I Met Tom Petty in a Dream (and this is what he told me)

For those of you who have no patience for artsy types talking about the subconscious mind, stop reading now. If you are just as fascinated as me about how our minds make sense of our experiences while we sleep, you might find this sample interesting. The fact I had this dream two nights before New Year`s resolutions are made just added to the intrigue.

I found myself in a room large enough to hold an oval conference table where Tom Petty was hosting a meet and greet that musicians often find themselves facilitating while on tour. The difference here was that it was less of a fan love-in than a seminar style presentation by Petty about the creative process. In it, he shared some of his insecurities as an artist along the lines of always wondering where the next idea for a song would come from and how he could never be sure if a song was good or not until he heard an audience react to it.

(Aside: when I woke up and thought about the dream, I realized that Petty was paraphrasing sentiments I had just read expressed by John Lennon in his recently published last interview with Rolling Stone. Why it wasn't Lennon appearing in the dream might make more sense in the next paragraph.)

At the end of his presentation, we spoke one on one, and he offered to have a look at my writing. In the dream I was surprised at his offer, because I hadn't breathed a word about having any artistic aspirations in the first place. Even after he offered, I went to great pains to ensure that he didn't see me as a needy writer grasping at any possible straw that might improbably lead me to being discovered. He reassured me that he simply wanted to personalize his talk about the creative process, and specifically asked to have a look at my "work."

Here's where it gets interesting. I opened my backpack to reveal a bag stuffed with work from my day job and papers that had to do with running my household. There was not a single sheet of my writing in the bag--in other words, I wasn't perceiving it as a legitimate form of work. Embarrassed, I apologized, then we went to my website to have a look at the single chapter of my novel there. Despite Petty's forbearance, I was acutely aware that this one chapter was not enough to provide a context for him to assess my abilities.

I didn't exactly wake up in a cold sweat at this point, but I was alert enough to make a couple conscious commitments to myself. 1) Add a few more chapters to the website. 2) Seriously pursue the possibility of making The Samurai Poet available as an e-book in 2011.

Sounds like I have my New Year's Resolutions in place. "Running down a dream" indeed.