Lily Briscoe

The Dream
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) was best known for his jungle scenes and was beloved by the Surrealists for his often fantastical images.

I love how the dreamer just lounges in her couch, blissfully unaware that anything is out of the ordinary and is unafraid of the lions and phallic snake.

Looking back on Hobson's work, I am reminded about the acid tests of Dr. Timothy Leary and the Harvard Psilocybin Project. I remember that Hobson was very critical of pharmaceutical drugs, including SSRI's. He didn't seem as judgmental about recreational drugs, in my opinion. He probably sees little difference between the two. I remember him saying that he's against any mind-altering drugs.

I found a couple of books that might be helpful for anyone who is considering a topic on chemically-altered consciousness.

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain

Myself and I, by Constance Newland. Apparently, she purposefully took 23 doses of LSD. She recorded some of her dreams and found that she could understand and interpret them easily 15 minutes after taking the drug.

P.B. Shelley's "Kubla Khan," Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone were all inspired by an opium induced dream or vision.

My violence is a dream
a 'real dream'
a skinny arm
a crush on living sin
my violence
is a sleeping head
nodding out to rising bliss
I left home for experience
carved 'suk for honesty' on my chest
my violence is the number
coming out of prayer
find it in the father
find it in a girl

there's a thing in my memory
holding on for dear life
with a feeling of secrets
beating up under my flesh
my tongue is tied
I'm sleeping nights awake
Tom violence is a dream
coming out of a girl
--Sonic Youth, “Tom Violence”

I'm watching my brother and two other guys (maybe they're his friends) fight two guys armed with guns in our family's backyard. The five of them are hunched over in wrestling stances: bent knees, arms up, ready to strike. At first I think they are all just playing around. I go into the house and up the stairs to my bedroom for a while. Suddenly, I hear gunshots! I look out my bedroom window and see that there are four left. One of my brother's friends has gone down. Now that I realize that it wasn't a game, I start to yell at them to stop.
I run downstairs and plead with everyone in my family to help me stop the fight. My sister laughs, mocking me, which enrages me. Why is she putting me down when there are bigger things to worry about? My mom tells me I'm blowing things out of proportion, which sets me off even more. I can't believe this is happening. "Does no one care that they're going to get killed?!" I scream. I feel betrayed that my mom just brushes it aside, nonchalantly. I don't care if nobody agrees with me-- I'm calling the police. Because of my insistence, my mom starts to come around.
Then I notice how quiet it is. I run out of the front door and yell "You'd better stop it. Someone's going to get hurt!" One of the bad guys runs up the driveway to the front of the house. I can't see his face. Suddenly, he turns away from me and catches a black gun that has been tossed to him, presumably from his partner. He tries to shoot at me, but I dodge the bullet and slam the door shut. From the door, I crawl on my belly, avoiding the windows. He might be waiting for me to pass by so he can shoot me. But after awhile, I realize he's gone back to the yard. I'm still worried about my brother. He has to face two armed men without a weapon to defend himself.

"You shoot me in a dream, you'd better wake up and apologize." Mr. White from Reservoir Dogs.

There are a lot of firearms in my dreams. I've been shot several times, but never felt any pain or seen any bullet holes or blood. Most of the time, it's like I'm in a video game (like a first person shooter. Halo fans know what I'm talking about). I get shot but don't die. Yet I know that a few more wounds will cause me to die, so I definitely feel the fear and urgency that comes in a firefight. I don't really know why there are so many gunfights in my dreams: I haven't played a first person shooter in years, and I'm not particularly into violent movies. You'll never find me at an NRA convention, either. So why the guns? I think it comes down to control. When one person has a gun and I don't, I feel vulnerable. They have power over me, whether they are aiming at me or not. But brandishing a gun, I am powerful.
In one recent dream, I am having an argument with my sister in a car, when I pull out a gun and shoot her several times. When we were kids, we got into scuffles with each other on rare occasions (nothing more than silly pushing and hair pulling), but I never felt homicidal! On the other hand, we have had periods of estrangement between us, so there is a bit of tension and resentment probably stored in my unconscious. But everything has settled between us now, so I wonder why I dreamed such a violent scene.

"Well, many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly . . . " Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island

I'm at my grandparent's house which is filled with children, including my four young cousins. Aunts and uncles are there as well, but they start to leave the room. Then the little kids start saying inappropriate things involving incest and explicit sex. I start to feel incredibly anxious and embarassed that they are talking like that and I'm too shocked to answer them. Luckily, a guy about my age named Len (who doesn't exist in waking life) breaks up the discussions and takes the kids out to the woods to build a fort. Relief floods through me and I smile. It's nice to see a guy who truly loves kids and is very nuturing.
As they play outside in the woods adjacent to the house, I sit in the living room. Then the doorbell rings. Hesitantly, I open the front door. Standing in front of me are a group of actors from the television show Lost. I try not to gush and act like a typical fan, but I can't help but exclaim how cool I think they are. And how I can't wait until February when the show will come back from hiatus. Then playing it cool, I ask them what they are up to. Dominic Monaghan, who plays Charlie, says that they are there to see their friend, Len. I try to conceal my disappointment that they're not there to hang out with me and tell them that Len is out in the woods building a fort.
Then I realize that Len's father and brother are there too. I go downstairs (which is weird because my grandparents' house is only one floor). I'm about to go back upstairs so I can join the Lost cast in the woods, but Len's father and brother block my way. I say, "What the hell are you doing? This is my house!" They hit and knock me down with sticks. I am only a little hurt, but I pretend to be knocked unconscious. After they leave me, I get up and go upstairs, ready to kick ass.

I'm playing a gigantic game of dodgeball in a big, bright gymnasium. (In waking life, I consider myself to be an awesome dodgeball player. In high school, I was the unofficial champ. Okay, the school was pretty small. But still!) It's the Cool Kids vs. The Geeks. Needless to say which team I belonged on. The Cool Kids, who wear red vests, are holding all of the balls, so our side can't strike back. They're just keeping them on their side.Some of them are even sitting down! This makes me furious--a recurring emotion in my dreams-- that they're just ending the game just when they're ahead. The Geeks aren't able to even the score. The teachers seemed to be on the Cool Kids' side. I wasn't going to give up. I walk down the line that separates the two sides and beg the seated students for a ball so I can get the game started again. It's pretty pathetic, but surprisingly, they don't mock me. I continue to plead while the Cool Kids basically ignore me. I think the interpretation of this dream is pretty straightforward: I'm reliving high school. My days of desperation when I yearned for someone to notice me and give me a chance. I always longed to hang out with the popular crowd, but I just ended up watching from afar, wistfully.

I wonder if Richard Linklater took a course like ours. Either way, he must have read quite a bit of dream theory. I found the existential discussion insightful to the theme of dreams. A particularly mind-boggling moment was the suggestion that maybe our whole lives are a dream. You can take that literally or figuratively. I have to agree about how many people seem to be going through life asleep. It’s as if they are resigned to a certain fate to walk through life absorbing stimuli and observing others act and live their lives. The Willy Wiggins character went through the movie in a similar state before he became lucid. I especially like the line “The worst mistake that you can make is to think you're alive when really you're asleep in life's waiting room.”
I kept hearing echoes of La Berge throughout the film, especially the scene where the bad guy is walking in the parking lot talking about the significance of the “dream self.” On page 235, La Berge develops the idea of the dream self. He reminds us that the dream self is not who we are, it’s only an imago. When we have lucid dreams we can make that distinction. What if we could incorporate our dream selves into our waking lives? In the movie, Guy Forsyth says, “The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything.”