Feast of Confidence: Basic Premise
by Pappy October 30th, 2007, Posted in: Writing
Originally documented 5/12/2005
General Notes:
The Feast of Confidence is based on a series of dreams I had over the course of roughly 4 nights. The basic concept is about a journey of self-discovery and the penalties people pay in life and possibly even in death, when they allow self-doubt, fear, and worry to prevent them from being truly happy and comfortable with themselves and their dreams.
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The course of this journey transpires during a number of visits to what appears to be a historic building or estate that has fallen into severe disrepair with the exception of a formal dining room. A sort of ethereal banquet/potluck is held there every Sunday afternoon. I’m still not quite certain if the attendees of this feast were real people, ghosts, or some mixture of the two. I’ll flesh that out better as I write it down (unless I have another dream).
With the weekly event, the main character (I’ve also yet to determine if I’ll write this from the first person or third person viewpoint) has a reason to visit the house. In my dream I noticed the house when going past it on a Sunday afternoon jog. I’ll probably use this or some variation of it in the story. I’ll explain how the rest of it unfolded in my dreams.
On my jog, as I approached the house I noticed many cars parked on the street around it, kids playing on a well-kept lawn, and several adults milling around the entrance. For all the world it reminded me of the typical American churchgoer’s traditional “fellowship potluck” after Sunday services. By the time I came abreast of the place, however, it seemed more like some kind of fundraising potluck like the kind a restoration committee or historical society might put on to fund an ongoing restoration project. For the rest of the dream I behaved as if the latter were the case and never saw anything in the dreams to contradict that idea.
I remember thinking to myself, “Hey, if I walk around the block to cool down and wipe the sweat off my forehead I can act as if I belong here and go inside to score some free food.” I even remember thinking that was a very juvenile thing to do, but I was also enjoying the idea of that kind of relatively harmless con job. So I walked around the block, cleaned up as best I could and then went inside.
I walked past several people, smiling and saying hello as if I had every reason to be there and nobody seemed to pay much notice. They all appeared happy and like they were enjoying their scattered conversations.
While the outside of the building seemed fairly well kept and landscaped, the inside was a different story for the most part. In the foyer area the wood had once been painted white, but now a dull gray wood shown through the few flakes of white paint still hanging on. From the foyer were hallways leading to the left and right as well as a set of open double-doors directly facing me as I entered. Down the halls were dark, unlit rooms, but they looked to be as bad or worse than the foyer area.
Through the double-doors was a stark contrast. A well-lit, gaily decorated formal dining room held at least 30-35 people, most of them standing around the huge table that ran the length of the room. Many were holding plates and forks, and again they all seemed well engaged in conversations as they ate. There was a wealth of foods covering almost half the table - not laid out like a feast, but more thrown together like a potluck.
I got this far in writing it down and all the sudden the dreams stopped. The farther I’ve gotten from the dreams the harder it is to recall the details.
At some point after getting some food and listening in to the casual small talk around the table I started wandering into the other rooms. They were in great disrepair, with a variety of old junk lying around, covered in dust and cobwebs. Some of the walls had holes in them.
Sometimes when I’d touched an item it would seem like a person would “materialize”. Not in some ghostly fashion, but more like they had been there and I hadn’t noticed them. These people would tell me stories about their life that were somehow connected to the item I’d found:
- an old phonograph player and I spoke to a singer
- a bullet casing and I spoke to a soldier, etc.
Each story was pleasant, but seemed to be tinged with some amount of grief or loss because of what their life missed due a lack of confidence. There always seemed to be a lesson or a moral that could be drawn, but was not blatantly told in these stories.
Beyond this general perception I’ve lost almost all details about these dreams…
- Tags: , background, Feast of Confidence, ghost, spirit
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