So I’ve woken up ridiculously early today (how silly; it’s my birthday, not Christmas, and I have a full day at work ahead… but still…)
I had a fun dream. One of those slightly odd ones in that its difficult to work out what inspired it. Elements of it make sense, others less so.
A few friends and I had decided on a media stunt. It was to be magnificent — even the people working with us were to think we were seriously undertaking a business endeavour, but the whole thing was going to to be, essentially, a clever joke. So we created a street fashion label – ‘Structive Destructivo’, designed some clothes, set up a press conference and then drove the model (me! – well, I said it was a dream) down there in complete secrecy so we would have maximum impact walking through the door. The last time I was on a catwalk in real life, I was 10 years old and someone at my primary school had asked me to do it as I was the only kid they knew who owned a blazer (in Malaysia!)… but I was reasonably swaggering and confident in this dream press conference (which was hosted in something that bore a staggering resemblence to a school hall, albeit one on a beach in Miami somewhere…), spun up the length of the hall, turned, and as I sat down I stylishly spun the orange baseball cap I was wearing around so it was on backwards. And then it didn’t fit. A strange level of detail for a dream, you might think? It gets weirder…
“Structive destructivo is not just about streetwear,” my voice says. “It is about a philosophy of life. It’s about not having to answer to the man. It’s about living real. It is about being able to kick the shit out of something if you need to — not someone, dude, that’s just wrong. It’s about being free to do what you need to do to make the world a better place!” Cheers greet my dream self, improbable as that may seem after a contrived and non-sensical intro. Then the first question:
“What wine would go with structive destructivo?” says a reporter I recognise as a housemate from secondary school I didn’t really get on with. I hear myself launch into a description of an Italian red wine I’m pretty sure doesn’t exist, from a part of Italy which may or may not…
…and then I woke up, vaguely proud at having had such a vivid dream that seemed so original, and great, and as I failed to go back to sleep, I realised that if I’d shot a ‘blue steel’ across the auditorium, I’d have been dreaming an alternate version of Zoolander…
Notes to self: the hybrid worlds of Zoolander, Eli Stone, Saturday Morning Kitchen and my youth is a very weird place indeed. And all the clothes are orange.
My Dad always had trouble switching off when he left the office when he was younger. Being a corporate lawyer defined him to the core of his being, and it was hard to leave behind the challenges and conundrums his work threw at him. He revels in the intellectual challenge.