The Beatles with a Velvet Glove...

Date: 11/25/2017

In my dream I shifted perspectives several times. We were on a sort of stage. It felt like maybe it was a televised event. A young Barbra Streisand was lounging on stage with beat poets and artists on a part of the stage that had a set of large comfortable white leather sofas. At the same time, reluctantly, American soldiers were being forced to walk up on some higher elevated part of the stage to salute some communist dictator and the flag of his presumably successful rebellion. It was supposedly a celebratory event honoring the rise of socialism, but was obviously very ironic since all celebrations were mandatory. In some ways it was actually somewhat terrifying. Like the symbolic fall of the western world. It felt like the 70s as portrayed in movies. First I watched from the audience. The beat poets waxed philosophic extolling the virtues of socialism. It all oozed with a kind of manufactured enthusiasm. Blatant propaganda. Then I was among the soldiers. It was made clear that there would be dire consequences if we dishonored the supreme leader with any form of disrespect or disobedience. The commanding officer went first. He climbed the precarious platform, clearly shaken and disoriented, almost as if he had been interrogated or tortured immediately beforehand. He saluted the dictator and his flag with tears in his eyes on the verge of succumbing and falling from the elevated platform altogether... Then I was one of the beat poets, sitting with Barbra Streisand as she was writhing sexually on the sofa, almost as if she was high on cocaine. She was being interviewed about her new album and was explaining how it was like liquid sex, touching herself provocatively, wearing fishnet stockings, “Like The Beatles with a velvet glove...” The whole thing felt like brainwashing, like mass hysteria, like the prelude to 1984... Then I woke up.