Sunday, January 8, 2012

On Dreams

I have had a lifelong fascination with dreams. Several books on the subject line my shelves. I dream in cinematic splendor and horror every night, without fail, waking with a bizarre fragmentation of images that I spend the day trying to arrange in a linear fashion. It's very difficult to shake my dreams. They have both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, I'm rarely at a loss for ideas to utilize in my work as a writer. I've kept a dream journal since I was thirteen. I can call up evocative levels of consciousness denied me during the waking state. The negative part of dealing with dreams is the crippling effect they sometimes have on my "everyday mind," the one devoted to tasks, errands and obligations. I'm often hamstrung by the power of my nocturnal struggles. They can consume my thoughts, leading to inaction. I am, in short, haunted by these subconscious excursions.

Some dream in microcosm, others on a huge canvas. Some characters in these nighttime stories show up regularly. Others make cameo appearances and never return. Dreams are a universal thread common to all cultures and religions. They often serve a prophetic function, as in the Bible and other spiritual texts. Everyone is dreaming while they are asleep, whether they're aware of it or not. My husband doesn't remember his dreams. I once had a writing instructor, a brilliant woman with an abundance of wisdom and ingenuity, surprisingly inform the class that she did not remember her dreams at all, ever. I assumed all artists were as caught up in their dreams as I. It was one thing for my husband, a pragmatic, left-brained individual, to have no dream recall. Quite another to learn of a fiction writer having none.

Why the random nature of this ability to retain our subconscious scenarios? Is there some physiological reason why some do and others do not? Could it be a sign of how evolved we are? Is dreaming as momentous as evidence of reincarnation or something as trivial as a digestive disturbance? Do dreams foretell the future? Or are they merely recycled bits of effluvium dressed up as a Fellini film? Whatever they are, I believe dreams carry far more weight than the simple explanation some offer for the phenomenon--that dreams are a way of resolving otherwise irreconcilable conflicts in our waking lives. A realm which has inspired and informed much of human history, especially the arts, is not just a clearinghouse for solutions we can't or won't reach in the cold light of day. I'll quote Willy on this one and conclude, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded by a sleep."