Author Topic: Lockdown dreams  (Read 2125 times)

ravenbait

  • Someone's imaginary friend
  • Pudge controls the weather.
    • Someone's imaginary friend
Lockdown dreams
« on: 26 May, 2021, 02:27:24 pm »
I have weird dreams. Weird, vivid dreams. I generally write them down, and a couple of them, suitably polished, have gone on to earn me spots in professional-level anthologies[1] -- not bad for what is effectively the output of my slumbering brain.

I was flicking back through my dream logs yesterday, looking for something that might inspire a new piece, and noticed that my dreams have become even more vivid and surreal, even for me, since we started working from home. This is an actual phenomenon, and actual scientists are actually studying it for actual science.

https://www.lockdowndreams.com/about

I've got one that took me 6 pages to write down, in which I was staying with a family in Canada whose son Daniel became possessed by some kind of evil spirit. It played out like an episode of the X-Files.

I had another one in which my mother owned a collection of rare books in a building so distinctive I spent a couple of hours searching for it on google. There was a fire, and I got into a fight with a fireman about saving the books.

The other night I dreamed I was taking part in a reality survival show on an island in Antarctica, and the sea was literally heaving with an over-abundance of marine life, including whales breaching and fluke-slapping metres from the shore. One of the other contestants killed a leopard seal and was slicing big steaks out of its back with the same tool the Faroe Islanders use for slaughtering whales. I wanted to feel it was wrong, but there were so many of them, and we were all starving.

What dreams have you had that made you think, "Woah, that's freaky"? I won't steal any of them unless you tell me I can  O:-) .

Sam
[1] Details available upon request
https://ravenbait.com
"Created something? Hah! But that would be irresponsible! And unethical! I would never, ever make... more than one."

Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #1 on: 26 May, 2021, 02:36:50 pm »
I have had many, and definitely increased in recent months.

However the important thing about dreams are that they vanish when you wake.  There have been many that I have woken from, thought they were real, but on rolling over and going back to sleep the brain has sloshed to the other side and the unreality has drained back out.  I wake a few hours later only knowing that I had had a dream.


The only one I recall recently was needing a "number two" and every public convenience I went to was in a clothes shop changing room which looked more like an open plan changing room and thus I couldn't "perform" whilst everybody was watching.  I woke up finally, passed wind, rolled over, and happily went back to sleep into a different dreamland.

ravenbait

  • Someone's imaginary friend
  • Pudge controls the weather.
    • Someone's imaginary friend
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #2 on: 26 May, 2021, 03:08:32 pm »
I have had many, and definitely increased in recent months.

However the important thing about dreams are that they vanish when you wake.

Mine don't. I've had dreams where I've gone back to places I recognise from previous dreams. I had one the other night that was so vivid I could draw a map of the place, and once or twice I've woken up with earworms or whole pieces of text. I find that you are more likely to remember them if you write them down. It's like, if you don't do anything with them, your brain doesn't think remembering them is important enough to spend energy on doing so. Write them down and your brain says, "Oh! Okay, these have pertinence and value, so I shall create MOAR. Here you go, part of the conspiracy organism that likes such things. I made new ones for you!"

Sam
https://ravenbait.com
"Created something? Hah! But that would be irresponsible! And unethical! I would never, ever make... more than one."

Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #3 on: 26 May, 2021, 03:28:41 pm »
I must admit, I've had several that when they appear I say "here we go again", and there have been others so realistic that I spend the rest of next day trying to recall where the location was that fed into the dream.

But the key thing for me is that 04:10 when I wake up and look at the clock.....   everything goes away if I can get back to sleep.

ian

Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #4 on: 28 May, 2021, 10:16:45 am »
I've never, ever remembered a dream. I remember that I have dreamed, but nothing of their content. It's like constantly finding yourself standing out the movies, you've obviously seen a film, but you're damned if you can remember what it was. You go back in and ask them, but you've got a rather awkward erection.

