I had a messed up dream last night, for the first time in years, really.
It started out with me coming in late to this gymnasium where a bunch of musicians were lined up against one wall performing. There was a cello section, and James was one of them. I came in and sat with my friends, who were seated against another wall on the floor.
The performance was ongoing, and everyone was pretty quiet, except James who kept loudly cursing things like, “Damn that part is hard!” Then some of my friends started shouting back loudly to him, and they were having this conversation, over the music. I was getting really pissed, and was going to shout for them to shut up…
But then I realized that there were actually other people talking—the gymnasium was way bigger than I thought—actually about the size of the dealer room at Gencon. Friggin’ huge. And there were many more people seated on the floor.
It turns out we were not actually leaning against the edge of the room, but rather the edge of a huge stage, and there were people on top the stage, also listening and doing stuff. And on top of that stage was another stage, for three levels total.
At the top level, there were professional actors acting out something, but it was hard to hear. Tom Cruise came out and was doing something dramatic. I realized the orchestra was just a pit orchestra for this whole thing going on.
And we were not the audience, but participants in a huge game of some kind. My friends told me that we were acting out the state of the African nations today, and that we were on the “third tier” representing the poor, servants and homeless.
Nonetheless, some guy in a toga came out and gave us some meager food. He also brought some juice in a bottle, but only one to share between all of us, which I found distasteful.
I tried to think about how to reach tier two, where the corrupt officials and faction leaders were, but couldn’t really figure out anything. Then my violin teacher from high school came out and brought us a more substantial meal, which we ate at a table that had one of the African nation flags as its tablecloth, and we used it as a napkin to wipe our mouths.
I woke up feeling like I might actually want to try designing this huge game, this experiment, to raise money for charity, but I really have no idea how it was supposed to work.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is no relationship between theory and practice.