-Doug Martsch

 Yeah, so.

 I really enjoy dream and have experimented with it since I was a kid. Even though the majority of my dreams are truly mundane, I dream lucidly often and have had some pretty interesting dream experiences over the years. Despite my love for the mental exercise, I really hate talking about my dreams to random other people. I even started a thread on my favorite message board a year or so ago about dreams, because I was inspired by a particularly powerful one, and have barely contributed. I don’t write them down, I don’t record them in any way and when I tell people about them I hate the look on their face. As Bill Hicks described it, they look “like a dog being shown a card trick.”

 Dreams are entirely personal affairs that rarely translate well. Bits and pieces of your nighttime journeys are easy to convey, but most of the time the sensation you felt upon waking is lost on the general audience. Dreams are a very singular, rambling jumble when they happen and trying to edit and condense them into a linear story for a strange audience, in true form, will never work. Only those that really know you, or other dream enthusiasts, will ever get it. This is not to say that you can’t part out your dreams for all manner of inspiration, but just don’t expect a second or third party to get it. I draw many of my creative exploits from dream.

 I’ve had a very active dream cycle lately, and when I commented on this to a friend, they said that they heard that everyone in your dreams is an extension of yourself. Reflexively, I was opposed to that idea, but in less than a second I realized the idea was as simple as thought itself. Of course all the characters in dream are representations of self, they are birthed by your own mind, cast as your basic thoughts.

 The reason I’m getting into this subject here, is that this past week, I’ve experienced a phenomena that I have never had as strongly in all my years of dream walking. Almost a theme throughout my last week of dreaming, duality has popped up. In an earlier dream, I was being forced to choose which of two people I was and wanted to be forever. That is a terrible translation, but I already warned you about that. It’s all dream hogwash that I don’t want to get into here, but the dream I had last night really stood strong.

 I was hanging with my Dad, who was younger than I ever remembered him. He was close to my age now, and I was close to the age I was when he died. With him was a small boy with bright blonde hair who was about three or four, who kept running around us trying to butt into our conversation, or at least get attention. In the dream, we had that best friend feeling about ourselves as we talked about life changes, things we were up to in our lives and the kind of things confidants discuss. Throughout the dream, the perspective kept switching. One moment I was talking to my Dad with this little boy running around us, and the next I was running around my Dad and this guy, who were talking and having a great time while I tried to get their attention. The whole conversation flowed naturally, but it was a little jarring. I managed to stay in the dream for a while.

 Waking was bad. I wanted to stay in. I wanted to not have to go to work. I wanted to talk to my Dad some more, who ever I was at the time. I floated through the rest of the day kinda weirdly. I had a visual migraine the night before and went to bed with one. I woke to a headache that didn’t go away until I was nearly off work. I don’t think they were related, but if for any weird brain reason they were, I would do it again and again.