wearing these chains: on nine inch nails, trent reznor, and all things gothemo

[Dear_Trent_#_31]

Dear Trent,

I dreamt about you last night.

I dreamt that your show had become a big spectacle, with set changes and constumes; like a musical. You were wearing a purple sleeveless shirt, leather pants, and a shimmering turban, like a Maharishi. You were singing a song I had never heard -- a love song. I hardly recognized you under all that spangle. Your voice was soft and full of longing, and it made me sad. Moments before the show had begun, though, I'd peeked through the velvet curtains at the front of the stage and seen you, clad in plain dark colors, a guitar slung over your shoulder, eyebrows painted straight and low over sharp eyes, and the veins standing out on the pale insides of your arms under perfectly smooth skin. I knew you were you, in spite of it all.

I hope you're well, Trent.

Love,
Dierdre

[Dreaming_Of_You: The_WTF?_Edition]

Last night, I dreamt that Trent was driving at night in the desert, on a highway not unlike the one between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, his black car plummeting down the road, into the night. He was tired and bleary, rubbing his eyes, and rolling down the window to try to stay awake. David Bowie's Sound and Vision (the SONG, not the greatest hits compilation) was blaring from his speakers, and Trent was singing along half-heartedly. The long, straight road ahead seemed endless and featureless.

Then, in the distance, there was a light. A town. He decided to stop and get a cup of coffee, some Taco Bell, ANYTHING. He needed to break his journey, to stretch his legs. The anticipation roused him a little from his near catatonic exhaustion, but as soon as he entered the the city limits, he knew something was wrong. It was almost as if the sound of the wind outside had stopped, and eveything out the windows was repeating, the signs, the buildings, the shapes of cars and people on the roadside, as if on a short, inescapable loop. He was stuck in a circular path, a vortex from which he could not escape. The town had him. There was no way out. All around him, neon lights and traffic signs to nowhere leered. Aimless, blank-faced victims of the gyre wandered the roadsides, dazed amid hulking shapes of ghostly, deserted big rigs.

Trent pulled his car over. It was coated with desert dust, dull and ugly, but the town was strangely pristine; nothing seemed real. It was real, but it didn't look like it. It looked like a movie set -- all too perfect, vivid, and contrived. Nothing seemed to bear the mark of time or use. The cars on the roadside were covered in the dust of the desert, but the town, the signs, the buildings; all of them were perfectly clean. He got out, and started shouting questions at the unresponsive zombies on the roadside.

"Where am I?"

"What the fuck is going on here?!"

"Hello? HELLO?!"

Nothing. No response. The people stared past him into nothing, as he grabbed at them, and shook them. They were empty, mere traces of the human beings. Trent stopped and looked around. He was surrounded by the mute shades of people, and he knew he was the only living thing for miles around. He looked down at his feet -- big, black boots -- and back towards his car. He knew it was hopeless, and at the same time, he had to find a way out. After that, Trent was calm. Once he realized that the people were cyphers, it was as if he folded up into himself, and his eyes were razor sharp.

But, you know how it is with dreams, right? There are holes in my memory of it.

After that, Trent stalked around purposefully, looking for a way out. It's a bit of a blur, what exactly happened, and the point of view was crazy, too. Sometimes, it was as if I were looking through Trent's eyes, and other times, I was watching him from outside. Here's what I do remember, though: the dream ended with Trent making out with a mannequin -- white, smooth, bald, made of plaster, and entirely unresponsive. Despite all that, it was hot watching the way his jaw worked, the way his eyes were half-closed, and the way his big, veiny hands and those crazy fingers held her plaster head.

Weird...

Don't look at me like that! At least he was listening to David Bowie's best record ever!

If I could control my nighttime brain, I'd order up a good old fashioned wish-fullfillment dream where Sparklepants sings me all his new songs that I haven't heard yet, and then feverishly gives me the high, hard one in a semi-public place, because he wants me that bad, and just can't wait to get me home.

Fucking hell.

[Dear_Trent_#_26: The_Mean_Reds*]

Dear Trent,

Sometimes it gets a little exhausting, being in love with you all the time. I mean, how many different ways can I say it? No matter what, I know it doesn't make any difference. You are distant, impossible and impervious, and I'm only one in a million, all gushing for you, all the same. I write you all these letters, and send them into the ether, to no one. Who cares.

I dreamt of you last night, for the first time in months. In my dream, I saw you in a restaurant I always go to, here in London, and when I introduced myself to you, we started talking. Our conversation was about art, Carl Jung, the notion of a collective unconscious, and religion; a really interesting talk, and satisfyingly full of little correspondences of mind and feeling. When I had to go, you asked if you could call me. Of course I said yes, so you did, almost immediately. We kept talking for hours, until my cell phone battery was dying. I asked you for your number, because I wanted to call you back sometime, and just as you were about to give it to me, my battery died. I spent the rest of the dream searching for my cell charger, and woke up full of regret at not having been able to find it, the need to go back to sleep and keep searching urgent in my half-conscious brain.

Then I realized that, in truth, I had really only been talking to myself in my own brain. Is the man I'm writing to now nothing but a beautiful dream that I've created in my own mind? I wish I could convince myself that dreams and feelings like the ones I feel for you and your work -- feelings that are undeniable, purely authentic to me, and mortifyingly enough, all too fucking real -- represent a true correspondence between souls. Maybe they do; I don't know. What I do know is that, as nice as it had seemed to talk to you while I was dreaming, when I woke up I felt like aching for you for all these years is really the most seriously my own stupid heart has ever betrayed me.

