Rerun: Bernard Welt presents ... A DREAM DAY (orig. 04/18/08)

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... undermines the old chestnut that no one is interested in listening to someone else tell their dreams. It’s been a hot site since it started a few weeks back, and I think the main reason is that everyone’s interested in Clinton, Obama, and McCain, but not really in anything they actually do or say. So it’s much easier to get caught up in what they get up to in people’s dreams. It’s like imaginary gossip. An example:

I found out about this website through a story in the New Yorker’s“Talk of the Town” section, so I wrote in, mentioning how I’m a big honking dream expert and maybe I should do a little commentary on some dreams. Hell, yeah, they said. As a result, I‘m their Dream Expert #3.

An interesting piece by Scott Cheshire appeared on the dreams-of-candidates blog appeared in The Huffington Post under the title, “I Dream of Jesus--As Barack and Hillary Join the Collective Unconscious,” citing my dreamwork BFF Jason Tougaw. Jason is a writer you will hear more of someday.

“The Metaphysical Poll” (as it’s also called) is the brainchild of Toronto writer Sheila Heti, who is as her website says “the author of the story collection The Middle Stories and the novel Ticknor. Her writing has appeared in various places—The Believer, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Brick . . . . She is also the creator of the Trampoline Hall lecture series, at which people speak on subjects outside their areas of expertise.”

Sheila is a very good writer and regulars here who do not already know her work will take to it, I think.




I teach a course on dreams in which students keep a dream journal and discuss their dreams—along with academic study of Freud, Jung, and the other 20th-century dream theorists; cross-cultural perspectives on dreaming from around the world; the historical relation of ideas and observations about dreaming to prevailing theories of imagination, creativity, and the nature of mind. I learned pretty early on that anyone can recall dreams if they’re willing to experiment with their sleep schedule and arrangements, their intake of intoxicants, and their attitude—including a little auto-suggestion. Here’s how:


Keeping a dream journal





Prepare yourself to recall dreams:

Always keep pen and paper readily accessible beside your bed. Use a small flashlight or pen with light if you're recalling dreams in the night and have trouble writing in the dark. A tape recorder works well for some people, but remember that it can make transcription of dreams more difficult.

Find a format for your dream journal. Many people use a spiral notebook or loose-leaf paper on a clip¬board to record dreams, then transcribe them in a journal kept on computer. If you use a bound journal, be sure to leave yourself room to add further notes and comments later.

Date your paper in advance. Not only will you want an accurate record; you'll find that writing the date enhances your commitment to recalling your dreams.

Try auto-suggestion to encourage dream recall. You can simply say to yourself, "I will recall my dreams tonight." Develop a ritual if it appeals to you. Remind yourself that you want to write down your dreams as well as recall them. If you want to try planning a topic or question for a dream, write about it in your dream journal before retiring.

Wake up 15 to 30 minutes early to give yourself time to recall and record dreams. (Soon you will need less time than this.) Go to bed earlier or cut down on another activity so you don't feel you're cheating yourself of sleep.

Read material on dreaming or review your dream journal before going to bed. Quiet study of material on any interesting topic at bedtime may increase dream recall.

If you wish, start your dream journal by writing an assessment of your major concerns in life. You might also want to write about the major concerns of each day before retiring. This can aid you in discovering the themes of dreams and dream series, and give personal focus to the experiment of keeping a dream journal.





To record your dreams:

Awaken gently. Record your dreams lying in bed, without shifting position suddenly. If you find your alarm jarring, you might replace it with a clock radio. If you awake in the night with a dream, use a very low-level light or a light-pen—or become accustomed to writing in the dark—so you don’t have to turn on a light.

Don't put off recording a dream. Don't mull over dreams in the shower or on the bus before recording them. Write them down immediately upon arising. If you want to get an accurate picture of your dream life, don't dismiss any dream as too trivial or fragmentary to record.

