hudebnik | Dream journal

Two interesting dreams last night, the first of which I've completely forgotten. In the second, I got a commission to write a verse for the national anthem of a newly-independent African nation, which had the tradition of adding a verse every time a major event happened in its history. (The flag had the entire anthem text painted on it, so the flags too got longer at every major event.) Unfortunately, I didn't speak the local language, and my only source for the local language was the half dozen or so existing verses of the national anthem; I had to piece together the vocabulary and grammar from that. For example, several of the prominent figures in the nation's history been professors, and they were invariably introduced with the line "Akade bo ", so I concluded that "akade" meant professor or academic. (The apparent cognate relationship between "akade" and "academic" didn't occur to me until I woke up.) Anyway, somehow I finished my verse, with very little confidence in its grammatical correctness, and was present at the ceremony where they unveiled it and the new longer flags. And nobody seems to have laughed at my grammar, so I guess I got it adequately right.