03.05.2026
S: A nightmare woke me up this morning.
A: Really? What happened?
S: When I say woke me up, the nightmare squeezed me into the few seconds before the alarm went off.
A: Come, tell the tale.
S: I was working as the manager of a party. The setting was a big supermarket. Before the party people had arrived, I had to get rid of a big white machine. I was taking it to the charging point, carrying it by myself. I suddenly got called and had to drop it off in one of the shopping aisles before I could take it to the charging point. The first party person had arrived, the organiser. She wanted something in addition to what she had been promised when I tried to give her a warm reception and seemed sulky. She wanted the seating area upstairs which was empty, part of the cafe. It was not part of the contract and had not been arranged. I walked inside past the empty chairs and found myself locked outside. I tried to get back in through the door but the whole of the inside was moving upwards. The door would have jammed the movement as it opened inside and would have been stuck on the frame. I closed it just in time. I waited and then opened it again. Inside, they were shooting an astronaut film and the room was full of astronauts. I rushed past them. I would get into trouble, they would find out that I had disturbed the film. The alarm went off. I woke up from the nightmare.
A: A curious sequence of happenings.
S: Very understandable though. The nightmare is about money. It is based on several of my jobs where I manage events at various venues. But tellingly, this is in a supermarket, where the cultural industries I work in have been transformed into exploitative business and not charity. Some spaces have filming for money. Money is taking over my career when it should be about arts and culture.
A: You are having a nightmare about the commercialisation of arts and culture?
S: Precisely. And not just about the charities I work for. Also about writing. Because the astronauts are there because one of my friends is reading a book about astronauts and I read about the author’s prior book which was self-published and made lots of money too, literature as business. When I, of course, self-publish. The dream is about how my self-publishing is an interruption of work and the whole money making ethos. I am the outsider trying to get in, disrupting everything, the unwanted.
A: What about the demanding customer?
S: The philistine public that will never be pleased. The origin of the nightmare.
diary of a lone man 