6/10/2014: Three days later...
IMAGE: Oh My Dear
The following dreams are accounts I have had (and one I have not) where profound creativity was an apparent epiphenomenon of the auto-creative dreaming process. I say 'epiphenomenon' because far from relying on the dreamers bag of tricks (emotional synthesis and memory association) to get the proverbial point across; the subjective experience and value of these dreams has seemed to survive the apparent waking process and continue on in living, breathing waking memory. In this context I focus on the two most profound displays of human creativity I can personally relate to: music and laughter.
The dream in question (because of which I chose to write this entry) was a strange one for many reasons. I had drifted happily off to sleep listening to Abbey Road, in a strange apartment, next to an even stranger girl. She was in my dreams too... probably from the moment they started. While we get along very well (in real life), her mind has always been a puzzling place, and in this dream world we explored the surreality together; providing each other a valuable feeling of kindredness and companionship to offset the otherwise cold, emotionally distant reality that we were two beings perceiving two very different worlds. I have never entered a sleep stage and taken my real-life companion with me. It was something quite special.
We explored some dirty streets of my subconscious mind, passing dishevelled, boarded up store fronts and broken windows. We settled at something approaching a vagrant's street residence; a collection of wooden crates and make-shift furniture that at once enveloped and colonised the side-walk to form a kind of open-walled house. It contained a surprisingly aesthetically pleasing collection of house plants, pin-ups, semi-functioning electrical equipment and of course the vagrant himself, who was friendly enough and seemed to resemble in personality and in presence, the beach hermit from Local Hero (a film I had viewed some days earlier). Among his possessions, was a radio.
As we stopped and played with it; we managed to produce a song so distinct and melodic it froze me and brought the entire dream-world into sharp focus. It was a haunting, bitter-sweet acoustic guitar track that at once had all the emotional and characteristic timbre and energy of Mark Knopfler, Chett Atkins and Brian May. It sang to me in chords progressions and and delicate licks that have embedded themselves so deeply inside of me I woke up with a near pain in my chest and I have that pain still. Were I any good at composing music (which I certainly am not) I would have transcribed it while I had the chance. I hear that music still and it was at once my favourite song on earth; and yet I will never hear it again.
Alas, on to brighter examples. My brother, an aspiring advertiser and artistic director, has many dreams involving creativity and he most certainly does put them to work in the way I never did in this instance. He has regularly told me of going to sleep with a complex brief on his mind; and having the answer come to him in his dreams... either quite abstractly, or bone-numbingly concrete to the point. He has likewise told me of dreams he has had involving comedic events, music, or interplays there of; with slow motion cinematic sequencing and a kind of creative quality that has likewise, transferred itself into waking reality and intersubjectivity with remarkable ease. But he was always the creative one between the two of us. He has likewise told me of dreams that have entirely consisted of him watching comedic sketches playing over and over, with himself a passive observer or formless, featureless ghost who's only in-dream ability consisted of being able to laugh manically at the situations his dreaming brain was concocting for his sheer amusement.
Often he has woken himself up with such laughter, and continued laughing there in bed, wide awake, at the ongoing brilliance of the joke. Other times his girlfriend has simply commented the next morning "you were laughing in your sleep again" to which he would suitably reply "yeah, I had another one of those dreams where I laugh". I suppose it is fitting that his success in advertising school came largely from his ability to produce visual images that would make his instructors laugh too.
I mention this; because I had just such a dream only a few days ago myself. It was in the same apartment, overlooking the same tennis court and next to the same cryptic girl. We had drifted off to sleep listening to psybient netradio streamed from my iphone and the next thing I knew I was talking to some old high-school friends/bullies, who were once a proverbial node of my great oscillating identity; (at various times a member of their clique, and others a victim of their excesses). This dichotomy carried itself through into the dream emotional atlas; as it were... and I talked to them in a familiar way only to experience their whispering an behind-the-back gossip no sooner as my back was turned.
As I made casual conversation, and felt the eerie tension of knowing I was neither an insider nor an outsider (the most precarious and dangerous place to be in any social hierarchy). As I gathered my wits to anticipate the impending social dangers contained therein; a splitting sound interrupted the conversation the de-facto group leader fell through the wooden floor he was lying down on, before complaining and recomposing himself and moving to a new section of ground space. In retrospect all the members of the group were in various positions of sitting, lounging and lying on what looked like a wooden stage or perhaps table-top skating ramp.
