Flood In The Studio

My studio is in an old mill building on the Housatonic River. The wall of the building goes right down into the waters of the river. It is a remaining building of a complex, and many of the other buildings have been swept away by floods. My building also has been often flooded, and been in danger of being swept away. But either because of luck or strength, it remains. Here have a look at it: My studio is on the second floor. In a flood it is the entire first floor that is under water, right up to the joists of the second floor. But before the water could engulf the second floor, it would need to submerge the whole county, I think.

The first floor is a huge open space, where trucks used to load and unload. Now it is empty and unused, dirty and abandoned looking. With or without floods the ground floor is no stranger to water. There is a large artisan well there, in big cement vats, in which water is running all day long. Here you see a cavernous hundred-year-old room all coated with dust, old cars and car parts, windows covered with leaves and mold, a rotted ceiling giving a view through to the next floor, no lights on, just pale green light through the mold on a few windows, high up, and the sound of running water in the artisan wells. Here have a look at that: And in the main room there was a plumbing leak for two month so that when you entered you could hear water dripping into a bucket, the bucket overflowing onto the floor, and a large puddle like a little lake, spread out on the cement floor amid the gloom, beer cans, trash, old rags, rusted tools, wet plaster, and cheap sheetrock walls covered with black mold, and full of holes punched in them by teenagers.

Last night I had a dream about this building. Here is that dream:

I am standing on the porch of Lauren Clark's gallery talking to her. Lauren Clark is two buildings away from my studio. Out in the street I see a large puddle of water, but it is a dry day. It is one of those big puddles like you might see when a hydrant is being cleaned. I continue to talk to Lauren, but then I notice that the entire road has become flooded, and it can't be coming from a hydrant. The studio building is blocked from my view by another mill building, both in my dream and in actual life, so Lauren and I walk down the street to see where the water is coming from. What we find is that a huge water main has burst in my studio building, and the entire structure is engulfed in a flood. The ground floor is completely full of water all the way up to the joists of the second floor, but since there are windows high up in the structure, the flood is exiting these windows, and not ascending to the second floor. I say to Lauren, "It looks like my things will not be damaged."

Next, I am on the roof of the building amidst the swirling torrent of the river in full flood. The water is now right up to the roof, and Carrie Haddad, an art dealer from Hudson, New York, is trying to deliver a huge piece of sculpture to me, from a little boat. There are other people involved, and everyone is screaming and shouting, as I am trying to haul a very heavy window, which is also a painting, from the boat to the relative safety of the roof of the building, but suddenly the tide of rushing water sweeps Carrie, the boat and the window away.

Now having had a dream like this, I think most people would be expecting that I would be self indulgent, and proceed to analyze what this dream might mean, as symbols in my life, and indications of my situation. But, not a bit of it, I want to talk about structural elements of the dream, its characteristics as a work of literature, or as a film. I intend to treat it as a film critic might treat it, for, indeed it is a film, composed and screened for me, in my head, by a self of mine, a very unknown self.