For the 1996 FortFest, the annual gathering of the International Fortean Organization, I delivered a talk on John Dee, that intriguing Elizabethan polymath. I had already composed and performed a song cycle based on Dee’s dream diary; so when Phyllis Benjamin, the head of INFO, suggested a Dee talk, I took his dreams as a framing device. Each dream generated a mock interpretation, which then bloomed into a consideration of one part of his life.
Here’s the first page:
