I Dream of Wild Horses

I had a dream last night that I made a video for a relative’s birthday. It was being screened in a large auditorium where my mum’s side of the family was gathered. I was so embarrassed of the video because it was tacky and irrelevant that I ran out of the hall to hide. Outside, my late grandfather now eleven years passed, was playing an acoustic guitar by a gutter. My cousin, Shanaz, and I sat beside him and the three of us sang ‘Wild Horses’ together. I harmonised but wasn’t very good. I think we sang the whole song then I laid on the grates of the gutter and my grandfather laid on top of me till I pushed him off. He was so heavy. I don’t remember if he said anything to me.

The photograph above is of the family plot in Keningau. I’m one of those people who would rather take photos on film rather than digitally most times. I didn’t do too well with this roll of film but of the six that came out, they were all taken at the cemetary. It wasn’t eerie.

To me, ‘Wild Horses’ will always be about death. Some people think of it as a break up song but I think the song has to be about death. It’s about a separation whilst talking about a reconciliation that will happen in a distant future (let’s do some living, after we die). When Mick Jagger sings “childhood living is easy to do” it resonates that we are young whenever we are alive. ‘Old’ is only age by comparison. ‘Old’ is when you can’t do anything for yourself and people want you to retire too. It’s when your body’s got no more life to live and your childhood programming is so outdated you couldn’t cope in this era if you tried.

I think ‘Wild Horses’ by the Rolling Stones and ‘Something in the Way’ by Nirvana would be my death songs. ‘Something in the Way’ because Cobain vividly depicts this permanent space where things are upside down or made unimportant. I think that’s what death would be like, the opposite of life. In life, things are always the right way up and everything is very very important. Also in a lot of ways, doesn’t life often get in the way of life?

I never really got to know my late grandfather but he was always a figure that hovered above in life. In death, he looms just as high above me. It was the first death I’d ever experienced and till today, I don’t think of him as dead as much as I do, dying. He’s not alive and he’s not gone either. He’s constantly existing in a realm of death therefore he is ‘dying’ as opposed to living. The logic is that when he was alive, when I didn’t see him, I’d think of him. Now that I don’t see him I still think of him. He comes back in my dreams from time to time in different characters and different ways, taking up space in my subconscious, personifying guilt, nostalgia and goodness. It’s always a comfort to see him. I don’t know if he would really approve of me if he knew me intimately, hence the guilt. I think that in real life he would find me odd or wayward but in my dreams, he likes me because I’m like him. Every time I find someone I like or can look up to I find that they describe me in some ways. Darwin was right. Attraction is narcissism.

After my grandfather finished playing the guitar in my dream, I turned my attention to some of my friends were a few feet away, trying to fish agave worms out from tequila bottles. When I turned around, my grandfather had gone. I asked Shanaz where he was and she told me he was drunk and had gone off to the mosque to marry ‘Aunty Yuz’ and said that as a joke, he was going to change her name to ‘Fuck Yuz’ after they got married. Erm, yeah. The irony is my grandfather had three wives. I guess one more wouldn’t hurt.

Me and my strange dreams. I was getting shot at with a nail gun by someone’s schizophrenic father the night before. Sheesh.

~ by starranise on November 24, 2009.