really satisfying to turn it into a "production number", where the things that make it fun are the production touches. To wit:

• The spots where the lead vocal is doubled with a whisper. We were deliberately borrowing the technique from the song "The Twilight Zone" by Rush. I also have the whispers move to different sides of the stereo field, so if you're listening on headphones, it sounds like Vixy is right over your shoulder and lurking around behind you.
• The always-wonderful Creepy Cello Shit™ and Creepy Fiddle Shit™.
• Sunnie imitating the sound of the growling, breathing Minotaur by scraping her bow across the strings of her viola (plus sprinkling some production magic on it).
• The heartbeat on the bridge (which is done by laying a towel across the top of the floor tom and then playing it with mallets).

The drum rhythm for verses and choruses of the song was something that Brian came up with: Sparse, simple, and just a little off-kilter. I feel like it doesn't quite match what the rhythm guitar part is trying to do, and they never quite gel well together. Normally, that would be a bad thing, but for this song, I think it's fantastic, because it keeps you a little off balance, which is what you want for a spooky song.

I recorded the bass line to closely match what the rhythm guitar was doing. Vixy didn't initially like it when I played it for her, she wanted a melodic bass line instead. I merely waited until the cello got recorded and took on the melodic bass line role, then surreptitiously added my original bass line back in. Vixy never complained, so my subterfuge must have worked.

Molly's backing vocals were really interesting for this song. She's mostly just singing chords to match the song's chords on the choruses. There's not much spooky about that, right? But when we laid down the parts, we found that on the penultimate lines of each chorus, when she goes to the C note in the A Minor chord, there's a real spooky feeling to that particular note sitting atop that chord change. It's subtle in the final mix, but I think it's awesome.