dreamscapes
wanna see my weird dream notes?
I have a recurring dream where I'm in a house. Within the confines of the dream, it’s my house although it never looks the same dream-to-dream and it’s never reminiscent of anywhere I’ve lived in the waking world. In this dream, there’s a door. I’ll be organizing papers and notice a glint of a doorknob out of the corner of my eye. I’ll be washing dishes and a realization will suddenly hit me mid-rinse. The Door. In the dream, I’ve forgotten about the door entirely until the moment it slides into view.
The door always leads downstairs, never up. Sometimes there’s a ladder. Sometimes plush and sun-faded carpet. The door always leads to a room and then opens into an entirely separate house. I’m always dumbstruck at my own forgetfulness and blissfully excited about the possibilities of my rediscovered space. This second, forgotten house differs each time in its overall size and style but it’s nearly always appointed with furniture straight out of the early 1990s. A fluffy coating of dust has settled across all the surfaces. It looks as if someone simply closed the door and left. At some point in the dream, I always notice a set of French doors in desperate need of Windex. With glee, I realize that the second house has a view of the water - an ocean or lake - that stretches shimmering into the horizon and is inaccessible from my upstairs home. I spend the rest of the dream cleaning the dust, scrubbing surfaces, and laundering old and dated floral patterned bedding.
I don’t know how many times I’ve had this dream but it probably happens every few months. I’m not going to waste your precious time speculating on its meaning. A hidden and neglected house decorated with furniture from my childhood? It feels like a rich set of symbols to deconstruct but it’s also a bit cliche, isn’t it? I only know it’s recurring because I keep a note on my phone where I foggily jot down snippets of dreams upon waking before the daylight steals them away. I have years worth of these things. Taken as a whole, they sound a little unhinged:
When I die, someone is going to find both these cryptic notes along with the absurd number of outfit selfies I’ve taken and make some assumptions about me.
My dream notes are the inspiration for this week’s playlist. Songs that sound like dreamscapes.
(here’s a direct link to this week’s mixtape)
In preparing for this playlist I scoured the internet for a solid answer to the question, "why does some music sound so dreamy?" I got an array of technical answers that went well above my head. My only forays into making music were some very sporadic childhood piano lessons and the mandatory recorder unit in 4th grade. I don’t know what an arpeggio is.
Despite my ignorance regarding musical technicalities, the songs this week hit a strange and at times unsettling note that conjure waking up half in/half out of dream-space. At times this mixtape is beautiful and luminous (“Lay Down” by Jenny Hval") and at times unnerving (“And I Know” by Eola). These two tracks were the first to be added and sound like opposite ends of a dream spectrum.
Apparently some people hear music in their dreams. I don't think I am one of those but once I dreamt I was at a concert.
I wonder what Carl Jung would have to say about squash seeds.
I love being in the squishy space in-between sleep and waking. The joy of laying awake but still caught in the sticky web of dream-feelings. Sometimes - and I know this sounds strange - I feel like I can hear little electrical zaps in my brain as I lay there in the in-between. Buzzing sounds. Like the waking brain is humming to life like a computer. Light switches flipping, synapses firing, and the clearing out of intricate dream cobwebs from the night before. It feels like the mental equivalent of the sun burning off early morning dew. It’s those moments when I feel like I remember my dreams most vividly. Most days I wake up to an alarm clock shocking me into 6:00 AM and there’s no lingering in the in-between fog. Those are the dreams that scamper back into the dark.
Children apparently dream about animals more than adults. The animals in children’s dreams are often scarier than those in adult dreams. The miniature bull is the only animal I’ve described in my notes although I’m positive I’ve dreamt about kittens, too.
I thought that if I did research on dreams before writing this I would be able to find some thesis amidst the backdrop of my own shadowy dream experiences. I thought I could develop something articulate to say about dreams that would highlight the ethereal quality of this week’s chosen music but all I’m left with is a strange collection of odd notes and interesting facts.
I’ve spent time reading excerpts from Dreams by Jung as he analyzes his patients. I’ve read scholarly reviewed research on various theories of why we dream. Memory consolidation? Wish fulfillment? Problem solving? I’ve listened to podcasts describing how some people, with practice, can cajole their mind into lucid dreaming or solve complex arithmetic in their sleep. I’ve learned that dream amnesia upon waking might be a built-in mechanism to keep the strangeness of our nighttime escapades clearly differentiated from our waking lives.
I made good use of my university-job access to academic journals this week but I’m still no closer to penetrating the murkiness of dreams than I was before. I haven’t been able to JSTOR myself to some higher plane of understanding about why I dreamt about cookie pancakes last week:
But I did buy a cookie the next day and it was delicious.
From the Mixtape Archives
Looking for all the music I’ve ever included on a mixtape? I’ve created a mega-mixtape playlist just for that very reason. There’s more than 11 hours of music there for you to browse.
If you liked this week’s playlist, you might also enjoy the following playlists that both contain songs that could have easily been cross-posted into a dreamscapes list: