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Dream Interpretation / Re: a cloak made of rats
« on: October 25, 2017, 03:50:43 AM »
Hi! First I have to say sorry because it took so much time for me to answer. In fact I wanted to take the time necessary to give a serious answer, for it's really difficult to explain such experiences with words. As the acting on-your-dreams post says, the dream itself is an experience that goes beyond what language can explain, because it's more ancient than thoughts and words. And it's also connected with all our system of perceptions, our relationship with our world (and universe) more than a system of thinking or interpreting. I'd like to synthesize my experience with dreams, that I feel strongly connected with since I was a child, so please let me first explain a little where this idea of the performance came from. I would try to explain this in three parts, as the action itself, the images it brought about, and the origin of those images as dreams fixated in my mind.
In my childhood I suffered from some illnesses that caused me kind of delirious states of mind. I remember particularly a dream I had that I link with those states on which there was a man standing in the midst of a dry meadow, just in front of a white sheet that seems to be hanging from nowhere, subtly moving with a psychedelic ripple, full of colors that at some point resemble flesh. It seems an eternity, that tall and thin man dressing in a way that looks like from the beginning of the 20th century, standing still in front of the flesh blanket as if it was some sort of "passage" to a place he'll not enter, nor return. It's almost as if time had met the place where it cannot be anymore. He doesn't look but to the blanket, the only thing that "moves", as the grass and sun and wind in that landscape seem to be paralyzed. I don't really know why this dream's been fixated in my mind since so long, besides the fact that I probably dreamt that in a delirious state. The curious first connection I found with your post, that I read like almost two years ago, was the fact that in this dream I can see the paradigm of acting out a vision, and the "screen" thing. So I began to explore with this like a sort of screenplay.
Before I had tried to do it using drawings, or even more "perceptual" translations, but it seemed futile because they ended up being mere representations. Then I became familiar with the artistic work of performance, that has more to do with "presenting" something. Even when it's related with the acting thing, it goes beyond, so I thought it could be way more productive than just try to repeat what a dream was showing me. I decided to work with this particular dream because it's become like the cornerstone of my curiosity about my own dreams. In the meantime I began to be more aware of all the wonderful information that my dreams could give to me, that was wider and larger than what I could describe with words. The complex nature of dreams made me thought about searching for and connecting with the things that are prior to language, a world of sounds, colors, free of the common explanations.
Then I began to understand better the dual ways we are immersed in, and the need of integration that dreams show so wonderfully. The first artistic approach I made with this dream was using video and sound (in an amateur way, because that's not my field). I had three elements that were fundamental (like you explain in "being the object or person") and the body itself, the person that appeared on that dream. That fitted perfectly to the concept I was developing about my way to perform -my performances are related to common and/or unusual actions that I try to transform in spiritual experiences through the appreciation and awareness of time, our own bodies, the ritual qualities of action that we pursue as humans in our need to expand and integrate (as in dreams). So I had that in this dream I was a place, a person and an object that enveloped, confronted and exhausted each other all at once. There was the wall of the Arts building where I used to take naps between classes, and it became my favorite place to perform and my study object also. So, after lots of revealing dreams and experiences "dreaming" on that wall, it became like a part of me. One day I made a video on which I was there, sleeping against that wall, so I could understand how it was to be there, the perspective of the camera showing me as part of that wall, and in that sense -an outer experience of my body. What happened when I was there with my eyes closed, in the inner "silence" of that experience, as the camera couldn't tell of my thoughts or even of the things that were out of its range in that still position.
After that I worked in a class project where I acted out some other dreams that curiously were in fact about performances, so I just had to reenact them as exactly as I could in real life. The symbolic part was of course the one that kept me thinking there had to be a more precise, more meaningful way. One of the projects was me being the door of the classroom where I began this journey (that for some reason became a painful one concerning my relationships) of discovery. I went back to painting because I considered I had enough material to begin a project with dreams and their nature with no need to just try to make a literal picture of what they were. The work involved color, materials that had a profound meaning for me, studying perceptions and postures related with "the impossible" and all the information I had collected with the performance stuff.
