Dream Week

September 6, 2020 9:34 AM

After learning that MeFi has had some really cool themed months/weeks in the past, I've volunteered to initiate a themed week in hopes of interacting with more MeFites and contributing to the MeFi environment in a positive way. I’d love to see a week of posts about dreams.

My fascination with dreams has led me to believe that it's going to be absolutely necessary to have a week of dream-related posts. Let's share all things dreams!

I'm thinking of podcasts, science-related things, photos, movies, art installments, books, common and uncommon myths, etc.

Use the tag #dreamweek and feel free to post your projects, songs, and asks with this tag as well.

Can't wait to see what we all come up with!

posted by travelingthyme (staff) to MetaFilter-Related at 9:34 AM (25 comments total)

I would love to read about aboriginal dreaming.
posted by aniola at 10:04 AM on September 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I lucid dream, and have flying dreams I can direct from time to time. I used to have sleep paralysis and surfed it a few times. In the early morning I float in and out of intense REM sleep dreams. I wish I could turn it on and off, but it turns itself on and off.
posted by vrakatar at 6:05 PM on September 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Ok ok ok I love this idea and need to do some research on a couple of topics. I may not be able to post until next weekend but we shall see.

a little about my own dreams
posted by Kitchen Witch at 6:48 PM on September 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Shoutout to my post about sixteenth-century Ottoman dreams from a few years ago on which grumpybear69 opined, "I have had dreams far more wild than this sultan."
posted by yarntheory at 7:43 PM on September 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

How do I know I'm not dreaming this post?
posted by sammyo at 8:06 PM on September 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Maybe a post about the function/necessity of REM sleep?

This is something I personally did a bit of a dive into several years ago, when I was coming off a period of extended sleep deprivation (read: stage manager with a day job meant I regularly only got 6 hours of sleep). When I started getting more sleep again, I went through a week of remembering my dreams more often, in greater detail. I got curious and looked into REM states and how often they happened.

I found something fascinating. Turns out that REM state is so important that when you go through an extended period of sleep deprivation, your body will actually increase the rate of REM states you have to compensate. Like, you may enter REM state once an hour when you're getting eight hours; but if you go through an extended period of sleep loss, your body will gradually up that to going into REM once every 45 minutes, so you still get the "right" number of REM states in. Then when you started getting 8 hours of sleep again, your body would gradually change back. (I assumed that this was explaining that temporary uptick in my dream recall - since the more frequently you were in REM, the more likely you were to wake up from it - and the more likely you were to have dream recall when you woke up.)

REM is said to be connected to memory processing, which also explains why people who aren't getting that much sleep experience brain fog; they aren't able to process all the input they've been getting all day. .....At least, we think this is what REM state does; the jury's out about what REM does anyway.

These days I take it as a good sign if I have dream recall; it's starting to happen more often these days and I'm taking that as a good thing. (Plus my dreams are super-entertaining - the other night I had a dream that I was in a Go-Kart rally, where a whole lot of us rode Go-Karts in a parade up 8th Avenue, which was so fun I'm seriously entertaining figuring out how to manifest that.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:17 AM on September 7, 2020 [4 favorites]

Aw, I posted my project too early.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 11:01 AM on September 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

Fourteen years too early, but my second-ever question here was about why thinking about dreams when I was in bed made me overpoweringly sleepy. At the time, the answer was inconclusive, but years later, I figured it out the first time I heard about the cognitive shuffle. It’s an insomnia-busting technique that works for me every time, and turns out, my own dream content is the perfect homegrown version for me.
posted by daisyace at 7:11 AM on September 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Do you have precognitive dreams? Is time just a flat circle?
posted by chavenet at 8:58 AM on September 8, 2020

The theme of the latest issue (and final print issue) of Cabinet magazine is dreams. Looks like some good stuff, but mostly behind paywalls. Mentioning it here in case it helps with anybody's posts.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 10:36 AM on September 8, 2020

I am unable to remember my dreams -- good or bad. Used to think it was a curse, but now it is definitely a blessing.
posted by Hey, Zeus! at 1:39 PM on September 8, 2020

I keep having a similar dream about my mother, having to help her pack up the house she last lived last century. We were estranged for 15 years before she died about 8 years ago. The dreams are different but the theme is the same: the responsibility falls on me, and not only does she not help, she actively (but plausible deniability) makes it hard for me to do what needs to be done. I visited that place some time after she died, it doesn't exist anymore, it's a vacant block of land. I have these nightmares at least once a fortnight. So frustrating!
posted by b33j at 12:17 AM on September 9, 2020

The time in my life when I, inspired by some book or other (not Jungian), started to scribble down (at night) and slop-analyze (next day) my dreams, I very soon began to dream about writing down and analyzing my dreams, and my dreams took up all sorts of clues and themes from my previous days of thinking about writing down and analyzing my dreams.
I mean, seriously, that exercise created some vortex-type-of shit Gadamer would never have dreamt of.
posted by Namlit at 5:18 AM on September 9, 2020

I only realized after hitting Post that I could tag my FPP today with "dreamweek" because it's partially about a utopian scifi story told as a recollection of a dream! Thank you, MeFi website developers who have made it possible to add a tag to a post after initially publishing it.
posted by brainwane at 9:15 AM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I will tell you this dream, and the antecedent...story time. This starts in real life, just so you know.

The Labradorite Heart

I went into a little shop with my mom and my youngest daughter, it was a place called Turiya's Gifts from the Heart, it has all sorts of new age gifts, and a lot of rocks, that had been shaped into keepsakes. I saw this larger gray heart, made of something which looked like agate, kind of off and on, clear, but when I picked it up, it had layers that flashed blue, and it fascinated me. It had a succinct other field that changed how I felt, and my hand seemed enlivened, and I came to a full stop to notice this stone, and turn it over and over. it was about three inches across at the widest point.

