INTRODUCTION

I'm a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. I have three classes; all are intense in their own ways. The last class is my Modernity and Modernism class. The book we are reading from is in some ways outdated, and I find an image in the book, of an Ife sculpture from Nigeria, that I feel is inappropriately labeled: Head of a Negro. I want to bring this up somehow, for it really bothers me.

Then I go home, and watch Tupac: Resurrection with my roommate. We get into a heated discussion; she is angry about the glorification of violence in the hip hop culture of that time. I am slightly agitated because I feel like she is almost insinuating that Tupac got what he had coming to him. She compares his murder to the suicide of Kurt Cobain. I am even more agitated by that and tell her "Suicide is not the same as murder." Why I have this discussion, I don't even know, for it is unfortunate that lives were cut short regardless of how it happened.

THE DREAM

I am on my way to work with my roommate. She is wearing a black coat, similar to Agent Scully on the X-Files, but more stylized, with 3-quarter-length sleeves. On the back of the coat there is a symbol I don't remember, maybe a flashlight or hands; I know it means "Look out, I'm in a hurry". Someone on the street says "I like your coat", and we talk about how she got it; I think she worked on the set of some production company. At last she takes off the coat and puts another on.

We walk on down the street. Patches of grass and puddles are tinted blue. My roommate keeps saying how gross it is that there are mushrooms. I don't see mushrooms, just these patches of blue grass. I try not to step in the grass or puddles that look blue.

Then the dream changes. I don't remember how it started, but this guy is harassing me. When I get off the bus, he follows me. I walk down the street trying to hide from him. I reach a building where I think Tupac's mother lives. I want to knock on the door but I am not sure she really lives there. So I wait outside and think about what I want to say to her, and I imagine that she is waiting for me.

Then the dream changes again; now I am in my dining/living room. Someone, a combination of my roommate and Agent Scully I think, is talking about the discovery of some heads from Africa. She starts to put examples on the table. She says about one of them "Because the head is so badly decomposed, we don't know if it's a sculpture or a human head." I think to myself, "This is really bizarre and horrific, how can they not know if it's a real head or not?"

She hands that head to me, to put on the table. It's small and heavy, and hot. The head is covered in moss. It looks like no other head or sculpture of a head I have ever seen. I stare at it as it sits on the table, and it seems to emanate an energy. I feel really uncomfortable having this head on our dining room table and I think this is not a good idea.

Then I wake up.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Labeling of the head: when dealing with race and representation, I get defensive and frustrated because I feel like people's bodies have been objectified to the point of abstraction. I find it hard to talk about or write about, even though it means a lot to me because of my family history and heritage--so many gaps and holes to the story, which I guess is how history works...
• Mushrooms, blue: on my blog I recently posted a picture of blue mushrooms that are captivating as far as mushrooms go. I do find mushrooms fascinating.
• X-files: my roommate and I have been rewatching episodes of X-files on Netflix, though not this night.
• I love interpretations, so if you have any thoughts please share them!

EDITOR'S NOTES

• Coat: most people who have X-Files dreams meet or become agents in that fictional world. Not here! Your friend seems to have been involved behind the scenes, in production. The dream kind of emphasizes the show is fiction. So rather than saying "Oh, you identify with Scully" or "you like investigating the weird" I'd guess this dream scene is mulling over media images and labels versus reality (Head of A Negro and Tupac: Resurrection)
• Avoid blue puddles and grass:
  1. Just creepy stuff to set the mood? Like the guy harassing you and the mossy head. But why blue? Seems symbolic.
  2. You're studying art. Are you sure didn't see blue grass and puddles in some image today, one you didn't like? Maybe your dream wanted to bring it up to consciousness to point out "THAT didn't work."
  3. Is Bluegrass a pun? You'd have heard some hiphop in the show on Tupac--is the dream making a comparison here? "You think hiphop glorifies violence? Bluegrass music was just as gruesome." I just went to an open mic last night and one guy played an old English folksong and one a modern bluegrass song. In each, a woman dies horribly! They drop like flies in that bluegrass world...
• You're followed: You feel harassed. Then it shifts--you hover round Tupac's mother's place. But wouldn't she see you the same way, as a stranger, a voyeur invading her privacy? Almost like the dream's putting you in his shoes.
• The creepy head:
  1. You write of the discomfort you felt over the labeling of Head of a Negro but you didn't say how you felt about the head itself. It's as if the politics--the abstractions--got in the way of seeing the art--how the sculptor felt, how the model felt, how you felt. Maybe your dream fought back by stripping off all the abstraction and forcing the head into your hands...
  2. But it's not mere sculpture. It's hot--is it alive? Or a preserved head with a spirit trapped inside? Moss grows on it, as if it's from a graveyard. Is this the head of Tupac? Is it violence, decay, disease, death, the spirit world? A reminder that even supposedly immortal artists end up as moldy skulls? I don't know.
  But the heft and heat of that head hint it's a vital issue. If one you dread to face.

LAUREN AGAIN

Last semester we covered art from Nigeria, and when looking at those sculptures I felt something hard to describe. It's like I have seen them before, back when they were made, and felt the energy of how and why the artist made them; yet now I see them on a projection screen as my teacher describes this culture like it's foreign and far away. It feels near and far at the same time, and that freaks me out! I can rarely find the words to describe the feeling--but I can when I dream.

--Lauren Watley

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