List major images first if you sometimes lose track of dreams as you write your record--for example: grandfather/fish/skeleton/wagon/clock. You may then find you can go back and reconstruct the whole dream from the outline. This is especially helpful for people who have usually had poor recall.

If you have difficulty recalling dreams:

Adjust your schedule of awaking so that you're more likely to catch a dream: awaken twenty minutes, an hour, or an hour and a half earlier than usual. It will be easier to do this on a day when you have the morning free. If this isn't working, try awakening several times during the night. (Remember that you get the best rest if you keep a regular schedule for sleeping and waking, even on weekends.)

Remember that alcohol and almost all drugs (including over-the-counter antihista¬mine sleeping aids) interfere with dreaming and dream recall.

Use auto-suggestion, at bedtime and several times during the day, to remind yourself that you want to recall and record dreams.

Discuss dreams and readings on dreaming with others; read extra material on the subject.

Write in your journal whether you recall dreams or not. Write about dreams you've had in the past. Write about common dream themes, like flying, falling, finding money, taking a test or making an artwork.





For me, going back and commenting on dreams is as important as keeping the record. For example, repeated images and themes generally aren’t remembered from night to night to night unless you review your dream journal – I once dreamed about swimming pools for about three months, and I doubt I would have known if I hadn’t been keeping track of my dreams.
If you’re interested in examining the content of your dreams, I think it’s best to stay far away from any conventional guides to dream symbolism, or established systems. This is what I suggest in class:

Transcribe your dreams in a legible format. Your original record may be sloppy and unreadable; you need a version that you can consider at length and return to in the future. Do not put off the transcription; if you're recalling dreams regularly, it's best to transcribe them every day, or at least every two or three days.

Title your dream when you transcribe it. Usually a title occurs to you without reflection—a good indication that you know the thematic core of the dream.

Identify day residue and memories when you have completed your account of the dream. Write about the connection between your dream and the day's events and concerns, or memories it has awakened.

Identify major images, characters, and settings in the dream. Describe them in detail; relax and write your associations from each. Don't dismiss your first associations as trivial, irrelevant, or silly; turn off your internal censor.

Identify puns, metaphors, dates, numbers, quotations. Puns are more common than you might think—I’ve seen dreams that made obvious use of the surnames of Bob Hope and Tyrone Power, and I had a dream myself in which Barbra Streisand was insistently referred to as “BS.”

Compile a glossary of recurring images. If you find that the same image, character or setting comes up in several dreams, set aside some time to consider it in detail.

Most dream images (including actions) seem to yield most when considered for associations and metaphors. Freud’s question, “What does this make you think of?” really does work. Dr. Gayle Delaney , who’s written several popular guides to dream-work, suggests asking yourself:
------Does the setting remind you of anything?------Who is X (each person in the dream)?------Who or what does X remind you of?------Is any part of you like X?------What is Y (each object in the dream)?------Does Y remind you of anything?------Do the major action or events in the dream remind you of anything?------Is this dream similar to other recent dreams?





There are a number of famous literary works either based on or about dreams. Col-eridge’s “The Pains of Sleep” is one of the best at capturing the emotionally intense and uncanny feeling of an anxiety dream:

The Pains of Sleep

Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought expressed,
Only a sense of supplication;
A sense o'er all my soul impressed
That I am weak, yet not unblessed,
Since in me, round me, every where
Eternal strength and wisdom are.

But yester-night I prayed aloud
In anguish and in agony,
Up-starting from the fiendish crowd
Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:
A lurid light, a trampling throng,
Sense of intolerable wrong,
And whom I scorned, those only strong!
Thirst of revenge, the powerless will
Still baffled, and yet burning still!
Desire with loathing strangely mixed
On wild or hateful objects fixed.
Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!
And shame and terror over all!
Deeds to be hid which were not hid,
Which all confused I could not know
Whether I suffered, or I did:
For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,
My own or others still the same
Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.

