hudebnik | Dream journal

I dreamed a movie adaptation of an Austen novel. In one scene a piece of stained glass is described as the color of some particular exotic bird -- I don't remember what bird now that I've woken up, so let's call it "peacock blue" -- but the character in the scene had never seen a peacock, and mused on whether this really was the same color seen by such-and-such painter when he depicted a peacock in such-and-such painting, and that led to a whole series of other thoughts that drove an event in the plot.

Anyway, at the end of the movie, we see a village with a river running through it, and a voice-over from the author, apparently coming from one of the houses on the bank, saying "I suppose I could have described the piece of stained glass as the color of a primrose, but then the character would have had to have never seen a primrose, and that would have changed her whole life story, and ..." and the entire book became absurd. And then Austen explained, equally seriously, why some other minor detail in the book couldn't have been otherwise than what it was, lest the whole book become absurd.