Dream Journal: Julia by Kenny Loggins

The Dream

Last night, in my dreams, I was a young tennis pro at an exclusive country club.  The club was located in a majestic old-growth forest somewhere along a coast; it felt like a subtropical Redwood Forest, but in Italia.

I won't try to chronicle the many events of my dream. Instead I'll just set the stage for the most incredible one. The entire dream took place the last two weeks of summer. Since tennis lessons had died down, I was fortunate enough to be able to work as an event photographer at a professional tennis tournament happening nearby. I was single and anxiously looking for fun opportunities to end the summer right.

One afternoon at the tournament, I ran into a friend, Deborah Weiss, who was sitting down to lunch with girlfriend of hers. Thrilled to see a friendly face after months of social isolation, I asked if I could join them. After briefly reconnecting with Deb, I turned to her friend to introduce myself.

"Hi. I'm Bryan. I'm a photographer for this event. And who are you?"
"I'm (mumbles something about a deer with two broken legs.)"
"I'm sorry," I said. "I must have misheard you. I thought you said, 'deer with two broken legs'."
"That's right," she said. "I'm Deer, and my Broken Legs are around here somewhere…"
"She's in a band," Deb interjected.
"Oh, cool! What kind of music do you play? Have I heard any of your stuff on Spotify?" I asked, pulling out my phone.
"We're kind of in a unique space—our concept takes well-known love ballads, then continues telling the story of their eventual respective demises. The tone remains stoically lighthearted throughout the telling. We call the genre longitudinal pessimism.  Our most famous song is called 'Julia by Kenny Logins.'"

I'll end there.

Post-Dream Analysis

When I woke up and wanted to look up both that band's name and genre to see if they actually existed.  However, I forgot the exact name of her band.  All I could recall for sure was that she was the headliner for the band and two guys made up the rest of the name.  And Longitudinal Pessimism isn't a thing—not yet anyway.  But I did remember her song title.  So I Googled, "Julia" and "Kenny Loggins" and discovered that Julia was in fact one of Kenny's ex-wives.  Inspired by their love affair, Kenny wrote two albums and co-authored a book entitled, "The Unimaginable Life" about attaining ethereal love through relentless honesty.  (FYI, Julia is a nutritional counselor and colon hydrotherapist.)  Unfortunately for them, Kenny and Julia were divorced in 2004.  A Hawaiian journalist asked Kenny about the sudden divorce and how it might affect a performance Kenny had scheduled soon thereafter in Honolulu:

The split from Julia — he said they still love each other but are on different paths at the moment — means a time to check options, re-analyze what they had together, focus on the future. 

"She's a healer, a psychic, a poet; she needs a lot of space. She needs to go more deeply into who she is, to find her inner path. She needs to find what's in her heart, and for both of us, it's a challenging experience that requires a tremendous amount of trust in God, like any death does. 

"And God willing, we may find our way back to each other. If this journey takes us apart, perhaps something better might evolve. We each need to reach for the highest good, the highest goal." 

"We are releasing each other to further our spiritual path," said Loggins, citing an agreement hitched to their wedding vows.” 

He didn't see the split coming. 

Personal Disclaimer

While I was familiar with Loggin's Return to Pooh Corner album and later reputation as the "Soundtrack King" during the early '80s, I had absolutely no knowledge of Kenny Loggins' personal life before experiencing this dream. I was utterly shocked to discover that the name Julia not only had deep significance in Kenny's life, but it correlated with the imaginary genre of music that "Deer" was telling me about. What does this all mean?

Fun Additional Dream Tidbit

After the tournament, some friends and I hiked down to a secret cliff-diving/swimming hole for one last hurrah.  The path to the hidden spot was only accessible through 3 miles of dense forest, the trailhead beginning at the country club.  While cliff jumping, someone tragically bashed their ankle and needed medical attention.  Two guys agreed to carry the injured individual while I volunteered to race ahead and return with some first aid supplies. (We did had walkie talkies, which made communicating convenient.)

Running through the brush, I turned a mountain corner and saw an elephant-sized gorilla grazing through the folliage 100m below.  I froze, gaping in both terror and awe. There were one or two "smaller" gorillas rummaging around in close proximity to the alpha.  Just then, my walkie talkie crackled and a voice came through requesting a progress report. I quickly shut it off, but the damage had been done.  The mammoth gorilla raised it's nose and started darting back and forth, combing the shrubs. I slowly retreated, ducking behind trees when I thought the spooked gorilla seemed most occupied.   I planned to re-trace the trail to warn the others once I had obtained a safe distance.

All at once, I heard the mammoth gorilla bounding up the mountain side behind me. I  sprinted. But as I turned back around the corner, a baby gorilla sat in the trail blocking my path.  Not wanting to be mauled by the alarmed baby, I turned 90 degrees and began to scamper up a 12-14 foot rock wall.

To my surprise, I was slow.  It felt like I was progressing up the wall at 25% my regular speed.  My climbing muscles were spent from cliff diving earlier.  I would never make it over the wall and out of sight in time.  My only recourse was to hug the wall and pray that I would be ignored.

The once-distant noise of the approaching gorilla now sounded like a bulldozer.  As the giant gorilla turned the corner, I squeezed my eyes shut and remained motionless. I just clung to the rock wall about eight feet above the trail (just higher than the gorilla's eye level). The unnaturally-large gorilla shot a glance at the baby, and then immediately up at me. Perceiving me to be a potential threat, the gorilla didn't even need to stand to address me—it simply raised its bicycle-sized hand and swatted me against the wall like a fly.

I obviously don't remember anything after that. That's when I woke up, got out of bed, and started Googling.