I seem to have entered a cycle of vivid dreaming. Every night something peculiar happens; though, naturally, once I wake up and try to think about the characters and events, they fade into shadows. Reconstituting a dream is a Through the Looking-Glass endeavor: the harder I look, the faster it runs away. Nonetheless, I do know that two nights ago I dreamed that a character (who might have been a real friend but whom I can only recall as Someone) told me, in the kindest possible way, that it's too bad I've never been able to play the violin in tune.

I woke up horrified.

To understand why this dream was so disturbing, you'll have to also understand that I have perfect pitch and that I have been playing the violin since I was 6 years old. In other words, pitch is not only hardwired into my subconscious brain, but I have been matching finger to ear for 40 years. Telling me that my sense of pitch is bad is like telling me I don't really understand English.

But of course, this being a dream, I believed Someone, and I found myself apologizing to her for the decades of torture I've been inflicting on my unfortunate listeners. And torture it would be, at least for anyone else with perfect pitch. There is music that I can hardly bear to listen to--certain early recordings of Cajun music, for instance--because the pitch inequities make my ears hurt . . . and this is not an uppity metaphor: I mean these sounds really do cause actual physical pain.

But now my dreams are telling me that I can't trust my sense of pitch; and even though I know these dreams are lying, my faith in my ear is shaken. Why do our own brains torment us like this?