Month: February 2021

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!