I was in one of the front rows of my old high school assembly hall. At a desk on the stage sat George W Bush, wearing a world war II army cap, which made me despair. "If he's not making policy announcements in army bases for no reason at all, he's wearing an army uniform. He's like some third world dictator," I thought to myself. He was delivering a rambling, pointless speech, full of horrifying platitudes and simple-minded lies. Mischievously, I started humming "The Star-Spangled Banner", knowing that he wouldn't be able to tell who was doing it. People around me started to join in and, by the time we'd got a few lines in, everyone in the hall was humming the tune, drowning out the speech. When we got to the stirring bit ("And the rockets' red glare."), Bush threw down his speech notes and walked out.
Notes for Freudian Interpretation
The day I had this dream, I'd started to read a news report on an speech that Bush had made on Iraq, then stopped when I realised it was full of horrifying platitudes and simple-minded lies. Well, what's the point, really?
I didn't ever do that thing in school where you disrupt the lesson by humming until the teacher flies into a rage and gives the whole class lines. In fact, I don't think I was ever in a class in which anyone was doing that; it's just something I've heard other people talking about. However, once, on an interminable wet and dark autumn afternoon when we had a nave and inexperienced supply teacher, Ian "Freaky" Philp pretended to have a stroke and die. That was brilliant.
This was the second of two George Bush dreams this week. The night before, I dreamed I was watching a new film by Oliver Stone in which the actor playing Bush was sitting cross-legged on the floor, lapping like a dog from a huge bowl of blood. He raised his head towards the camera, his eyes two mad white spaces staring out of the splattery gore. You can say what you like about Oliver Stone, I thought.
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