In Your Dreams

Hi dreamers! This is it! The final blog post of the year! It’s been a busy year, but strange dreams have carried us through it all. For the final In Your Dreams analysis, we will be analyzing my verdant dream from a few nights ago.

Onto the dream!

Ecopunk 

On a sunny, breezy day, I ask a patch of Siberian Squills, the small blue flower, “Do you feel my breath?”

The Squills begin to grow, writhing like worms in soil. They speak, “We hear you. You do not hear us.”

Confused, I say, “I can hear you.”

They grow larger now, their petals unfurling like ribbons and their stems becoming thick like dogwood trees.

“Good fertilizer,” I say.

The Squills’ roots come up out of the ground and they step onto the soil. “Nitrous oxide. Methane. Carbon dioxide,” they spit at me. “Man becoming machine. Oil pumping into the ecosystem.”

I back up. The Squills grow larger and larger. Their pistils grow snapping teeth. I turn to run and find that my legs have become steel, immovable and rusted.

The Squills advance, and pull me with their leafy fingers to face the sky, which is thick with smog.

“See?” They say. “See?”

This is where the dream ends.

The Analysis 

In this nightmare, I find myself face to face with ever-growing Siberian Squills that want to show me the realities of environmental destruction and climate change. The Squills are disgusted by humanity’s recklessness.

This nightmare is horrifying for three primary reasons:

1) There is body horror. My legs transform into metal, rusted metal at that, and I am unable to run away from the Siberian Squills. This transformation alludes to the fact that man relies heavily on machinery and unnatural objects to function, so much so that, according to the Squills, man may as well be a group of machines or robots. It is unclear whether the Squills are responsible for transforming my legs into metal in the dream, but some force was holding myself and the rest of humanity accountable for our actions that have been rooted in materialism and inorganic material.

2) An object which is not supposed to have human qualities becomes humanlike in nature and uses those humanlike qualities to chase me and, eventually, force me into facing a reality I don’t want to face. The animation of the Squills is a surreal method of the unconscious anthropomorphizing nature, which has been harmed by humanity. The Squills become a kind of phantasm, haunting me until I acknowledge the nature of the environmental crisis. The Squills act as an inescapable omen, an assurance that yes, this is real, and yes, you must do something about it.

3) Most importantly, the dream unveils the reality of climate change and environmental destruction, the reality dream-me didn’t want to face, and speaks to my (waking me’s) unconscious anxieties about the subject. The Squills refer to “oil”—something that wreaks havoc on ecosystems—and “Nitrous oxide. Methane. Carbon dioxide,” three greenhouse gases that are contributing to climate change. This nightmare brought to light the fear I am feeling about my own future, my generation’s future, and my younger siblings’ futures, and the guilt I feel about being a part of humanity when we have caused so much destruction.

This dream serves as a welcome reminder that there are actions to be taken to combat climate change, even beyond reducing, reusing, and recycling. One can always speak out to local representatives to ensure they are making environmentally friendly decisions. Here is a BBC article about ten ways to help fight climate change. One noteworthy fact from the article that I would like to highlight is that “If cattle were their own nation, they would be the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the US.” Changing one’s diet is a deeply personal decision, but if anyone has any questions about cutting out red meat or going pescatarian or plant-based, leave a comment!

Overall, this dream about Siberian Squills becoming animated and angry with humanity revealed deeper lessons about about climate change and environmental destruction. Stay loose and dream lucid!

Hello dreamers! This week we are going to be analyzing a dream in a song from one of my favorite bands, Radiohead. Thom Yorke is Radiohead’s vocalist, so he is who I will be naming in the analysis. The Bends is one of Radiohead’s earlier albums, and it’s worth listening to in full. I recommend listening to High and Dry and The Bends, songs on that album.

Onto the dream!

