Dream

26 Mar, 2023

MUSIC Information:

• Emperor's New Clothes
• Bb Major / G minor
• 36 Measures
• Cello and Piano
• 2:56 min
• 3 Pages

“I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas: they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

ABSURD IMAGES

Most mornings I wake up without knowing whether I dreamed. I do prefer keeping it that way. If I do remember, the information is rarely worth having. I dislike dreams regardless of their content — agony or bliss. Nightmares are exhausting, and pleasant dreams are just as suspicious. Both feel unnecessary.

Dreaming strikes me as one of the stranger defects of being human. My mind produces a variety of absurd images, incoherent plots, no colors and no sounds. By morning, the whole thing dissolves on its own and that is the most sensible part of the process.

ANALYZE THIS

Ever since Sigmund Freud put the study of dreams on the map, experts have been explaining them with remarkable confidence. They entertained the idea we dream constantly while we sleep. The mind it seems, never clocks out. Even in unconsciousness it continues reproducing images for unknown reasons.

Perhaps that is true. I wouldn't know — Seems like authorities in any subject, always said things to amused themselves, believing, possibly, only half of what they proclaimed. However, I have to bite my tongue and acknowledge the fact that there are well-documented facts about dreaming and over the years, researchers have accumulated data on these observations.

Thrice — For example, they believe most people dream several times every night. By morning, however, the mind has the courtesy to erase nearly all of them. If the brain is trying to tell us something important, it seems strangely committed to not leaving a record.

Active — Another detail scientist point out is that the brain is surprisingly active during dreams. Regions responsible for emotion and imagery work intensely, while the areas that normally handle logic and judgment get disconnected to a degree.

Lucid — Occasionally, someone become aware of the situation. In what researches call lucid dreaming, a sleeper realizes that the dream is happening while it is happening. In a control setting, researchers have managed to communicate with participants during these moments.

All of this is interesting, of course. But it doesn’t necessarily make dreams more appealing to me. If anything, it only confirms that my brain is perfectly capable of entertaining itself without my permission, and that by morning it prefers not to discuss the matter further. I find that arrangement perfectly acceptable.

DIFFERENT OPINIONS

However, the real purpose of dreaming remains well camouflaged. Dreams existence is still subject to significant debate. With decades of studies, experiments, and bold explanations, opinions differ from one another — memory sorting, emotional repair, rehearsal for danger, or something else entirely. After awhile they start sounding like a part of a hoax. With all this effort, nobody can say with certainty why dreams exist or what practical benefit they provide.

This uncertainty has never discouraged interpretation. Some poets, for example, have long preferred to romanticize dreams, turning them into delicate messages from the soul or windows into some hidden emotional landscape. Religious traditions have often gone a step further— of course they have— treating dreams as omens, revelations, or private conversations with the divine.

FALSE POWERS

Since the beginning of times, people have claimed they can interpret in a accurate way, the meaning of dreams. In the Bible itself, God occasionally and conveniently chooses dreams as a way to communicate with humans, delivering warnings, instructions, or prophecies while the recipient is asleep.

Curiously, the dreamer rarely understands the message alone. The meaning often requires a prophet or interpreter to explain what God supposedly meant. Which suggests that even divine messages, when delivered through dreams, still benefit from a second opinion.

Driven by fear, myth, superstition, or the occasional hint of witchcraft, some people have tried to convince others that they possess special powers to interpret dreams. With impressive confidence, they claim to decode meanings hidden in the mind’s nightly confusion. A few have even gone so far as to write entire books devoted to the “interpretation” of dreams, presenting their conclusions as if the matter had finally been settled.

I HAVE A FEELING

Each field offers its own translation of the same nightly phenomenon. Poets treat them as fragile messages from the soul. Prophets have taken them as divine instructions, sometimes requiring another prophet to explain what the first dreamer failed to understand. Psychologists have searched them for hidden desires, while neuroscientists examine them as pure electrical conversations between restless neurons.

Yet the dreams themselves remain stubbornly uncooperative—appearing without invitation, dissolving without explanation, and leaving us to debate what, if anything, they were trying to say. Dreams seem to have no practical application in anyone's lives. They never have, and I suspect they never will.

GRAY, SILENT, COLD

There have been unfortunate nights when I remember my dreams. Some are so unsettling that I feel trapped inside one of Salvador Dali monstrous paintings, or perhaps one of Frida Kahlo atrocious ones, where reality bends in uncomfortable ways and escape seems impossible.

Other nights bring the opposite experience. The dreams are calm, pleasant, convincing — so convincing that it is disappointing to open my eyes to find out that it was just a dream. For a moment there's a faint sense of loss, since in these dreams, conversations make sense, all is arrange with an effortless logic, places appear familiar. But then again, I ask to let it be bliss and not a nightmare when I go to sleep.

Dreams twist reality, and freeze time. In my dreams there are no sounds, nor there are colors. I can go to the edge of the earth and back, before anyone misses me. In dreams, I've talked to strangers and to people that are already gone. In dreams, I've been younger and older. They're gray, silent and cold. What a waste!

COLOR MY MIND

I do not think dreams are necessarily harmful. Dreams are just a massive gray area that no one understands. There are people spending a lot of time studying them. From serious scientific researches to religious charlatans — which is far more common than the reverse. The central question remains unanswered. And it is worth emphasizing: nobody really knows why they exist.

I've composed a gentle piece while I was reflecting in the matter, wishing to have quiet nights free of dreams. What are dreams anyway, if not some kind of uncontrollable pest? Some can linger long after the night has passed. When present, they can be frightening enough, twisting reality in awful ways I would rather avoid. I'd much prefer to let music or poetry color my mind. If only I could dream music when I go to sleep.

What is this?
by Hannah Flagg Gould

Am I dreaming? what is this?
Is it anguish?—is it bliss?
'T is a mingling of the twain;
Doubtful joy, and certain pain;
Feeble gleams of morning light
Playing through the shades of night!
Ah! the same unconscious wing
Wafts the honey and the sting!

Quickly passing from the view
Of the mind, that's fleeting too,
What a vast and varied crowd!
Bridal vesture; funeral shroud;
Robes of honor; weeds of wo;
Oh! the wearers, how they go!
Scarce a glimpse of each is caught,
Ere the vision turns to nought.

Well! and is there nothing more,
When the busy dream is o'er?
Ay? 't is truth the waking brings;
'T is a world of real things:—
Nothing transient, nothing mixed;
All is clear, and all is fixed.
Be it anguish, be it bliss,
'T is no changing scene, like this!

Then, thou slumbering soul, awake!
Let these earthly baubles break,
Let the mildew blight the tree!
Here's no fruit to nourish thee.
Up! and from the ruins haste;
Look not back upon the waste!
Up! and fasten on the prize,
That is offered from the skies!>