I turned around to talk to an unnamed dream character and heard the whispers again '...Do we really like him anyway?' ... 'We should make our move' ... 'Who does he think he is? Is he even one of us?' ... 'Nah he is ok' ... 'Leave him alone' ... 'No. Let's get him' ... and so on it went. My tensions were really up now. I turned back to talk to them in the casual manner once more. The ensuring conversation was thick with tension you could cut with a knife. I could identify by voice, as well as by body language, who had sided with me and who against me. I asked a question. Everybody froze: it was not intended to be symbolic but somehow, everybody now knew it's answer would decide my fate. It was just one of those questions that has meaning you did not intend to give it. The leader leaned up on one elbow to give his answer, and everybody was on edge for his response...
๑๑
So what does all this tell me? Seeing that this latest entry has been remarkably neuroscience free for a change. Nothing that I did not already know (or at least suspect). And that is that our dreams are likely to be mediated and modulated by the highest stages of our neurocognitive networks; if not the commanding echelons of our consciousness itself. That rare gift of human creativity; the ability to evoke an intense emotion through a mathematical arrangement of sound frequencies, or the capacity to strip all anger and aggression from a situation by pointing out its utter ridiculousness with nothing more than an unconventional selection of adjectives and good sense of timing, it comes to us when we sleep just as readily as it may when we are awake. Sometimes even more so. And we may never turn these creative insights into anything of value unless we are similarly creative in waking breathing actual life; for something of the gift becomes stripped away when our brain requires itself for our daily survival. Musically, I know I am not capable of transferring this into everyday life. Alas my brother sees no clear distinction between the creative arrangements he sees in his dreams and the ones he produces through his chosen vocation. I in turn make some effort to interpret my dreams creatively through this blog; but that is where my in-dream creativity starts and stops.
Are we all profoundly creative beings, hampered only by our own brain topology as cerebral pre-frontal blood flow returns to basal homoeostatic levels; our Serotonin and Norepinehrine rise to prepare us for our days journeys and our biparte states of consciousness re-integrate for the eternal game of trying to out-whit outsmart of foes? I have wrestled with this question often: why diminished states of consciousness can so reliably be conducive to some of the pinnacle achievements of consciousness itself, and all we call human. It is actually one of the many curious subjects of my project right now (human thought processes under Xenon induced disassociation) and I have no answer, though I feel I am increasingly close, at least theoretically.
All I know is that the blurred-lines between the boundaries of our own awareness and that which we give over to our blind reflex arcs and instinctive urges and muscle memory can be more than a proverbial treasure trove for the highest faculties of our minds; they can in cases be an oasis too. The fragmentation of the self yields many dividends, if done correctly... but the question of what does the fragmenting and what 'done correctly' exactly entails evades me quite reliably. Well, maybe not for much longer. My creativity might be dream bound but my curiosity is a free. For that I am thankful.
The dream in question (because of which I chose to write this entry) was a strange one for many reasons. I had drifted happily off to sleep listening to Abbey Road, in a strange apartment, next to an even stranger girl. She was in my dreams too... probably from the moment they started. While we get along very well (in real life), her mind has always been a puzzling place, and in this dream world we explored the surreality together; providing each other a valuable feeling of kindredness and companionship to offset the otherwise cold, emotionally distant reality that we were two beings perceiving two very different worlds. I have never entered a sleep stage and taken my real-life companion with me. It was something quite special.
We explored some dirty streets of my subconscious mind, passing dishevelled, boarded up store fronts and broken windows. We settled at something approaching a vagrant's street residence; a collection of wooden crates and make-shift furniture that at once enveloped and colonised the side-walk to form a kind of open-walled house. It contained a surprisingly aesthetically pleasing collection of house plants, pin-ups, semi-functioning electrical equipment and of course the vagrant himself, who was friendly enough and seemed to resemble in personality and in presence, the beach hermit from Local Hero (a film I had viewed some days earlier). Among his possessions, was a radio.
