Monday, March 24, 2008

A Weird Dream

I woke up this morning and couldn't wait to blog about a dream I'd just had! I think it was inspired by a piece of art I saw hanging in a restaurant last night. I mentioned to my dinner companion that the colors might look good in my bedroom. We then had a conversation about whether it was any good as art-- I didn't think it was anything really special, but my friend kind of scoffed at it and said I could just paint something myself that would be much better. I kind of agreed, since it was a really abstract piece that was basically just two big areas of flat color! But I guess I went to sleep with art on my brain.

In my dream, I was in a place sort of like the Strand Bookstore, except that there were various big old paintings hanging on the wall. I noticed one that was up near the ceiling-- it seemed to be painted directly on a piece of ragged plywood that was covering some sort of attic door. The painting was of a man sitting at a table, with his hands on an open book. He was leaning down so that his chin was below the level of the table edge and his eyes were staring out over the edge of the book. His hands seems unnaturally large, and they were painted very beautifully, with light and shadows across the fingers. The background of the painting was a room with dark blue walls.
For some reason, I decided I really liked this painting and wanted to buy it. The store seemed to be having a going-out-of-business sale, so I thought they might sell it to me even though it seemed to be part of the building itself, not a free-hanging piece. An old lady came by who I guessed must be the owner of the store, and I asked her if the painting was for sale. She said, "Oh sure, but I'm not sure how it costs, maybe $120 or $130 dollars." Hearing that, I was thrilled, as I'd been thinking I might offer $200 or so! Then the old lady told me that the painting came with a small black chalkboard hung on the back of it-- she pointed to other paintings with similar chalkboards near them, covered with columns of numbers, and said that the numbers represented the history of the auction bids on the paintings. I thought the little chalkboard was almost as cool as the painting itself, so I rather breathlessly said "Great, I want to buy it!"
The old lady set someone to work on taking down my painting, and we went to a cash register. She then handed me a bill with the price scrawled across it in huge numbers: $1,000! I was stunned, as I'd thought I was getting the painting for $130! I stood there wondering what to do-- had my obvious excitement over the painting made her think she could charge more for it? Should I try to negotiate a lowball price? How much did I love the painting? Was it worth spending $1,000 or should I just walk away if she wouldn't lower the price?

And that's when I woke up. I hate it when dreams are left unresolved like that!

2 comments:

Noel Larson said...

...and they lived happily ever after.

The End
:)

Anonymous said...

So the evil storeowner lady wanted to charge you a lot more than you expected to pay, huh? Well, I think you should exact revenge on her by emailing everybody a description of the painting so that they can paint it for themselves. You know, just like the Neiman Marcus cookie story, except you're publicizing it in a blog instead of email.

See how your friend's DIY suggestion and the dream tie together?