I dream a lot, I'm sure. I get a good eight hours sleep a night since I don't believe in getting up before 9 am. I've had some particularly florid, disturbed nights since the COVID jab. I woke up thinking 'ouch' this morning, only to discover while peeking into the bathroom mirror that I've bitten the end of my tongue quite painfully. I probably dream Finestre was the nurse issuing the jab. This won't hurt, she says chirpily, yanking on the cord to bring the motor to life.

Lockdown dreams
« Reply #5 on: 28 May, 2021, 10:47:59 am »
I remember bits of my dreams. Last night involved a property for rent with a swimming pool. The description said not to use the pool. It was described as so cold it made the owner take up running.

I think they’ve only got more frequent / vivid since lockdown to the extent that lockdown coincided with us inheriting quite a lot of red wine.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
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Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #6 on: 28 May, 2021, 06:12:04 pm »
I've never, ever remembered a dream. I remember that I have dreamed, but nothing of their content. It's like constantly finding yourself standing out the movies, you've obviously seen a film, but you're damned if you can remember what it was. You go back in and ask them, but you've got a rather awkward erection.

This might help (SFW).
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #7 on: 29 May, 2021, 03:05:22 pm »
Last night I had two distinct dreams.  The first was a classic anxiety dream, though no idea why. I was trying to make cups of tea for my parents, but the kitchen was chaotic and I could find matching cups and saucers, then lost one of the full cups, and when I did finally take the tea to them, my grandparents (though they looked nothing like them) were there too so I had too little tea.

The second was odder. I was walking along in a small group, in Edwardian-like dress, when I looked down to my left, and some metres below me were people sitting in serried ranks of cardboard boxes, pretending to be rowing. I asked where the children were, and was told they were swimming in the river. I turned left, and sure enough there was a river, with children swimming in it, and some fish too. Looking to my left was a bridge arch, to my right a wide path that wasn’t, I was told, the disused railway I’d thought it to be.

And then I woke up.  ;D
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #8 on: 08 July, 2021, 10:31:12 am »
On Monday I was camping on top of the Ridgeway. I had a disturbing but short dream that some human-like creature was sitting on top of some stairs malevolently staring at me. I shouted "Go away! Go away! GO!" The last "GO!" being so loud that I woke myself up. I blame a malevolent spirit from Wayland's Smithy, which was less than a mile away.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ravenbait

  • Someone's imaginary friend
  • Pudge controls the weather.
    • Someone's imaginary friend
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #9 on: 08 July, 2021, 12:06:49 pm »
On Monday I was camping on top of the Ridgeway. I had a disturbing but short dream that some human-like creature was sitting on top of some stairs malevolently staring at me. I shouted "Go away! Go away! GO!" The last "GO!" being so loud that I woke myself up. I blame a malevolent spirit from Wayland's Smithy, which was less than a mile away.

Oh. I thought I'd got rid of all the malevolent spirits at Wayland's Smithy. Mind you, that was about 20 years ago, and it does attract the kinds of people who like to muck about with such things.

Sam
https://ravenbait.com
"Created something? Hah! But that would be irresponsible! And unethical! I would never, ever make... more than one."

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #10 on: 08 July, 2021, 03:26:20 pm »
What about the stairs though? I don't think Neolithics had stairs. I'm discounting the theory that stone circles are actually the foundations of two-storey buildings, the upper floors having rotted away as they were made of wood.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

ravenbait

  • Someone's imaginary friend
  • Pudge controls the weather.
    • Someone's imaginary friend
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #11 on: 08 July, 2021, 03:52:36 pm »
What about the stairs though? I don't think Neolithics had stairs. I'm discounting the theory that stone circles are actually the foundations of two-storey buildings, the upper floors having rotted away as they were made of wood.

Stairs are just steps. They had steps. I expect the stairs were metaphorical, though.

