Mister has reappeared in my dreams again! I can’t help but feel that with this one there was much more to it than had met the eye.
The timeframe was the present day. I had come across footage on YouTube I’d never seen before. You know, we all end up down that YT ‘rabbit hole’ as we call it – in reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. So the footage I found was dated around 1983/84. Aspects of it were similar to that mini documentary footage from Brussels in 1983. Jim was beautiful, as ever. He had more chest hair than he actually had at the time (going by how his chest looks in that Brussels clip) but not like a raging man bush, either. Just, like the amount of chest he has now (that I’ve seen). There were these little clips within the video taken of him in a pool, as if he’d been swimming. But the little clips were a montage of him coming out of the pool (completely in the buff but somehow able to hide his….’meat and potatoes’. Like he could just…tuck it away) and then sitting around poolside and being interviewed. So, he was naked, but not showing off his ‘bits’ – initially. These images were kind of ‘classy’ and ‘languid’…like he was walking around and sitting about effortlessly and just exuding this exoticism. It was BEAUTIFUL. Then on the final bit of this montage of him exiting the swimming pool and sitting about, the last bit had him sitting poolside on this kind of rockery and…EVERYTHING was on display! He didn’t make the effort of tucking it all away. I have to say he was not this personification of equine ‘manhood’ that he has been generously bestowed with over the years…but he wasn’t exactly ‘lacking’ either, let’s say that.
The genuinely weird bit about this dream was that one) Mum was still alive, and Two) Berenice was in the dream and I was going to show her this footage – like she would have ANY interest seeing Jim in the buff in 1983?
Mum is in the background doing everyday ‘admin’ things – stuff that you do in life. She’d had a workman come and sort something with the house and he was going to turn up at some point and get his payment for the work he’d done.
Berenice and I are in the kitchen, Mum’s in the periphery and then the guy turns up to get his payment – meanwhile I’m dialling up YT and getting the video on the screen for me and Berenice to watch. We start watching it, and right at the beginning of it, Jim is fully clothed. So before it even gets to the ‘juicier’ bits of the footage, Mum comes into the kitchen and I stop the video and I drop my iPad down into my lap. Mum looks at me with a squint and says ‘what are you up to?’ ‘NOTHING!’ I say back to her. And that is just a totally odd thing for me to do in relation to my mum. We were VERY open with each other. I was very open with my mum. I never felt the need to hide anything from her – in relative terms. It depended on the situation. But I would never shy away from discussing aspects of my sexual relationships or anything like that. Again, not universally, but by and large I didn’t ever feel uncomfortable about talking about things with her.
It was just such an odd thing. The only thing I can put this strange mix of things down to is that it was a manifestation of wishing for when things felt ‘better’. A nostalgic time when I was still very much a fan, and I was still very much ‘in love’ with Jim. To a time when there was still a feeling of SOME stability to the band, perhaps? As signified by Berenice’s presence in the dream? Mum still being alive and feeling that I could visit her and be near her is a very evocative notion of the recent past feeling like the place I want to be at still. All of that stuff intermingling – still feeling a connection with Jim, to the band, the music, the fanbase, friends, Mum. It was so strongly nostalgic beyond that propensity I have for ogling (what I feel is) the young and highly erotic version of Jim.
It left a lot of questions. I tend to dream very lucid dreams – but these past few dreams have not been very lucid. The laundry chute one was not lucid. This new one was not lucid. I’m stunned by that because it REALLY felt like Mum was still alive and still present and that hurt me when I woke up from it and realised it was just a dream and she’s actually not here.
I’m not sure why I’m even sharing it. It feels like the more I am ‘letting go’ of the significance the whole Simple Minds thing had over my life, the less my brain is cluttered with a continuing stream of Jim Kerr, that my subconscious is coming in saying to me ‘Not so fast, girly! You think you can escape this shit? There’s NO escape! He’s got you by the short and curlies for good.’
Anyway, that’s that. I don’t know what else to say about it. The brain is a minefield of fuckery. But I tell you what, I wish that footage I dreamed of actually existed!