In the time of the project I had very vivid and intense dreams that kept me wondering and trying to explore more. The Bible was the source of unexhausting discernment because I've always thought that dreams are not just physiologic or psychological baggage, but also a way to connect, and bring to our waking life those visions. As you clearly say there's no point in just trying to figure out what an image could mean, we need to access that image, become one with it. The analogy you made with the icons in a computer was exactly what I had found in my own gathering of personal archives; now I had to work with them, to get where they were taking me. The association method was sure a very helpful and dependable one. But as much as we tend to theorize a lot we get lost, so I had to come back several times until I finally began to make just what the experience itself of dreaming and waking life was offering me, first on paintings, then in writing and developing my own performance script. And also as you recommend, I talked a lot about it so it could "flow" more easily, to grasp the intuitions and insights that come from the sharing of it. Also praying to God, because it's for me a form of higher communication on which you begin with words but as much as it gets deeper and more intimate it takes the forms of things that cannot be represented or explained, just sensed and expressed in ways that are beyond understanding but are real, they give you lots of energy and knowledge that's not intellectual.
Well, to get to the point where I hope to give a specific answer to your question (sorry but I get carried away when I talk about what I love), when I finally presented the whole project, in the same Arts building, I had a collection of paintings and a performance on which I'd bring back all those dream images. It was almost shocking to me how it looked like the very place of all my dreams put into "scene". But for some reason the performance was interrupted time and time again, as if it was something that was following a direction outside my own will. As the exhibition took place it was awesome to see how people connected with the work, as if they were entering my dream world for real; some of them even told me so, and children were the ones who showed me the power of experiencing the place taking active part on it. The day I had to speak about all my process and findings ocurred the first thing that seemed like an intro to the acting-on thing. I arrived earlier to have time to prepare, but then the door kept closed for no aparent reason; what was shocking about it was the fact that as in a dream the door didn't want to open even though the janitor had the key and tried a thousand others, and forced it also. Half an hour later it opened with a light push, as if a ghost was holding it in the other side and just released it then. This and all the continued interruptions to the performance kept me wondering when I could finally try.
And that time arrived the day that the exhibition closed; I had programmed the thing the day before, and asked some professors to assist, but basically I thought all of the things were telling me that this had to be a more intimate exercise, as much as it was connected with my own need to act my dream on and kind of giving a goodbye to the place I had spent so valuable times in. It was titled "wall, blanket, paper" and was slightly scripted as a dream I had almost a year ago, that I thought had a connection with the dream of the man in front of the blanket and was about three stages or sceneries that described the past, the "present" and the future of my relationship with that building, my experiences there. The dream showed more than ever the quality of a "screen" on which, in different planes and perspectives, it was shown first the back of the building surrounded by a cold blue atmosphere, similar to the one of the dream that I began this post with but not blurred, where a friend and myself were sitting in the greenest grass I've ever seen talking about a coral collar I had put on, saying it was a kind of spiritual shield, the same Jesus protecting me against evil. I talked to her about Jesus and the relationship with the thing and then the scenery became the screen I mentioned. Then I could see, orderly appearing, the very white wall in the back of the building, and superposed to it a paper with three written columns, as a mapping; first a kind of short written poem that I just take a rapid look at, "it's just a love poem" I think, and just get into the next image, which is a tomb with a stone table engraved with words that I don't read but "hear"; I remembered them exactly but for the time I woke up the words were almost erased, and I just kind of remembered the idea, a man telling something like -before I - (not so clear and then) -so there I knew I'd feel fear for real", sealing the sense of which was written on that stone. All with that violent white brightness of a computer screen shining against the dark in some memories, the images looking like those of a music app, and myself repeating that those words cannot be forgotten. There. Then an invisible and short paragraph (no more than four verses) that I'm really interested on, the one with the "revelation", that I won't be able to read. So for me it meant clearly the relationship past-present-future and the scenarios I wanted to re-create, the wall, the tomb (I took as sheet for the performance) and the paper, objects that also had a close relationship with the elements I was working in my drawings and paintings prior to make of them performance material.
Well, here I explain the performance and why it all was great but bewildering at the same time. After developing the writing process describing shortly the elements and small actions to define how it would take place, I decided just acting it on in a more natural, direct way, just as when we speak things out and describe them to someone else better than trying to add more objects and fictions to the moment as a usual performance would. I registered and walked the space between me and the wall so I could get really into it, not just thinking about the perspective and my position as a mere observer but taking conscience about how I could eventually get so into it that I'd finally feel at ease "being the very wall", with all its remembrances, messages and hopefully, revelations. I decided to reenact the dream of the man standing in front of the blanket but having in mind how this image splitted into so many ways in other dreams, like the one that took me to that moment, on which the wall was also the blanket (thought to cover a body in the material process), and written surface resembling paper, all of them in one. So I stood there in front of the wall taking every piece of those images back in my memory, but knowing that it was time to be aware of those things beyond depictions of any kind. I have to say that the wall for me carries a lot of meanings, not just from dreams but real life experiences, conversations and memories.
