Tag: Dreams

If Life is Comedic

I was about to start this entry — delayed I apologise, despite having more time to write than I’ve had at any other time since starting this blog I am finding it difficult to sit down and do it — with a statement to the affect of (I hadn’t yet settled on the precise wording) “in dreaming, we can finally bee ourselves”. I’m sure it hasn’t gone unnoticed by any longer term readers that I have a slight obsession with this phrase, every time mocking it as I do with the extra “e”, it’s just so exceedingly layered. The eternal onion, every time I return to it in my mind I find another sheet of meaning to be stripped off and examined. Yet at the same time there is a beautiful, truly beautiful, simplicity to the saying. I am sure it will continue to provide as we move forward, as it has so reliably done so far.

Anyway that sentiment (about in dreams) is not quite accurate, I realise upon further reflection. To say we can bee ourselves in dreams isn’t quite true, because unless you achieve complete lucidity within the dreamscape — which I have never experienced, though I’ve had moments which took me halfway there — then the experience is essentially an “on-rails” one. Pardon the vidya jargon, it’s just the most effective means of elucidation available. Of course so is waking existence, as I’ve written about before more than once, fairly recently. In “real life” there is the illusion of agency however, but in dreaming that illusion is removed. It could be said that in one sense dreaming is a more honest experience in that we simply follow along. Some people, one of whom I know, experience dreams from a third person perspective. They see themselves from outside.

I don’t dream in that way, my visual perspective is for the most part exactly as it is when awake. This was particularly clear the other night during the dream I had which inspired the point which I used as the prompt for this post. It’s a short one, but I remember most crucially being aware of my own upper limbs. I’ve always felt like a head above a body when dreaming, but my awareness of anything about my own anatomy beyond that has never really been something I felt worth paying any attention to. I’m not sure if I always have arms and legs, hands and feet, or if I sometimes sprout webbed alien flippers, large crablike claws, or cloven hooves. My attention is so taken by everything else, it’s something I don’t even think to wonder about, and after waking I’m in no position to examine a then faded experience.

So, the dream itself. Corona-Chan had had her way with the world, and work was back on the table, that is the premise. I was called in, for some kind of meeting, and it was announced that with the death or disappearance (not actual, thankfully) of unnamed once-colleagues a new team of replacements would be brought in to fill the old roles. These new characters, they were not right, they would shift and morph into new types in most blatant fashion. Impolite I think, to shapeshift as they did right in front of me. I believe the proper thing to do is to change out of eyesight and then somehow hold convincingly that they always appeared this way. That is the standard rule of dream, and they broke it. From a woman so tall and thin she towered over me, long nose drooping to form a sharp point, lank stringy greying hair; was molded a stout old world Turk complete with little red hat. The fez.

A few instances like this, a few such slippery characters, then appeared a more structurally stable seeming individual. Dark auburn hair held in a loose ponytail; a round, rather undefined, but nevertheless alluring visage; eyes, in colour and slight shine matching the hair atop her head, which expressed a certain acuity; delicately held atop a pretty plain — though difficult to tell, concealed beneath a woollen forest green jumper — figure, unremarkable if not for her fairly large breasts. I don’t include that last note of description in order to titillate, I don’t write for coomers (formerly cumbrains) and never will; in fact if you identify with that descriptive positively, that meaning in any sense other than as a state of being you wish to free yourself from, I want you to know you disgust me. That being said, I won’t pretend that feature of this fictional female wasn’t memorable, I am only human.

Drawn together like two magnets, we fell together and into the usual formalities. The handshake, the exchange of names, so on. There wasn’t much time for introductions though. My manager appeared, gave a rousing speech which I now forget the contents of along with the name of my mysterious maiden, and declared us back in action. A tour, of a new shop opening to mark the occasion. And like magic the cold glass prismatic canister on rails that would whisk us over there pulled in behind her. I’m sure you can figure out who was seated next to me, on my right hand side to be specific. It was an open carriage, empty save for our group, yet beyond her I saw nothing. We were in a bubble, her as much as me.

Her role in the interaction as an amalgamation of the noted movements and cues of numerous somehow-charmed ladies I’ve chanced to be stuck with in “real life” was not too unfamiliar, though still enough so as to rouse my full focus. My own part though, in the game of conversation we played, was something surprising. Again, note the total awareness of how I was merely along for the ride I was taking myself on. I’ve spoken before, on this thing I call a blog, about how in similar interactions that no doubt inspired this merely dreamed one I feel like I’m trapped in a bird cage of my own bones helplessly watching myself, through my own eye sockets, fail fantastically to demonstrate any charm.

