In the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell, two characters (Emma and Stephen) are forced each night to attend balls in the Faerie kingdom of Lost-Hope, where they dance all night long. During the day, they have no knowledge of this ‘second life’ they lead — and understandably, they’re exhausted!Ever since I was a child, I’ve had vivid dreams — and multiple dreams — every night. Some are just odd or whimsical, some frightening and foreboding. I often liken my overactive ‘dream life’ to the fate of Emma and Stephen. It sometimes seems that I lead two lives and that if I didn’t dream, I might feel more rested. (Hey, it’s a theory.)
What I find most fascinating about dreams are the unique, extremely specific details. Last night I dreamt that my cousin Kathy and I visited an antique shop. I entered a storage room to view an antique table and chairs from China. The details were so clear: the black and red lacquer finish, the intricate carvings on the tabletop, the red silk of the chair covers, the ‘feet’ of the table legs that resembled lion’s paws. Next, I browsed dusty shelves where I found an old leather-bound church hymnal. It was square and the spine of the cover had pulled away from the browned and aged pages inside.
Have I seen these items somewhere before? Or are our minds capable of storing a million (billion?) tiny bits of data that we draw on to construct these dream worlds? Do we tap into a collective unconscious as Jung would suggest?
I don’t have the answers but as a writer, the questions compel me. When I construct a world on paper, what images do I rely on? My own memories? The images absorbed through movie, television, books? Or, do our imaginations — like our dream worlds — draw on the collective unconscious?
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you dream? Where do you think your dreams come from?
The best description of dreams that I've heard from came from an episode of Radiolab. If you think of your brain like a big filing cabinet, sleep is the time when everything that you did and saw that day is filed away. Dreams result from mis-filing -- people and details in the wrong places, in the wrong times. Not exactly scientific, but I like it a lot.
ReplyDeleteI do dream, but they are usually not very vivid. I usually have 1-2 dreams each week that I remember. I almost never have nightmares, and I can count on one hand the number of scary dreams I remember having.
When I was in elementary/middle school, I was convinced that somehow people's dreams were connected -- that if I had a dream about someone that it absolutely meant that they had a dream about me too. Alas, I finally had to accept that the cute boy in my math class wasn't dreaming about me in return :)