Destroy Everything You Touch

Look, there’s no easy way of say­ing this, but I used to reg­u­larly exper­i­ence a bad dream. A very bad dream. It was so hor­rific, so black in con­tent, that it was almost amus­ing in its awful bleak­ness. Darkly hil­ari­ous, in fact. The sort of dream from which, if I were a writer of twis­ted and sur­real com­edy, I would imme­di­ately seize the bare bones of the mater­ial and craft it into a sketch that even late-night Chan­nel 4 would prob­ably refuse to show in their sick­est moments of allegedly humor­ous broadcasting

I still have the dream — the night­mare, I sup­pose you would call it — just much more rarely these days, I’m pleased to say. It occa­sion­ally drops by to spend a few hours in my sleep­ing, tur­bu­lent, sub­con­scious mind, to remind me that it’s still around and can have its desired effect. I am only revis­it­ing it now because last night, for the first time in almost a year, it revis­ited me.

In this dream, it’s — and I can sense the sharp intake of breath and the rolling of eyes that will undoubtedly occur when I put this into words — well, it’s my funeral. I’m there, nat­ur­ally, because in this world of dreams all the best people are able to hang out out at their own funeral, lurk­ing in the ghostly shad­ows to mon­itor the pro­ceed­ings and care­fully note exactly who is there and who is not­able by their absence, who cries the most and who laughs the loudest from the back of the crem­at­orium hav­ing enjoyed one too many toasts to the deceased in the pub before­hand. Need­less to say, the names are all jot­ted down on the final Shit List of them all for the pur­poses of future haunt­ing, com­plete with rat­tling of chains and dis­em­bod­ied wailing.

In this dream, I have obvi­ously entered death in the same way that I pre­sum­ably spent the major­ity of my life — in a state of bit­ter and twis­ted cyn­icism. I know this because there is no funeral ser­vice as such, no fond good­byes from loved ones, but merely a record­ing that is played to the assembled black-clad throng on an ancient reel-to-reel tape recorder. (If you’re seek­ing reas­sur­ance that this dream dates back many years, there is your proof. I was obvi­ously under the wor­ry­ingly per­vas­ive influ­ence of Samuel Beck­ett at the time, and had both read and watched Krapp’s Last Tape rather more often than was per­haps wise in my usu­ally del­ic­ate frame of mind.) Unfor­tu­nately, the exact words of this final speech from bey­ond the grave are muffled and indis­tinct. I sus­pect I have returned to this dream so often because I wanted to hear what I was say­ing. I wanted to get a clue as to how the rest of my life would pan out from the thoughts that I gave voice to prior to my final rat­tling breaths.

All I can make out, how­ever, is the sur­pris­ingly cau­tious and nervous open­ing of the record­ing — “Hello? Any­one? Hello? Not a whis­per, not a bloody whis­per” — and a bel­lowed, vale­dict­ory con­clu­sion in which I instruct all those present to dance on my grave. That part, at least, I know that I deliver in no uncer­tain terms. Indeed, this is the point where the dream becomes even darker, even more embar­rass­ing, and yet also com­ical in the extreme:

“Yes, that’s what I want you to do. Wait until the loose soil has been beaten down by the backs of the gravedig­gers’ spades, then dance. Dance on my grave. Dance dance dance on my grave, you fuck­ers! Dance! Go on, dance!”

There’s the sound of wheez­ing and wracked cough­ing, seem­ingly caused by smoking forty cigar­ettes a day through­out my entire life (even though I have never indulged in the filthy habit), then noth­ing. Just a sharp mech­an­ical click of con­clu­sion and the repeated flick­ing of mag­netic tape against reel. End.

Exit mourn­ers in stunned silence, pre­sum­ably. I don’t know. I always wake up at that point, or drift into other dreams that over­power that one in the battle for dom­in­ance that rages in my sub­con­scious mind. I occa­sion­ally find myself hop­ing that with this dream now being far less fre­quent, I will some­how man­age to keep myself in there, in its clutches; that I will stay immersed and find out what hap­pens next. I never do.

At about three o’clock this morn­ing, hav­ing let this dream once again warp every corner of my mind for a brief moment or two, I awoke to a real­isa­tion. I knew what my shocked mourn­ers were going to dance to. I sud­denly had the title of the song that was going to play as they unleashed their feel­ings on my final rest­ing place. The only ambi­gu­ity lay in whether the lyr­ics were going to be dir­ec­ted at me, the deceased, or the people stamp­ing mer­rily on my bones.

And as if by magic, a woman with very clipped, pre­cise tones appeared to sing syn­thet­ic­ally and robot­ic­ally into my ear that I (or they) des­troy everything I (or they) touch. I couldn’t agree with her more, on either inter­pret­a­tion of the lyr­ics. Come join the party, then. Dance, you fuck­ers. Dance dance dance!

I can’t say that I exactly enjoy this dream, but in a sense it’s now so famil­iar to me that when it reappears I treat it rather like an old friend. An old friend with ser­i­ously dis­turb­ing emo­tional prob­lems, gran­ted, but an old friend non­ethe­less. Still, I can’t help hop­ing that I dream of noth­ing but bun­nies tonight. Lol­lop­ing bun­nies. Pink, lol­lop­ing bun­nies with friendly, gleam­ing eyes rather than crazed stares of death. Please.

• Ladytron
• Lyr­ics to Des­troy Everything You Touch