Sometimes on weekends when I wake up at the usual time, I’ll briefly fall back asleep for 15 minutes or so. I call it my second-wind sleep. Its defining characteristic is how vividly I dream during the interval. When I awake for the second time, I’m usually coming directly from dreaming. 

Saturday morning I dreamt I was arriving at some sort of pre-graduation gathering. The parking lot was filling up, but I found a place on the loop near the entrance with ample space for me to park the white Econoline van my dream-self was rocking. While it ‘felt’ like it was high school — something about the loop — all recognizable personnel were from my college experience.

Once inside the building and entering the room where (whatever) the gathering (was) was being held, I saw a face my dream self hadn’t seen in a while. 

“Dave!” I called out to a guy I played some music with in college. I remember making some awful noise one summer shedding with Dave and a couple other guys in the TKE house basement.

In the dream Dave was wearing a Star Trek-like uniform, but in the colors of our alma mater. He mentioned he was just finishing a musical project, and was holding the physical master or some recording of the final product in his hands. He interrupted my congratulating him with a question.

“What did it sound like?” he asked me. 

I wasn’t sure what he meant. 

Asked him to explain. 

“Your drums … what did it sound like to you?”

Deep question. 

He said he wanted to mention me in his liner notes of the project he’d just finished. How super cool of him, I remember my dream-self thinking. We hadn’t played together for a couple years.

I ascribed a genuine weight to his question. 

What did it sound like? 

But just as I began to think about how I might answer, the proceedings began.

I never got around to giving him my reply. 

Dave, who played guitar (and bass), was there to accompany a choir-ish group (hence the Star Trek uniforms) providing music for the occasion. Singers harmonized a lyric, “It’s been a long time comin’ …,” and were nailing it, understanding both the assignment and the substance of the material. 

As I listened to the music, my dream self was thinking back to how cool it was that there were people like Dave in this world who care about liner notes. 

It was at that point I woke up from my second wind sleep. 

I had a morning haircut, so quickly showered and got dressed. But before heading out I felt compelled to jot down all the details I could remember of my dream and email them to my good friend Doug. 

I had no idea what motivated me to share my dream with him. 

The dream itself made no sense. It was barely a fragment. And it wasn’t even interesting. Immediately after hitting send I considered following it up and apologizing to Doug for my dream spam. 

But before I could do so Doug replied, telling me that my timing was perfect, and added a few words intimating why. I mentioned I was coming to Waynesburg and could I buy him breakfast? He said he already had breakfast plans with his youngest son and grandson, but would shoot me a note after, if I was still around. 

He did, and I was.  

And so we met at a place on High Street.

Seeing him walk in brought its usual smile and our big hug was medicine to my Saturday morning.  

And as soon as he grabbed the chair across from me, we jumped in to the conversational jazz we’ve been playing ever since we met as freshmen in the band room at Waynesburg College. The kind that just makes time melt. We took chorus after chorus after chorus … catching up and comparing notes: on family, on things we think the other might appreciate (Have you heard … ? Have you read …?), as well as the day-to-day smudge and scuff that more and more keeps us up at night (whither sleep?). Our friendship has always made space for all of it, even the messy stuff. There’s music to be found there, too. A long way from freshmen we are. 

As always we could’ve sat and talked forever, but we knew it was time when it was time. Before going our separate ways, Doug mentioned a new coffee shop around the corner that opened up across from where Scott’s Delight used to be. I asked him if it was worth checking out, and he said it was. 

Though my caffeine tank was full to brimming I stopped by on my way out of town. Ordered something sweet and carried it into the adjacent room with the tables. The interior was warm and coffee-shop cozy, the walls adorned with local art, photography and ephemera. 

Something on the wall immediately caught my eye. On a hunch I walked over to take a closer look. 

It couldn’t be. 

Ha … it was. 

Our record. 

Well, Doug’s record. 

The one he bootstrapped, wrote, and paid for the recording, pressing and distribution (such as it was) of a couple months after we graduated. He poured his full heart and bank account — everything he had at the time — into it. 

I played drums. 

Technically speaking I sang backup, too. In actuality, I monotoned on the chorus. So committedly, in fact, that by the end of the session I had earned myself a nickname: The Drone. 

The A and B sides were rock-a-billy homages to the music Doug loved and loves to this day. Of and from a time when three chords were as sufficient and sustaining to us as ramen. 

After the recording and pressing of the 45s, we got some local airplay, and, according to ‘official’ documentation Doug received from the record company, we briefly trended in one of the Scandinavian countries. I remember seeing a photo copy of some paperwork Doug received that testified that, at our peak, we were charting just north of Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” in Sweden, I think. I got the second biggest kick out of that. The biggest kick was the occasional photocopies Doug sent me of the modest royalty checks he’d get in the mail.   

Those were the liner notes that came to mind as I stared at a relic from more than 30 years ago, framed and hanging on a wall in a tiny coffee shop in the town where we met. 

I imagine Doug’s youngest son was behind its placement. 

I thought to myself how cool it was that there were still people in this world who cared about such things. 

Pondering the morning’s serendipity as I stared at our old 45, it suddenly all made sense to me. 

I knew why I’d shared my morning dream with Doug. 

Because he’d shared his with me three decades ago. 

And I also think that, deep down, I had a hunch that we’d make some music of it somehow. 

I think our morning’s conversational jazz qualified. 

Same chords as always. Different changes these days.  

As I drove the back roads home, I mentally made plans to turn in early that night. 

To give myself room for a second wind sleep, in hopes that I might bump into Dave again. 

And get back to him with my answer for his liner notes. 

“What did it sound like?”

It sounded like what it’s always sounded like. 

Like old friends making time melt.