When it's been suggested that, as a writer I really ought to keep a dream diary, I make excuses. I'm told that writing down my dreams, just after I wake, can help my creativity, open up new horizons, instil a sense of discipline, routine etc. I just know that I can't. All I can do with the dream diary idea is try and explain, to myself, why it won't happen.
The opposite of 'putting it in a nutshell' could be to 'have the world as my oyster', but for all its pearly sheen, an oyster is just another container. Another shell to cut me off from the universe outside. Dreams are like this, maybe they contain a kernel of truth or a pearl of wisdom (though I seriously doubt that) but they don't connect me to reality, they cut me off from it.
Since I was tiny, my imagination has been my constant familiar. I love it dearly, it has almost always been the most important thing in my life. Maybe this makes me borderline certifiable, but I usually feel I am in charge of it. I began controlling and experimenting with my imagination from before I can remember and it mostly does what I want. It has carried me through stormy days and sleepless nights. But when I can sleep, dreaming is seldom helpful.
In my dreams, my imagination is not merely beyond my control, it's out of synch with where I need it to take me. Sometimes the intensity of a dream, even though I've almost forgotten the subject, can invade a whole day, making me useless. I know that there are accepted reasons for people to believe that dreams are a way out of the nutshell or the oyster or the cave with shadows on the wall, I just don’t happen to believe them. For me, it feels like the opposite.
When I was a child, for a time I became petrified at the prospect of sleep, because my worst nightmare was waiting for me. This dream, recurring time after time, was of walking down a dark stairwell, down almost endless staircases, descending into catacombs or cellars or dungeons, spiralling out of my control and I knew there was something terrible and nameless at the bottom, waiting just for me. I would have welcomed Esher’s staircases, they make complete circuits, therefore there is no end. That would have been preferable to the knowledge that there was indeed an end.
I finally invented a way to escape from the horror of this nightmare. When my fear reached a certain pitch, I learned to very deliberately tell myself, this is a dream and now I am going to wake up. It worked, I did wake up. And a mere shadow behind the door was just my dressing gown hanging there, and the creak of the tree branches outside held no fear for me. And after a while the dream became less frequent. It has left me with an abiding horror of enclosed spaces, and a suspicion of staircases.
I have no desire to analyse this dream. I’m not interested in Freudian or spiritual interpretations of it. Dream imagery is bound to differ not just according to culture but also personal experience and associations. My nightmare is simply about an uncontrollable fear, which must be a pretty universal emotion. This is what I get from memorable dreams, emotion, not imagery.
I know that I do have pleasant dreams, but they seldom last into daylight, beyond a certain feeling of well being or satisfaction. Memorable dreams are of frustration, or fear, or exhausted anxiety because I have to perform some mundane task which is nevertheless so enormous as to be impossible. I often wake with a clear memory of sobbing my heart out from anxiety and frustration, so maybe I am still telling myself to wake up.
Such are my excuses for not writing a dream diary. So as a writer how do I go about “making the darkness conscious,” without this apparently invaluable tool? When writing fiction I find it comparatively easy, I make my characters suffer, putting myself into their heads, their minds, so that I can feel how they respond to the suffering. Perhaps this is where my dreams come in, enabling me to heighten the emotional intensity that my characters feel, but I don't need a dream diary to remind me of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment