Cbm 6jx3v

Apology of the Dream - Part 2 2y1k4b

One day, in a scientific magazine which devoted a whole file to dreams, I read that we could not read in a dream. 

So I discussed it with the person I was living with at the time, to tell him that it was not true, because I was able to read my dreams.

His reasoning invited me to understand that what this journalist had written was constructed, and that the fact that I could read in my dreams was only a product of my imagination.

I was deeply annoyed by this sterile conversation.

******* 

Moreover, isn't it more difficult to imagine being in the process of reading, than to let oneself live in a dream?

While I make a differentiation between dreaming and imagining, there are, apart from the nuance of control that I mentioned in the first part of this article, other dissimilar characteristics.

As I mentioned before, I am a great dreamer.

This subject has always interested me, and I have this habit of always needing to understand certain mechanisms. I document myself, I experiment, and as far as the science of dreams is concerned, there are sometimes contradictory discourses between what we have been led to think about the functioning and what we can experience in a singular way.  

Contradictions also appear in the way our super brain interacts in this science of dreams.

I had read in an article that everything we see in our dreams are images already inscribed in our memory.

So, let me tell you a fascinating story...

*******

Unfortunately, I don't have the exact date of this dream, because often, when I wake up, I write down the dream directly before it escapes me, and I don't always bother to write down less significant details.

However, I do use my workbooks that follow me everywhere to write down my dreams.

My dreams are written in the notebooks I have on hand.

In February 2020, I have this dream, which I deliver to you raw, as I had transcribed it on Obsidian:

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I don't the date; it seems to me that I spoke about this dream in detail to my friend Amélie, since she is the one who offers me a book in this dream*. 

*illisible Mr... of zinzin? who me ?

Amélie offers me a book that I wanted to read, A4 size, red cover (*Ma TSE, Mau T? M for the first letter for sure - note at the time of the rereading: it seems to me that I open a gift package where there is this book, this package being first on a circular table with another package I think*)

It rained. Outside there are some things, computers... and my camera. *Drawing + Note: drawing of a circle, and another circle resembling a pizza topping, in the center left - When it was raining and I went to check on my camera, there were various digital tools on the table: tablet, mini laptop, and something else I can't . They had just watched a movie, the title of which escapes me. A movie I like. Big gardens, big tables*.

It's two o'clock in the morning, everyone is going to bed because they haven't seen the time. I say that there may have been a time lapse. I think there is my cousin Benjamin.

Note: *The book that Amélie offers me is in a gift wrapper. It is a book that she read and that I wanted to read. It is a red leather book (big cover). I opened it at the presentation page. And it made me very happy. We are with other people, but I don't who. First she gives a gift to a person on my right. I don't what or who.

Note: *see if the book exists* 

Note while writing: *I only put in my beginning notes a vague memory of another package. I hesitated to put it in at first because I'm wary of dream memories and how they can be reinterpreted- As I write more dreams in the meantime, I realize I've added details in paper versions a few pages back. So my memories were good.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

As you can see, even with years of practice and discipline in transcribing my nighttime dreams, many details escape me while writing. They are scattered memories, snippets of fresh memory. However, I would like to draw attention to this book that I received in this dream. I had put in my notes, "look if the book exists".

A book, with a red leather cover, where I could, in my dream, and then in the transcription of this memory, read letters. Of course, I investigated this book the same day.  I have read a lot of books in my life, but this one does not tell me anything. In my memory, I even thought that it was certainly the "Little Red Book" of Mao.

But, I am curious by nature, and I needed a confirmation or invalidation of the existence of this book.

And strangely enough, I found this *book and its author... which I not only didn't know, but which also complemented the research or reading I was doing at the time for my art work. Fascinating, isn't it?

(*This author is Meng Tzeu, better known as Mencius, Chinese philosopher)

I obviously don't have an infallible memory, and maybe I came across this book at some point in my life. A reminiscence of a distant file stored in a corner of my noggin. However, as I deeply doubt that we cannot read in a dream, and that by this small example I can contradict and affirm that reading can be operated in my dream dimensions, I can also question the fact that only our memories can appear in our dreams.

When I make the distinction between what I imagine and what I dream, and this particularity of being able to control the imagination when we cannot be in control of what we dream, an undeniable recurrence appears in my dreams.

Again, I speak of my dreams, because I don't know how you dream.

As a great dreamer, I am a self-proclaimed great expert on my dreams.

*******

I would like to come back to this notion of unconscious memorization, of records that have not been decided of our own free will, but that our mind has deemed useful to compartmentalize in a drawer.

I laugh to write this sentence, because if I start from the scientific postulate analyzing dreams as sequential memories of data that we have encountered throughout our lives, I laugh to think how difficult it is sometimes to memorize information that we want to retain, while our gray matter randomly chooses which ones it will engrave.

Often, in my dreams, I am in the company of people I do not know. People whose existence in my waking reality I do not know, who magically populate my nights or my daydreams.

Perhaps I have already seen them, or glimpsed them, and finally, I will contradict myself on this point, because indeed, I have lived in big cities, I have traveled a lot. It is irrefutable that a mixture of faces from all horizons have met my eyes at one time or another.

However, I invite you to do this simple exercise. If it is true that we can sometimes dream of unknown people, can we imagine them as simply?

Close your eyes, and try, in less than a minute, to imagine all around you a group of people you don't know, that you have never seen... Difficult, isn't it?

