Note: as it says at the end, please take everything I’ve said in this story with a grain of salt, for between the ages of 13 and 14 I was a manic Asbergian kid who was bouncing off the walls nearly 24/7. I don't really believe in much of this story anymore except for the fact that it proves I belonged in a mental hospital.

A Short Prologue
Saturday, February 18, 2006

I was watching RAGE on the Saturday morning as I often did. On came a video clip that I recognised the tune for. It was a new song regularly played on the radio. I missed the title and artist of the song and I cared for neither in those days. I must have been writing something down for I remember looking up and there was a man, singing. And I like to think that right there and then, there was something. That when I saw him, there was a strong feeling, just something about him, and not that I recognised him, although I subconsciously would have since I had seen him on a TV show only a few months before. Again I had had the same feeling then although not as strong, but perhaps I only like to think this and am creating false memories for myself.

In the beginning there was nothing.
And then… there was Everything.

Sunday, February 19, 2006 (Approx. 10 a.m.)
At first I saw nothing. I only felt. I was sitting in a chair, there was a table in front of me, and a particular cartoon character – my somewhat childish crush at the time - was next to me in another chair. Then I looked up and saw the same man that had been in the video clip, sitting straight across from us on the other side of the table. The room had a bluish light to it, the same of that in the clip. I realised that my crush was selling me to him. I was aware of other people in the background, in another room. I wondered if they were other teenage girls that had been sold, or their captors, or both.

Then Sophie woke me up. And although she had just saved me from the mysterious sleaze, I couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed and slightly disoriented.

That day I looked up the song. Found out its name and the artist(s). I knew nothing of Rock ‘N’ Roll, nothing of rock history, nothing of music. It must’ve been that I was so blind, naïve and oblivious that some sort of outside force (which is what it felt like) actually had to go and track Steven Tyler down for me and arrange an astral meeting.

The song was Just Feel Better by Santana & featuring Steve Tyler.

There was a line in it that went, “I’ve got a key to the door, but it just won’t open.” Now I know this line is meant to be metaphorical, and knew so back then as well, but I still laughed about it because the lock on our front door was screwed at the time. We had a few different keys cut for it but mine happened to be the only one that worked. So I kept on laughing about it, that is, until, a week later it stopped working. And you know what? Two and a half years later it’s not fixed and we still use the back door to enter the house.

How I knew of him in the first place was because I had bought The Simpsons: A Complete Guide To Or Favourite Family for $2 in an op shop a few months before and one of the things I took note of was the guest celebrities in each episode (Aerosmith where one of the first ones to be on it). A few weeks later, they had played The Christmas special of Lizzie McGuire, whichhe is also in, and Lizzie exclaims, “It’s Steven Tyler from Aerosmith!” I ran to get The Simpsons book and looked up the Flaming Moe’s episode; and there he was in the credits. The thing is: I have no idea why it was of so much significance to me, I had already seen that same Christmas special at least twice before. Maybe I had noticed him on viewing it previously but I really can’t remember.

I don’t know why I had the dream. But it was what I call real, whether I have/had a spiritual connection with Steven or not. I knew the dream was special from the moment I woke up, or I would not have been so obsessed.

Monday, February 20, 2006
The next day I was listening to the radio which I always had on back then even while I slept and I had this feeling of what I might call some kind of urgency and something else and just something all together and the song suddenly started playing. From then on I would have that same feeling every time the song was about to be on. I always knew it would be on. Often a few songs before it started even. I was never wrong. I would even wake up in the middle of the night a few seconds before it would start. Maybe it was that the radio station I listened to (104.1 - 2day FM) played songs in the same order and I subconsciously memorised it, but I doubt it because I would also frantically switch over to other stations when I could feel it would be played. And it happened at least twice a day. It felt like the song was calling out to me; trying to tell me something. And not the lyrics, I don’t mean them. The song itself, the feeling of it, the music; not how the music was played and what it sounded like but as if the song had a soul itself.

Saturday Morning, Date Unknown, Sometime in March – April
I woke up in a four-poster bed that wasn’t mine in a very bright, white room. I felt groggy and started crawling around the floor as memories of the night before came in flashes as I staggered on all fours. And if I forget the flashes of memory they shall be forgotten, for I am not writing them all down here. I will however tell you that Joe Perry was there and I entered the next room (blind folded of course, how else?) with him. He must have not tied it on tightly enough because I could still see down past my nose to the floor. I had a feeling there were still other people in the room, possibly the other band members, I don’t know, but they seemed to be occupied with their own business (I am sure it was nothing of a sexual nature so don’t get the wrong idea) and weren’t that important in the situation.

Oh, uhm, Steven was in there too.

I woke up on my own this time, and I am sure the reason The Dream continued from where it had left off was because it had been interrupted the first time.

From then on lots of strange little ‘coincidences’ happened; so many that I cannot name even a quarter of them. I would hear a song and swear I had heard it before (which still happens to this day), things would all seem to be connected to other things, and things that seemed to want me to discover them would throw themselves at me. This somehow ended up with my main genre of musical interest being ‘hair metal’ for want of a better term, which I find relevant because every glam band of the 80s has Aerosmith listed under their influences. However, there are many more things that I can’t answer for.

It wasn’t until about June or July when I started to hear the song less and I had switched radio stations that I predicted it less & less until it finally stopped happening altogether.

A Short Epilogue
This is where I shall end the story because it was only meant to be a documentary of The Dream itself. No one seems to understand that was my life. Is my life. It is the absolute story of how my music obsessions & theories began. I didn’t dream it on purpose. How can one dream a dream on purpose? As they are magical things with a mind of their own. It came to me from (literally) out of the blue, so unexpected; this thing that utterly and completely changed my life within a matter of a few seconds and they think I was ‘reading too much into it’. I chose for it to change my life as much as a bug chooses to be stepped on. If I hadn’t had it I would be nothing. I would have no interests, no spiritual beliefs, no nothing. I don’t know how to say it any better and I don’t know how people cannot understand it. It was the beginning of me.

My Story
Finally put to rest on August 6, 2008

An After Word July 3, 2009
Although I do not feel so much this way anymore about the dream, I still recognise that it was a big thing in a part of my life, and it attributed to a lot of my insights into things I would perhaps have had no insight into or understanding of before, or still particular interests I have to this day although my taste in music has changed a little. Whether I still believe in spiritual connections or not is another thing altogether, but it was big thing for me at the time. Just take everything I’ve said in this story with a grain (or two or three or four or five) of salt, for between the ages of 13 and 14 I was a manic Asbergian kid who was bouncing off the walls nearly 24/7.