After a particularly raucous performance at the Salisbury Performing Arts Centre, you’d think the last thing any self-respecting musician would do is keep the excitement going. But, to any member of Cardiacs, the concept of a ‘self-respecting musician’ is something totally foreign. Even after the last straggling fans had left the old cathedral, the energy backstage was still going strong… Until it wasn’t.
At some point, Tim had passed out. Perhaps from exhaustion, but really, anything could be a contributing factor. Sarah, intuitive as she is, was the first to notice and ordered everyone to keep the merrymaking to a minimum. She had taken it upon herself to fetch him some water, and she kept watch over him for some time, occasionally dabbing the sweat from his forehead with a paper towel. As the night went on, his state grew a great deal concerning; one by one everyone began to worry, muttering amongst themselves. It was fine, right? It was a rather energetic night, something like this could have happened to any one of them. And he was still breathing, so he was alright. It’s not like any of them were doctors, but…
His eyes shot open, and he sat up abruptly, looking around at everyone cautiously as they all stared at him. They were all holding their breath, waiting to see what he had to say.
“…I had a very strange dream,” is all that came from his mouth.
Sarah breathed a very loud sigh of relief; he really was fine after all.
“You had us all very worried,” she huffed, frowning, “We weren’t sure what was going on.”
“My first thought was that we were the subjects of some kind of practical joke,” Jim added, “But I realized it was more serious than that once I’d loudly announced I was going to throw your T.V. in the pond again and you didn’t immediately leap to your feet and start viciously beating me.”
“Yes, well, I really was unconscious. How embarrassing,” Tim groaned, rubbing his forehead, “The visions I had while under were the stuff of nightmares. There was a young person named Hong who proclaimed themself my biggest fan– they harnessed the very fires of hell, yes, an insect-eater who sprouted wings and flew away… There was a wizard named… Ant… Anthony, I think, yes, his name was Anthony; the spitting image of David Bowie in that film about puppets and a maze… Labyrinth, and–”
Sarah looked to Jim with great concern as Tim continued rambling on and on like a maniac.
“Maybe he’s not alright, after all,” she whispered in his ear, “We should probably keep a close eye on him.”
The only person in the room genuinely captivated by this erratic retelling of a psychedelic fever dream was Bic, he held his head in his hands as he clung on to every word that came out of Tim’s mouth… but eventually even he couldn’t bear to listen anymore and chalked the whole thing up to an over-overactive imagination. Tim was like that sometimes; Bic had overheard Sarah’s whispering and rolled his eyes. As Tim’s wife, shouldn’t know his whims better than anyone else? Despite his typically quite down-to-earth nature, Tim was at times prone to great fantasy, and everyone who knew him was well aware of the fact. It made for some rather excellent music, that’s for sure, and for many years he (and his other musical collaborators, unwittingly) held onto the memories of that very wild, very fantastic dream of dreams.