I picked up somewhere that it's a sign of immaturity to tell people about what you dreamed last night: nobody cares, the sights or scenes themselves are never as interesting to someone who's forced to listen, nobody cares, nobody but you or a shrink who's paid money to listen will know what it "means", if you can untangle it then it won't mean anything to someone forced to listen, nobody cares and... basically, I gathered, it's impossible to make dreams into a good story unless you're Lewis Carrol. Or Neil Gaiman. Or maybe the writer of 9th Elsewhere. Actually, forget those anti-oneironauts. I, for one, love to hear about other people's dreams! Mostly. Sometimes. Well... when I don't, I tend to blame the style of storytelling more than the nature or content. It's usually an unscripted oral, lots of backtracking, messy associations, and an increase in vagueness as the teller gets more excited. I can see how that can lead to one big snooze, but I get more annoyed listening to somebody come back from a shopping trip and regale me with glowing descriptions of things they didn't buy-- or, boyfriend troubles. That never ends. But, to someone, that's an engaging story. So, my question: How to improve expression of dreams? Have you any dreams you'd like to share? Especially a lucid one-- I love those, since the MC, as it were, tends to take action and that gives me vicarious thrills of power. Here's one dream-image of mine, from last night: The hues and contours of a foot-long Audrey Hepburn, wriggled through the blue haze and up to the aquarium wall. She kissed the spot on the wall, that I had been tapping on the other side, before bringing her white-gloved hand up to take a drag from a cigarette, and then meandering away. My first thought was not, How did these koi breeders get catfish to look like Audrey Hepburn? but How do these Hepburnfish keep their cigarettes lit while underwater? Carefully watching these schools of fish swim by, I eventually gleaned that the long cigarette filters were their tongues-- and their tongues weren't muscle, but bone-- and their bones were made of a metal that could remain combustible, even under water.
You know, for a very long time i had dreams about dying. Dreams that somewhere i would wake up to face the barrel of a gun. Or wake up to a knife caressing my throat. I always woke up from these dreams terrified, they seemed so realistic. Finally i told a friend about these dreams and my concerns, he joked about them and said he was going to dress in all black, because the killer always was, and break into my house so it would come true. Ever since then i have not had the dream, which is good for me. The dream i have transformed and added a lot to and created a story out of it. I have had many dreams that inspired stories but most of which i have just turned into parts of stories and elements.
Dreams rock my socks. I dreamt (firefox says "dreamt" isn't a word!) last night about sitting in class. My friend and I were in Japanese, whispering to each other unimportant things entirely unrelated to our Japanese lesson. Suddenly, she asked to borrow a fresh piece of binder paper. I happily obliged. That is, until I noticed a very private story was written on that back. But it was too late! I had already handed it to her. I didn't want her to read it. I grew very embarrassed; the heat was tickling my face. I reached over and tugged at the corner of the paper. It must have been strong because it didn't rip, tear--nothing. She furrowed her brows at the sight of me reclaiming the paper and started pulling at it in the opposite direction, laughing like a wild hyena. Then...I woke up.
Last night I dreamt I was a male detective in a murder story, but it was like one of those point and click adventure games. I had to find a whole bunch of items just to be able to talk to people. The first time, I had to start over, and then I got to talk to everyone I needed to talk to, including my fiancee, my fiancee's father, my fiancee's mother, some weird dude who was really creepy, a doctor, and my assistant. When I had finished, we all left and got in a bus. On the way, one guy died from poisoning. Then, we all got together and talked, and this one guy was really weird and he had a skull, a bone, and a vase of flowers on his desk. So of course I didn't suspect him. The most obvious choice for killer never is the killer. Then, at that meeting, another person died, this time it was my fiancee. And then the dream went on and I don't remember all of the details, except that a monkey was involved, but the murdered people kept sticking around as ghosts, only I couldn't talk to them. Finally, it was only me and two other people, the creepy guy with the weird desk, and his wife, who I hadn't noticed until then. Turns out he was the murderer, but not really. His "wife" was a ghost he had created and who existed solely to do his bidding, and he had been ordering her to kill the other people. And now he wanted to kill the ghosts. So he switched heads with her, picked up some weird, glowing knife, and went after my fiance. I went to stop him, and it turned out the knife he had could only cut spectral flesh, not live people, so I grabbed the knife and we started fighting. Disappointingly enough, I never finished the dream.
