Dream

Intense. Walking up a flight of steps with some friends, suddenly feeling very faint, my body telling me there was the outline of a woman, but it was almost as though I was trying to make myself believe the place was haunted, like a child getting over excited, too involved in a story.

Cut then to a verdant wild place, clambering and exploring with larians. Lots of trees and rocks, lovely but haunted and this time it was for real. I saw nothing, but the air and the land was thick with it. From a high place we saw many castles here and there, jutting up out of the woodlands, and I didn't know if that strange atmosphere came from them, it was certainly tangible between where we stood and where they were.

larians led us to the boundaries on two sides of this little land, bordered by small stones, jutting up out of the earth. I had the feeling that this whole thing was the shape of a diamond, and as I write this, I recognise that in the Boot lexicon of dreams, the diamond that I connect with land is the norse rune Ing, from Ingvi Frey, the god who rides in a cart...the god specifically connected to England. And yes, it looked like England. But such a weird atmosphere! Not even Halloween haunted; I wasn't waiting to see the ghosts, like I was in the first part of the dream. It was something else, disconcerting and hard to describe.

Of Dreams and Wishes

A Christmas wishlist went round FB. I tried to participate but just couldn't do it. So instead I will talk about a wish I have, my own wish about directing a version of Shakespeare's Tempest. Actually, there are two.

One is a production of the play straightforward in all things except its setting; the Norfolk Broads, with the audience sitting on boats, and scenes being played out on little islands and inlets all around. Here Prospero is a rag and wode conjuror, while his girl Miranda makes her dresses out of fishing nets and they live between old lanterns and masts from lost ships. The grendel howls, and marshlights illuminate their story on little lost England, far from mighty Milan.

The other is an adaption. It is based on the island of Socotra off the gulf of Aden. Prospero is an English diplomat working in the Yemen in the early 60s, when the Brits leave. He has been dabbling in Yemenese witchcraft, and decides he can't return to England - that there's nothing for him there. So he steals away to Socotra, the magical island. There, he meets Sycorax, a sorceress feared by the islanders and they have an affair, which ends badly when Prospero tries to train Sycorax's son Caliban to be his servant. Prospero drives Sycorax away, and forces the islanders to make her outcast. She disappears. 9 months later, island nomads bring a baby to Prospero, claiming that the child is the result of his liason with Sycorax. He brings the little one up in his own little world of magical supremacy, served by Caliban and the djinn of Socotra. And all is well until a boat arrives from the outside world...

There now, that's a dream.