What the Dream Chose to Play

The dream had a score. Somewhere underneath whatever was happening, barely there but persistent, was Samson by Regina Spektor—that song that takes the Samson and Delilah story and turns it into tenderness rather than betrayal, Samson with his hair cut in the dark and somehow it’s not about power at all. I don’t remember everything that was in the dream. I remember waking up with the song still running.

This was the first Advent weekend. Becca and I drove to Kaufbeuren on Friday to walk around—bought nothing festive, ate Leberkässemmeln and sandwiches instead, which felt like the right call against the backdrop of all those Christmas decorations neither of us wanted to look at. Saturday the plan to go out for some party collapsed the way those plans always do, so André and Lisa came over and we played GameCube and suffered through bad MTV shows. Fine.

Sunday, Nastja and I sat in the Schlossgarten in actual winter sunlight and worked through economics together—GDP, price indices, bubbles. The kind of material that makes you feel like you’re studying for a life you haven’t fully agreed to yet. Back at hers, things almost turned into a proper fight between her and Iri. The evening ended with me trying to help her through Latin homework, nearly asleep over poems that turned out to be considerably more explicit than the curriculum probably intended.

Later I found a cover of Samson on YouTube—someone clearly very good, just playing it straight—and the combination of that interpretation landing on top of whatever the dream had left sitting in my chest genuinely got to me. Eyes watering. Not going to apologize for it.