As we stopped and played with it; we managed to produce a song so distinct and melodic it froze me and brought the entire dream-world into sharp focus. It was a haunting, bitter-sweet acoustic guitar track that at once had all the emotional and characteristic timbre and energy of Mark Knopfler, Chett Atkins and Brian May. It sang to me in chords progressions and and delicate licks that have embedded themselves so deeply inside of me I woke up with a near pain in my chest and I have that pain still. Were I any good at composing music (which I certainly am not) I would have transcribed it while I had the chance. I hear that music still and it was at once my favourite song on earth; and yet I will never hear it again.
๑
Often he has woken himself up with such laughter, and continued laughing there in bed, wide awake, at the ongoing brilliance of the joke. Other times his girlfriend has simply commented the next morning "you were laughing in your sleep again" to which he would suitably reply "yeah, I had another one of those dreams where I laugh". I suppose it is fitting that his success in advertising school came largely from his ability to produce visual images that would make his instructors laugh too.
I mention this; because I had just such a dream only a few days ago myself. It was in the same apartment, overlooking the same tennis court and next to the same cryptic girl. We had drifted off to sleep listening to psybient netradio streamed from my iphone and the next thing I knew I was talking to some old high-school friends/bullies, who were once a proverbial node of my great oscillating identity; (at various times a member of their clique, and others a victim of their excesses). This dichotomy carried itself through into the dream emotional atlas; as it were... and I talked to them in a familiar way only to experience their whispering an behind-the-back gossip no sooner as my back was turned.
As I made casual conversation, and felt the eerie tension of knowing I was neither an insider nor an outsider (the most precarious and dangerous place to be in any social hierarchy). As I gathered my wits to anticipate the impending social dangers contained therein; a splitting sound interrupted the conversation the de-facto group leader fell through the wooden floor he was lying down on, before complaining and recomposing himself and moving to a new section of ground space. In retrospect all the members of the group were in various positions of sitting, lounging and lying on what looked like a wooden stage or perhaps table-top skating ramp.
I turned around to talk to an unnamed dream character and heard the whispers again '...Do we really like him anyway?' ... 'We should make our move' ... 'Who does he think he is? Is he even one of us?' ... 'Nah he is ok' ... 'Leave him alone' ... 'No. Let's get him' ... and so on it went. My tensions were really up now. I turned back to talk to them in the casual manner once more. The ensuring conversation was thick with tension you could cut with a knife. I could identify by voice, as well as by body language, who had sided with me and who against me. I asked a question. Everybody froze: it was not intended to be symbolic but somehow, everybody now knew it's answer would decide my fate. It was just one of those questions that has meaning you did not intend to give it. The leader leaned up on one elbow to give his answer, and everybody was on edge for his response...
CRACK. The leader fell through the broken flooring again and tumbled head over feet into an inclined abyss bellow, and everybody started laughing with an energy I cannot describe. I was laughing too. I ran over to look down into the hole he had descended into; and he was collapsed in a heap of sawdust and broken wood in a rag-doll position and my laughter picked up further. And that is when I woke up; laughing to myself with hideous satisfaction. "What the hell are you laughing at?" The girl next to me inquired, waking up herself. It was quite hard to describe. I continued laughing there for some time, just as I laugh now as I write this. The image, context and the timing were utterly indescribable. I at once understood and envied my brother a great deal. He was certainly lucky to have this.
๑๑
Are we all profoundly creative beings, hampered only by our own brain topology as cerebral pre-frontal blood flow returns to basal homoeostatic levels; our Serotonin and Norepinehrine rise to prepare us for our days journeys and our biparte states of consciousness re-integrate for the eternal game of trying to out-whit outsmart of foes? I have wrestled with this question often: why diminished states of consciousness can so reliably be conducive to some of the pinnacle achievements of consciousness itself, and all we call human. It is actually one of the many curious subjects of my project right now (human thought processes under Xenon induced disassociation) and I have no answer, though I feel I am increasingly close, at least theoretically.
All I know is that the blurred-lines between the boundaries of our own awareness and that which we give over to our blind reflex arcs and instinctive urges and muscle memory can be more than a proverbial treasure trove for the highest faculties of our minds; they can in cases be an oasis too. The fragmentation of the self yields many dividends, if done correctly... but the question of what does the fragmenting and what 'done correctly' exactly entails evades me quite reliably. Well, maybe not for much longer. My creativity might be dream bound but my curiosity is a free. For that I am thankful.
No comments:
Post a Comment