(Nice Dream) by Radiohead 

They love me like I was a brother
They protect me, listen to me
They dug me my very own garden
Gave me sunshine, made me happy

Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream

I call up my friend, the good angel
But she’s out with her answerphone
She said that she’d love to come help, but
The sea would electrocute us all

Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream (If you think that you’re strong enough)
Nice dream (If you think you belong enough)
Nice dream (If you think that you’re strong enough)
Nice dream (If you think you belong enough)

[guitar solo]

Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream
Nice dream

The Analysis 

(Nice Dream) tells a story of a fantasy that the narrator is living in, one where they are loved and nurtured by the people around them. The narrator does not want to snap out of this fantasy, instead favoring the “nice dream” that lulls them into a sense of peace and security.

In the first verse, Thom Yorke sings about being loved, protected, and nurtured. The narrator compares themselves to a plant who is being given sunshine by the crowd of supportive loved ones. The loved ones tend to the narrator, adopting a caretaking role in the narrator’s plant life. This could reflect the narrator’s desire for their loved ones to take care of them—perhaps they have tumultuous emotions that need tending to or a worsening mental illness that they feel would be alleviated by care from others.

Then Thom Yorke sings, “nice dream,” indicating that their care and protection is only a fantasy that they have dreamed up. It is a fantasy that they want to live in. In fact, they do live in it, but they are beginning to acknowledge that it is dream, based on the repetition of the phrase “nice dream.”

In the second verse, Yorke sings, “I call up my friend, the good angel,” an indication that the narrator is still in an idealizing, fantasy state where they believe everything is better than it is. They proceed to be sent to voicemail, where their friend tells them she’d love to “help,” but “the sea would electrocute us all.” Their friend is not there for them like they want her to be, no matter how wholeheartedly they believed she (and their other loved ones) would be when they sang in the first verse.

The line, “the sea would electrocute us all” (if she helped) is interesting in that it subverts the narrator earlier comparison of themselves to a plant and makes the narrator painfully human, jarring them into reality. After all, plants cannot be electrocuted, but humans can.

The motif of the sea is a powerful one as well. The sea can consume and subsume, shift and morph, ebb and flow. The narrator is incapable of ebbing and flowing or morphing—they are trapped in their fantasy. If the friend were to help them, the sea would electrocute them both. In other words, the narrator would be shocked out of their fantasy and realize that the friend doesn’t really care for them, understand them, or have the capacity to nurture them in the way they want the way they have deluded themselves into believing she does.

Overall, (Nice Dream) is a song about someone’s cemented fantasy, which they would only be shocked out of by seeing their friend try to help them. Stay loose and dream lucid!

Hello dreamers! I hope everyone is feeling energized by the spring weather. This week we will be analyzing a childhood dream from a family member of mine who, at the time of the dream, had just been told they were adopted. For the sake of this person’s anonymity, I will be using they/them pronouns in the description of their dream.

Onto the dream!

Trudging Up That Hill 

The child is five years old. They walk alone up the main road next to the deli in their town. Cars whiz past, the shiny colors blurring together as they enter and exit the child’s peripheral vision. The child has a backpack on, a small, square, red bag that is too loose for their shoulders. Their white sneakers pitter patter against the concrete of the seemingly endless ascending road. At the end of the road is their comfortable house, where they live with their parents.

As the child walks up the hill to get to their house, they begin to find it more and more difficult to walk. They trudge upward, moving their feet, which feel like lead, in long movements. The hill feels insurmountable, an impossible feat. The child feels tears stinging their eyes. They keep fighting their way upward, but they move only an inch with each step.

In the house at the top of the road, their mother cooks dinner while their father reads the newspaper. Stuck on this hill, the child sees them in their own head. Their stomach ties itself in knots. They keep walking upward, far away from their parents.

The Analysis 

This family member recounted their dream to me knowing that it had to do with their adoption. I will operate under this knowledge in my analysis.

The primary motif is a hill that is impossible to climb. Hills in literature and dreams can symbolize a struggle of some kind, as well as a journey from point A (perhaps an emotional state or relationship) to point B (a change in this emotional state or relationship, or a realization). The dreamer here is facing a devastating emotional challenge for someone so young—they have to cope with the fact that they are adopted when they do not have the tools to do so. This challenge manifests in the dream as a struggle uphill, a journey that never gets anywhere.

