A DREAM OF THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN

Let me start with a dream and my conversation with my Dream Healer and Wise Woman.

I've found over the years that there are small, everyday dreams; and then there are the Big Dreams. Dreams that are reaching you from beyond the everyday life. Perhaps from the greater sense of Self towards which you aspire - which is already there, waiting for you to unlock? Those dreams have a special feeling, a greater resonance, than the small dreams. They stay with you into the day.

Hi Gloria, It’s been a while, though time over here has become rather meaningless.

Anyhow I have a little to share.

Back in September I was rather down and low and there seemed to be no way forward for my creativity when I had the following dream,

I’ve been ordered to the palace where the queen is indisposed and in need of entertainment and diversion. I’m in a big, big stately function room with a grand piano and I’m expected to play it. I sit down and open the lid and find, to my horror, that there is not a keyboard. There’s a tiny keyboard with about 1 1/2 octaves of notes. Not enough to produce any music of any substance.

I point this out to the functionaries as a crowd starts to come in to listen to me play and they say that the real keyboard is on the other side of the piano. The queen is here by now, very beautiful but very distracted. I go around the piano and slide out another set of keyboards: one on top of the other. The lower one is ancient and cobwebby and doesn’t work. The upper one has a bizarre arrangement of keys, not in the accustomed order of black and white. I have to stand to reach them. I press a few and find they make seemingly random, weird noises.

The crowd is quite large by now and full of important people.

Desperately I start hitting the keys. The result is very atonal noise. But I find one key produces the sound of an opera singer, female soprano. If I manipulate that as I strike away at the other mess of keys a strange sort of semi-music begins to emerge. It’s more noise than music, or very ‘modern’ in sound. In a strange way it is effective. It has a haunting quality emerging over the ugliness of the accompaniment.

Then the recital is over. Everyone is filing out. As he passes me Ringo Starr says in a droll ,humorous manner, “Well that made a lot of noise!” I laugh in agreement. We chat and he agrees that, given 3 months’ practice, I could make good music with this thing.

Gloria’s reply

"Oh, this is very intriguing! Your dream was September 8. Three months later is December 8.

I don’t know if you aware but Dec 8th is the feast day of the immaculate conception! http://www.marywood.edu/history/events/immaculate-conception.html It has nothing to do with a virgin conception but that Mary's parents were deemed to be without sin.

Ringo does seem very grounded (the most grounded of The Beatles). He is also knighted for what it’s worth. It hadn’t occurred to me before but drummers are usually content to stay in the background, literally and figuratively. Karen Carpenter struggled mightily with taking the spotlight when it was discovered she had a beautiful singing voice. I remember seeing a documentary where she lamented being pressured both to give up the drums and being out front.

I wonder what the connection with the operatic voice was, given the lack of association with your mother? What comes to mind is that it is a ‘higher voice.’ It also came from the upper keyboard, reiterating the 'higher up' theme.

I did have a feeling that the Queen was linked to the divine feminine and the term 'Queen of Heaven’ crossed my mind but I couldn’t get my mind around how to put into words what I was feeling. Given what you’ve said and the date coincidence it makes more sense.

I like that your hot buttons are cooling down! Same is happening with me and not before time. I sure have worked hard at it."

You'll find Gloria's dream blog here.

It was a time when I did feel stuck, my creativity going nowhere. I'd not been raised in the Catholic Faith and knew nothing of this particular feast day. I'd not followed the Beatles in any great way. I admired their music but in the mid-60s I was more attuned to jazz, blues, soul, Dylan. But I meditated on Ringo as a Knight and I saw him as Knight of Pentacles in the Tarot. ​ "In a general Tarot spread, the Knight of Pentacles represents common sense, responsibility, practicality, working hard for what you want and finishing what you start. This Minor Arcana card is a wish card that signifies achieving your wishes or dreams through perseverance and determination."

Well I have those in Spades! Yep, focused and critical practise. Not just 'going-through-the-motions' practise. Hard and repetitive work practise. So I set to work.

And so it was that in mid-December I felt my music lift to a new level as I went back into the studio with a new style and a bolder voice. A voice singing my own truth. A 5 year journey from the day the door in my mind opened and song lyrics started to pour down...but that's another story!