Sunday, January 13, 2008

Dreams - How Do You Make Yours?

Dreams are a fascinating subject aren't they. Not the old dream thing about having goals and things you want to achieve, like driving a Ferrari or storming the Canadian High Commission brandishing a pistol. No, I mean those proper dreams we have at night, about fantasy women and drums, about mad chases involving people we hate, that kind of thing.

Gaz, one of my business partners told me of a dream he had the other day which features me and his Dad. He said it was one of those dreams we have after we've woken, but have then drifted back off into a light state of slumber. When the things or people we have been thinking about while awake morph into our dream, if morph is the correct word. To be honest I'm just trying to be a bit flash with my use of it, bluffing really.

Apparently Gaz dreamt that he got on a bus with his son on their way back from watching a Fulham match. He asked the driver if the bus went to Hampton Court and the driver was yours truly. I had a cigarette dangling from my mouth and was wearing an old fashioned peaked cap, as bus drivers here used to do. He tried to pay me the fair but I told him to go to the back of the bus and pay the conductor, who turned out to be his Dad. I assume Gaz had fallen asleep while thinking of people in his life who have had a huge positive motivational effect on him and who have taught him valuable things. Yes, that must be it.

Recently I was at a dinner thing and the hostess was telling a story about a dream she had had. Fortunately I wasn't a bus driver in this one, I wouldn't want to get typecast so was relieved about this. The content of the dream is not relevant and was also quite rude, which may be another reason I didn't feature in it, though I hope Gaz's Dad was well out of the way for both of their sakes.

She told us about the dream though. She said that she woke up, told her husband about it, then went to sleep again and "went back into it".

At this point I had to ask her.

"Wait a sec, what do you mean you went back into it? Do you mean you CHOSE to keep the dream going?"

"Yeah, I often do that" said the dreamer.

"Wow" I said, but I was really thinking "Wow".

She was absolutely serious. Apparently she often does this, as she said.

I asked her again and she said that she frequently has dreams that she can "re enter" almost at will. This amazed me. As I thought about it later I realised that most people have and have had dreams that are interrupted by consciousness which we would give half our kingdoms to go back to. Like the one about Hillary Clinton and the sexy underwear, a common dream for all men I'm sure.

I've never met anyone who can actually do it though, a person who can make themselves choose a dream.

Or can everyone?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

just google search the words "lucid dreaming"

Anonymous said...

i've found myself wanting to jump right back into a dream that was interrupted midway. but i've never been successful. it's very frustrating to have an interesting dream stop half way without ever figuring it out how it ends.

Gutterflower said...

I have the most wonderfully weird dreams.
Trouble is I can't remember a single thing when I wake up.
Oh well.

Six & Out said...

I've managed to re-enter dreams that I really wanted to. Dont know how it works but I can do it sometimes.

But I see really disturbing dreams like people or strange beasts trying to kill me etc. Some are really bloody.

Prob cuz Im a freak but yea....hmmm...

Tahani said...

I do that all the time! I know I'm dreaming, and if my sleep is disturbed, all I have to do is close my eyes and go back to sleep (when I say back to sleep, I mean light sleep because I can hear real-world conversations in the background etc) and the dream picks up from where I left off. Sometimes I think about how I want the dream to end and then go back to sleep and make sure my dream ends just the way I wanted it to. It's kinda freaky, because if I don't like how it's going, I just decide to rewind from a certain part of the dream and then control the ending.

The best times are when I've awoken to my phone alarm and am in the middle of a dream. I put it to snooze, think about how and where the dream is going, think about adding cool special effects and plot lines, and then go back to sleep until the alarm goes off in another ten minutes! My dream just goes on and on and I guess it must be getting pretty complicated too!

Sadly, I can never remember all of it when I'm fully awake. Just the parts that I thought of in my semi-conscious state.