Now the situation was reversed, from the first person I watched myself display a quick wit and casual confidence that is rather alien to me — there have been brief moments where I’ve distractedly stumbled into mimicking this “Chad-like” deportment, but the moment I notice the positive response I am always snapped right out of it — rhyming with her you could say. I’ve described it as a game, perhaps more accurately a dance. And it worked, the bubble around us gradually lost it’s transparency and the world beyond became a dimmer and dimmer thing. There was that rare genuine interest in genuinely uninteresting aspects of my life (I have no life), and, paired now, this encouraged a similar interest from me in turn.

This continued, and then somewhere along the way she looked me in the eyes, holding her gaze intently, and with a wry smile let go of the handle she had been holding to keep her still while turned to face me fully. I saw her about to crash to the floor, and immediately reached out to grab her. The smirk grew into a great grin, she purred playfully while still holding eye contact, I brought her back up onto her chair properly. As I was doing so, she instead leaned forward trying to pull me into an embrace. “Lucky me” was the last thing I remember hearing from her, my alarm crashing through the barrier between realms causing the train and everyone on it to dissipate almost instantly. What a lovely way to start the day.

The point in recounting the events of this dream? It was just a good dream. I need to improve my writing, I need to simply do some writing, and so now I have. No, that’s not quite true, there was the other thing.

On beeing yourself

One sentiment behind “yourself”                                                                                             Could be the simple fact of health,                                                                                                But one does wonder if perhaps                                                                                           Another meaning it might map.                                                                                                What if the moment you are you,                                                                                       However hard to follow through,                                                                                            Comes when you reach total comfort.

Now if this explanation is                                                                                                        Correct, not a hit and a miss.                                                                                                           It’s fair to say that in our dreams,                                                                                              Even our waking reveries,                                                                                                           With all our usual social fears                                                                                                        No longer there to interfere,                                                                                                            At last we meet our fabled selves

Alas, the issue is not so                                                                                                             Simple. No, I have to say no.                                                                                                          You see, a dream is fantasy,                                                                                                             We watch but have no agency.                                                                                              Without that waking delusion                                                                                                     Now revisit our conclusion.                                                                                                          This “self” we see is make-believe

What was the point of all this? Reader, I’ll level with you, today I just wanted to have fun. For a week I’ve delayed, hid that “new entry” page, but this morning again faced with a day that contained not a single aim I finally decided to push through the pain. Sometimes, most times, I do have something to write about specifically. With this lockdown, as alluded to already, despite the extra time I find myself in front of a wall. Writer’s block is a term, but I find it a rather presumptuous one in my case, can I call myself a writer? This is a hobby, and that’s what I kept in mind when starting today. I thought to myself, well if I’m gonna be sat in front of this damn white screen all afternoon then I’m at least going to make it enjoyable for myself. No moaning or whinging from me today reader, today I wrote for fun alone. Prose and verse, arts and crafts, I’m just here to have a laugh.

I hope that my humour comes across well of course, I make these public so naturally I want whatever I put into an entry to be felt by the reader. There’s no point asking for comments I know, but if you do feel the urge to tell me that you “actually really enjoyed this one man” then by all means go ahead. Bonus points if you can guess which author’s style I aped all day, all the good boy points you’ll ever need. I promise. If you thought this post was great, tell me it was great; and if you thought this post was pee pee poo poo, tell me that too. Regardless, I should do more like this in future. From time to time, I should just try to simply have some good natured fun.

There’s a rather woeful tone that clings to this blog like a bad smell, perhaps sometimes a little more mirth is needed to combat the melancholy. I think it’s important to step back and see the funny side of things, in life I do this all the time, but on this blog I have fallen into the unhealthy habit of mostly mining my most mopey moments. That’s probably not going to change a great deal, I like wallowing in my own misery too much, but it is a refreshing thing to engage with the side of myself which sees the humour in this absurd world. Don’t want to ruin the tone I worked so hard to create now though, that wouldn’t be a very funny thing to do at all. Thanks for reading, it’s night time for me now so I’ll end this by saying goodnight. Goodnight!

Dreaming in Prose: Slumberous Soup

Life is lots of tiny cuts, and we dream.

