I dreamed I was visiting with Trevor Moffat, the lead guitarist of my first teenage rock band. I had agreed to plastic surgery in which we would switch appearances entirely: faces, hair, etc. I was very sad about it, but sure I must have agreed for some good reason which I couldn’t remember. At different points in the dream, I also told various people I met that Trevor and I had exchanged names. People still seemed to recognize me.

Early in the dream, I got out of Trevor’s car at his modernist house and went to a Soviet pub. The place was full of brutish workers. I left my seat to ask the indifferent server for some French fries, and when I got back, a guy was sitting in my chair and had drank all my beer. I sat next to him, refusing to be intimidated. His friend, a guy across the table started talking to me. They were German. He was talking about people in northern British Columbia, mostly holed up little cabins, and I mentioned that yes, I knew the man he called The Master; I revealed that I knew his name to be Richard Teitelbaum. He corrected my pronunciation, but accepted what I was saying. We discovered we had other people in common. They were a little warmer to me after that.

At a late point in the dream, I forgot a woman’s name who recognized me even with Trevor’s face. I can’t remember if her name was Ruth or if that was the name I incorrectly called her. At her house, I got a look at myself in the mirror and who I actually looked like was Chris Batting (the lead guitarist of my second band). Outside her place, the Fraser River was flooding ominously—almost right up to her door.