My Head’s on Fire and Frogs Are Singing

The other night I dreamed I was sitting on a porch overlooking a rocky coastline, pen in hand as the sun melted into an expanding pool of rippling burnished life itself – the water crashing against the land, reshaping it and reclaiming it all at once. I started writing about a character who wrote musical comedies with a particularly arch sensibility. In my piece, the piece I’m writing in the dream, the character is being interviewed by Heller Harrington, theater critic for the New York Clarion. The excerpt, in part, reads as follows:
HH: “Many of your works have been called exceedingly somber. How do you feel about being pigeonholed by some who don’t know the fullness of your oeuvre?
Playwright: “That’s true, I guess. I do some of my best work on the sad side, but I’m really proud of the fantasies and lighter stuff we’ve been able to produce. In one of my more comic operas, I set a young man forth on a quest to end a miserable affliction that severely hampers his social and moral growth.”
HH: “This would be “My Head’s on Fire and Frogs are Singing,” of course…
P: “Sure, it’s one of my favorites, and I think it stands apart from more downbeat, overtly psychological stuff. The hero, Criscaldo as he’s called, lived in a small fishing village on the Maltese coast with his family of itinerant fishmongers. They were a happy lot, enjoying their backbreaking labors with the good humor usually found among the trash of European peasantry living in medieval conditions.”
HH: “This was a rather difficult show to mount, due to the involved prop work, yes?”
P: “All in service of the story. Criscaldo’s alarming ailment was that he would periodically combust, sending a tower of white flame ten feet straight up, much to the delight of local toughs and dismay of the clergy.”
So now that I've written this, in my dream, I continue dreaming more adventures for this guy whose head is on fire. Criscaldo’s quest begins when he finds a message in a bottle directing him to take a long sea voyage, at the end of which he will find the cure for his disorder. This would be the best scene in the playwright’s show, where Criscaldo sings a tearful goodbye to his family who wave to him from their doorstep until the plume of flame shooting from the top of his head is only a twinkling on the horizon.
Criscaldo’s voyage ends when he encounters the magic frog that lives on an island of magic frogs. The king of the mystical amphibians sings a spirited welcome to Criscaldo, their long-lost flame-headed god on earth. Criscaldo’s destiny is to be worshipped by the magic frogs and he retires to spend the rest of his days basking in their adulation.
Tingling all over, sitting bolt upright in bed, I know I’m awake but I still feel the sear and scar of my hair on silver fire and just can’t get the ringing out of my ears from the voices of the frogs that encircle me, singing.

End.rev3, 1.23 a.m.
© David Mark Speer, 27 April 2011, Brooklyn.