I am very imaginative, and I can describe precisely a character I don't know without even thinking about it. On the other hand, visualizing him instantly is extremely complicated for me.  Even if I ask my mind to help me, even if I ask it to open some drawers. A face, a silhouette appears. It is not very precise. A whole group of different and unknown people is almost ambitious, isn't it?

However, I am in charge. When I am not, a whole tribe of people from who knows where can keep me company. What intrigues me about this observation is that I have never come across any studies that talk about this dissonance.

When I meet unfamiliar faces in my dreams, I am always fascinated by the disconcerting ease with which I can experience situations with these people I seem to know. Kind of like being in a public garden as a little girl. I never had a problem socializing, and I could easily play with children of all ages. Kids have this quality of being buddies for life sometimes for a single hour of meeting in the park.

And that's kind of what can happen in my dreams. A scene taken on the road, with people I don't know from Eve or Adam, but with whom I will punctually live one or more situations as naturally as possible.

*******

A much more disturbing experience that you too may have encountered in your dreams can sometimes look like this: You are in your dream with a person or a group of people with unknown faces from your reality . Only when you wake up and your dream, you are able to tell that these people are so-and-so, individuals you know in your life, but who in your dream have put on another "human costume.

Thus, it sometimes happened to me to tell a friend, a relative, that I dreamed of him, that it was indeed him, but that physically it was not him... I agree that our mind can indeed be confused. And I have no doubt about the extravagant neuronal connections that take place in the background during our sleep.

However, awake, can you imagine a person you know with a different physical appearance?

Do you then, like me, begin to distinguish this nuance between imagination and reverie?

I focused on the image, by reading, the people. I will come back in a third article on the visualization of places and situations.

******

But right now, as a self-proclaimed dream specialist, I want to take you into one of my most unfathomable dreams...

And this dream is rather what we could define as a nightmare.

There is no recurrence in the images, no repetition in the visual cueing, no real traumatic memories. Just a strange feeling of "ah...".

I would also like to clarify that when this sensation in my nocturnal dream fantasies make their appearance, there are no definite links with any situations or repeated situations of my reality in the awake state. By this I mean that sometimes in our lives we encounter dreams, or symbols to these dreams that reappear as a result of situations or patterns that we repeat, and that our dreams can sometimes make us understand these situations. This is not the case.

The dreams in question never resemble each other in the places, nor in the situation of the event of departure. I am an actor, that is to say that I am not a spectator of myself, but I am well aware that I am me, and I see what presents itself to me as if I were in reality. I see what my eyes invite me to see.

This dream can thus begin on configurations of the most banal to the most eccentric circumstances, a surprising triggering element will however warn me that this nightmare is coming.

A music... a music that I consistently recognize. It is not a shrill sound that I could have met in one of the many horror movies I saw in my adolescence, and besides, I started to have this dreamy sensation when I was a child, it is not notes linked them being able to hear a distressing refrain. No, it's a musical tune, quite basic that I am absolutely unable to sing or hum while awake, that I have never found in a movie or my music playlists. It's a redundant tune, quite low, the volume is low, like background music.

To those who think that it is the humming of some appliance, or of my pipes, that I transform or distort during my sleep, I would like to specify that I have moved many times, and that it happened to me to sleep in rooms without any electrical appliance. I would also like to add that this musical frequency can sometimes appear in my daydreams. When this happens, it often takes me out of the daydreams, because I have the music... I say to myself, "It's the music!" and by the time I've thought about it, it has already escaped me.

This music is then accompanied by a light, a subdued luminosity, like an orange filter that tints the image. Sometimes this light is of a yellowed white, or tending to the greenish. A bit like in an old movie. And then I have this strange, "paranoid" feeling that invites me to melt into the crowd so that I won't be found. I am wanted.

By whom, by what, I have no idea... Because, whatever the situation, it's never the same. And of course, having this dream since childhood, the locations change.

In my dream, I'm not at all comfortable experiencing this. So I usually go and curl up in a corner and close my eyes... Then I wake up, my body and mind being in a state of stress, manifesting as heart palpitations, sometimes sweating, feelings of anxiety, muscle tension, even though I am awake.

I failed to mention that when that music and light appear, I know that the anxiety-provoking feeling is coming, and that, whatever the circumstances of the environment I am in at the time, it will take place some time before I am awake. That is to say, I know that the drama is coming, but my brain continues to bog me down in an unpleasant sensation...

Of course, I have experienced, like all of us, factual situations of paranoia in my waking states. However, it is not in my nature to have unreasonable fears, I tend to trust, and feel safe where I am.  

Why am I telling you about this strange feeling?

If I relate it to what I can imagine, I am not able today to reproduce this musical tune, even by imagining it. Strangely enough, when I talk to you about this music, I feel that it is there, in my head, and it is quite frustrating, because I am not able to find it.  A bit like the name of a person that you want to pronounce, or a word, a country... You want to say it, you know it, but there's like a brake, a rusty drawer that won't open. And then, in a great moment of letting go, bang, the word, the country, the name you were looking for is there! Pow! Magic! 

And usually, you had moved on to something else, degreasing the drawer without warning you!

This music sometimes comes back, in moments of daydreams. I can however, in consciousness, invent a whole bunch of pieces of music in my head.

I am not able to reproduce this one.

To be continued...

#aperpetualsearchformeaning #frequency  #dream #psyche #imagination #hermetism #concept #artisticresearch #art #apologyofthedream #thestrangemusicofmydreamsthaticantimagine

Illustration: The Strange Music of my dreams that I can't imagine