(I'll have to cut the message here)
In my childhood I suffered from some illnesses that caused me kind of delirious states of mind. I remember particularly a dream I had that I link with those states on which there was a man standing in the midst of a dry meadow, just in front of a white sheet that seems to be hanging from nowhere, subtly moving with a psychedelic ripple, full of colors that at some point resemble flesh. It seems an eternity, that tall and thin man dressing in a way that looks like from the beginning of the 20th century, standing still in front of the flesh blanket as if it was some sort of "passage" to a place he'll not enter, nor return. It's almost as if time had met the place where it cannot be anymore. He doesn't look but to the blanket, the only thing that "moves", as the grass and sun and wind in that landscape seem to be paralyzed. I don't really know why this dream's been fixated in my mind since so long, besides the fact that I probably dreamt that in a delirious state. The curious first connection I found with your post, that I read like almost two years ago, was the fact that in this dream I can see the paradigm of acting out a vision, and the "screen" thing. So I began to explore with this like a sort of screenplay.
Before I had tried to do it using drawings, or even more "perceptual" translations, but it seemed futile because they ended up being mere representations. Then I became familiar with the artistic work of performance, that has more to do with "presenting" something. Even when it's related with the acting thing, it goes beyond, so I thought it could be way more productive than just try to repeat what a dream was showing me. I decided to work with this particular dream because it's become like the cornerstone of my curiosity about my own dreams. In the meantime I began to be more aware of all the wonderful information that my dreams could give to me, that was wider and larger than what I could describe with words. The complex nature of dreams made me thought about searching for and connecting with the things that are prior to language, a world of sounds, colors, free of the common explanations.
Then I began to understand better the dual ways we are immersed in, and the need of integration that dreams show so wonderfully. The first artistic approach I made with this dream was using video and sound (in an amateur way, because that's not my field). I had three elements that were fundamental (like you explain in "being the object or person") and the body itself, the person that appeared on that dream. That fitted perfectly to the concept I was developing about my way to perform -my performances are related to common and/or unusual actions that I try to transform in spiritual experiences through the appreciation and awareness of time, our own bodies, the ritual qualities of action that we pursue as humans in our need to expand and integrate (as in dreams). So I had that in this dream I was a place, a person and an object that enveloped, confronted and exhausted each other all at once. There was the wall of the Arts building where I used to take naps between classes, and it became my favorite place to perform and my study object also. So, after lots of revealing dreams and experiences "dreaming" on that wall, it became like a part of me. One day I made a video on which I was there, sleeping against that wall, so I could understand how it was to be there, the perspective of the camera showing me as part of that wall, and in that sense -an outer experience of my body. What happened when I was there with my eyes closed, in the inner "silence" of that experience, as the camera couldn't tell of my thoughts or even of the things that were out of its range in that still position.
After that I worked in a class project where I acted out some other dreams that curiously were in fact about performances, so I just had to reenact them as exactly as I could in real life. The symbolic part was of course the one that kept me thinking there had to be a more precise, more meaningful way. One of the projects was me being the door of the classroom where I began this journey (that for some reason became a painful one concerning my relationships) of discovery. I went back to painting because I considered I had enough material to begin a project with dreams and their nature with no need to just try to make a literal picture of what they were. The work involved color, materials that had a profound meaning for me, studying perceptions and postures related with "the impossible" and all the information I had collected with the performance stuff.
In the time of the project I had very vivid and intense dreams that kept me wondering and trying to explore more. The Bible was the source of unexhausting discernment because I've always thought that dreams are not just physiologic or psychological baggage, but also a way to connect, and bring to our waking life those visions. As you clearly say there's no point in just trying to figure out what an image could mean, we need to access that image, become one with it. The analogy you made with the icons in a computer was exactly what I had found in my own gathering of personal archives; now I had to work with them, to get where they were taking me. The association method was sure a very helpful and dependable one. But as much as we tend to theorize a lot we get lost, so I had to come back several times until I finally began to make just what the experience itself of dreaming and waking life was offering me, first on paintings, then in writing and developing my own performance script. And also as you recommend, I talked a lot about it so it could "flow" more easily, to grasp the intuitions and insights that come from the sharing of it. Also praying to God, because it's for me a form of higher communication on which you begin with words but as much as it gets deeper and more intimate it takes the forms of things that cannot be represented or explained, just sensed and expressed in ways that are beyond understanding but are real, they give you lots of energy and knowledge that's not intellectual.