So two nights passed: the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day.
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me
Distemper's worst calamity.
The third night, when my own loud scream
Had waked me from the fiendish dream,
O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,
I wept as I had been a child;
And having thus by tears subdued
My anguish to a milder mood,
Such punishments, I said, were due
To natures deepliest stained with sin, -
For aye entempesting anew
The unfathomable hell within
The horror of their deeds to view,
To know and loathe, yet wish and do!
Such griefs with such men well agree,
But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?
To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed.





But my all-time favorite is Walt Whitman’s “The Sleepers.”
This is the first part:

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I wander all night in my vision,
Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping,
Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers,
Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory,
Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping.

How solemn they look there, stretch'd and still,
How quiet they breathe, the little children in their cradles.

The wretched features of ennuyes, the white features of corpses, the livid faces of drunkards, the sick-gray faces of onanists,
The gash'd bodies on battle-fields, the insane in their strong-door'd rooms, the sacred idiots, the new-born emerging from gates, and the dying emerging from gates,
The night pervades them and infolds them.

The married couple sleep calmly in their bed, he with his palm on the hip of the wife, and she with her palm on the hip of the husband,
The sisters sleep lovingly side by side in their bed,
The men sleep lovingly side by side in theirs,
And the mother sleeps with her little child carefully wrapt.

The blind sleep, and the deaf and dumb sleep,
The prisoner sleeps well in the prison, the runaway son sleeps,
The murderer that is to be hung next day, how does he sleep?
And the murder'd person, how does he sleep?

The female that loves unrequited sleeps,
And the male that loves unrequited sleeps,
The head of the money-maker that plotted all day sleeps,
And the enraged and treacherous dispositions, all, all sleep.

I stand in the dark with drooping eyes by the worst-suffering and the most restless,
I pass my hands soothingly to and fro a few inches from them,
The restless sink in their beds, they fitfully sleep.

Now I pierce the darkness, new beings appear,
The earth recedes from me into the night,
I saw that it was beautiful, and I see that what is not the earth is beautiful.

I go from bedside to bedside, I sleep close with the other sleepers each in turn,
I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers,
And I become the other dreamers. . . . .


It’s a long poem in eight parts. This is how it ends:


The sleepers are very beautiful as they lie unclothed,
They flow hand in hand over the whole earth from east to west as they lie unclothed,
The Asiatic and African are hand in hand, the European and American are hand in hand,
Learn'd and unlearn'd are hand in hand, and male and female are hand in hand,
The bare arm of the girl crosses the bare breast of her lover, they press close without lust, his lips press her neck,
The father holds his grown or ungrown son in his arms with measureless love, and the son holds the father in his arms with measureless love,
The white hair of the mother shines on the white wrist of the daughter,
The breath of the boy goes with the breath of the man, friend is inarm'd by friend,
The scholar kisses the teacher and the teacher kisses the scholar, the wrong 'd made right,
The call of the slave is one with the master's call, and the master salutes the slave,
The felon steps forth from the prison, the insane becomes sane, the suffering of sick persons is reliev'd,
The sweatings and fevers stop, the throat that was unsound is sound, the lungs of the consumptive are resumed, the poor distress'd head is free,
The joints of the rheumatic move as smoothly as ever, and smoother than ever,
Stiflings and passages open, the paralyzed become supple,
The swell'd and convuls'd and congested awake to themselves in condition,
They pass the invigoration of the night and the chemistry of the night, and awake.

I too pass from the night,
I stay a while away O night, but I return to you again and love you.

Why should I be afraid to trust myself to you?
I am not afraid, I have been well brought forward by you,
I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long,
I know not how I came of you and I know not where I go with you, but
I know I came well and shall go well.

I will stop only a time with the night, and rise betimes,
I will duly pass the day O my mother, and duly return to you.

