<\/i><\/p>\n
I wake from a dream in the middle of the night and scratch out this note to help me recall the dream in the morning:<\/p>\n
Dancing ladle\/tef >silver>gold\u2026alive<\/u><\/i><\/p>\n
In the morning, fully awake and far from the dream state, I use my note to draw back as much memory of the dream as I can. I recognize that the memory of the dream is nowhere near as \u201csubstantial\u201d as the dream itself, more a simulacrum<\/i> of the original. But remembering is better than not, so I work my sketchy note into a narrative of sorts. Here is the text of the dream I wrote in my dream book. <\/p>\n I see a ladle hanging in midair as if held by some unseen hand. It’s moving about, twisting this way and that. As I look into the Teflon bowl of the ladle, it changes to bright silver. Its movements are ever more a graceful dance, balletic even. As I watch, I see the silver change into bright gold. I realize the ladle is alive! I am awestruck.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I am aware to the point of pain how inadequate<\/i> my written text is in relation to the dream experience itself. As text, it fails to capture the palpable reality<\/i> of the dream, the awe in realizing the ladle was alive. Like my camera capturing David<\/i>,[1]<\/a> the resulting two-dimensional images were only reminders<\/i> of what I experienced with the living sculpture itself. Even with uninterrupted moving images (film) I have seen, the framing<\/i> was so focused, that the enveloping<\/i> contextual reality within which I experienced David<\/i> was missing. <\/p>\n It is common to refer to a dream as \u201cmy\u201d dream. This is similar to the proprietary aspect of capturing a photograph that is the subject of Susan Sontag\u2019s masterful critique of photography.<\/a>[2]<\/a> The \u201cappropriating\u201d she decries applies as well to how we relate to the dream. We appropriate the dream and call it \u201cmine.\u201d As I have written before,[3]<\/a> when we photograph, we milk<\/i> reality for its truth.[4]<\/a> Likewise, we tend to \u201cmilk\u201d the dream for our own ends, our own needs, our own intentions. <\/p>\n I realize that milking the dream to serve our conscious intentions is a perdurable activity that is not going to change\u2014its history is too long, its utilitarian value too embedded, its \u201cobviousness\u201d too obscuring of any other approach. I know that most anything I say here is going to fall on the ubiquitous \u201cdeaf ears\u201d of the standard approach to dreams, which leads to seeking meaning, interpretation, and analysis, all of which leads \u201caway\u201d from the dream itself.<\/p>\n Nonetheless, I want to look at the dream differently.<\/i><\/p>\n The dream presents itself to us. It comes as a visitor. Perhaps instead of \u201ccapturing it,\u201d we might treat the visitor as a guest. <\/i>Then we would be host<\/i> to the dream. I\u2019m thinking of Baucis and Philemon, and how they invited the beggars<\/font><\/a> in, something no one else in the town did. While the townspeople who rejected the beggars paid a steep price (drowning in a flood), Baucis and Philemon were rewarded. The disguised gods (Zeus and Hermes) made it possible to grant them their wish: to die entwined together as an everlasting tree. <\/p>\n Freud made it a fundamental principle that dreams are<\/i> disguises, disguises for the dreamer\u2019s unconscious desires. Jung disagreed and felt the dream was \u201cjust so.\u201d But Jung did emphasize in many ways that what was crucial was to welcome the dream as a guest. But contemporary attitudes toward the dream tend to forget this. The common mode is to \u201cuse\u201d the dream for its utility value in serving the ego. <\/p>\n The dream, however we recall it, comes to our experience already<\/i> crafted with exquisite precision, or impressionistic flux, or fleeting but impressive impact, or eerie vagaries. Consciously, we could produce none of this. So how are these experiences we call dreams crafted<\/i>?<\/p>\n We don\u2019t know. Probably the best answer is that dreams are crafted by something other, <\/i>certainly something other than our consciousness. We might argue that at some point brain science will unlock this mystery and we will have a more complete picture of how the brain crafts dreams. Still, it will be how we relate <\/i>to these experiences we call dreams that will be crucial. <\/p>\n The dream exhibits artisanal<\/i> forces at work in the making of the dream, already worked, already crafted, already smithed into the forms we see by an unknown dreamsmith. <\/p>\n We can approach the dream as critics<\/i> and form an opinion of it, try to discern its meaning, attempt to assess its value, and otherwise try to understand it. But as Baudelaire observed, \u201cthe only proper criticism of a work of art, is another work of art<\/a>.\u201d In Psyche Speaks,<\/i> I wrote of a dream that pictured me leafing through Jung\u2019s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. <\/i>A piece of paper fell out and when I looked at it, there was written, poem-like: <\/p>\n <\/i><\/p>\n The poem wants a poem<\/i><\/p>\n The dream wants a dream<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Notice how this dream shifts the emphasis from the dreamer\u2019s desire, to the dream\u2019s desire<\/i>. This dream had a powerful effect on me because it radically shifted my own way of working with my dreams as well as those of others\u2014wherever that is possible. <\/p>\n Jung\u2019s \u201cactive imagination\u201d way of working with dreams, now made clear with the publication of his Red Book<\/i>, is clearly one way of satisfying a dream wanting<\/i> a dream. <\/p>\n I think that almost any artisanal<\/i> approach to a dream carries this same spirit. As an example, I have lately taken up approaching my dreams poetically before<\/em> textually. What I mean is that I steep myself in the memory of the dream and while in this experience I write a haiku.<\/i>[5]<\/b><\/i><\/a><\/i><\/p>\n Here is the Haiku I wrote following the dream:<\/p>\n The Teflon ladle<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>turned bright silver, then bright gold<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>dream ladle: alive!<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In my experience, working on a dream haiku within a kind of meditative state, brings forth spontaneous memories. For example, in this instance, what came is the memory of Kandinsky\u2019s reflection I had quoted in Psyche Speaks:<\/i><\/p>\n <\/i><\/p>\n Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street\u2026Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n <\/i><\/p>\n At once I knew what to do. I went to the kitchen drawer and fetched the Teflon ladle. This everyday mundane object now took on that quality of Kandinsky\u2019s trouser button. Could my consciousness see into the ladle as deeply as the dream? One thing I know: I can no longer pass by anything as if it is a lifeless object. When things become \u201calive\u201d in this way, it is not the rational mind that will be moved; it will be the artist-soul that will want to dream this aliveness into new forms. <\/p>\n This I believe is a key to understanding the principle of eros that underlies the nature of the Coming Guest. More about this in the next post. <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> See the previous blog post on \u201cDreamsmithing.\u201d<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Susan Sontag. On Photography. <\/i>New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> See my \u201cAfterword\u201d to Jeff Jacobson\u2019s My Fellow Americans\u2026<\/i> Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991. The relation between the photograph and the dream has yet to be fully essayed. This afterword was my initial attempt to do so and remains my favorite piece of my own work. <\/p>\n\n
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