[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!
Alyssa, this is such a cool topic and I love how you painted the picture of your dream! I will definitely be coming back to read more.
Alyssa, I’m super excited to read more that is to come. I think the idea for your passion blog is so cool and interesting.
I loved reading your blog last semester and am excited to continue reading it this semester! This was an interesting dream and I found your analysis of it fascinating. Keep up the great work like always!