Major Matt "Show Poem" from: Rabbit Killer, Folkicide, Major Matt Mason USA @ Davey's Uptown- KC,MO- 2/13/13

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Just before waking up today I had an anxiety dream. I’ve grown to kind of enjoy anxiety dreams. They seem to be the kinds dreams that I remember most frequently. This dream took place on the day of my college graduation. I was waiting in a room, preparing to walk out onto a field with my fellow graduates. Then I realize that I’m supposed to be giving a speech of some kind and I’ve done absolutely nothing to prepare for it. There’s a couple of other very smart looking people in the room with me that are looking over notes and mumbling to themselves like they're rehearsing their own speeches.

All of a sudden the door to the room opens and a woman pokes her head in and says, “It’s time.” I start sweating as I fumble into my graduation robe and start walking down this long hallway with the other speakers. I’m feverishly trying to think about what I’m going to say as I adjust my mortarboard on top of my head. I’m freaking out a little but I’m also kind of excited. The strange thing that seems different about this anxiety dream and others that I’ve had in the past is that I’m not actually all that stressed out. As I walk down the hall I feel like I’m coming up with this awesome idea for a speech that I never would have thought of if it weren’t for the fact that I’m completely unprepared. I’ve decided to embrace my fear and just come clean to this huge stadium full of people and confess that I’ve more or less blown off my home work and that I’m totally winging it.

At this point I wake up.

Usually, when I wake up from an anxiety dream I’m super relieved that I’ve escaped this impossible position that I was in. But this time it’s different. I was kind of looking forward to seeing how the speech turned out. So, it’s almost like in a matter of seconds, right before I woke up, my anxiety dream turned into a sex dream, where I always wake up right before I reach orgasm. I then realized that Sex Dreams are the second most remembered types of dreams that I have.

Aside from this frustration, I felt a special kind of peace upon waking from this dream this morning. Like some things have aligned in my conscious and unconscious world and that its going to be okay.

I’ll explain. Every time I play a solo show I’ve created this little self imposed pressure to do an original writing /poem that I’ll read at the show. Like, I’m doing right now. There’s always a bit of anxiety in the back of my head that some force, be it writers block or other commitments throughout the day, will prevent me from coming up with a good idea. I try not to push it, and occasionally I’ll go through most of the day with nothing. But luckily after doing this for about six years something always comes up and things seem to work out. Well, today, before I even woke up I had this idea. So, it didn’t even feel like I had to try on this one really.

And the triple whammy is that for the past week the reoccurring theme of FEAR has been popping up a lot in my life. Nan and I watched a Ted talk given by a woman where she talks about how fear is the opposite of love and how vulnerability is the source of all creativity and human connection. The last thing I remember in my dream is that the speech that I had planned on giving at the graduation was going to be something along those lines.

You know how people are always giving advice at commencement speeches like “We are the future! Follow your Dreams! Don’t be afraid!! Blah, Blah Blah!” Well, I was going flip that and say something like, "Be afraid! Be very afraid!!! And then be thankful. And follow your fear. Because that’s were you need to be. The other side of that fear is where you’re going to find the most fulfillment in your life. The point is not to eliminate fear or to be consumed by it. We should be eagerly seeking it out and talking through it. We should be thanking those that raise our fears to our consciousness. And instead of fearing the loss of things, we should be trying to teach ourselves how to love the things we fear."