Today’s NY Times devotes the entire Science Times section to the latest insights into dreaming, the little-known mental process we all share. Little may be known about the mechanism and biological function of dreams, maybe. But psychotherapists and artists of all kinds thank their stars every day for their dreams of the night before, because without them, we would lack what amounts to an interstate highway straight into the mystery of the human soul. There are other well-travelled access roads writers use–freewriting, clustering, improvisational theater games, induced revery among them–but only the dream takes us, willing or not, into that unknown part of ourselves…where great narrative material hangs like ripe fruit, ready to be picked.
Would you like to see some current work inspired by the quirky power of the dream? Catch Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe while it’s still in the theaters. Or rerun just about anything by David Lynch (Mulholland Drive is a good one). Notice that the stories are trivial or heedlessly incoherent. It’s because stories, narratives, are constructs, a special frames we used to format the interplay of the unseeable and unknowable; our deep, non-verbal compulsions, urges, desires, fears, etc. so that the conscious, information-oriented, do-it-now part of our minds will get it.
For me, what remains after seeing these movies is not their endings, in which immense complications dissolve, rather than resolve, into a sweet soup of "Love, Love, Love"–not that but the purely visual audaciousness and distorted un-reality that speaks directly to my unconscious (home of the dream) because it came directly from another’s unconscious.
But how do writers, who DO have to write for people who are awake, use the dream as a tool or resource? Stay tuned. That’s tomorrow’s post.
(btw, the question of why the unconscious is not interested in ordinary narrative is for another day too–but it will happen, because it’s a question that’s ALWAYS fascinated me.)
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Thanks for dream thoughts. It’s interesting to see how writers incorporate dreams into their work or are inspired by them. Even more interesting, I think, is seeing the dreams themselves. Kerouac’s “Book of Dreams” is a wild, enchanting ride through his nightscapes, some of his best writing. Do you know of any other writers (or any other ANYTHINGS) who have kept really good published dream journals. I’m busy creating a theater of dreams up in Boston, and am always looking for good dream fodder. And by the way, dream journals (your own or other folks’) show how dreams link up in a non-narrative fashion. Everyone has images that repeat and morph in their dreams over time. The morphing often is in some form of relationship to what’s going on in so-called “real” life. By following the dream series, a collage like shape emerges that shows the development of your image life, the language of your image-ination. If you, or any of your blogger folk, know of any good dream series, I’d love to know about them. Jon