The most important part of this hill, however, is not the struggle of climbing it, but rather the fact that it acts as a barrier between the child and their parents. This dream tells a story of a child who feels utterly alienated from their parents. Their mother and father are inaccessible in the dream, much like how in the dreamer’s waking life the dreamer may have felt they were unable to access the connection they once had with them. As a young adoptee without the understanding that their relationship with their parents was a normal and healthy one even in the face of adoption, the dreamer felt lost and disconnected.

The idea of a child being stuck in one place also lends itself to the analysis of stunted development. The dreamer may have felt like they were unable to move forward in life with the knowledge of their adoption, so they remained stuck on that metaphorical, subconscious hill. The dreamer yearns for progression, but does not know how to move forward after being told what they’ve been told.

In conclusion, this dream brought up themes of struggle, disconnection from parents, and stunted development. Stay loose and dream lucid!

 

Hello dreamers! We’ve made it through deliberations! I hope everyone is proud of their participation. I think everyone did a great job. This week on In Your Dreams, we are analyzing one of my own dreams that struck me as symbolic recently.

Onto the dream!

Meteor Voices

I lay on my back the ground, alone, staring up at a clear night sky. I am somewhere in the mountains. The stars burn bright pinholes in the black, expansive darkness. I am on the grass and I can feel the pointy blades tickling my arms and legs. It is summertime. It must be.

As I watch the sky, a white blur streaks across it between a wide cluster of stars, there for a split second and then gone. I keep watching, my interest growing along with my peace. In another pocket of the sky, away from the first, another radiating blur streaks across the inky plane, there momentarily and then gone. I see another one elsewhere in the sky, there and gone.

Soon more of what I now recognize to be meteors explode white across the dotted black palette, never lingering. I hear a soft chattering coming from above, but I think I am mishearing. It’s just a trick of the ear, like stars may once have been thought of as a trick of the light. But the chattering grows, and I realize that as it grows louder, more meteors burst across my vision. They are speaking.

The meteors whisper and murmur as they exist visibly for a moment and then individually go quiet when they disappear. There are so many of them that their voices become uproarious, a tidal wave of sound and light.

This is where the dream ends.

The Analysis

In my dream, meteors grew voices. They became like humans, or at least showed signs of life to a human, and I, a human, became privy to their conversations. The question is whether they intended for me to hear their conversations or whether I was a happenstance listener in the private details of the lives of astronomical bodies, somebody who just happened to stumble in at just the right time to hear the phenomenon.

It is worth noting that I could not understand what the meteors were saying in the dream even when there were only a few of them. They spoke in a language beyond human understanding. This separates me, the spectator, from them, the spectacle. Their language was indecipherable to me, so I was held apart from the beauty of the phenomenon. I don’t remember how I felt in the dream, but based on this analysis, I would suggest that there was likely a sense of longing to become a celestial body, to participate in their conversation, and to transcend human life.

There is also the point of the meteors’ transience which makes them like humans. Meteors are only visible to the human eye for a few seconds before they disappear. Like the human lifespan, the “lifespan” of a meteor is brief. This similarity perhaps added onto the feeling of longing—if I am going to live a brief life anyway, why not become a meteor and burn brightly for all to see?

Overall, this dream exemplifies my human desire to be like a meteor.

This dream also inspired a poem that I wrote for my poetry class about a comet, another astronomical phenomenon. You can read it below:

Halley’s Comet, 2061

You asked me a celestial lifetime ago
whether I would return.

I traveled long stretches in the darkness,
the barren planes stirring
undistilled loneliness
until distant stars guided me back to you.

You, groundling:
Feet tethered by gravity
to the earth.
Eyes skyward, wide,
reflecting the whole
of my soaring
across your lifetime.

We mirror one another again,
separated only by atmosphere.
My nucleus gazing over the Earth,
your face watching the sky.

Two orbs, each miming the other
across space: your pale, awed face,
my burning body.
The spark in your eyes
as you stare into me
as bright as the sparks dancing
across my surface.
Your hair streaming behind your ears
like my kind’s detritus.

Me as cinder, ice, and ions,
you as star-born flesh.

You, human watcher, the one
I have longed for—to see you,
standing there, alight with wonder
at something so like yourself.
That is the mystery I return to—

You asked me a celestial lifetime ago
whether I would return.

