I was dreaming and I heard a voice say clearly to me, “Turn on the light”. I awoke with a start. I tried to lie still and figure out where I was.
Bed. Which bed? I tried to map the shadows I could see to the dream I had been having. My bed.
As I pulled myself further out of my dreamland, I tried to listen to for prowlers. Nothing. My pulse was up a bunch and there was no way I was going back to sleep. Time check, 3:57.
I remembered what it was like when the kids were small. The least sound from them and I would be awake. It was as if my auditory alertness level was turned up when I was sleeping. I would go into their room and find them not quite awake yet, maybe from a bad dream. Maybe it happens only during REM sleep.
The voice I heard was something I generated internally. It registered as if it were a person speaking to me. I started thinking about schizophrenics and the voices they hear. Is this what it is like, but only when they are awake?
I was dreaming about being in a church building that had been converted to other uses. I was sitting next to my late friend, Jim Smith, and we were waiting for something to start. I was riffing on songs, hymns, as sung by Elvis. I would sing a few bars and then say, “I could sing that.” and Jim would crack up. Elvis recorded a lot of hymns. He had to keep recording because he got no songwriting royalties.