Steven Spielberg has a wife and what seems to be about nineteen or twenty kids holed up in a nice little old country style home planted somewhere in the middle of New England where the change in season is visible at every turn.

It’s really quite an unassuming abode for Spielberg which comes pretty darn close to taking on the aurar of a quaint Bed & Breakfast.  It doesn’t really possess all of the trappings of a joint one would normally expect for a big time Hollywood director / producer extraordinaire.

It’s nice to see the man is trying to keep a sense of normalcy available for his sizable family.

On a regular basis, Spielberg invites complete strangers to his house for the weekend to share along in activities designed to bring us all close together.  Naturally, there is singing.

Yours truly was there recently.

I’m not really sure how I came to be invited or even how I got there.  It would seem that the songs we sang were either well known, or previously rehearsed by the Spielberg family and it’s guests.  Frankly, I had never heard the songs, or saw the music to them beforehand.

So when we all sat down in the living room, five or six of the Spielberg sons had acoustic guitars in hand with strategically placed capos designed to alter the key and make the playing just a little easier.  A daughter brandished a mandolin.

When the playing started, the brilliant architecture of that living room resonated the music beautifully.  Like I said before, I didn’t know the song.  It sounded like a pro-American campaign song sported in commercials by politicians seeking office back in the 70′s.

While we sang, the lights dimmed and Mrs. Spielberg stood in the middle of the room with a camera equipped with a light.  She gradually panned around the room to focus on the different participants taking part in the festivities.  When she came to me, I just mouthed the song without really singing anything.  If she knew I didn’t know the song, she didn’t let on with that little tidbit of knowledge.  Instead, she continued her pan.

By the time the weekend was over, I found myself navigating the labyrinth of the Spielberg house trying to locate my luggage and other personal belongings.  The house was obviously bigger and more complicated than I had previously appreciated before.

And then, I woke up.

I took Faith the TharpSter TreadMill for a walk, and I pondered whether I had been the subject of an inception.

If I was, what devious machinations were behind the premise of getting me involved in a sing-along with a Hollywood big shot?

It would seem that I need to get a totem.