Scientists who study lucid dreaming say that being able to remember your dreams vividly is the first step to being able to realize, during a dream, that it is one. Since becoming a musician, I’ve had plenty of dreams where I’ve heard beautiful songs just to wake up in the middle of the night with vivid details of everything but that piece of music, and last night was one of them.

It’s all fuzzy, of course, but I remember some friends and I (no one I recognize now) were listening to a mixtape that ended with several Holopaw songs, and it was the last song that blew everyone away. I remember it had a couple key changes like the miniature epic “Honeymoonin’ Under the Sea” (by the great Holopaw side project Citra Super), and in the dream reminded me of the powerful Stevie Wonder song “Never Dreamed You’d Leave in Summer.”. It had such an effect on me that I wasn’t frustrated at all that I couldn’t remember how it went. I was just content to have experienced it. The mixtape also had Ben Folds Five (whom I don’t listen to that often anymore, but they were my gateway band into being addicted to music) and, oddly enough, a video for the Rentals’ “Summer Girl”. The band played in a white room, with cameras close to their hands and microphones, on which there were all sorts of bees, but it seemed routine. I even made a terrible joke, singing “I know I don’t like hives.” — or something like that — to the tune of “I know I’m not your type”.

I guess the idea that Paul McCartney could wake up in the middle of the night with the complete music for "Yesterday" in his head makes me think that this notion, of trying to remembering your dreams, shouldn’t be taken lightly by those of us with a drive to create. And for bad jokes.