Every week or so, I have a dream involving the JFK
assassination. It’s never
realistic. I’m not in Dealey Plaza as it actually looks. I often don’t even see Kennedy. It’s much more abstract. I’m running through some generic city streets
that are sort of stand ins for Dallas (I guess), and I’m aware that the shots
are about to be fired, but I don’t know where.
Or I’m watching something on television about the assassination, and
suddenly I’m sucked through the screen and I’m somewhere unfamiliar and
unrecognizable, and I’m scared I’m about to see something horrific, and then I
hear the rifle shots.
I don’t know why this has become a recurring motif of my
dreams. I wasn’t alive when it happened,
so it’s something more indirect than reliving a traumatic experience—something metaphorical. If forced to guess, I suppose it has probably
has something to do with fear of my own death, the threat of violence, dealing
with loss, or just the fragility of life in general.
In the early 1990s, around the time of the 30th
anniversary of the assassination, I became interested in exploring the assassination
and read a few books. Stone’s JFK had
just come out, so that was probably the catalyst for my interest. What became more fascinating to me than
issues of bullet trajectories or missing autopsy reports or the time Oswald spent
in the Soviet Union was the passion with which people held their opinions on
the event. Single bullet or magic
bullet. CIA or the Cubans. Grassy knoll
or sixth floor. Whatever people thought
about the assassination, they seemed to hold like a religious belief. I became aware that whatever the actual facts
were didn’t matter. Any fact could be
molded to fit a preconceived narrative.
The question was then why did people choose certain narratives over
others? What was at stake for them? Clearly, it had to be something, given my
increasing conviction that rational argumentation had little to do with people’s
thoughts.
