I started composing work over the weekend on the next Mortal Fools gig: Wonderland Revisited.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was Lewis Carroll’s first novel, published in 1865 though begun two years earlier as a real-time invention as Carroll was boating with friend and his three kids. It stands among firsts in children’s literature as well as an example of literary nonsense.

Almost everyone is familiar with at least some aspect of the story, whether from one of the many cartoon or live-action movie adaptations or songs like the Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit.

It’s pretty messed up, plot-wise — stuff happens that makes no sense or contradicts what happened immediately prior — but I’m already through the first chapter, and think I have a handle on a topic for the song. And I need to push out of my mind whatever I remember from prior versions of the story, including the easy interpretation of Alice’s experiments with size and the hookah-smoking caterpillar as examples of drug use.

The gig has to start with Alice’s “descent” in to the rabbit-hole, in which here extended experience of falling is a metaphor for her entering deep slumber…the story isn’t a drug-addled binge but a nap along a pastoral riverbank.

But that won’t make any of the language or scenes less insane.

I woke up thinking about a chord progression. We’ll see later this morning if I’m onto something, or if it only made sense in my dream.