Read the whole poem

A couple of years ago I gave a paper about it at a conference session on dreams in literature, including this:

-----Writing before the outbreak of the Civil War, in an atmosphere pervaded by geographic and sectarian divisions, Whitman consciously took on a task that was eccentric at the time but has since become an essential element in how we think about poetry, and indeed all the arts: to provide a vocabulary of images and symbols that would allow a diverse audience to find common ground, transcending the intractable divisions of political life in the realm of the imagination, and thus—as has arguably been the case since his time—using art as a means to break accustomed conceptual bonds. In this respect, Whitman’s dream theory also anticipates other 20th-century theories, especially that of Mark Blechner, as discussed in The Dream Frontier (Blechner, 2001). Blechner begins by accepting the essentials of J. Allan Hobson’s activation-synthesis hypothesis of dream-formation, the first serious scientific theory of dreaming since Freud, which holds in contrast to Freud that the imagery of dreams is randomly generated, and thus that there is no “latent content,” no repressed wish which the manifest content seeks to disguise. Instead the content of dreams may lead through association, like many other randomly generated contents, to revelation of the dreamer’s preoccupations and complexes. But Blechner asserts in addition that it is precisely in their bizarre imagery, disjunctiveness, and conceptual confusion that dreams have their uniqueness and value: as daytime thought defers to the categories set by language, dreams constitute a form of extralinguistic thinking through image and metaphor that allows us to break through accustomed conceptual boundaries and, essentially, “think the unthinkable.” In The Sleepers, this appears to be Whitman’s theory, too, and he offers his poem as a way to share the advantages of breaking conceptual bonds not as a personal matter alone, but as a means of revitalizing national consciousness. In contemporary language, Blechner and Whitman share a view of the dream as not only creative but fundamentally subversive. In imagery of the erotically liberated body, of the embrace between traditional opponents, and of the capacity of the individual to integrate personal and political history in an uniquely original approach to citizenship, Whitman demonstrates that the subversive value of dreaming is precisely that of poetry as he conceives it—and indeed there is nothing he says of poetry in his critical observations that is not also true of dreaming as he envisions it in The Sleepers.




Last: Something I wrote last year. This was intended to be a short film, several male talking heads relating their dreams to the camera, but it hasn’t happened yet, and the window of George Bush’s relevance is rapidly closing.


The Dream Body of George W. Bush


I wake up—I wake up inside the dream, you understand—and I’m in my freshman dorm room, in my bed. It’s a narrow bunk bed; I couldn’t sit up without bumping my head. Sometimes when I got into it, it felt like I was climbing into my coffin. Anyway, I wake up—inside the dream—and my roommate, F---, is just standing there in the semi-dark, turned away from me, in his pajamas. My freshman roommate was a very dorky guy, who wore pajamas and picked his nose right in front of me. He turns slightly toward me and I can see he’s got a hunting knife, a big, scary-looking, slasher-movie kind of knife, like you’d gut a deer with.
-----Then he smiles down at me and he hasn’t got a knife in his hand anymore. He’s a got this unworldly big hardon tenting his jammies, like a fireplug, thicker than a guy’s dick could possibly be. He rubs it just a little, smiling. Then it’s like there’s a close-up of his face, or maybe he’s leaning in over me, and I see he’s got blood in his mouth, like his gums were bad or he bit his tongue or something, but he’s still smiling, and he’s turned into George W. Bush, like he looks in those pictures from his Texas Air National Guard service, grinning like he knows exactly what I’m thinking.


My friend M--- and I are on an assembly line, in chef’s hats and smocks, like Lucy and Ethel, and there are candies coming by, we’re trying to roll them in chocolate but of course they’re coming too fast, so instead of freaking out like Lucy and Ethel in the show we just laugh and laugh like we’re stoned, and the guy in charge comes out like he does in the TV show, only it’s George W. Bush, and he looks at us in disgust. Then he reaches over and takes my friend’s chin, but gently, into his hand, and then he suddenly spits, hard, into my friend’s face, like a cobra spitting venom. And my friend’s head explodes. And then he turns to me and says, “Now you clean this mess up,” and leaves, and I start trying to clean up, and then the assembly line starts again and a coffin comes down the line and I have to drape an American flag over it and salute it as—the assembly line is like as long as a football field now—as it disappears out of sight.