I have waited 2 billion
three hundred-sixty-five million
two-hundred thousand seconds
of the sun’s turning
to answer you:
Yes, yes, yes.

Stay loose and dream lucid!

Hello dreamers! We’ve made it through the first day of deliberation. I hope everyone is feeling refreshed from the Wellness Day. This week, for the first time ever, we are going to be analyzing a song about dreams! The song is by one of my favorite artists in the world, Kate Bush, a powerhouse of inventive hooks inspired by subjects like literature (see her song Wuthering Heights), the seemingly impossible exchange of empathy between a man and a woman (see Running Up That Hill), and the way one can overcome cowardice by letting go in love (see Hounds of Love).

I found The Dreaming soon after discovering Kate Bush. When I first listened to it, I recognized the Australian influence, but I didn’t know what the song was about. “The Dreaming” is the name for the Aboriginal Australian philosophy that states that all people and things are interconnected, and represents the time when spirits roamed the Earth. Keep this in mind as you read the lyrics. I like to think that Kate Bush also dreamed this song before she wrote it. Onto the dream!

The Dreaming 

“Bang!” goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van
See the light ram through the gaps in the land
Many an Aborigine’s mistaken for a tree
‘Til you near him on the motorway and the tree begin to breathe
See the light ram through the gaps in the land

Come in with the golden light
In the morning
Come in with the golden light
Is the New Man
Come in with the golden light
Is my dented van
Woomera

Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-
I-i-i-i-i-
Me-me-me-me-me
Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
Woomera
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-
I-i-i-i-i-
Me-me-me-me-me
Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti…

The civilized keep alive the territorial war
See the light ram through the gaps in the land
Erase the race that claim the place and say we dig for ore
Or dangle devils in a bottle and push them from the Pull of the Bush
See the light ram through the gaps in the land
You find them in the road
See the light bounce off the rocks to the sand
In the road

Come in with the golden light
In the morning
Come in with the golden light
With no warning
Come in with the golden light
We bring in the rigging
Dig, dig, dig, dig away

Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-
I-i-i-i-i-
Me-me-me-me-me
Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
Woomera
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-
I-i-i-i-i-
Me-me-me-me-me
Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Woomera
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-
I-i-i-i-i-
Me-me-me-me-me
Dree-ee-ee-ee-ee-
A-a-a-a-a-
M-m-m-m-m-
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-
I-i-i-i-i-
Woomera
Me-me-me-me-me

Many an Aborigine’s mistaken for a tree
See the light ram through the gaps in the land
You near him on the motorway and the tree begin to breathe
Erase the race that claim the place and say we dig for ore
See the light ram through the gaps in the land
Dangle devils in a bottle and push them from the Pull of the Bush
See the sun set in the hand of the man

‘Bang!’ goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van
See the light bounce off the rocks to the sand
You find them in the road
See the light ram through the gaps in the land
In the road
See the light
Push ’em from the
Pull of the Bush
See the light bounce off the rocks to the sand
Push ’em from the
Pull of the Bush
See the sun set in the hands of man.

The Analysis

The first detail that stands out in the song is the recurrence of “light.” The first iteration of light is after the “bang,” which is presumably a gunshot. This could mean that “light” is referring to the blinding light of a gun being fired. However, light appears later in the pre-chorus when Kate Bush sings “come in with the golden light of the morning.” Light in the song serves two purposes, functioning first as a flashbang and second as the sunlight.

Kate Bush references “Many an Aborigine mistaken for a tree” and begins to mimic Aboriginal songs, indicating that this song is about the plight of the Aborigines. The people who mistake the Aborigines for a tree and implicitly chop them down are mentioned by name once in the song, when Kate Bush says “The civilized keep alive the territorial war.” The ones who wish harm upon the Aborigines are the “civilized,” or Europeans.

The light I mentioned acts as both a symbol for these colonizers and the Aborigines. In the first verse, Kate Bush sings, “See the light ram through the gaps in the land.” Here, the light represents the violence and force of the “civilized.” As the light invades the cracked Earth, the colonizers too invade the Aboriginal people of Australia.

