Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Three Dreams

Hilary Stace

Sun, 29 May 2016 12:23:10 +1200

What a fascinating thread. Reminded me that when I was young I was very keen on everything witchy. It was the days of TV's Bewitched but there was also a great genre of girls' witch literature with heroines who were powerful and could do magic. I often dreamed of hovering…

nzlemming

Fri, 27 May 2016 23:55:35 +1200

While some dreams are seamlessly realistic, others have very shabby production values.

Budgets cuts for the arts are to blame.

Joe Wylie

Fri, 27 May 2016 11:13:29 +1200

I highly recommend Michio Kaku's “The Future of the Mind”

Thanks Murray, will give it a go.

While some dreams are seamlessly realistic, others have very shabby production values. I'm thinking of the kind where the action is so urgent that you don't have time to check out the dodgy…

Murray Hewitt

Fri, 27 May 2016 10:47:57 +1200

Of course, many books (& some giant tomes) have been written on the subject of dream meanings. I haven't read most of them, but get the feeling that one's own interpretation of a dream is at least as valid as any “expert” opinion.

For a fascinating discourse on the past experiments,…

Ian Dalziel

Fri, 27 May 2016 06:52:14 +1200

can muster a vast amount of often mundane detail to create its own totally immersive verisimilitude
Viva verismo!
the devil is in the detail…

PS: hey Joe drop me an email,
I have a photo for you but my
computer has lost your email address

Joe Wylie

Thu, 26 May 2016 23:40:13 +1200

Yikes!

According to Leak's "memory" he discharged himself from hospital as he couldn't endure the behaviour of his fellow wardmates. The "disruptive" elderly woman in the next bed was real enough, but she was in an extended induced coma the whole time. As for the annoying guy who listened to…

Lilith __

Thu, 26 May 2016 23:16:18 +1200

a totally illusory version of his regular life were so detailed and convincing

Yikes!

Joe Wylie

Thu, 26 May 2016 22:46:56 +1200

Leading to the idea that anyone could be a Brain In a Vat and never know it.

While it doesn't appear to be online, I was intrigued by the Australian artist Bill Leak's account of his recovery from a major head injury in 2008. On waking from an induced coma…

Sacha

Thu, 26 May 2016 19:02:37 +1200

I too have had a dream in which I realised I was dreaming, and woke up. I then started going about my day, but weird things started happening, and I realised I was still dreaming, and then actually woke up for real.

seen Existenz?

John McCormick

Thu, 26 May 2016 18:35:26 +1200

When I was a schoolboy, I had a friend who took an interest in hypnosis. We agreed to hypnotise each other, and plant suggestions that we would have incredibly erotic dreams that night. It was an understandable goal, given that the real world was proving rather disappointing on that front.…

Nora Leggs

Thu, 26 May 2016 17:26:07 +1200

Dream bridge below… or above !

Lilith __

Thu, 26 May 2016 16:19:01 +1200

May be a good moment to mention Descartes and the Dream Argument.

Leading to the idea that anyone could be a Brain In a Vat and never know it.

nzlemming

Thu, 26 May 2016 13:18:37 +1200

It was a dark and stormy night… wait that’s Peanuts.

Edward Bulwer Lytton, actually. Schultz was deliberately referencing him.

Brent Jackson

Thu, 26 May 2016 09:48:31 +1200

... had nested this two levels deep.

Rich Lock

Thu, 26 May 2016 07:27:46 +1200

I've heard that it's quite possible to have particularly unpleasant experiences of bodily paralysis when doing this, the "night watchman syndrome". I've had something like it once, and it was really not nice. Sleeping causes some kind of muscle control suppression, and being "awake" when that happens can be quite…

Rich Lock

Thu, 26 May 2016 07:20:53 +1200

nested this two levels deep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1khghXRGb6k

Trevor Nicholls

Thu, 26 May 2016 06:59:04 +1200

Do y’all have the remembered-as-real thing?
and
I always know it's time to wake up and go for a pee because I start peeing into all sorts of cavities because there's never a toilet.

Most realistic dream I have ever had nested this two levels deep.
[In the dream] I…

Lilith __

Wed, 25 May 2016 20:25:07 +1200

I have a terrifying recurring dream of being the house of I grew up in and looking out the window and seeing the garden in flames.

Recently I told this to my sister, who said, “You know Dad used to have bonfires in the evening to burn garden rubbish? It…

Lilith __

Wed, 25 May 2016 20:20:44 +1200

There are various lists of common recurring dreams around the interweb.

Some are:

Flying
Falling
Being Chased
Trapped/Can’t move [see also sleep paralysis]
Naked
Lost/Unprepared
Teeth falling out
Can’t find the toilet
Drowning
Discovering new rooms in a house
Losing control of a vehicle [see xkcd]

I have flying dreams…

JacksonP

Wed, 25 May 2016 19:56:03 +1200

Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream.*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FIUuPUEacc

*Poe's law.

JacksonP

Wed, 25 May 2016 19:47:31 +1200

A couple of years ago I was in Kaiaua on the Miranda coast, and spotted this ghoulish head built into the climbing wall of the playground.

