So, I had this dream last night– no, wait! Come back! I’m not going to go into detail about my dream, I promise. If you read my last post (and if not, why not? ) you recall it had to do with the guy here who posted a Craigslist ad for a time-travelling companion to go back to June of 1988 with him in order to “take care of some business.” Well, last night I dreamt that I went back in time to, very specifically, June of 1988! I know!
Ooooh, what does it mean?
Well, clearly it means that this time-travel machine is real, and it can influence your dreams to show you a hypothetical future/past. Or something along those lines.
But what’s funny about this dream is that I’ve thought about it periodically all morning. It wasn’t a particularly intricate dream, or revelatory, or dramatic. Yet I keep thinking about bits here and there. Characters, events, details.
I love dreams. My own dreams, that is. Not so much your dreams. Nothing personal, but I think you know exactly what I mean – once you get past the essence, the basic plot, you’re in dangerous territory in telling someone else your dream.
No, I'm listening. It's like you were watching TV, but then you were in the TV and it was real, and there was a really fast turtle. Yes, it's fascinating.
I think it’s fascinating what it says about our dreams that we can pour over every detail of just about any one of them like it’s the Zapruder film, combing through details, looking for meaning, look for clues into our own minds. “And the guy was
Like a repressed memory, maybe? Of some named Roy? Of cords of wood?
wearing a brown, corduroy denim type jacket. A brown. Corduroy. Jacket. I mean, whoa, you know. Why? Why? Why corduroy?”
It also says something about our solipsistic nature that we A) can’t believe, simply can not believe, that other people wouldn’t find our dreams utterly fascinating; and B) can’t believe how shockingly dull other people’s dreams are and why they would possibly think anyone would be the least bit interested in them after about 30 seconds.
Is there any phrase that inspires more paralytic social dread than, “Oh, I had the most interesting dream last night…”? I mean, maybe – maybe – “I just got back from vacation. Let me show you the pictures!” but that’s about it.
(Side note: what is it about vacation photos? You could take your vacation on the moon, or on an erupting volcano and the pictures would be brain-numbing. “Here’s me in front of a lava flow. Here’s Janice in front of spewing ash – no, it’s not fog, it’s a plume of ash. Here’s Janice in front of a lava-bomb exploding – well, the lava-bomb came out kind of blurry and off-camera, but it’s a good picture of Janice, except for the blinking.”)
This one's Earl on the beach. Hm? I don't know what's going on behind him. I think a war, or something. This next one's me in the hotel room watching TV...
And yet, there is almost no quicker turn-around from painfully dull to utterly compelling than to take the phrase “I had the most interesting dream last night…” and add the phrase (and you know the phrase I’m thinking of. Say it with me, now), “… and you were in it!”
Oh! Now see, that’s interesting!
I suppose the easy conclusion from this would be that we’re all self-centered jackasses, but I don’t think that’s it. In David Eagleman’s Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain gets into the really interesting ways our brains are so much more vast than we’re consciously aware, or even really previously thought, and that the conscious and unconscious are always vying for control like a “team of rivals.” Dreams seem like this ephemeral connection to that inner part of our selves we only kind of know. Our subconscious are so honest, so intricate, that they really do reflect our purest being, and so of course we want to tap in to that, and – like existence itself – it is ultimately isolated and personal. But being in someone else’s dream shows that you exist on that deeper plane for them in some way. That you aren’t merely a social component. That, in a funny way, we’re not all isolated.
Well, that and maybe you’ll get to find out that, deep-down, they want to sleep with you. But mostly the other stuff.
The Byronic Man 
June 25, 2011 at 2:52 pm
So…if Karl Urban dreams about me he wants to sleep with me?
Hmmm.
Excellent!
June 26, 2011 at 4:45 am
I suppose this calls for “do androids dream of electric sheep?”
I try not to over-share dreams–certainly in much detail yet one can never accurately describe “the feel” (as nobody can tell you the Grand Canyon is more than a big hole in the ground til you’re there). I am not surrounded by loving, kind individuals at work yet they respond, “Dude, you should write that into a movie!” when I share the chose few.
Sounds like my kind of book.
June 26, 2011 at 6:31 am
Yeah, I think brevity is the key. Stick to the essence, avoid anything, as you say, that communicates the “feel.” A friend told me about his dream a couple days ago and stuck to the basic framework and – like you mention – then it sounds like an interesting story.
June 26, 2011 at 4:54 am
I suppose this calls for “do androids dream of electric sheep?”
June 26, 2011 at 4:57 am
Erm, that’s weird. Sorry. I’m on a rural dialup right now *and* possibly downloading something I shouldn’t be whilst reading my subs. We’ll see if this posts or hiccups.
June 26, 2011 at 4:40 pm
Such a great line: “I suppose the easy conclusion from this would be that we’re all self-centered jackasses, but I don’t think that’s it.”
June 27, 2011 at 7:14 am
I miss the “zip zip zip” sound of a good pair of corduroy pants as I’m walking quickly to and from places. It sounds so distinctly 90s, but we could change that! Be the change you want to see in the world, I always hear. And I want to hear that “zip zip zip” again. Let’s do this. Corduroy lovers unite!
June 27, 2011 at 9:18 am
That would be the loudest, chafing-est march ever… but maybe worth it.