Phoenix Swords and the Potato Festival

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Last night I dreamed that Phoenix Swords was performing at a Potato Festival in northern New Hampshire.
We were up there the day before the festival setting up. One of our friends had decided to come along with us to the show and was helping us set up.

It was a disaster. The weather was cold, it rained, none of the equipment would set up right because it was so muddy, no one was going to show up for the show because the weather was so bad.

There was some weird piece of equipment I don’t recognize that I was trying to set up and just couldn’t get it to do what I thought it should do. Even in the dream I didn’t know what it should be doing, so maybe that was part of it.

I got very frustrated and we called it a day. We were staying with our friends in New Hampshire. Although the festival was not particularly near where they lived, we were told there was a covered walkway that would get us there.

I began walking through the wooden corridor indicated. The floor was very uneven, the corridor was narrow, and lots of people were going up and down in it.
I was still carrying the muddy piece of equipment and it kept getting caught on things.

Finally, I just dropped it.
“That’s it!” I said. “It can just stay here!”
“It’s not much farther,” Mike, my friend from New Hampshire said, coming up behind me.
He picked up the equipment and continued on down the corridor.
I followed and a short time later there was a door to the side that came out in his living room.

“There are secret passages that lead to every house in New Hampshire?” I asked him.
“We don’t talk about it much,” he replied.
“But, I used to live in New Hampshire, and I didn’t have a secret passage.”
“Remember that door in your living room that you thought went to the next apartment?”
“The one the landlord told me to never open?”
“See, we don’t talk about it much.”

We all sat down in his kitchen and I was still cold, wet and angry.
“I don’t want to go back tomorrow!” I said. “No one is going to show up! It’s cold, it’s raining, it’s muddy. I think we should just grab our stuff and go home.”

The friend who had come up with us looked sad.
“You wanted to go to the potato festival?” I asked.
They nodded their head.
“OK, we’ll at least do the show on Saturday.”
Dream ends

This dream is made up of a whole bunch of things, most of which I think I recognize.

First a month from now we’re doing a festival in Maine. A state that is known for its potatoes. Yesterday my wife and I were saying we weren’t really ready for it and don’t have many rehearsals left before it.

This weekend we’re doing a faire in New Jersey that has had many problems before. While it is run by some good friends and we like a lot of the folks there, it is the faire that rained so much a small lake formed around out tent. Or, the year there were tornado warnings. Or, the year we found a dead mouse in our tent and the smell made everyone sick.
So, things often go wrong at it, despite the folks we like there.

When we were cleaning out storage the other week, we found some sort of contraption my wife ordered. I’m not sure what it is. Some sort of tent extension or something.
She made the comment that I could probably figure out how to put it together and I said something like “I’m not sure I want to at a show”.

For this weekend’s show a friend is joining us. She’s done this many times before.
This time, the hotel has told us that instead of the 2 beds per room I thought I had ordered, we’re only getting 1 bed per room. How we’re going to sort that out is not yet worked out, but I’m sure it is in my mind we might disappoint our friend.

While I am not aware of secret passageways through New Hampshire, my coworker and I were discussing the new Godzilla movie yesterday. One of the plot points there is that there are secret underground passageways that let the monsters move around the world quickly.

And, when I lived in New Hampshire, there was a door in my apartment that I never opened. The landlord did say it went to the next apartment and was there to be an emergency exit. He told me that if I ever opened it, my apartment had better be on fire. As that never happened, I never opened the door.

So, I see all the components that went into it.
But, it is strange how it all came together…