Don’t worry this is a dream. Or should you be worried? It was my dream. I guess if anyone it’s I who should be worried. (Don’t like the word should). Or should my dreams worry you? If I don’t act on them. Which in this case I won’t for lots of reasons.
The Dream
I am sitting in an underground restaurant at a booth table, under a stone arch. It is vaguely Spanish, vaguely reminiscent of a cellar bar I used to go in Bristol (Beer Emporium, in King Street). I am with my girlfriend. Soon it seems to become my ex-girlfriend. We are ‘sharing’ a large dish of what is apparently venison crumble despite the fact that in real life I am vegetarian and in the dream I know that we both are. (Emporium used to do cracking and enormous pizzas, don’t recall a venison topping. Four cheeses? Definitely.) The crumble is delicious. As we discuss her impending departure from the shared home we are frequently interrupted by a young man hovering near the table. Sometimes he is in the role of a waiter. I know him to be the new boyfriend. The one she is leaving me for. She knows that I know. It is not a secret it seems.
We finish half the crumble. It is quite large. She says something that implies that she will use the remaining crumble to self harm! (I know! I can’t remember the words, just the feeling. How it would be done seems unimportant in the dream). I say that I am not going to let her takeaway the leftovers. She says she was joking. I am not convinced. I say that I will eat it, it was after all delicious. There is a pointless verbal skirmish. That bit could definitely be from real life!
Talk turns to her imminent departure from our home. She wants to move on. I want to stall. The sticking point seems to be shared custody of our pets. Cockroaches. In a tank. Lots of them. The mental image of the tank varies in size. It is always filthy in the images. There don’t seem to be any cockroaches in it. It is my turn to clean the tank and I have been prevaricating. She insists that I clean it and then she will move out. I wonder aloud what my incentive is for doing the cleaning. The answer is not clear. The young man hovers. The dream ends.
My question really is this. Accepting that all these images were generated from my brain, popular and historic opinion seems to be from the subconscious, should I be worried? What if I dream about something taboo? I might know that I have no intention of acting upon the contents on the dream any more than I intend to cook venison crumble. Yet my brain undoubtedly generated those images.
In many dystopian worlds imagined by authors and writers the ability for thoughts to be read and indeed for governments to monitor and want to control them. From one of Asimov’s robot to Orwell’s 1984 through Gillian’s Brazil and of course Bowie. His influence is in there.
“Fleas the size of rats sucked on rats the size of cats’.
If a world like that becomes fact does that mean that I could be held responsible and accountable for that dream and its contents. Thankfully, we are a long way from that world and not in my lifetime seems to be an increasingly common thought and phrase for me. This one without regret!
Would any government do it? In a heartbeat. There will be cold authoritarian logic. The will of the people. If you have done (thought) nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear. Yet fear is precisely what many governments, including some so called democracies use to steer us, control us.* The scared brain is less likely to function rationally.
I have had complicated dreams before, I wrote an entire 7 minute piece based on one quite recently. I have often (not often enough!) woken up with almost entire songs in my head. This time there is no song just a collection of bizarre dreams and for a few minutes a very REAL feeling carried forward from the dream.
Don’t be surprised to see a song emerge next year featuring cockroaches and venison crumble, or near relatives.
* It is possible to be congruently scared about something real and allow some protection and preventative measures for limited periods. Providing this is truly democratically monitored that can work. I think we know what I talking about whilst having no doubt that if there is potential for grinding the bastards will do it and take advantage of the situation. Feelings, thinking and behaving can form a healthy triangle to co-ordinate real world events, individually or in communities.