A musical packrat's dream

Last night, had a bit of a funny tummy. Woke up this morning, and still had it. Called in sick to church -- I was supposed to do one of the readings -- and essentially stayed in bed dozing until about 1pm.

While asleep, I dreamed that I was walking around some suburban neighborhood, and there was a pile of stuff on the front lawn of a ranch-style (i.e. single-story) house. The house had some charring, so there must've been a fire, and the stuff out on the lawn must have been what was salvaged -- or what was going to get thrown away. But it wasn't the usual type of stuff: instead of chairs and old carpets it was microphones and stereo equipment and the like.

Then I noticed a station wagon in the driveway to my left, fitted out like a camper. In the front seat was a friend of mine from high school, Stephanie Smith, who had been in a few Seattle bands until recently moving out of state. Her boyfriend (or some guy, anyhow) had just gone inside the house, and she told me that the person that owned the house had used it as a recording studio, but when the house had burned he'd just written everything off -- that is, took everything as a loss and just took the insurance money as a cash-out. Thus, everything on the lawn was fair game! She said the guy she was with had gone inside to salvage some of their stuff, but that anything that they didn't grab, I could have. Score!!!

I went inside the house. On counters, and in cupboards, in what would've been the kitchen if it hadn't been used as a recording studio: cables; switching boxes; signal processors; footswitches; weird stuff I recognized as being audio-related but had never seen before...

Some of it had some smoke and/or water-damage, but most of it looked unscathed. And it was free -- so if any given item didn't work -- ah well!

Most of it looked 1970s-1980s-ish, which suits my taste more than the looks of most audio gear built in the last ten years.

As I went thorough the den, with a horrible 1970s shag carpet, I also saw various sorts of video gear -- mostly video monitors of various sizes -- on the floor along the walls, I decided I'd pick some of those up, as well, for future video work.

After I'd gathered up two large cardboard boxes of gear, I started dragging them to the front door. A lady claiming to be an estate sales co-ordinator was in the living room: she was starting an auction. But -- nicely -- she said that since I had already gathered up my haul, she wouldn't include my stuff in the auction.

All. That. Lovely. And. Esoteric. Gear.

Ahhh... :)


--GG