I dream I’m Colin Powell and I’m standing at attention at some kind of ceremony, in my uniform. I’m saluting and there are flags and a lot of Marines in uniform; I think it’s a funeral at a military cemetery, or maybe a memorial service; I can see Washington-type monument buildings around. And there’s this weird little buzzing noise, really bothering me. It’s a voice, saying something; I can’t hear what it’s saying. I look to my right, and there’s no one standing there. Then I look down and it’s George W. Bush, only he’s the size of a kid, like three feet tall, and he’s got a tiny, buzzy little voice and he’s talking the whole time. I try to tell him quietly to simmer down, just hang on, be quiet while what-ever it is is going on. But he starts plucking at my trouser leg, and then he’s pulling at it it, and he pulls my pants down and I get tangled on them and fall on the floor and he’s attacking me, digging into me with sharp fingernails, going for my face. And he’s still the size of a little kid and I’m still Colin Powell, by the way.


I don’t know about this, this dream really shook me up. All it is, is we’re sitting in a rowboat, me and this old friend of mine, from home. I can feel the water rocking the boat gently, I can hear the insects and the birds and the fish occasionally breaking the water; I can see the sunlight filtered through low-hanging branches. And we’re fishing, you know, with poles, out of the boat. On the bank of the river, in the sunlight, I can see some guys playing touch football. They have their shirts off, and they look like those pictures you see in an Abercrombie & Fitch store, like they’re just pretending to play football, just pretending to have a good time. And somehow, my friend turns into George W. Bush; he’s looking quiet and intense, like he’s thinking all seriously about something, and then I notice that the base of the pole he’s using is rubbing against his crotch, he’s rubbing himself off against it, and suddenly I’m really anxious, I mean I’m pretty terrified, like what’s gonna happen here. And he doesn’t feel like my friend anymore, but different, like a grownup does, when you’re a kid. And Bush grins at me, but that don’t make me feel any better, and he reaches across me, like to get at the tackle box, but his hand grazes across my crotch, and when the side of his hand brushes across it, I feel that my dick is rock-hard, and that’s when I . . . I mean, if you’d a told me I’d wake up from a dream about George W. Bush with a fresh load in my jockeys, I just don’t know what.




I wake up in a cabin in the woods, and I hear noises, like someone rattling around in the kitchen. I walk down a hall, a carpeted hall, way too long and fancy to be in any cabin, and through a doorway I see that I’m looking into the Oval Office—in the White House, you know? The President is standing, turned away from me; it’s like there’s a stove at the window, and he’s cooking eggs and bacon or something, he’s wearing an apron and humming a little tune, like a TV sitcom theme song. He turns towards me—it’s George W. Bush—waves me over, scoops breakfast onto two plates, and sets them down. I come over and look at the plates and there’s a little dead dog on one and a little boy’s head on the other. And he’s smiling, smiling, and now he looks sort of more like Alfred E. Newman from Mad magazine.


I get hired by this creepy old guy to be a male prostitute. I mean, I’ve never had a sexual experience with a guy or felt any desire to, but it makes sense in a way, because the whole scene feels like it isn’t about sex in any normal sense at all, but about a task or ordeal, something distasteful to me I have to go through to prove myself. The guy who hires me is like a parody of sophistication in a bad old movie, wearing a smoking jacket, drinking a glass of white wine, and he has this ridiculous snotty British accent. Anyway, I have to strip and get in bed and wait for him, and when he comes in, he’s a little old man now, wrinkled and bald and squinty, and he’s taken his teeth out. I lie back on the bed and he “services” me, and all I can think about is, is my dick big enough, is it hard enough, is he going to like it, and I’m disgusted, yes, but really I mostly feel like it’s a job interview and I’m anxious about how I’m coming across. Then I’m on top of him and he’s got his thin creepy white arms around me and my cock is in, I guess, his hole and I’m pumping, pumping . . . It doesn’t feel tight, it feels loose and slimy, like I’m fucking into mud, like I’m sinking into a morass. It’s scary and depressing. I stop in a kind of shock and the old guy opens his eyes and looks up at me, and now suddenly, he’s George W. Bush. And he looks up at me, like “Why d’you stop?” but smiling that weird smirk of his and he says, “You’re doin’ a heck of a job, man, a heck of a job.”


