I had this great dream last night...
I was talking to my friend David on the phone while I was pumping gas into my truck at a gas station. Next door was a fast food restaurant that had rooftop seating and it was packed full of people. In the sky in front of me was a magnificent double rainbow. So, I am pumping gas and checking out the rainbow and notice a plane flying across the sky. I could hear the dull, distant roar of it's engine and propellers. Then something bright yellow fell from the plane, first tumbling down in gravity's pull, but then suddenly shooting across the sky as if flying. It began streaking back and forth, gracefully arcing while slowly descending towards Earth. It appeared to be making it's way in my direction. By now the diners on the rooftop next door had noticed it too and they were standing up, pointing and excitedly oohing and aahing. Closer and closer the flying object drew until it got close enough that it became apparent that it was a human in a winged flight suit. This ascertainment aroused quite a commotion amongst the diners as well as the rapidly assembling crowd of people on the street.

The flier soared smoothly and effortlessly, turning and swooping through the sky. Just a hundred feet or so high now above the ground I could make out from it's form that the flier was a woman. With a quick drop she made her way towards the ground just a dozen feet from where I was standing. I could feel a rush of air as she fully extended her wings and hung motionless, seemingly hovering just off the ground. Then with all of the ease and grace of a bird landing in soft sand she touched down to the Earth. Immediately she unzipped her winged flight suit and hurriedly removed it. As the crowd of onlookers began to move towards her she ran to a group of three astonished looking young women who were standing close by and she gave them the flying suit. Then she ran by me, giving me a big smile as she passed. She was young, tall and slender with long black hair and her skin had the dark tan hue of a Pacific Islander. She ran out into the traffic of the busy street and paused on the center island dividing the opposing lanes of traffic. She turned and looked around, scanning the oncoming cars when suddenly her face lit up. She motioned her hand at an oncoming car which screeched to a stop at her side. She jumped in and the car sped away, disappearing into the busy traffic.

I looked back to the three young women holding the bright yellow flight suit. They looked at me, their mouths agape in amazement and then turned their attention to the suit, examining it and running their hands over the smooth material. I hung up the gas nozzle and as I replaced my gas cap I realized that I was still holding my phone in my hand. David was still on the line and as I hopped in my truck and drove away I began explaining to him what I had just witnessed. End of dream.

Shortly after I awoke this morning I was playing an instrumental piece that I recently composed for guitar. The piece uses a non-standard tuning (C,G,D,G,B,E) and I began to explore this tuning a little bit more while remembering my fantastic dream. Soon a bit of slow, meditative music was coming through me and I decided I would like to record it and call it "Peaceful Flight" in honor of my dream. The windows and doors were all open and I could hear the birds chirping outside. I thought it would be great to capture the bird's song in the recording, so I left the windows open. Just as I was about to hit the record button, a bee flew in the house and began buzzing around noisily. I gently shooed him back outside, smiling that another instance of flight had graced my morning. So, I pressed the record button and sat down to play Peaceful Flight and over the course of the next six minutes while I played the song, first a helicopter flew over, then a propeller plane and finally just at the end of the piece, a jet rumbled it's way across the sky. All three leaving their indelible sonic fingerprint intertwined with the guitar and etched onto the recording.

It was a pretty amazing morning!

Tim Flood
San Diego, CA
March 16, 2010