I'm working hard to make up for some lost time at work. I got sick last week. It's still lingering, but I'm back in the office, which is good. On top of that, the week's fitful sleep has resulted in some exquisite imagery from my dreams, some of which I hope to incorporate into my creative work.I don't keep a dream journal in a strict sense, but I do keep a pen at my bedside. It was 3am last night when I woke up coughing. The image I held onto from the dream was of a nude, hairless, sexless, gray humanoid with bulging black eyes. It was shivering beside an iron bed frame covered in a pile of bloodied bandages stacked so high it was impossible to tell if there was a mattress underneath. The room was padded, lined with a mildewed polyurethane fabric. There was a porcelain sink in the corner, with rust stains and a leaky faucet.
The trouble with dream images is the difficulty of transcribing the mood from a dream. What I wrote above fails to deliver the simultaneous feeling of dread and excitement that was in that room during my dream. There was also a sense of altered states woven into the whole thing. And those bloodied bandages were unpleasant to look at, but there was a kind of relief in that they were no longer in use.
There's a character in my project that gets guidance from spirits while hallucinating, and I think this dream might contribute something to her story. But trying to get all the elements on the page will undoubtedly change the original moment several times before the elements are all just right.
And there's the part of fiction that's hard to describe, the aspect of fiction writing that I can't explain to some people. These people suggest, "You ought to write some journalism stuff. Like some 'life in Hungary' bits." These people mean well. They feel I'd be better off if I cast a wider net in search of publishers. But if I just wanted my words in print I'd go into journalism (or I'd keep a blog). It's not the act of writing that's got its hooks so deep in me. I enjoy composing a killer paragraph sure, but that is not what brings me back to this work. It is the fiction that I get a kick out of. It is the attempt to capture a moment taking on a life of its own.
My work on Miffland was exciting as long as it felt like the manuscript was more in control than I was, and the same is true of this fantasy story I'm working on. I guess it's kind of like dreaming that way.
So my question this week is this: What have you read or seen that creates a dreamlike state for the audience?
3 comments:
Alan Moore's Watchmen(graphic novel) has a set of stunning characters.
The one that I find particularly intoxicating is the Comedian.
Consider it: a man that has seen the world's "dark underbelly" and has understood everything. The mechanics of humanity offer him only a feeling of disgust. He treats everything as a joke. The romantic atmosphere that surrounds the stereotypical masked superhero makes him chuckle ironically. He is not a super-hero, at least not in the classical meaning.
The Comedian is "the madness, the pointless butchery ..." of the world. He is an agent of power, one that disregards humanity, morals. Power is his art and means of communication. There are no morals, to him the human condition is a joke. "He understands perfectly ... and he doesn't care"
The Comedian chose to become a mirror for the world. The reflection is a tragic parody.
Now, I will consider myself the audience. The point might turn out a little biased but anyway. There's something breathtaking in characters that are conceived to be mirrors of society. They have a given power from the start. The power to evaluate and put their mark on everything. They sound assertive and expansive. Why? Because their drama isn't an inner drama as in the case of the Comedian, on the contrary their drama is the tragedy of the world projected through their fiber. The Comedian is violent and "deliberately amoral". Yet he is helplessly human. But so authentic and alive. You can't help believing in this character.
So, ultimately the dreamlike state is given by a depiction of less of the "super" and more of the "human". If this works out then the whole point of the superhero fades away, all that is left is a man.
I'm glad to see you writing about your dreams (or at least trying to write about them). I've had another one that is worth retelling that I haven't gotten around to writing about it, yet. Maybe this weekend. There's something cool about writing about my dreams. For me, they are 2 completely separate (but connected) experiences. One is the experience of the dream. And the second is the experience of writing about it. These two experiences are so different from each other, sometimes I wonder if it's more like I'm writing fiction. I haven't written any fiction since I was very young (probably a teenager, for class) and since writing was never my best aptitude (according to just about every teacher I had before and during college), I haven't delved into the idea of writing anything just for the fun of it. And I surely haven't thought about what writing fiction must be like. I'm definitely a bit envious of you, Hogs.
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. there are some bits of that book in which spirit animals / spirit visions are described. but that is not what you are talking about here i guess, oh now i understand the question much more clearly, i don't have any good examples from books but movies, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind does one of the most spectacular jobs of capturing what it's like to be in a dream, how you move from emotion to emotion, and the scene changes all around you at once, and you almost don't notice, it seems natural sometimes. david lynch had some imagery in his films which does a fine job as well.
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