In this dream I’m running through a futuristic city. I run along some rails way up high, like the rails of an elevated tram line. I run through alleys, I run on empty desert roads, I run through crowds of Asian-looking people in some third-world type marketplace. And at some point, I realize that I’m Tom Cruise and I’m running to save the world from something, I have to get somewhere, I have to stop some catastrophe from happening, some supervillains are going to destroy our way of life. I run out on a pier, and this is the part that really looks like a movie, with edits and everything: I run towards a boat, with a huge flat deck, like a battleship, that is pulling away, and I run toward the end of the pier, and I just keep running, I fly through the air—I’m still Tom Cruise—and I land, gently as a feather on the deck. I’m surrounded by thousands of men in uniform, simple uniforms, chambray shirts and blue pants, and they’re looking toward the sky, gesturing and shouting, full of hope and expectation, transported by their excitement, and I see a form floating down through the sky. There’s no plane or anything, he’s just drifting down as if from heaven, but with a parachute, and he lands on an upper deck, men are stripping his parachute away and he stands revealed to the crowd below, holding his arms up like Rocky, and grinning, full of confidence and vigor, and I see that it’s George W. Bush, looking incredibly virile and youthful, like a guy in a ‘50s war movie. There’s a banner behind him but I can’t see what it says, and this is very frustrating for me, because I feel that, if I just knew what the banner said, I’d know how everything is going to turn out.


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p.s. Hey. For the weekend, I resurrect this rich and helpful post by writer, thinker, and d.l. emeritus Bernard Welt for your delectation, and I hope you're glad that I did. Thank you again so much from years in the future, B. So, since there are only a handful of comments, and since I'm still downing my second cup of morning coffee right now, I'll go ahead and p.s. the place up. ** Cassandra Troyan, Hi, Cassandra! So awesome of you to be here and say what you did. Oh, my address, yes, I want a 'THRONE OF BLOOD' badly, thank you!  So, it's: c/o Centre International des Recollets, 150 rue du Faubourg St. Martin,75010 Paris, France. Can't wait! All respect to you. ** David Ehrenstein: RIP: Hector, et. al. ** Dom Lyne, Hi, Dom! Things with are actually really great with me at the moment, thanks, and I'm really glad to hear that you're on the return and upswing. That sounds, yeah, intense. Great about your part in the Comics Convention, especially if it has tweaked your wish to make things for the world, me heavily included. And a belated very happy b'day! Yeah, except for trips out of town and here/there, I'll be in Paris late in the year, and, for absolutely sure, let me know when you're coming and pen me into your itinerary. More greatness! Take really good care, my friend. ** Sypha, He did seem very you, or, well, his photos did at least. ** Matty B., Hi, Matty! I got your email safe and sound. I'm just more mail-impaired than usual right now due to the distractions of this trip. You can find my mailing address in the comment to Cassandra Troyen just up above. And I'll head over to that link/pdf in a sec and bookmark it eternally. Lovely to see you, pal! ** Gary gray, Hey there, Gary! Me too, unstrangely enough. You good? What's up? ** Misanthrope, I guess the slave at the top wins the session by default if nothing else. Have a swell weekend. ** Okay, read and contemplate Mr. Welt's share of expertise, please. Don't know if the p.s. will be back again on Monday or not. The blog will be. Enjoy yourselves.