i am dreaming right now
i am dreaming, and this is a dream
I’m gonna tell you about a dream I once had. I know that’s, when someone says that, then usually you’re in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be, but it sounds like, you know, what else are you going to do, right?
waking life (2001)
what else?
well, weird dream pills.
atovaquone/proguanil, sold under the brand name malarone, is a fixed-dose combination medication used to treat and prevent malaria, including chloroquine-resistant malaria. i got mine off the internet. i take one a day.
on the patient information leaflet slotted (by law) into every pill box is a long, long list of side effects. a side effect is an effect, whether therapeutic or adverse, that is unintended. one of the common side effects of malarone is ‘strange dreams’.
and so. i have been having strange dreams. a statistically significant quantity, and, i might add, quality. significantly strange, and in some cases, strangely significant. apart from my malarial invulnerability, this side effect is absolutely the best thing about malarone. it’s so (side) effective, it brings to my mind the dreamshit of china mieville’s perdido street station, one of my favourite fictional drugs. and yet, somehow, i doubt that it’s going to catch on recreationally.
you are either a non-player character, a construct, within my dream
or i am a construct within your dream
or we are both constructs within someone else’s dream
something else?
Most people never ask themselves that when they’re awake, or especially when they’re asleep. Seems like everyone’s sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams.
Waking Life (2001)
one of these strange dreams is stranger than the others.
stranger in a strange way.
it’s not that it seems any more surreal than normal.
actually, in some ways, it seems more real.
i say i am dreaming
but who am i, dreaming?
who am i dreaming?
… venerable tradition of sorcerers, shamans and other visionaries who have developed and perfected the art of dream travel, the so-called lucid dream state where by consciously controlling your dreams, you’re able to discover things beyond your capacity to apprehend in your awake state …
Waking Life (2001)
the moment of realisation is unexpected, and in hindsight, unremarkable. there’s nothing about this specific situation that suggests i should suddenly and surprisingly recognise its artifice, but i do.
i am dreaming, i say. to myself, maybe, or to nobody in particular. i am dreaming right now.
i am not awake-me, asleep
i am someone or something else
entirely or partially
i am a projection perhaps
i am a residual self image
Art was not the goal but the occasion and the method for locating our specific rhythm and buried possibilities of our time. The discovery of a true communication was what it was about, or at least the quest for such a communication.
Waking Life (2001)
i am dreaming, and this is a dream. immediately, a world of infinite possibility opens up like the perfect pink-tipped petals of a lotus flower, like the crinkled, wrinkled, unfolding origami of an old os map of lancashire, like the legs of a lover, or other.
in which case
i am being dreamed
seems to be a more accurate
approximation
Our planet is facing the greatest problems it’s ever faced. Ever. So whatever you do, don’t be bored. This is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.
Waking Life (2001)
i wake up
harry styles sex dream: harry styles of one direction formerly, lets me play with his hair, lets me muss it up a bit, with both hands, and then my hand is in his and he tells me i adore you. i bet you say that to all the boys harry but i don’t care not even a little bit
