[Thor Joachim Haga]

# 13:

I just dreamt about Elliot Goldenthal last night.

I was sitting in a hotel room somewhere, all dressed in a black suit because we were going to a funeral of some sort. I remember Elliot sitting on a chair opposite me and talking to me about the person we were attending a funeral for (forget who…it may have been my own grandfather, who passed away a couple of months ago). Just as we were leaving, I saw in the mirror that I had forgotten to remove my colourful T-shirt inside the black shirt, and I couldn’t go like that. Elliot had to excuse himself because he needed to use the toilet, and then it was a rush of time to change shirts before he left, because I wanted to hang out with him.

Really weird.

I met Goldenthal in real life last year, and am going to see him in Ghent in a few months. Maybe that’s what triggered it, I don’t know.

# 14:

I had scheduled an interview with Williams for my magazine montages.no (similarly as I did with Goldenthal in Ghent a couple of weeks ago) by e-mail, and arrived at his house somewhere up in the mountains or countryside — maybe the Boston area? It looked very plain and grey, though, just like any odd family house in smalltown Norway.

I can’t remember if I rang the doorbell or just went inside, but I suddenly found myself in the hallway. At the end of it, I saw the living room where Williams was seated in a huge comfy chair, talking to some female associate of his. I wanted to wait untill he had finished, so I just went inside a storage room with windows. Outside was a small mountain creek and I watched as a pair of huge stone tablets floated by with a couple of trees on each.

Finally Williams came out and noticed me, although not particularly welcoming.

– “You did get my e-mail?” I asked

– “Yes, yes….”, he said, but with a distant air.

– “OK, great, it’ll just be 5-10 minutes, I promise”, I said.

In fact, he looked as if he wanted to be somewhere else. Far too important to spend time with little me. Gruff, disinterested and distracted.

– “I love all the redwood trees in this area”, I said, also noticing lots of tree sculptures, paintings, fountains and trees inside his living room (as you know, Williams has a fascination for trees). But I didn’t get much of a response.

Finally we were seated in the living room area with the comfy chairs and I went straight into my first question:

– “So, Elliot Goldenthals’s FINAL FANTASY score apparently cost $300 a day to make. What do you think about that?”

Then I went on to something with Michel Legrand after that. I can’t remember what Williams replied, but I remember being very embarrassed and angry with my irrelevant questions now that I finally had the opportunity to ask anything.

What was very interesting, though, was how he completely changed character in the interview. Now he suddenly became the warm, softspoken gentleman we’ve seen in so many interviews.

At some point, we decided to go outside for the rest of the interview. There, we were seated at some wooden platform, and there were some other people sitting at another table nearby, as if we were on a public outdoor restaurant or something. Lots of trees and nature around, but still with a very Norwegian look, not American. The tone eventually improved, but all of a sudden two fellow members (brothers) from maintitles.net sat down by the table. I was glad to see them, of course, but I needed to finish my interview and couldn’t have more distractions.

Just then, we felt a few drops of rain and I saw dark clouds above. The interview fell apart, but even more importantly, I needed to get my photo with my composer hero before it was too late.

“The photos, I need to take some photos”, I said, pulling up my crappy camera and starting shooting Williams as he rose from the table and, smilingly, stumbled towards me with a big plastic glass of beer. Then I quickly threw the camera to one of the two brothers so he could take a few pics with me and him. He complied, but then he eventually metamorphosed into my sister. The other brother disappeared, but the goal had been achieved. Picture with Williams taken.

That’s about what I remember.

The next part of the dream had nothing to with Williams, but a huge, 50-meter tsunami wave that was hurdling towards a small ferry between Norway and Denmark that I was on. I remember being on it and seeing it foaming and rising in the horizon as a gigantic wall of water and asking myself if I should stay outside or if I should go down below when it hits.