
Podcast: Dreamy Audio
Episode: 25
Title: It all begins with a train
Host: Lewis Moten
Release Date: July 2, 2005, 2:45 am
Restored Date: January 16, 2026
Duration: 14:56
Channels: 1 (mono)
Sample Rate: 44.1 kHz
Encoding: MP3, VBR (~130 kbps)
File Size: 3.6 MB
Summary
In this twenty-fifth Dreamy Audio entry, Lewis Moten recounts a long, wandering dream stitched together by travel, confusion, and misplaced agency. It begins on a dark freight train where uncertainty about direction gives way to resignation—missing exits, arriving in DC anyway, and learning that a sister may be in trouble. The dream keeps shifting locations, from platforms to porches, telescopes to police cars, all threaded by unease about lost money, missing checks, and quiet investigations that never quite resolve.
The second half turns inward and strangely meta. At a grandmother’s house, authority figures blur into robots scanning without judgment, followed by moments of play, laughter, and domestic oddity. The dream culminates in a confrontation over ownership: a friend uses an iPod—originally given as a gift—to podcast and claim the dreamer’s own dreams as his content. The final emotion is clear and sharp: betrayal, authorship reclaimed, and the insistence that the story belongs to the one who lived it.
Transcript (auto-generated)
I’m on a train trying to figure out how to get back to DC and I’m not sure which way to go. So I get on and I’m in the middle of the cars like a big empty freight car and it’s pretty dark. I’m sitting there and then I decide to look out and the whole time I’m trying to think if I’m on the right train or not. And then I start looking out back at the platform where people get on or they wait and then I get the feeling that the train’s going to leave like any minute. So I go across the other side of the freight car to the other door and I hear hollering or something.
That pretty much means the train is going to take off soon. And someone starts to close the door. I can’t see them but the door is sliding closed.
I try to stop the door from closing but they slowly get the door closed anyway. And then I have the feeling that the train is about to move but then it slowly starts to move. And they were going, it was a possibility that the train might have stopped because the person outside knew I was trying to get out. But the train continued to accelerate. And I pretty much figured you know I’m here for the ride and I’ll just have to wait until we get to the next stop to decide what to do.
So we arrive in a DC and I get off the train. I walked through a building and there were two women there and there was something with my sister that we were talking about. I think I was looking for her and I came back and they gave me a paper. I started writing what the woman was saying to me on the paper. She was saying something about my sister wasn’t there. Now I have to go somewhere else or call somebody to find out how exactly to hook up with her to find out what’s going on. So it seems like she was in trouble.
I had to go and help her out. And I can’t think of what any of the words were. It was a light orange paper that was like faded writing on it.
That was writing on top of like it was almost recycled. So anyway I get back to the train and somehow I’m at my grandmother’s house. I’m on the back porch and I have a spyglass. It’s just a telescope that flips open. I thought it was kind of humorous because I already had a better telescope.
But I had left it somewhere when I was coming there. So I looked at the telescope right outside the window and I see my uncle. He’s looking straight at me.
So I put the telescope down and then my other uncle. He runs up the steps and into the back porch. It’s more of the front porch. He’s telling me if I lost any money or how much money. And then he’s saying somebody came and stole money. And the police are checking it out.
And I look down at my grandma’s mailbox and there’s a… It’s not a police car but I know it’s a police car. It mainly looks nothing like a police car. Maybe it was an undercover car or something. But the driver in there is just sitting down and looking forward out of his window.
The motor’s running. That’s all that’s happened. But there’s this idea that he’s actually writing down paperwork. Anyway, I had the feeling that I was around that area the other day with my brother. And I lost quite a few hundred dollars going to the ground but never picked it up.
But I didn’t say anything about it. And I then walk into grandma’s house and she’s really upset. Apparently she gets some kind of check in the dream from the state for her retirement. It was supposed to be exactly two hundred dollars. And she was pretty much saying that these thieves took her check. And they’re going to cash it and spend her money. And she really needs the money to get by.
I have no idea what my grandmother’s financial situation is in real life. But this is just the dream. So then there are these two robots that look like humans. One is black, one is white.
They both have heads without any features. Audio call, transcript. I guess I felt like a red, I felt like a heat or it wasn’t really heat and it wasn’t wind but it was a combination just as they looked at my sides to scan me. I remember they were so bulky I was kind of wondering if they were going to step on me or maybe I was afraid they might step on me but I wasn’t afraid, I was just glad that thought that they were going to do that. So they were doing this and they noticed that I’m a pretty planned person. I’m not really reacting to them.
I’m just going along with what they’re doing and just waiting for them to finish. And my uncle’s first wife comes by and she’s like, well he’s always been like that. And then she grabs my hands and she starts to play with me and tickle me and stuff. I hear like laughing around me and the whole room is pretty much acknowledging me.
Yeah, now I’m a normal person having fun but the reason being is that my aunt is participating in helping bring that out. I went upstairs to Grandma’s bathroom and the first thing I do is flush the toilet. There’s nothing in it but water but I flush it anyway.
And then I go and do my business. The thing is my grandma’s house still runs on well water or not really well water but rain water and to use this toilet is like really discouraged unless you’re doing a number two. And the fact that I would flush the toilet first when there’s nothing in it is really odd.
But anyway, after I’m done I flush it again and the toilet overflows or it doesn’t overflow but it gets up pretty high up towards the rim and I just left it there which is kind of odd. Anyway, somehow I am not at my grandma’s anymore but I am in this room with a lot of people and a woman and a man who are apparently my friends come in and start talking to me. Now the one guy, he has an iPod and he’s actually talking into it and apparently I gave him this iPod because I couldn’t use it.
I didn’t know how or I didn’t have the time or something. Anyway, he’s talking into it and the main reason is he’s podcasting. His belief with podcasting is as he talks everybody can hear him at that time which is telling not the case with podcasting.
What he has to do is after he’s finished recording everything that he puts it on the internet and it’s a push-pull client technology where everybody else then listens to what he said. But anyway, he doesn’t get this. He’s talking like a radio announcer as if he believes he’s talking to me. The thing is, I realize that what he’s talking about is my dreams. He’s saying what I dreamt of and saying that they are his. So he leaves for a moment and I pick up the little iPod and I walk away and there was this one dream about the doors that he had that I decide, well, I’m going to continue talking about what I originally was talking about in my dream because hey, it was my dream.
I have all the content. He doesn’t know what the hell I dreamt so I continued. So I was talking to the iPod and I added a bit more to it and I summed up the fact that I pretty much said right there that I knew the end of the story because it was mine to begin with. So I go back, sit down, put the iPod down and the guy comes back and I pretty much, I don’t know if I played for him or if he knew what I had said but afterwards I was just looking at him with the thought that you took my stuff and said it was yours and I was really upset. And the other thing that really took me off was I was the one who gave him the iPod to begin with.
It was like a treat. I couldn’t use the iPod so I offered it to him and then he turns around and starts using my mind or my dreams and claiming that they are his. So I was like kind of really upset about that. Well that’s going to be it for today. See you next time where I’ll wake up and tie another dream.
