There may come a time when you find yourself at a party with me. More likely for some of you than others, I grant, but still. Most of the time, I will be amiable, sociable, and once past the conversational hiccups we discussed in my last post, pretty darn funny and maybe a little charming. On occasion, however, I may become quiet. Withdrawn. Antisocial would not be overstating the matter. Should this occur... don't worry about it. It will pass with time, and it's not likely to be anything you did.
Let us now speak of dreams.
I don't really have recurring dreams. Not since I was quite young, anyway: I recall recurring nightmares about zombie Fraggles and King Kong-sized Frankenstein monsters... and the Thing from Readalong, but that's another monologue unto itself. So there's no recurring theme I'm trying to understand here: instead, I'll be discussing the categories my dreams fall into.
My favourites are the action/adventure dreams Some people find endless amusement in the grand, epic narratives my subconscious is capable of. I've gotten three scripts out of dreams I've had: sure, one of them isn't working out the way I'd like, but there may be parts of it I can salvage, and one of them came from the dream. Now, it can be tricky to keep to a plotline: the random nature of the dream state means that elements are constantly shifting. A recent dream which started as an episode of Lost turned into a rather amusing battle for power amongst my theatre friends. AC was a little put out that in the dream, he was the power-hungry dictator I was being asked to overthrow, but most people found it funny.
Another flavour of dream is the Unfortunate Situation dream: naked in public, say, or "just pissed everyone off in a big way." The best part of these dreams is the intense satisfaction of willing myself awake when things are at their worst. These are not nightmares, per se: cautionary tales perhaps. Self-consciousness made manifest. Rarely notable for their content, simply for my ability to put an end to them. But not wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmares. I don't really get those much anymore.
No, it's the good dreams that'll kill me. The happy ones. The wish fulfillment dreams. The dreams in which I get what I didn't even know I wanted, only to wake up and find none of it's true. There's two prime examples of this: for the moody one, step into the ol' Wayback Machine for a blog of Times Past. For the funny one, read on: When I was 12 or so, what I really wanted was Bubble Bobble for the Nintendo (ah, to have such simple wants again). I had a dream one night that I'd been given an actual stand-up Bubble Bobble arcade game, which seemed cool beyond words. A little too cool, actually. I said "Hang on... this isn't real, is it? This is just one of those dreams where I've got the thing I want and when I wake up I won't have it anymore." Suddenly a booming voice declared "And so it is! So why don't we take it away right now?" And it laughed evilly as a whirlwind descended, sucking away the game. At which point I woke up, thinking "Well, that was weird."
That's how I'd like to end this lengthy diatribe on dreams... the weird shit my subconscious pulls out. Last week I was dreaming of a crossword puzzle when my alarm went off. One quick whack of the snooze button later I drifted back to sleep: a friend of mine who enjoys crosswords popped up, saying "Let's finish the puzzle!" And I say "we can't. The dream state doesn't have the long-term memory capabilities to store an entire crossword puzzle. That puppy's gone." And he said "Oh," kind of sadly. Or there was the time my dream went into a test pattern. I was sleeping, dreaming away, and suddenly the dream stopped and I was presented with a still image of light shining from behind my bedroom door, with a sign and a voice stating "Your dream will resume shortly. Please stand by." Seriously. This happened. This is what my brain throws at me sometimes. Is it any wonder my day-to-day existence is a big game of "Hide the Crazy." But then, isn't everyone's?
"When your worst fear happens... there's nothing left to be afraid of."
-Hal Jordan
Let us now speak of dreams.
I don't really have recurring dreams. Not since I was quite young, anyway: I recall recurring nightmares about zombie Fraggles and King Kong-sized Frankenstein monsters... and the Thing from Readalong, but that's another monologue unto itself. So there's no recurring theme I'm trying to understand here: instead, I'll be discussing the categories my dreams fall into.
My favourites are the action/adventure dreams Some people find endless amusement in the grand, epic narratives my subconscious is capable of. I've gotten three scripts out of dreams I've had: sure, one of them isn't working out the way I'd like, but there may be parts of it I can salvage, and one of them came from the dream. Now, it can be tricky to keep to a plotline: the random nature of the dream state means that elements are constantly shifting. A recent dream which started as an episode of Lost turned into a rather amusing battle for power amongst my theatre friends. AC was a little put out that in the dream, he was the power-hungry dictator I was being asked to overthrow, but most people found it funny.
Another flavour of dream is the Unfortunate Situation dream: naked in public, say, or "just pissed everyone off in a big way." The best part of these dreams is the intense satisfaction of willing myself awake when things are at their worst. These are not nightmares, per se: cautionary tales perhaps. Self-consciousness made manifest. Rarely notable for their content, simply for my ability to put an end to them. But not wake-up-in-a-cold-sweat nightmares. I don't really get those much anymore.
No, it's the good dreams that'll kill me. The happy ones. The wish fulfillment dreams. The dreams in which I get what I didn't even know I wanted, only to wake up and find none of it's true. There's two prime examples of this: for the moody one, step into the ol' Wayback Machine for a blog of Times Past. For the funny one, read on: When I was 12 or so, what I really wanted was Bubble Bobble for the Nintendo (ah, to have such simple wants again). I had a dream one night that I'd been given an actual stand-up Bubble Bobble arcade game, which seemed cool beyond words. A little too cool, actually. I said "Hang on... this isn't real, is it? This is just one of those dreams where I've got the thing I want and when I wake up I won't have it anymore." Suddenly a booming voice declared "And so it is! So why don't we take it away right now?" And it laughed evilly as a whirlwind descended, sucking away the game. At which point I woke up, thinking "Well, that was weird."
That's how I'd like to end this lengthy diatribe on dreams... the weird shit my subconscious pulls out. Last week I was dreaming of a crossword puzzle when my alarm went off. One quick whack of the snooze button later I drifted back to sleep: a friend of mine who enjoys crosswords popped up, saying "Let's finish the puzzle!" And I say "we can't. The dream state doesn't have the long-term memory capabilities to store an entire crossword puzzle. That puppy's gone." And he said "Oh," kind of sadly. Or there was the time my dream went into a test pattern. I was sleeping, dreaming away, and suddenly the dream stopped and I was presented with a still image of light shining from behind my bedroom door, with a sign and a voice stating "Your dream will resume shortly. Please stand by." Seriously. This happened. This is what my brain throws at me sometimes. Is it any wonder my day-to-day existence is a big game of "Hide the Crazy." But then, isn't everyone's?
"When your worst fear happens... there's nothing left to be afraid of."
-Hal Jordan
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Also, I'm modeling today and I've already managed to almost fall asleep twice during a 90 minute seated pose. You know the "head starts to tip forward, sudden jerk as you realize you're falling asleep, oh my god I hope no one noticed that" deal. Because a classroom of art students staring directly at you wouldn't notice if you almost fell asleep.