Combing through a large shopping complex that contains a scale model of New York City set on a steep hillside. As I come back over the 57th Street Bridge and head toward Tudor City for a dinner engagement the only option is to scale down a small moving staircase. And a thick guard from the Rockaways yells: "No downsies on the upscalator!"

On the second floor of a large and drafy Victorian house, I am sitting on the sill of a small window and leaning back against a screen. And I realize that every screen in the house has been cut open with one neat and forceful slice.

At a friend's wedding I join in the treasure hunt with a growing band of mischevious friends. By game's end was have accrued in a giant musical pileup, a pyramid formation of revelry and noisemaking that inches toward the end of the room. I myself am hanging upside-down from a wheelchair at the front of the parade, playing an organ which I pump with my head and singing loudly. As I open my eyes I see that we are on a collision course for my maternal grandparents, who are seated and smiling meekly back at the spectacle.

I wake in a large guest room with Jesse and his entourage of wind and water spirits. There is a whining chorus of nymphs and there is also the rambunctious and bearded Beaver Supreme. We are rehearsing the vocal tracks for my next album. Worried that we'll wake the rest of the bed and breakfast I try to convince them to whisper, but they resent this suggestion deeply and grow ever more boisterous. Outside in the dining room I pass by the solitary table of Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan's nuclear weapons czar. He is inconsolable, and in a single gesture he peels the entire oily skin off of an enormous roast turkey. Only later do I learn that he has recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer. And I think: Butterfield on Giambologna.

After riding through a dark tunnel in a tiny box with my mother and father, I am stranded on a bright and sunny docking island waiting for the next city-owned paddleboat to arrive. As I stare out to the horizon I get too much of the sun in my eyes. Finally a craft pulls in and a couple disembarks with a video of homemade porn so we wait for the next one. And suddenly, sound comes back into my ears.

After a rough day at work, I wake the commuter train home. On board is my old friend Jesse, undercover with his electroacoustic improv troupe. He hands me a self-contained human pickup, a small white electric device which emits a constant whine. Following his lead, I affix it to the wall and twist to its active position. We then start in on a ten-minute work of physical theater and vocal experimentation, at the end of which we make believe we are two passengers on a night train across Europe.

At night we drive up to the hilltop estate where the three royal children are kept by their keepers. The playroom is on the third floor and the only way to it is through a steep Victorian passageway, like a staircase without stairs, that seems to be designed for highly trained animals. When we reach them they have taken the form of two girls, not surprised by us but bemused at our exhaustion. It is clear that they do not need our protection. Realizing this, Rafael descends to the ground floor in a single leap, leaving me to shimmy down over the next fifteen minutes. He later admits that he was driven by a blend of malice and sportsmanship. I go next door to the house of a shy and brilliant editor. Over dinner he reveals that he has separated from his stunning wife and is now raising the child of a girlfriend who is never home. She gets home just as I am leaving.