The light also operates as an emblem for the Aborigines’ spiritual life. Kate Bush sings, “Come in with the golden light of morning.” The colonizers come to the bush, where the Aboriginal people view themselves as connected to everything and everyone. There, the colonizers shoot and destroy, rupturing the interconnected peace.

The final line, “See the sun set in the hand of man,” represents the death of the Aborigines, literally and spiritually, at the hands of the colonizers. The colonizers held the Aborigines’ spiritual light in the hands and caused that ever-glowing sun to set.

Overall, Kate Bush’s song, “The Dreaming” about the plight of the Aborigines at the hands of Europeans uses Aboriginal descriptions and music to convey its message and light to represent the colonizers and the colonized. Stay loose and dream lucid!

Hi everyone! Unbelievably, we are almost halfway through the semester. Time has been catapulting forward during these past few months. Speaking of time, a friend of mine, Kenzy, shared with me a recurring dream of hers that started in childhood and pertains to the prehistoric era. Get your dream analysis magnifying glasses and pajamas because we’ll be analyzing it today.

Onto the dream!

Prehistoric Pressure

(The following is my own rendition of the brief synopsis Kenzy gave me of her dream.)

A young Kenzy sprints through the Cretaceous trees, which curl their astounding height upward toward a brilliant sun. Kenzy does not have time to admire the beauty. She is out of breath, panicked. Moving beside her are her parents, who pummel the ground with their feet as they, too, run. A frenzied roar permeates the air, choking Kenzy with fear like a vise. She runs faster, somehow, and feels her mom beside her, but her father falls behind. She does not have time to turn around and call out to him before the creature makes itself known.

The tyrannosaurus rex crashes through the trees, bloodthirsty and vicious, and clamps its endless rows of teeth down on Kenzy’s father’s leg. Kenzy, who is still running, does not look behind her, but knows innately that her father is going to be eaten. She hears the snap of jaws and knows that she has no time to grieve. She keeps running.

She and her mother make their way through the forest, massive ferns brushing their ankles, until Kenzy realizes that her mother is not beside her. She hears the tyrannosaurus rex roar and turns around to see her mother snapped up in its violent jaws. Kenzy turns back toward the forest before her and launches herself forward into the greenery, running harder than she ever has.

The tyrannosaurus rex pursues her, snarling and snapping. She feels its hot, sticky breath at her back. Bile rises in her throat. The feeling of the dinosaur’s breath  disorients her enough that she trips on a rock. The tyrannosaurus rex opens its mouth to rip her apart. That is when she wakes up.

The Analysis 

Kenzy’s dream, which was recurring, developed to replace her parents with various other people she cared about. She always ended up in the forest with the tyrannosaurus rex, but the people changed depending on how old she was at the time she had the dream.

To me, this indicates an evolving dream. What I mean by this is that the dream represented the same fear but different relationships at different times in Kenzy’s life. The question is, which fear?

Let’s start with childhood. If during the first occurrence of Kenzy’s dream she sees her parents, and they are placed in a survival scenario, it could indicate a basic primal fear that all children have of losing their parents and having to fend for themselves. The T-rex, then, would represent death by any means (a T-rex is just what a child would think of), and the T-rex eating Kenzy represents Kenzy being unable to fend for herself and not making it because of it.

However, I’m more interested in what this dream represents in future iterations. In adult life, the tyrannosaurus rex is associated with violence, history and therefore time, and  humanity’s smallness. If Kenzy has a version of this dream where she is running away from the T-rex and her three closest friends are picked off one by one, these complex associations with the T-rex figure could mean:

1) that she is afraid of violence or death being enacted on her loved ones and herself

2) that she is fearful of her own past alienating her from her relationships

3) that she anxious about the passage of time and its result, which is death

Or 4) that she is afraid of her insignificance in the face of all that exists in the world.

I think that the most likely interpretation will have some connection to the original iteration, which has to do with death. Therefore, it is probably interpretation 1 or 3.

In sum, Kenzy’s recurring dream about a tyrannosaurus rex chasing and eating Kenzy’s closest people and herself could stem from the common childhood fear of losing caregivers’ support, and later iterations of the dream may mean that she is afraid of she and her loved ones being killed or harmed or that she is afraid of the passage of time leading to death. Stay loose and dream lucid!

