Dreams. No... not the "I want to be an Astronaut when I grow up" type dreams, or even the "I wish the world was more like Star Trek" type dreams. I'm talking about the "images that flash through your head while you're asleep" type dreams. We all have them. Every night, apparently. (Unless you rely on Rohypnol, which I'm told knocks you out so deeply you don't.)
Mostly, our dreams are just disconnected images, over-interpreted to bring order to the chaos.
Occasionally, there is order in there and we can wake up remembering a dream so vividly that it was hard to know whether it really happened or not... and then a few hours later... nothing... just a faint memory that there was a something... you can't recall what... "and yet it seemed like I was there".
Very occasionally, there are dreams that stay with us for ever. You know what I mean, when the line between dream and reality is so blurred in your brain that you'll never really know which was which.
There's the implausible too... I still recall one I had when I was too young to remember much else. I think I must have been 6 or 7, and if I created the scene on film, you'd think fire and brimstone Hell. I can still smell the smoke even now, forty plus years later. And I can still feel the giant trilobites eating my ankle. I remember waking from that dream and going to my wardrobe to get my dressing gown. All would have been fine if it hadn't been for the slipper overhanging the edge. The scream was so loud as it brushed the front of my ankle, and it was at that moment that I "knew" those trilobites had been real.
I've always been a vivid dreamer, and for most of my adult life the dreams have been so real, so coherent, that occasionally they'd have end credits. I'm not kidding. Some of the best films I've ever seen were dreams, complete with titles, characters, dialogue, plot, sub plot, special effects and, at the very end, credits.
Some of the music has been sublime too... try Trumpet Voluntary played two or three octaves lower on a concert hall organ with full orchestral backing. (When I've got far too much money I'll pay someone to do that... it was so beautiful I woke up sobbing.)
And I'd pay just about anything for a ticket to see one particular dream again. It was stunning, and for days, I couldn't stop talking about it. I might tell you about it one day, though like all really personal experiences, it is bound to lose something in translation.
Very occasionally, my dreams come true too. If I ever I tell you "I had the weirdest dream last night", pay attention, because track record would suggest that sometime in the future...
Ah... how I long for the good old days of great dreams... because lately...
Stargate (copyright MGM) has featured prominently in The Bear's dreams
Readers, I like Stargate. I've always been a sci-fi nut, but if I have another all night Stargate dream...
Seriously. Every night for the last week... bloody Stargate. Sensational movie length episodes, by the way... I hope the writers are telepathic because some of those stories were fab... great dialogue too... but they go on ALL night. All friggin' night! I wake up exhausted from fighting Wraith, Goa'uld or Ori, or stretching the brain into implausible science to find a technological solution to the problem/puzzle of the day. This morning, I even woke up "knowing" how the damned thing works. It had all been figured out in an especially long episode about... oh bloody hell... GO AWAY... I need to get some sleep here.
And a couple of weeks ago, I played out the entire Season 7 of Hogan's Heroes... which is a good trick, because the show only ran for 6.
Oh please. Brain, haven't you got better things to do while I'm asleep?
I want my old dreams back. The original screenplays. The coherent and intelligent plots, the stunning special effects, the profound and sometimes faintly disturbing glimpses into my future... where did those dreams go?
I don't know what drugs I need to be taking to get them back, but I am smart enough to know that if I want to watch re-runs of 60's sit-coms I should just get up and switch on TV1.
Perhaps I just watch way too much TV.
5 comments:
Tickets for dreams... I love it.
Woke from one of those dreams this morning where you never quite manage to shake it off... someone puts an arm around your shoulder and you will *always* believe they did, will always see them slightly differently now. Line between the real and the not-real maybe doesn't exist some mornings.
Don't publicize that idea about the telepathic screenwriters. Once they find out that you are wise to their tactics, they will come to administer the nasty nocturnal brain cleanse. Not pretty.
Memy Fandi
A recurring dream of mine is snapping my front teeth off with my bottom teeth & then spitting them out into my hands - it is horrifically unsettling and I always wake up frantically feeling for my pegs. I don't think that would make a good TV show or film though.
Me, I really would do just about anything for that "Ticket".
And IC, don't worry. While they're cleansing my brain, they might spend a few minutes cleaning the house.
And Ms Mouse, right now, there is a team of script writers incorporating the snapping of teeth into the next smash hit sit-com.
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