The confessions of Doctor Dream

[TAE]

I started responding to the writing lyrics thread where the topic of songs deriving from dreams started coming up...

So rather than hijack the thread I decided to start this one about dreams and not just songs coming from them but other influences dreams have on our lives..
Unlike when we are conscious where have some control of where our imagination takes us...in Lala land it's a roll of the dice, a ball on the roulette wheel...round and round and round she goes and where she stops...nobody knows..

I really enjoyed Kevin Ayers early album called The confessions of Doctor Dream...where he explored the concept of dreams and asked the question why? Why are we sleeping?

The confessions of Doctor Dream

It begins with a blessing
But ends with a curse
Make life easier
But making it worse
Turn to your partner
And say "how does it seem?"
She'll turn to you and say...

Get out of my dream!

As a kid I had some pretty rough nightmares....as an adult I have had some pretty rough nightmares.. Just had one last night that got me out of bed in a cold sweat ....there I was driving with my granddaughter and son in law...heading down the highway and took the wrong offramp and we were in a wreck of sorts when we stopped he and I were fine but my 7 year old granddaughter was missing...Then we hear her crying help from a distance...SHIT! we get out and are running towards where we heard her and there's all this vegetation and trees, she's quit calling out and we are screaming for her to let us know where she is...WAKE UP HOLY SHIT THAT SUCKED...got up and kept having to tell myself it wasn't real my sub/dream consciousness still wanted to find her..it took me 20-30 minutes to switch channels and get back to sleep...damn
For sure what you eat prior to sleeping can have an effect...It doesn't effect everybody the same but man if I eat a banana before bed I am almost always guaranteed of having bizzare / uncomfortable dreams..I haven't ate one in 30 years...wife thinks I'm nuts ( I am) but one of my daughters came to me a few weeks back and admitted that she thinks I might be right as she started noticing the same thing...psychosomatic or physiological ? I don't know...I ain't eating any banana's before I go to bed...It happened too many times that I am 99% sure that was the culprit of that bad scene...Last night not sure what it was ...maybe the mercury in the awesome albacore steak I ate or the delicious grilled peppers and banana squash.....AHA! Banana squash! I don't know...last night I continued to have some weird ones but didn't revisit the crash scene..thank God...that was intensely painful..

So...Why are we sleeping? Why do we have nightmares? If an adult was to tell stories to a little kid on the scale of the nightmares many experience ( myself as a kid included) we'd have them arrested for child abuse..yet..there they come, all around the world, every night to millions of little kids WTF? Nowadays they call them night terrors and my grand kids all seem to have them at some point ...pisses me off...

OK so that's the beginning of my rant on this dreamy subject...whatchya all got to say about it?

 

[TAE]

BTW pretty awesome album for the early 70's

 

[kickingtone]

I think that some aspects of "the digestive system" may not perform well while the body is "unconscious". For some people, the "mind" may use a nightmare to frighten the person awake. This low level of dreams can apply to other bodily conditions.

Anyway, that is a very sketchy description at the tip of an enormous iceberg of a topic that has become almost taboo in a "scientistic" Western culture, where dreams can only be explored under the guise of humorous mysticism.

A dream is very much a mirror unto "yourself". Dreams contain the lost "user guide" that we are packaged with at birth -- lost only in a maelstrom of trivia and cultural ignorance, but not unrecoverable. Give dreams the respect they deserve, and they will reveal "mind-blowing" dimensions of life.