What does it mean, in the vast scheme of dream symbology, to dream about Andy Warhol? Twice, in one night?
Really, they were more like dream-fragments. And Warhol was perhaps standing in more as a symbol than as a character – but that's how he'd have preferred to appear in a dream, I suspect.
In the first dream fragment, I was with my father. He was trying to explain to me that, unfortunately, he would not be able to repay to me the 9 cents he owed me, this month. I wasn't sure why he was even worried about it, but he was very intent on justifying, via an explanation of his financial situation, why it simply wasn't going to be possible to come up with the 9 cents. He opened his wallet, and pulled out this repeatedly folded, enormous sheet of paper, upon which he was maintaining a gigantic spreadsheet, in multiple colors of ball-point ink, showing all the different people he owed money. It was all quite pathetic, especially when I realized all the amounts were in cents. Then I noticed, in the far upper left corner (and thus an early, if not first, entry in his spreadsheet), the name and amount "Andy Warhol -15."
"You owe Andy Warhol 15 cents?" I asked my father, starting to laugh. I was incredulous, and found it funny.
He shook his head gravely. "Noo. Fifteen dollars." He shrugged his shoulders in embarrassment.
"But… he's dead." I said. My dad looked at me in alarm.
That was the end of the first dream fragment.
In the second dream fragment, I was on a commuter bus, trying to get across the 김포대교 (Kimpo Bridge across the Han River – the one that you cross from Ilsan if you're going to Bucheon or Incheon or the airport). There was a horrible traffic jam. It turned out someone had noticed that Andy Warhol was in a car – it looked like a late-model Lincoln towncar, of a sort I've never seen in Korea – and insisted that it was a great place to do an interview of the reclusive (reclusive? – this is some kind of dream-construct) star. In the slowly-moving traffic, my bus finally pulled along side the car where Warhol was being interviewed. The person doing the interview was my student Jinwon (of recent mention). I was more amazed. Jinwon apparently worked for a large Korean media company, and had arrived by helicopter. The questions he was asking Warhol were incoherent. Warhol's answers were incoherent. I was skeptical whether it was really Warhol in the car.
That's the end of the second dream fragment.
What do they mean?
What I'm listening to right now.
David Bowie, "Andy Warhol." No, I did not listen to this last night, so therefore no, it is not an explanation for the dreams. I found it this morning, after waking up with Andy Warhol on my mind. Normally I try to avoid posting a song on my blog that I've posted before, as I have with this one, but it seemed too apropos to resist.
Lyrics.
Like to take a cement fix
Be a standing cinema
Dress my friends up
just for show
See them as they really are
Put a peephole in my brain
Two New Pence to have a go
I'd like to be a gallery
Put you all inside my show
[CHORUS]
Andy Warhol looks a scream
Hang him on my wall
Andy Warhol, Silver Screen
Can't tell them apart at all
Andy walking, Andy tired
Andy take a little snooze
Tie him up when he's fast asleep
Send him on a pleasant cruise
When he wakes up on the sea
Be sure to think of me and you
He'll think about paint
and he'll think about glue
What a jolly boring thing to do
[CHORUS]