My dad and I were in the bedroom that I had had as a teenager. He was painting the walls and I was helpfully reading a book and listening to Lou Reed and John Cale's "Songs for Drella" on my old ghetto blaster. I left the room for a while, leaving the tape playing. When I came back, I noticed that my dad had put on a Van Morrison album instead. He must have hated the other one.
Having apparently discovered a way of having the ghetto blaster's radio on at the same time as the tape was playing, my dad was listening to the news. I must have forgotten about that feature in the years since I last used it. The news story was about a young boy in Mongolia or western China who had saved his village by killing some sort of giant wild bear and had become the hero of his country as a result. I suspected that there was less to the story than was being made of it as it all seemed very unlikely.
Later that day, I was in a supermarket in which a huge bear-like animal was prowling around glowering and snarling in a vaguely threatening way. While I was standing on a cooler cabinet with some other customers, wondering whether I would be eaten if I waited in line at the checkout, the young boy from the news report showed up, holding a pistol. As he repeatedly shot the animal in the head, smiling cheerily, I realised that he was Mir Hussain from the documentary, "The Boy who Plays on the Buddhas of Bamiyan".
Notes for Freudian Analysis
I talked to my dad on the phone the night before I had this dream. He seemed quite tired and was in a hurry to get off the phone as he was in the middle of doing reports for school.
"Songs for Drella" was rarely out of the tape deck for months after I got it during my last year at school. Inspired by the songs, I read everything that I could find that Andy Warhol had written, which in retrospect, was a bit of a waste of time.
I doubt that my dad could name a Van Morrison song. I don't know that he would hate "Songs for Drella", but he certainly wouldn't enjoy it.
You couldn't listen to the radio and the tape at once on my stereo, but Alan's one let you listen to both tape decks at once -- a quite shocking design flaw that we mistakenly assumed was a really cool feature.
I can't account for anything else in the dream. Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" has no observations relating to dreams in which the dreamer is saved from a bear by a little Afghan kid, although it really should.