Keeping Track Of History: Dreaming With Intention.
From my idyllic sub-cranial creations that harvest my real-time comprehension of existence to my consumeristic need and desire for affection, I am balancing between a world and a sylph of thought’s that might not even be real. Jean Baudrillard, a french philosopher and Christopher Smit, a communications professor at Calvin College would be having a field day with my mind at this very moment. Right now I am in the throws of finishing two books, applying for graduate school and experiencing “all the feels” for a particular woman. But that is neither here nor there, for Baudrillard and Smit, they’d be laughing at me because my instant need to process these experiences through both a consumeristic standpoint, but also a personalized prediction of a “what-if” simulation. Baudrillard states in Simulcra and Simulation that the simulation is positively more dangerous to those who believe in it because it manipulates their ability to distinguish between natural law and simulated law. For within simulation, there is no boundary or limit to what can and will be manipulated. And it is at this point that I can feel you, the reader slipping away into darkness. So therefore I must reassure you two things: This is about life and music (I promise), and there will eventually be a dick joke (hang in there).
I’ve been thinking a lot about dreams lately, but more importantly how I’ve been consuming them. Smit said once that end result of consumption is excrement. Smit went on to say that this consumption has become routine, “we love the puppy, hate the dog, buy now, think later…” and so on. I often feel as though my dreams, our dreams, become advertisements for what we desire to consume. One could make the joke that I think about dreams every night, but all jokes aside, I have experienced strong and realistic dreams in my past. These dreams fragment my emotional reality and tear a hole into what I believe to be “actual”. Or maybe this whole life is a dream, and what I’ve experience during “sleep” is just a reverberation of a some eternal echo. Or maybe I’m just really, really high. When I was doing these pieces in the past, Keeping Track of History, I often had a very real story to tell you. Some of you may recall the one about the lost love from California and how I made her my very first ever mix cd. Or the one about the oriental beauty who stopped time in the middle of a Japanese subway. These memories, as real as they were, are now dreams of a tired heart. But the story I am about to tell you, well most of it never happened. But much like a simulation, or the hyperreality of what dreams become, it is and was very real. The dream was so real, that I in fact shared it recently with someone special, as if it was a testimonial as to how far gone my heart had stepped into the darkness of dedication.
Koda, an ambient artist that weaves electro beats, cathedral harmonies and spaced out pads is the perfect sonic companion as to what I have been thinking, feeling and also processing. It was about two or three months ago, when I was working on a web application project with a good friend of mine, that I first heard of Koda. He paused in the middle of work and told me that I had to check out this picture/video released by NASA. It was titled, “Gigapixels of Andromeda”. In the video we start off with a gorgeous capture of the galaxy. Then over time, frame by frame the video takes pieces of the photo and zooms in. With each zoom the smallness of my being increased ten-fold. But as the video played there was this ambient angel that softly hummed. It was Koda’s song “The Last Stand”, and it was mesmerizing. I immediately looked the artist up and listened through all of his material that I could find that evening. I knew, within the depths of my soul that I was to use his music as an inspiration. About a month later, like tales of angels visiting, it came to me in my sleep.
Go ahead and press play if you want. And if that doesn't work. Here's a link to the song.
Like the progression of the song, in this dream, my eyes slowly began to find their focus. First the barbed light of halogen bulbs crept into my gaze. Then the walls materialized into cream and charcoal, while the floor bled out in a dark maroon. Tables and chairs started to materialize with people in them like flower pots. I rubbed my face, I was a spirit looking out onto this room. Like an invisible camera I turned and pivoted, scanning the room, and then saw my self. I had small round glasses, a glorious beard, shorter hair and dressed like a champion of literature. Or perhaps to some people, an uber nerd in a sweater vest. In my right hand was a computer remote that I was using to progress through a power point that was being projected on the wall and in my left hand, there was nothing but pure passion and expression for what I was talking about. I could hear my self think. It was as if I had duplicated and had an extension of my body and soul hovering invisibly. My physical body knew of my spiritual one and vice versa, an odd cosmic harmony. At this point I knew I was dreaming, or at least the “third eye” did and was aware of these duplicated beings being created in another reality. I was consuming my dream, frame by frame and beat by beat. I had always wanted to be a teacher, lecturer or highly esteemed academic and now I was “living” that out that fantasy.