Well, to get to the point where I hope to give a specific answer to your question (sorry but I get carried away when I talk about what I love), when I finally presented the whole project, in the same Arts building, I had a collection of paintings and a performance on which I'd bring back all those dream images. It was almost shocking to me how it looked like the very place of all my dreams put into "scene". But for some reason the performance was interrupted time and time again, as if it was something that was following a direction outside my own will. As the exhibition took place it was awesome to see how people connected with the work, as if they were entering my dream world for real; some of them even told me so, and children were the ones who showed me the power of experiencing the place taking active part on it. The day I had to speak about all my process and findings ocurred the first thing that seemed like an intro to the acting-on thing. I arrived earlier to have time to prepare, but then the door kept closed for no aparent reason; what was shocking about it was the fact that as in a dream the door didn't want to open even though the janitor had the key and tried a thousand others, and forced it also. Half an hour later it opened with a light push, as if a ghost was holding it in the other side and just released it then. This and all the continued interruptions to the performance kept me wondering when I could finally try.
And that time arrived the day that the exhibition closed; I had programmed the thing the day before, and asked some professors to assist, but basically I thought all of the things were telling me that this had to be a more intimate exercise, as much as it was connected with my own need to act my dream on and kind of giving a goodbye to the place I had spent so valuable times in. It was titled "wall, blanket, paper" and was slightly scripted as a dream I had almost a year ago, that I thought had a connection with the dream of the man in front of the blanket and was about three stages or sceneries that described the past, the "present" and the future of my relationship with that building, my experiences there. The dream showed more than ever the quality of a "screen" on which, in different planes and perspectives, it was shown first the back of the building surrounded by a cold blue atmosphere, similar to the one of the dream that I began this post with but not blurred, where a friend and myself were sitting in the greenest grass I've ever seen talking about a coral collar I had put on, saying it was a kind of spiritual shield, the same Jesus protecting me against evil. I talked to her about Jesus and the relationship with the thing and then the scenery became the screen I mentioned. Then I could see, orderly appearing, the very white wall in the back of the building, and superposed to it a paper with three written columns, as a mapping; first a kind of short written poem that I just take a rapid look at, "it's just a love poem" I think, and just get into the next image, which is a tomb with a stone table engraved with words that I don't read but "hear"; I remembered them exactly but for the time I woke up the words were almost erased, and I just kind of remembered the idea, a man telling something like -before I - (not so clear and then) -so there I knew I'd feel fear for real", sealing the sense of which was written on that stone. All with that violent white brightness of a computer screen shining against the dark in some memories, the images looking like those of a music app, and myself repeating that those words cannot be forgotten. There. Then an invisible and short paragraph (no more than four verses) that I'm really interested on, the one with the "revelation", that I won't be able to read. So for me it meant clearly the relationship past-present-future and the scenarios I wanted to re-create, the wall, the tomb (I took as sheet for the performance) and the paper, objects that also had a close relationship with the elements I was working in my drawings and paintings prior to make of them performance material.
Well, here I explain the performance and why it all was great but bewildering at the same time. After developing the writing process describing shortly the elements and small actions to define how it would take place, I decided just acting it on in a more natural, direct way, just as when we speak things out and describe them to someone else better than trying to add more objects and fictions to the moment as a usual performance would. I registered and walked the space between me and the wall so I could get really into it, not just thinking about the perspective and my position as a mere observer but taking conscience about how I could eventually get so into it that I'd finally feel at ease "being the very wall", with all its remembrances, messages and hopefully, revelations. I decided to reenact the dream of the man standing in front of the blanket but having in mind how this image splitted into so many ways in other dreams, like the one that took me to that moment, on which the wall was also the blanket (thought to cover a body in the material process), and written surface resembling paper, all of them in one. So I stood there in front of the wall taking every piece of those images back in my memory, but knowing that it was time to be aware of those things beyond depictions of any kind. I have to say that the wall for me carries a lot of meanings, not just from dreams but real life experiences, conversations and memories.
(I'll have to cut the message here)