I asked the woman of the shop what this rock was and she said it is Labradorite, it comes from Madagascar. Already I am getting quizzical, but I ask further about it. She gets out a book, and it is about "properties" of minerals, and she reads that Labradorite was left on this world by alien teachers who wanted us to experience portals to other worlds, then she added, it is powerful and some local spiritual mediums won't wear it, because of this. By then I was bursting with supressed snark, and being polite, but, I didn't buy the rock and we went home. I was strangely tired and decided to take a nap.

So then I start to dream, I am driving in a rural area, going to these friends of mine's house, but always in dreams before, they are never home, yet I am welcome there. Once again, no one is home, and I wander a bit down the side yard, along the fence, to go to the back yard, when I see the gate. Then I remember this is my gate, the gate to my garden! I am so surprised, how could I forget that it is here? I stand for a moment and I open the gate, and I step through.

I look up and I am filled with ecstasy, I am at my old house, and my garden is here, but this house and garden exist on my home world, not this one. It is lit by a giant red sun, and the color is very different. The house is modest, a little house with an open front porch, that runs the whole length, no more than 40 feet or so. The garden is plants that look like ground level palms, with velvet oak leaves, all in a grey green, because the orange sun makes true earth green impossible, and the whole place glows in an orange aspect. The garden is planted in a series of parallel ess curves. The joy is intense, immense, and I weep to be at my place again, the place that I perennially forget, but still exists in some moments I don't remember.

Then I woke up, with a gasp, and I just laughed at the irony of my snark, and I still have numerous Labradorite objects in my life, and a favorite modest necklace of plain greenish beads, I wear, when I need to be grounded in me.
posted by Oyéah at 12:40 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Has anyone been commenting yet on how COVID-19 has added to the shared dream lexicon? I somehow had imagined the commonly shared dreams like 'I have no pants,' 'I forgot to study for the test,' etc. were stable for the ages. But now I've added 'I'm in public and I don't have my mask,' and I'm sure I'm in good company.
posted by daisyace at 1:08 PM on September 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I know I've felt like this before
But now I'm feeling it even more
Because it came from you

(from earlier this summer)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 2:43 PM on September 9, 2020

Now there you go again, you say you want burritos

(also from earlier this summer, but those are the main two songs called "Dreams" that I could think of, so I'll stop now)
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:13 AM on September 10, 2020

The most memorable dream I've had was the one where I couldn't get a haircut because I was a giraffe.
posted by pipeski at 6:55 AM on September 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Horns got in the way, too tall to fit in the chair, speciesism, what?
posted by clew at 12:05 PM on September 12, 2020

I'd been wandering around town looking for somewhere to get a haircut, as you do in a dream, and only realised I was a giraffe when I had to bend my very long neck down to ask a passing constable for directions. At that point it also became apparent to me that there was no way I'd fit through the barber's door.
posted by pipeski at 12:16 PM on September 12, 2020

Today I dreamed about raising kittens and going out to eat in a cafe with friends. I ordered a cheese plate and then a BLT. It was amazing.

Such ordinary past life dreams for this time.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:06 AM on September 13, 2020 [1 favorite]

Mod note: Hey all! thanks for the awesome engagement. I'm thinking we should give #dreamweek an extension, till the end of the month! Let's keep using the same hashtag for consistency. Looking forward to hearing all about dreams.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 4:50 AM on September 15, 2020

I had an interesting dream in early July shortly after the government here in the UK had just reopened the pubs. I don't normally record my dreams, but this was a really vivid one, so I typed it out. This seems like as good a place as any to share it:

Boris Johnson was pointing out that he was thirsty and it was definitely not his round. That he, one of his cronies, and myself had gotten a round so it was someone else's turn. Then his crony pointed out that he was mistaken in an over-generous way, and that I had not gotten a round, making it clear that it was my round. I pointed out that my glass was empty so the timing was perfect. Just as I was about to ask what he would like to drink, the PM loudly proclaimed that I had not asked him what he wanted to drink and how did I expect to get a round without knowing that? I said "I was just about to ask. So what'll it be?" He then went on a long-winded speech about the nature of happiness and insanity, suggesting that the fundamental difference between the two is whether or not one's delusions happen to correspond to reality, and that I should give this idea some serious consideration. I said that I would, and started walking to the bar, only to realise that I still did not know what he wanted to drink. I wasn't sure if he just hadn't told me or if I had lost track of it in the long-winded speech. I came to the conclusion that I would have to go back and ask him again, which filled me with dread, and I woke suddenly.

posted by swr at 9:57 AM on September 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Yay, #dreammonth! Two nights ago I had a dream that my family rented an AirBnB in a large city, and when we got there (after an exceedingly long trip by airplane and an airport shuttle that was also, inexplicably, a rollercoaster) the entire apartment was a crime scene.

Specifically, a pizza crime scene: pepperoni scattered about, caramelized onions strewn across multiple rooms and surfaces, grease and tomato sauce spatter on walls. In the kitchen, the last occupant had pinned a pizza to the wall like some grotesque trophy of culinary murder.

We were very tired, so we stayed there anyway. In the dream, I fell asleep in the kitchen on hold with AirBnB's support line.

In real life, I woke up to find my weighted blanket had slid halfway off the bed in the middle of the night, apparently rendering my unconscious just as unbalanced.
posted by deludingmyself at 3:07 PM on September 25, 2020 [1 favorite]