Hello dreamers! Well, it certainly has been a speedy week, hasn’t it? Let’s slow it down for for this post and get caught in the tremulous darkness, shall we? This week we’ll be examining one of my own dreams.

Onto the dream!

The Tremulous Darkness

I sit, naked, in a white room. It is warm– the slightly sticky kind of warm, warm enough that the skin of my armpits sticks to the skin of my sides. The room is infinite, extending as far outward as I can see. Everything is white. I am alone.

I shift to my knees and look upward to the white “ceiling,” which is really just an endless plane of lightness. On the white paneling, there is a wisp of black, contorting and undulating. I whisper something. I don’t remember what. The wisp moves closer to me. It starts growing. I feel peaceful as it grows larger and larger, beginning to encase me in darkness. It shrouds me like a cloak, but it feels like a friend. It is cooling and soothing on my skin, a welcome substance.

The shroud starts to shrink. I embrace myself to try to catch it, hold it to me, but it escapes, quivering as it disappears out of existence. I am left alone, without the darkness. I look at the white walls. I grow hot, itchy. I realize something about the room.

It is an incubator. That’s when I wake up.

The Analysis

In this dream, I became friends with the darkness, and was threatened by my searing white hot surroundings.

The darkness is a kind entity, and takes two distinct forms in the dream. The first is a wisp, a delicate shape that lends itself to disappearing, which is what the darkness eventually does. The other form is a shroud or cloak that I wear over my naked body. This seems to offer some kind of physical but also psychic protection. It comforts and soothes, cooling me down in the hot room.

The cloak functions as an emblem for the Grim Reaper. interestingly, I am the one wearing the cloak, so I am the Grim Reaper in this context. I believe this symbol has to do with recent anxiety about my own mortality. I am petrified of there being an end to my consciousness, so my subconscious created a scenario where I could dictate my own end and beginning.

Speaking of beginnings, there is the emblem of the incubator. The white room where I am “incubating” makes me uncomfortable and itchy, generating negative feelings and angst. Conversely, the darkness (my ability to control death) gives me comfort. The incubator could represent the oppressiveness of my mortality– the incubation of time. However, I think there’s more to it than that.

I believe the incubator is heaven. In the dream, I am in my mortal body. When the darkness comes, I am the Grim Reaper– I become immortal, godlike, and I have control over death. When I am unshrouded (unprotected by the darkness) in the incubator (heaven) I am in heaven in my mortal body. This means I am experiencing heaven as a mortal, in a way no mortal was ever supposed to. Naturally, I feel uncomfortable, afraid, and oppressed in this state. It isn’t until the darkness comes that I feel comfortable in heaven. In other words, it isn’t until I have control over death that I feel comfortable in heaven.

In sum, the darkness allows me to be the Grim Reaper, the incubator is heaven, and only when I am shrouded as the Grim Reaper do I feel safe in heaven. Stay loose and dream lucid!

 

[Trigger warning for mention of suicide]

Hello dreamers! This week I have a very exciting dream for you all. The dream comes from Netflix’s show “Dark,” a new favorite series of mine. Dark is a mind-bending, existential examination of a German town where multiple young people have gone missing over a 33-year span of time. At the heart of the town are the people whose lives are meticulously interwoven, with all of their stories pointing toward a mysterious nuclear power plant. The story bends time (literally) and operates on a plurality of levels worth examining.

The dream we’ll be examining takes place in season 1 episode 2 (very few SPOILERS here except for the first two episodes, if you want to watch the show). I am only five episodes into the series, so I know almost as little as you guys do! To give some backstory, one of the central teenage characters of “Dark,” Jonas, lost his father to suicide in the first episode of the series. His father left behind unusual drawings of spirals resembling vortexes or wormholes in the room where he took his own life. Onto the dream!