Sam
https://ravenbait.com
"Created something? Hah! But that would be irresponsible! And unethical! I would never, ever make... more than one."

ravenbait

  • Someone's imaginary friend
  • Pudge controls the weather.
    • Someone's imaginary friend
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #12 on: 15 July, 2021, 10:08:09 am »
One of last night's dreams was some sort of spy caper involving a drone with sensitive footage on an SD card, two Italian matriarchs and a character who was part Raymond Reddington, part Hannibal Lecter. It took place in Florence, the part I remember most clearly was wishing I could speak Italian, because I couldn't understand anyone without an interpreter. And there was this weird part in which I was running to swipe the drone from one matriarch as she handed it over to another matriarch, only I was too late. It wasn't a drone. The drone had already been sold. They still met, but one of them gave the other an ice cream. I arrived -- I'd sprinted there on foot through a crowd of tourists up a narrow grassy path beside a fence -- hot and sweaty, and the woman accepting the ice cream said, in heavily accented English, "No, thank you Isabella, not at my age. But this young woman looks fit and healthy. Perhaps she would like it." She gave me what looked like a half-filled Cornetto (if Cornetto came in tiramisu), then they got back into their limousines and drove off.

One of the other people in my "squad" told me sources had identified the person who'd bought the drone, and he was already dead, but I suddenly realised what the caper was and knew (1) they'd misidentified who'd bought it, and (2) he wasn't dead. He wanted the drone for some reason, but happily let me have the SD card.

Sam
https://ravenbait.com
"Created something? Hah! But that would be irresponsible! And unethical! I would never, ever make... more than one."

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #13 on: 15 July, 2021, 10:33:11 am »
That dream has to go with this song: https://youtu.be/oJdPS4RYzWM
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #14 on: 21 July, 2021, 08:57:18 am »
I received a message from Carradice that they would mend my saddlebag for free if I did a DIY 300 audax. They helpfully included a blank brevet card, a proper paper one, though I don't know how they did this as their chosen medium of communication was LinkedIn. So I started planning a route starting from somewhere near London, where I don't live, in to Hampshire where I was planning to visit a relative who doesn't live there, and then a northerly route back to the start.

I don't know which saddlebag they were going to mend as in woken up life I have more than one, none in need of mending.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

woollypigs

  • Mr Peli
    • woollypigs
Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #15 on: 21 July, 2021, 09:24:33 am »
Sam, just like you I go back and revisit some of my dreams and build on them, I call them my little soaps. Like Nutty I often go back to a dream and often upon waking, I spend most of that day trying to figure out if I ever have visited said location or what cause it to be in my dream - book or movie or internet rabbit hole about something I fell into. I still dig up things from our world tour 8-9 years ago, in my dreams that I have forgotten we did or visited. 13+ months of travel to stunning locations cause it all to become a blur.

I can also control my dreams/soaps, when hearing outside noises that often would have changed your dream direction - I skip, go back and fast forward, pick a new chapter etc. One of these soaps is about my parents and the DIY they tend to do on the house, some is real and some aren't, which of course makes a visit to them interesting - did they tell me or did I dream and does the dream match what they did - which makes the dream after a visit very interesting :) 

Another have DK, UK and Aussie locations mixed together and I used to walk route through that, visiting friends and favourite locations. 

I know a few of my dreams have stopped since I got together with Peli, or changed work or moved.
Current mood: AARRRGGGGHHHHH !!! #bollockstobrexit

Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #16 on: 21 July, 2021, 01:56:22 pm »
I've got a whole dream hospital in the making.
It's a combination of various horse spittals that I worked in over 40 years, and some imaginary bits for good measure.
Most of it is one of my more recent places of incarceration, but a significant bit is from the 70s.
I could probably now draw a map of this place, but it is peopled by shadows.
On the one hand I wish it would stop, but it's actually quite fascinating.
Too many angry people - breathe & relax.

Re: Lockdown dreams
« Reply #17 on: 21 July, 2021, 05:47:59 pm »
Speaking of maps. This is only dream adjacent.

But does anyone else find that when you go from not knowing a building/area to "getting it" your mental map/image turns by ninety degrees?
Miles cycled 2014 = 3551.5 (Target 7300 :()
Miles cycled 2013 = 6141.4
Miles cycled 2012 = 4038.1