Fever Dream

The initial ideas for Fever Dream, written for and premiered by Alarm Will Sound, came to me in a series of actual fever dreams over the course of a week-long illness. Images and events swirled together in a nonsensical haze, and I was left in a constant state of restlessness. There were a few consistencies, however. Constant drifts in and out of sleep were dominated by an overwhelming and oppressive feeling I was trapped in a heavy, viscous ooze that minimized my every movement. The more I struggled, the more it weighed me down. When that feeling would finally subside, I would surface, still dreaming, in a rush-hour of unrelated images that fluttered by to the sound and feeling of very rapid pulsing. The chaos always ended in a train wreck-like catastrophe that jolted me awake, my fever temporarily lifting but the pulsing still persisting, like some kind of post-jackhammering phantom tremor. It was during those half-waking moments I tried in vain to piece together any specific recollection of the bewildering and disorienting night.

— Charles Halka