Sorry to be so grim. I think I'm still feeling a little sad these days. Perhaps regrettably, I still love you, even if you're only half real. There's no comfortingly concrete math I can break out to prove it, but I know that something I see and love is really you.

Be well, dear Trent, and get some rest, ok?

Love,
Dierdre

*

[Dear_Trent_#_11]

Dear Trent,

Gabriel is all mad about this fan club thing, but I want you to know that I think he's full of shit, and I love you the same as ever. Anyway, who cares about all that? All I care about is the sweet, sweet thought of your hot jock -- that, and your bitchin' numbers. I hope you're rocking both as hard as ever for the Euros, but I can't wait for you to get your smokin' ass back over here so I can once again taste the gorgeous elixir of your proximity.

I miss you, sparklepants, and I burn for you night and day.

The main thing I wanted to tell you, sweetness, is that I dreamt of you again last night! yeah! Lucky me, right? Well, kinda: I dreamt that you were the bag boy at my supermarket, and I couldn't take my eyes off you. You asked me if I wanted paper or plastic, and I asked you if you wanted to fuck. You did, so we made plans to make it so -- like animals -- in the produce section, after the store had closed for the night.

When I snuck in through the delivery entrance, you were waiting next to the root vegetables wearing nothing but the most adorable apron with your name embroidered on the left breast. You were growling and panting like a bitch in heat, and when you kissed me, your tongue rough and insistent, your hard... er... muscles pressed urgently against me, I'm not kidding when I tell you that molten fire shot through my loins.

Unfortunately, that's when I woke up.

Jesus. You really know how to leave a girl on the brink and DYING for more. I fucking love you.

Now, what was that about a fan club? Seriously, Gabriel needs to get some cock. He's taking everything WAY too seriously, if you ask me.

Love,
Dierdre

[Dreams_of_the_Divine]

I have just awoken in the middle of the night. I have received a visitation. From him. From Trent.

I was hanging out at Veronica's house earlier tonight; she had a bottle of absinthe she'd stolen from her brother after he took a trip to Spain. We got good and blotto on it -- I was trying to do that fancy sugar cube trick Trent does in the video for "The Perfect Drug", to no avail -- but instead of seeing visions, we just got drunk. Veronica started kisssing on my neck and trying to put her hands in my shirt, but the velvet was rubbing me the wrong way and it just pissed me off, so I went home and passed out.

The next thing I knew I guess I must have been dreaming. I was on my knees, my hands and neck bound in a wooden stockade. There was only blackness around me. I sensed evil around me everywhere, yet I was not afraid. I could feel my NIN logo tat on my back searing into my flesh like molten fire.

Then, he appeared from the inky blackness. In a loose green gown, long hair tousled about his shoulders. Trent Reznor. The Trent of old; circa that one really wierd Spin magazine cover he was on where he was making that wierd face by pulling the skin around his eyes up. Only he wasn't pulling it up around his eyes this time. His face was passive; kind. He approached me.

From the folds of his robe he removed a shiny silver object; at my reduced height I could see it for what it was: a microphone, not unlike the Shure Beta 58A he gave to me whilst in the pit at the San Diego concert two short weeks ago. He held the microphone out at waist level, it's shiny silver knobbed head even with my face.

"Give me all that you have", he said. "Make it hurt. Make it hurt real good, now."

"I love the pain."

Suddenly the stockade burst open, and I was free! But I didn't run; instead, I clasped both hands around Trent's, and brought the microphone to my lips. "Perfect little dream, the kind that hurts the most," I uttered.

"Forgot how it feels?" Trent asked me?

"Well, almost." I replied.

"Never forget, Gabriel. Never again." He moved backwards, leaving the microphone in my grasp, it's head still at my lips. "Never forget... never again..."

Soon the Trent apparition disappeared into the darkness. With both hands clasped tightly around the shaft of the microphone, I rose to my feet. "I tried, and I gave up," I uttered.

He has visited me. My path is clear. I must begin work on L'orangerie Stank's cover of "Gave Up."

I must create.

-Gabriel

[Dreaming_of_You]

I had to rescue this dream from languishing in the comments, because the more I think about it, the more I think the whole world needs to see what I see. Wearing These Chains reader tormented_soul_3 says he's had the same dream himself, which proves that this is, in fact, a vision of Trent Reznor's very soul.

I dreamt that Trent was sleeping inside an enormous, gleaming black cocoon. He was naked and as white and waxy as the petals of a gardenia flower, his skin almost larval -- dewey and soft as a baby's, mapped with blue veins and patches of soft black hair. He was at peace, and his beauty was staggering. As he slept, his hair grew long and fast, twining around him like bluish-black snakes, and his fingernails turned to glass. When he finally emerged from the chrysalis, he spread his newly formed glorious black wings, so black that when the light hit them, they were scattered with many colors and hues. He looked down at me, and I fell to my knees under the weight of his eyes. Then, he flew straight up, through darkening clouds, and right up to heaven. His eyes were blazing with an inner fire, and he demanded an audience with God himself.

Then I woke up. I was panting and sweating, and I ached to my very core.

Love,
Dierdre

PS. Trent, I'm sorry Gabriel's such a hater.