Do you remember the last car accident you were in or saw? More importantly do you remember the noise before impact? It’s as if a seismic charge had gone off, pulling in all sound through a giant straw to the epicenter of carnage. A most alerting silence. As my lecture started to progress the “seismic straw” began to suck all noise from the room. I didn’t realize it at first, much like one doesn’t realize they are being slowly cut, but the suction of sound grew. It was getting louder and louder as if a child was slowly turning up the static on an abandon TV channel. I frantically looked around the room and noticed that the physical me didn’t seem to hear or feel what I was feeling. I covered my ears and knelt down on the ground, then it stopped. I looked up and didn’t see anything. Everyone was still taking notes and I was still lecturing. But then, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a door in the back of the room start to open slowly. A woman was walking into the room. As soon as I saw her face, my point of view and entire being collected its self into the physical body that was lecturing. I paused the power point with the remote and stared.
Her hair was freshly cut, a shimmering dark hazel brown that had little flip right above her shoulders. It danced on her shoulder like the lace would between the bed and carpet. The eyes of this woman were uncommonly soft. Fixed between short dark lashes, they changed colors between light blue and a sea green as they rested like frame and picture on their cream pale wall. Her top was black, cut just below her neck and above her breast. It looked warm as wool but as soft as thin cotton. The sleeves were rolled up to her elbows and it snuggly fit around her torso. She was holding something though her left arm. It was wrapped in a blanket. But my eyes did not stop there, they traversed the rest of her body. The black top connected with a silk, shin-high dress at her waist. It was also black, but it had small dotted pearls sewn in like a tapestry. Her feet had small flats. Her gate, as she walked in, swayed allowing the dress to be caught in the wind that entered with her.
As I gazed upon her, she lifted her right hand and index finger to her lips, silencing me in my already stunned state. It was as if she wanted me to ignore her and allow her to watch me, unnoticed. But I looked again, I looked to what was in her left arm. She was cradling a baby. It’s bunny soft head peaked from behind the wrapping of the blanket, and shifted from side to side. He was awake. My dream told me — he was awake. She sat down in the back of the class room, holding the baby and looking at me. She looked at me in the way a mother looks upon her husband. She looked at the baby as one does when it’s theirs. She looked at me again as if to say he was ours. My students looked at me, pencils in hand, waiting for my next breath. How long was I out? How long was I lost and voiceless? I shook my head, apologized, clicked over to the next slide and then that’s when I awoke. My conscience rocketed back to my bed and I found my self awake and covered in sweat.
Dreams, crazy right? The last time I had a dream that vivid was a little over a year ago. I won’t share the entirety of the dream, but I still could tell you to this day what people were wearing, saying and doing. And in that dream I had a year ago, I did nothing about it. I silenced it, shut it away in my journal and never talked about it. But as for this one, well that girl who was holding the baby. I told her about this dream. But after I told her this dream I felt guilty. Why was I really telling her this? To win her over, to guilt her or to inform her of some weird alternate universe? This dream was a simulation of a deep desire of mine, but does that mean that I should consume this dream, give it life and use it as a road-map? This dream actually has nothing to do with the reality of my life. Yes, I want to be a teacher. But I am no where near to that being a reality. Yes, I was a child. But I am no where near that reality. Yes, I am romantically inclined and desire this woman, but I am no where near that reality. After I told her this dream, she was rather speechless. Much as I expected. But I’m glad I did. When we share our dreams, I believe we no longer become consumers, but we become benefactors. We open our hearts and souls to others which allows us to fully comprehend the meaning of what we had experienced. So what do we do when we receive dreams that touch the core of your soul? Songs like “The Last Stand” by Koda give me inspiration to keep track of these dreams. Even though they may be unrealistic interpretations of life, they still birth creativity and need of expression. Dreams, simulations, hyperreality, they are just soft remainders that we live in a world where are not confined to this physical body, but we in fact can share in a different universe without being mindless consumers. How do you keep track of dreams? What’s a song that reminds you of something so vivd it becomes real? Are you afraid that you’ll just consume your dream instead of finding courage and wisdom in it?
P.S.
Damn, I forgot your dick joke...