Jonas’s Dream about the Man Drenched in Darkness 

Jonas “wakes up” and sits up gasping for air, his mouth agape. He looks around wildly in the dim, barely-there light, but his movements slow when he feels something wet slipping down his ear. He feels his ear and finds black liquid—blood, oil, or ink?—running down the side of his face. He goes to his mirror on closet door on the other side of the room and looks at himself in it. He hears his name, distorted and quiet… quiet but everywhere all at once. He opens the door to move the mirror and see behind him and he sees a man (who looks like his father) covered in the same liquid that came out of his ear.

Jonas wakes up gasping, again.

The Analysis 

One of the most important things about this show that I keep in mind when I am analyzing it is that it functions on a complex literal and symbolic level. In one of the episodes, Franziska and Magnus (two of the other teenagers in the show) are sitting in Franziska’s literature class (Magnus wasn’t actually supposed to be in the class) and the teacher speaks about symbolism. My radar goes off when art or media incorporates dialogue about symbolism, because I know it means that there is going to be symbolism to watch out for.

Jonas’s dark leakage, distorted name, and vision of his father drenched in dark liquid indeed harbor symbols. The most clear symbol, to me, is that of ink. “Dark” is about time travel. Ink is associated with permanence, something that time travel actively works to undo. This dream asserts that no matter how one turns back the clock, certain things are permanent. Jonas’s father’s suicide is permanent, for example. That is why his father is seen covered in ink.

Perhaps something that Jonas has heard is permanent too, like his name, or more profoundly, his identity. No matter how anybody jumps through time, Jonas will not be able to change who he is. Jonas may feel remorse over the ways he contributed to his father’s death, even if he isn’t to blame, but no matter how he tries to undo those mistakes, he won’t be able to change who he is.

It is also possible that the show is having Jonas’s father visit him in his dreams as a portent of the past coming “back ” (or forward) into the present in future episodes. As time begins to unspool, characters may begin to appear in the wrong time, and the past may begin to exist in the present, or the present may exist in the past.

Through Jonas’s dream about the man drenched in darkness, “Dark” unloads heavy symbolism about permanence and possible portents of time wonkiness. Stay loose and dream lucid!

Hi everyone! I hope the snow that’s been twirling down from the sky this week has made it easier for everyone to sleep (and dream). This week we are going to be examining my friend David’s dream. I have paraphrased and rephrased what David told me about his dream, enhancing details that I feel are important to the analysis and leaving out irrelevant details.

Onto the dream!

Partial Blindness 

David had a dream that his eyes weren’t working properly. His surroundings were dark, the blackness encroaching on his comfort. It wasn’t dark enough that he couldn’t vaguely see what was going on, but it was dark enough that he couldn’t read and distinguish details. He was it his high school’s basement volunteering to move boxes, but his lack of vision made the job incredibly difficult.

Some new teachers came downstairs and he introduced himself to them, unable to see them. He watched their blurry faces as they spoke. The new chemistry teacher said that she had just mixed some new chemicals and wanted to show the staff after school let out. David went upstairs and said hi to his old teachers. He was asked to sign himself in on a sign-in sheet at the front desk but he couldn’t see the paper because of his partial blindness.

He became increasingly frustrated trying to sign the sheet of paper. That’s when he woke up.

The Analysis 

David’s dream evokes all-too-familiar feelings in the dream world: helplessness, loss, and frustration. He struggles to navigate the world with his new eye ailment, unfamiliar with the darkness.

Interestingly, The new sensation in David’s eyes parallels the new teachers in his old high school. His eyes, old organs to his body, are experiencing a new phenomenon, partial blindness. His old high school is filled with new teachers who are beginning to replace the old teachers that linger in the halls of the school. His partial blindness acts as a metaphor for his movement into the future.

As he gets older, more and more of his life is replaced with new things that he is not used to or does not know how to navigate. He has graduated high school and he has no power to stop the effects of time on the school he once went to; time filters out the old teachers he once loved and brings in new teachers that “mix new chemicals.” He also has no power to stop the effects of time on his life more broadly. The boxes also symbolize the future. Objects are packed away and moved to new locations, pushing forward into new lives. This dream, then, is a dream of anxiety about the onward march into the future.

