Margaret's Column

1. I frequently dream of things that later happen, usually minor things, like ordinary chores or scraps of conversation. I’ve had dreams like this since I was little. I mentioned it to my mother once, and she dismissed it as coincidence. This is impossible. I suppose one could argue that ‘oh, you dreamed it, so you somehow contrived to bring it about.’. Uh, but why? And how could I possible dream a specific conversation; I could say what I said in my dream, but I can’t put words into the other person’s mouth.

2. For several years, I dream about people I knew in high school; some were good friends of mine, others classmates whom I liked well enough. These aren’t memories; we’re never doing things we actually did. Often we’re on secret missions or elaborate trips. This is easier to explain: Where have we all gone, and what have we done?

3. I’ve been reading Lovecraft, and he posits that dream-life is our real life; waking life is the illusion. I think this may vary from person to person. Many people claim they don’t dream, or else they remember dreaming, but never the dreams themselves. I’ve always been a vivid and prolific dreamer. I get many story ideas from dreams, including a recent breakthrough on the fourth and fifth installments of The Lorrondon Saga.

4. Is this meant to be a message, or simply another view of the world? Not exactly a parallel universe, but the same universe from a different angle. (Chesterton called this mooreefoc, coffeeroom backwards. He wasn’t talking specifically about dreaming, but I don’t see why that can’t apply).

Or perhaps dreams are the place where past, present and future meet all at once, which they cannot do in waking life. Last night I realized I had to incorporate this into Book III; it’s part of Neoran religious practice that’s fallen out of fashion, and the attempts to revive it.

If there are ‘messages’ in dreams, as in warnings and such, I’ve never gotten one; Others insist they have, and I don’t doubt them; dreams and dreaming will, of course, mean different things to different people. Perhaps it all depends on what the individual expects expect from dreaming; if you expect warnings, premonitions, etc, you’ll get them. If you expect (or hope) for breakthroughs on plot points in your fiction, you’ll get those.

5. It’s a shame that too many people are familiar with Freud; the knowledge of modern psychology can’t be good for the imagination. But it’s impossible for educated people (the ones most likely to write/paint/etc) to avoid. It’s difficult to banish that ‘clinical’ angle, just as it’s difficult for any intended audience not to analyze. God, but I envy that final generation of writers and artists who didn’t have that monkey on their backs-people like the pre-Raphaelites, and William Morris. (Chesterton was born in 1874; he was relatively free of this, as were Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsly).

That djinn is long out of the bottle. More will follow.