I dreamt I woke up

I had one of those dreams within a dream last night.  Inspired by watching "Inception" perhaps, who knows - a sci-fi thriller more I found more ingenious than compelling, that played with the idea of psychic operatives who can break into your dreams and steal your secrets.  Anyhow, there I was on a concert stage, about to direct some musical production from the piano stool.  (As if a show's musical director would also be on stage??? Whatever, this was a dream, OK?) I might have written this musical myself, but I certainly knew the number - except when it came to the vital moment, I didn't.  I hadn't been practising because I was so familiar with it, but the familiarity had suddenly vanished and I was unable to continue.  The show couldn't go on, couldn't even get started, and I fled into hiding, humiliated.  What was that about, the fear of "drying" in front of an audience?  But I don't get stage fright now, haven't since my teens.  If I forget my lines I'll ad lib or turn it into a joke, like I did one night during the last run of the village panto.

Anyway, I then woke up, except I was still dreaming; and I felt myself reflecting, perhaps saying to someone else, that the dream had really been about my fears of dementia, losing the plot, just as my Dad is doing.  Of course I knew the musical, I just needed to run through it on the piano and I'd be fine ... and then I really did wake up, and realised that there is no musical.  Or at least, not one I would be involved in like that.  But the interpretation of the first dream within the second still makes sense: dementia does frighten me, and here's one of the reasons.  No-one has ever been demented and then come back to tell you what it was like; so there's a sense in which although you may be able to connect with the sufferer, you can't empathise.  You can't feel their confusion and you don't know if all confusion is the same or - as observation suggests - different in every case.  The patient is lost but can't be given a map, only guided on his way by someone who knows where he is.