I had this immediate flashback to the one recurring nightmare I remember from childhood.

Around the age of 11 we moved into a house…

BenWilson

Wed, 25 May 2016 18:20:27 +1200

When I played waterpolo a lot, I had a frequent dream of being able to "eggbeater" (tread water without using hands) so efficiently that I could almost walk on the water. It wasn't really that much of a progression to treading air with powerful strokes.

In my early 20s I…

andin

Wed, 25 May 2016 17:23:00 +1200

I think the floating/flying dream is quite common but everyone has their own so all good. Dreams are personal, thanks for opening up about yours
Paul Butterfield does a dreamy song, this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WllnGLeqQGw
With sublime soprano sax solo by the great Dave Sanborn

Joe Wylie

Wed, 25 May 2016 15:23:39 +1200

In my early 20s I experimented with lucid dreaming where you try to set up the dream in advance.
A very long time ago, so long ago that I'm confident that no-one's privacy will be breached by repeating this anecdote, I knew a gentle hippie who dabbled in such things.…

nzlemming

Wed, 25 May 2016 14:45:57 +1200

Different thing, but two or three times I've woken up to go for a pee, come back to bed and thought "I liked that dream" and been able to go back into it.

I always know it's time to wake up and go for a pee because I start peeing…

Russell Brown

Wed, 25 May 2016 14:38:06 +1200

In my early 20s I experimented with lucid dreaming where you try to set up the dream in advance. I never had much success.

Different thing, but two or three times I've woken up to go for a pee, come back to bed and thought "I liked that dream" and…

Alfie

Wed, 25 May 2016 14:06:04 +1200

When I was about six years old I used to have regular flying dreams whenever I stayed at my Nana's house. It became so commonplace I began to look forward to it every time I went to bed. It was a very gentle and pleasant experience, quite "out of body".…

Bart Janssen

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:43:21 +1200

My flying dream is often a frustrating one where I can never quite get enough altitude and end up skimming along just above ground level or worse gaining enough height to make power lines a real issue.

Also I apparently often fly naked, which is embarrassing when you're flying at…

Russell Brown

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:22:00 +1200

My subconscious is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a total arsehole.

Yeah, not cool, Emma's subconscious.

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:15:49 +1200

Do y’all have the remembered-as-real thing?
I've spent hours looking for (or worrying about) things that I finally realise only occurred in a dream – or is it vice versa?

lucid ditty...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbXgtmN6AJY

nzlemming

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:15:41 +1200

Do y'all have the remembered-as-real thing?

Yup, on a number of occasions. I've had falling dreams, but very few flying dreams. I think I always know, in the back of my dream, that I'm dreaming and sometimes use that to wake up, before I hit the ground.

I've more recently…

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:09:56 +1200

Haven’t had that one for decades now (as far as I can remember).
The Last Wave is available on YouTube – combines both dreams and waves (brilliantly) without leaving the lounge – aaaahhh, the modern world, wake me when it's over!
:- )

Russell Brown

Wed, 25 May 2016 13:02:36 +1200

I have never, ever had the Flying Dream. Starting to wonder if that’s unusual.

I don't know. I'm quite surprised by how many people have something similar to mine.

Do y'all have the remembered-as-real thing?

Emma Hart

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:33:00 +1200

After my mum died, one of her friends got in touch to tell me she'd dreamed about Mum, and how wonderful it was, and I actually felt quite upset that I hadn't. Months later, I finally did dream about her for the first time since she died. I'd just given…

Brent Jackson

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:25:45 +1200

I too have had recurring flying dreams. As a teenager I had a series of falling nightmares that would wake me with my heart pounding in my chest, that got more terrifying, and more numerous, until one day, after falling off the Harbour Bridge, just before hitting the water, within…

Ian Dalziel

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:16:16 +1200

Meta Morpheus...
It’s really just exercising social noise.
or 'exorcising' in many cases...

I always find the light in dreams good evidence that photons don't have mass...

...and the detail, oh. the detail – sometimes I wake up drained from the processing that must go on – my poor 'wetware'…

Scott G

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:08:08 +1200

I have the same recurring flying dream, Russell. It feels like a mix of gliding and swimming. Being able to jump off things and glide or being able to kind of swim upwards in the air. Quite pleasant, they're always fun dreams to have.
The other recurring dream is being…

Russell Brown

Wed, 25 May 2016 12:03:58 +1200

and then realising what your subconscious was getting at

Yes. For me it's not like it happens often – like most people, I generally forget my dreams on waking – but when it does it's "Oh, right. I see what you're saying there."

James Dunne

Wed, 25 May 2016 11:56:04 +1200

There is something oddly gratifying about waking up from a dream – whether pleasant, frightening or just baffling – thinking 'where the hell did that come from?' and then realising what your subconscious was getting at – whether that's just reprocessing recent events or something a bit deeper and more…

linger

Wed, 25 May 2016 11:55:21 +1200

if I fell right, I’d never hit the ground. brings to mind Douglas Adams' definition of the secret of flying — "throw yourself at the ground and miss".

Public Address

Wed, 25 May 2016 11:55:21 +1200

Discussion from blog post.