Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Dreams Are Boring

A scientific fact: dreams are boring.  Not individual dreams specific to the dreamer.  Dreams except for ones that you have dreamt are boring.  Unless.  Unless you believe dreams are full of hidden imagery, a signal that your subconscious is trying to explain you to yourself, or any number of supernatural other explanations of dreams.  In that case, both the dreams & the people who feel that way about dreams are boring.

It's fun to fuck with people like that.  They're so self-important & faux-earnest.  One fellow I knew, once upon a time, when I was telling someone else within his earshot about a recent dream (I was boring the hell out of her, though it had been a neat dream), overheard me say something in the (long-forgotten) dream about a window.  "Whoa," he said, exaggeratedly wide-eyed in an exaggerated manner, "Don't you know how important it is when you dream about windows?"

Boring.  But I affected a wide-eyed manner & asked him to explain what windows mean in dreams.  It didn't take too long before he used the word "archetype" & of course "Jung," which he pronounced with a hard J.  The other person I was talking to knew I was pretending like I gave a shit, so she did her best to stifle her laughter.  It ended with the dream interpreter giving me his card & telling me he'd give me a discount on the first visit.

Having said all that, I have to tell you about a dream I recently had.

No, I don't.  I don't have to.  I feel compelled to tell you because sometimes dreams are the most interesting thing to happen to me.  They're not only interesting to me, they're mostly consistently interesting.  Things one might think are interesting that I do aren't always as interesting.  For example: I enjoy doing my radio show, but talking to people about my radio show, the process of doing the radio show, things that may happen behind the scenes during my radio show, those aren't usually too terribly interesting.  The show itself may be interesting (probably not) but what I do during the show - with the exception of the occasional goofy phone call - not too interesting.

My dreams, though - virtually every morning I wake up & think: wow, that was an interesting thing that happened to me!

One reason dreams are boring to anyone except the dreamer is that most dreams are experiences that are felt & don't travel in a narrative arc.  Last night, I dreamt that I was in a bad part of town (what town? who knows? in the dream KVRX & WRFL were basically the same place) but when I wanted to show the bad part of town to someone, suddenly there were shops & stores there, & it didn't seem as derelict as I believed it was earlier in the dream.  The whole place changed, & I was a little surprised, but the dream moved on.  That was probably very boring, but it wasn't for me, & whatever the narrative was in the dream, I thought about it a lot when I was waking up.

In fact, I (& I'm probably not alone) often try to get back to dreams if I am wakened before the time I've supposed to actually get up.  That's how interesting my dreams are to me!

& yet - boy, are dreams boring.  It's sneaky of me to have shared a snippet of a dream in this denunciation of dreams.  I didn't meant to be sneaky.  I needed to make a point.  A point of how tedious dreams are.  Oh my god.  Let's not talk about dreams anymore.  Not to each other.

Please.

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