Dreams and the Writer

I rarely dream at night over the past few years especially. I suppose when I was younger, I enjoyed lucid dreams but also didn't enjoy the occasional night terror. Not dreaming at night became a godsend because when I'm awake, my brain never shuts the fuck up.

I daydream... sort of. I interrupt myself when talking and hop immediately back on course. I can hear a line coming up on a show I've watched before while reading out loud, say the line in sync and go right back to reading. My short term memory is very, very unreliable but I can remember things that happened when I was still in diapers. Hell, I can recall how the world looks at less than two feet tall and crinkling around in the diaper. I can prepare lunch from scratch and forget what I spent half an hour making two hours later. Probably sounds problematic for a writer but I develop methods to complement the way I think. Daydreaming for me can be both hyper-aware and completely absentminded in turns. It can be a bit scatterbrained or very focused. 

No matter how you dream, it's a toolbox that sometimes reveals things you didn't know you knew or absurd counter logic your rational brain might miss. Dream are a scramble of information, sometimes garbled, other times crystal clear. Sometimes it can disturb you, staging something disgusting or horrifying as a desire or turning your sugar sweet pastel world into dripping tar nightmare. Once I saw people missing perfectly geometric chunks of their body, missing legs or part of the neck, but all smiling and walking around as if it was a regular day at the cotton candy pink office. Sometimes it can trick you into feeling real. I had a really ordinary dream that got weird when my best friend and I suddenly broke into a church to steal markers from the Sunday school room. It can feel real quite literally. I felt both sensual and violent dreams that had me gasping awake.

Because of dreams, we can adopt ways to immerse ourselves in our stories and ideas. It's certainly not a requirement. Even extremely logical and rational types that never dream are capable of collecting and reordering information and making something whimsical or at least fictional. I've seen plenty of art students trying to one-up each other on who has the artiest brain. ''I have lucid dreams!" "Yeah, well, I fart realistic portraits when I eat crayons!" "That's nothing! I was born holding a paintbrush and reproduced Starry Night in womb blood!" "Tax evasion!" *Literally all dissolve into puddles of forced hysterical laughter*

I know because I was one of those and I am so. So. So happy that I didn't get a digital camera or webcam until my early 20s and post that noise on the internet. Ffs, we think we're being quirky and original but only about 15% of it is funny to anyone who doesn't know us. And in this age of aggressive and insincere complimenting being a youth trend, I see most of these kids getting sick of each other pretty quick. "No, I do mean it! My bff is so ridiculously hot, I could just stalk her and strangle her!" Funny how quickly they'll switch hot into annoying and talk garbage from there.

Yeah, we all get carried away. Dreams are a much safer victimless way to explore uncomfortable ideas. Uncomfortable can even be a breath of fresh air if you're feeling jaded by the same old stories. Really, writing can be a uncomfortable as you can lean it and you can web publish it free in most hosting sites. Other places, including self publishing markets will set guidelines so be wary of where your wicked dreams lead. 

Personally I never assume that sensual settings gave to arouse that violence can't be disturbingly sensual. I realize it very well could used as an excuse to harm but could easily sate someone to keep them from doing so as well. Sometimes I like a safe, warm or comedic story, to be light and not going fir a little shock or squirm. Sometimes I just want to be a nerd, to tackle quirks or illnesses without laying it on too thick. Maybe the challenge is trickier than I thought, but I pool through daydreams and counter failing logic with dream logic and work it out better.

Writers can often affect changes in reality, even without that intention. Interpretation from dream inspiration can spark invention and innovation. Things thought impractical can challenge a determined thinker to create the logistics to make it so. At one point, touch screens were unlikely, laughable, but now that they're common, we accept the possibility that Tony Stark's air gestures operating a dimensional holographic computer could be widespread someday even in the near future. Virtual reality that can affect other senses than sight, including smell, touch, real movement, are possible. Everything we experience is a specific charge to our brains and science shows the possibility that virtual reality might someday be a place where people with disabilities can experience a convincing facsimile of sensations they have not in the past. (I hesitate to use deprivation or call it a lack of senses-- those who have never experienced something don't exactly miss it if they never had it. We all maneuver with limitations.)

Corny and overused or not, it can't be denied that dreamers are doers, encouraging all of us to dare to dream bigger.