I had a notably odd dream yesterday afternoon during an extended nap - one of the most elaborate 'production' dreams I've ever had. By 'production' I mean that as the dream progressed I was playing a role along with others in a sort of play (as opposed to simply being myself in the first person).
The scene was a roadside gas station / truck stop / cafe very late at night in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It was cold and dismal, with traces of show on the ground and in the air. The place sat adjacent to a substantial highway that had only sporadic traffic. I'd been driving for a long time and stopped in for some coffee at the diner's counter. The place was drab, and the staff and customers were quietly keeping to themselves. The initial stages of the dream were in black and white, which is unusual for me. This was one of the things that cued me I was acting in a 'production' rather than simply dream-living a slice of life. It started out as something akin to a grim film noir version of Hopper's Nighthawks painting.
As I was silently nursing my coffee a guy seated nearby at the counter said something distasteful. The waitress behind the counter looked at him and said, "You better watch out ..." Some drunk in one of the booths next to the front window chimed in, "You better not cry ..." One by one people spoke up to trace out the first verse of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."
... And we were off ...
More and more of the diner's occupants joined in until we were all singing along, smiling and laughing. We all then grinned, shook our heads and went back to what we'd been doing.
Almost immediately a car pulled in at the gas pumps outside, and the driver came into the diner. He asked if the cashier knew what the weather was like farther down the road. The cashier told him there was a major storm coming in and the driver should 'watch out' ...
... And we were off again, jumping into the song more quickly and with more animation than the first time. The waitress started stepping in time to the song, and those seated also began to sway or gesture in synch with the singing. This time we kept it up through multiple verses before simmering down.
This cycle began to repeat endlessly as new people arrived, and each time it repeated we all acted more lively and self-consciously foolish. Eventually we were dancing around and interacting in synch with the song as if we were characters in a 1930s Fleischer Brothers cartoon or one of those intricately choreographed mile-a-minute MGM musical numbers.
At one point I spontaneously jumped behind the counter and began washing / drying dishes in tandem with a waitress at another sink, and we were sailing dishes back and forth between us like Frisbees. At another point I was carrying two mugs of steaming coffee - each the size of a mop bucket - through the side door into the attached garage area and handing them to the mechanics in coveralls who'd been working on a car up on a lift. These and other maneuvers were tightly coordinated with the singing.
On each cycle a drab wan fellow (think of a 5-foot-tall Dobby) would pop up and ask, "Isn't Christmas over with? Wasn't it a month or so ago?", whereupon one or more of us prancing fools would answer to the effect that there would be another one coming if you just shut up and waited. His appearance and the Q&A became a running gag performed in different ways.
With each go-'round our singing and dancing got progressively more involved, more surreal and more complex. In addition, the motif became more colorful with each cycle, as if we'd washed away the original film noir ambience.
I finally got tired of the foolish infinite loop, hit the eject button, and woke up wondering WTF that was all about ...