David’s frustration over being unable to sign in on the sign-in sheet is also emblematic of anxiety about the future. To sign in to a high school sign-in sheet means you are welcome in the building. In the dream, David wants to be welcome in the high school, and perhaps wants to go backwards in time and relive the nostalgia of high school. That the dream made David physically incapable of signing in indicates that David was subconsciously aware that he is unable to move backwards against the future. This is the beginning of acceptance of what is to come.

Moving away from the more figurative interpretations, it is worth noting that my friend David wears glasses. It is possible that David may have been having literal vision problems in his waking life, the anxiety of which spilled over into his dreaming life. I know that if I had glasses and my vision started to worsen, I might develop a subconscious or partially conscious fear of going blind that manifests itself in my dreams. The fear of losing our senses awakens a very primal fear in humans, and that doesn’t go away when we’re sleeping.

Overall, David’s dream is about anxiety about the future and more literally anxiety about losing his sense of vision. Stay loose and dream lucid!

[Disclaimer: My brother Bryce is a great kid and an even better brother! My dreams aren’t an accurate representation of him.]

Hello everybody! Welcome back to In Your Dreams! I hope waking life has been going smoothly for you all these past three weeks, and that dreaming life has been going even smoother. It’s nice to have some new friends on the blog this semester. Because there are some new faces, I’ll reintroduce the concept of the blog and the general guidelines that I follow when posting here.

In Your Dreams is a dream analysis blog in which I use psychological (Jungian) and literary (symbolist) tools to interpret my own dreams, others’ dreams, and dreams in media like books, movies, and television shows (this semester I may try to find a musical dream to analyze as well). Suggestions of media and descriptions of your own dreams for me to analyze are always welcome in the comments. For a more in-depth overview of the pillars of this blog, feel free to go back to my first post.

This week we are going to analyze one of my dreams, one I had a few weeks ago. I woke up with my heart in my throat and my mouth bone-dry. Onto the dream!

Music Thieves 

I am in a massive apartment complex, walking up and down the stairs, looking up the stairwell, and searching for something that I need very badly. I am watching myself in the dream from the third person, like I am watching a movie. However, I can feel dream-me’s emotions. They rumble and stir in my chest.

I open a door, one of many, to find that the floor in this room is gone. There is a jungle gym made of plumbing pipes stretching up and down as far as I can see. There appears to be no bottom to the room. At the top of the jungle gym my brother, Bryce, is dangling. He is holding my clarinet. I remember that what I am looking for is the clarinet. Bryce’s friends are perched and dangling and otherwise strewn about the jungle gym.

“Bryce,” I call, “Why do you have my clarinet?”

He doesn’t answer, instead swinging to another pipe and tossing the clarinet to his other hand as his hands switch. My heart drops as the clarinet flies through the air.

“Bryce, please give me back my clarinet,” I plead.

He smiles, and throws the clarinet to one of his friends. His friend catches the clarinet, and fluidly tosses it to another friend. They continue passing it around like this for many minutes, throwing it faster and faster, taunting me and laughing. I plead and beg with them, but they do not stop.

This is when I woke up.

The Analysis 

In this nightmare, I am faced with the cruel villains that are… my own brother and his gaggle of teenage friends! The crux of the dream is that my brother and his friends are keeping something sacred (to me) away from me. In the dream’s interpretation, there may also be an element of me feeling belittled, mocked, or controlled by a person or people that are younger or smaller than me.

Interestingly, in real life I handed the clarinet down to my brother, who plays seven instruments. The clarinet in the dream, then, may represent some kind of emotional gift I have given Bryce that I subconsciously feel he is using to hurt me or distorting in some way. For example, if I spent a lot of time in the summer with Bryce when he was a child and now he gets mad at me when I spend time in the summer with him, that would trigger the kind of emotional response that the dream evoked.

Beyond emotionality, there is symbolism in the musicality of the clarinet. The clarity of a clarinet’s notes lends itself to the expression of the full scope of emotion. When the tool for emotional expression (the clarinet) is taken away (by teenagers), the person who needs to express themselves is left without a voice. This feeling of not having a voice while everyone around you is laughing at you is a particular kind of anguish, one that the dream constructed well.

Overall, this dream tells a story of the voice being taken away and the feeling that an emotional gift is being bastardized. Stay loose and dream lucid!