I saw that building again, the glass tower standing above the shop filled with sweets of all sorts. Old boiled sweets, hard sunset pink and lime in clear wrap, little bows. Timber framed finger pointing to the sky, a chair inside. I didn’t venture inside this time however, we went next door and I heard the same comment about the empty wall. We’ve done this routine before. It wasn’t even empty this time, made of marble it had things hanging.

Later I was at the station, it was half sunken and to get around one had to swing around on heavy cables, monkeys in the jungle canopy. The trains entered from the trees, and returned to them, we must have been in some kind of clearing. Looking down at the tracks I could see the water went deep. Stone and steel and little fishes who would scatter before the train came into view. A few of the guys who work there were around, the orange coats, but no shop. So, I was without purpose, cut loose. No fun allowed!

Now later my mother appeared, back from wherever she’s been all this time. We had to sell the flat and go some place where it would be sunny all year round. At once I was again fourteen, and though still naïve at twenty taken back to a kind that even to me seems now to be extreme. I walked past palm trees and felt again to be the shortest person in the room. The beach, an open room. It wasn’t to be though, just another false or fading memory.

I did return to one more concrete however. On the same night I forged a memory of particular regret and resignation, I was sent back. This time with added smiles, and warmer goodbyes, and a department store, of course. I didn’t return to the restaurant of goodbye but the streets after, instead of a glum plod the sounds of mirth filled the air and the streets seemed to twist and turn forever. I was glad, I really thought I was back there to do it again. Farewell, again, fool am I who truly thought I had gone back in time.

Duty calls though, for there was a city to save. Against the backdrop of pitch black sky pierced by bright and colourful lights we brought the terror down. Gliding up and along it’s cold metal body, and inside the thing. The destruction it caused was great, wandering through that broken city I realised this. Upon a toppled temple tower I stood, feeling sorry for myself. I think I was in some sense aware of the fantasy.

Handing out crisps, a bag bigger than any I’d ever seen before, to everyone in the room. The faces I knew and the ones I had forgotten.

Different city, smooth and shining bright with the sky open above. I searched for you, a platinum bob forever out of reach. Then you were a wolf, all white and vicious, and you hunted me. All these memories I have, of leaving you behind on that football field plateau, driving away in the shop. Or that old European city we set up in under the main level, and not one customer came. While I have you around in this world can I better access these fragments of our exploits in others?

I’ve met someone new in a different world, a sleepy seaside town by a forest. Tommy Caruso is her name, investigative journalism is her game. A walking caricature, a cartoon made flesh, golden hair, cork hat, shorts and boots, and a big smile to follow up after your first encounter with that accent. An exiled scientist from her home country of Australia who she was sent to get the story on had released a new breed of highly intelligent talking wombat dogs. They look more like black poodles with three rows of teeth. To hear them speak in their strange strained voices unnerved me. I found myself dragged into a series of events I felt unqualified for. Raised stilt houses on a cliff on one side of town, I went to them and delivered a letter. A chat with one of those odd and slightly frightening creatures. Finally a trip into the forest, cutting through vines with a lent machete. I don’t recall the laboratory, perhaps I woke up.

A cold concrete car park that was also a school, plastic red/ yellow signs by the railing over the stairs. I had to explain the purpose of my poem. “The thing is, women above all want to be pretty, rather than beautiful. This is why they wear make-up, sacrificing the latter for the former.” It wasn’t received well by Flo, but Molly didn’t seem to care. Tacit agreement, in my opinion. There were also stone streets, a tiny wooden bridge (enclosed) crossing over the narrow street above me.

Getting on an unfamiliar bus to go back home, a passenger who was equally unfamiliar expressed clear interest in getting to know me. So I responded in kind, only to be shunned. I get off the bus and see you, you’re crossing the road and I assume you’ll not even see me and keep my head down. That’s not what happens, you turn and smile just before a car blocks my view. So I walk some more towards home but now you’re walking towards me. You have this smile, and I kind of can’t believe you really want to talk to me. I then notice you’re talking to a friend. As we pass by one another there is a very quick moment of eye contact.

You look away almost like you feel guilty of something and I try to pretend to myself this never happened. I got a reply in my dreams, closure. Not all of them nice, in some instances you mocked me and another I was shaken awake by an imagined embrace. At the glass doors to the stairs you waved and I had to say something then from the lift you turned and we fell.

A, I didn’t realise this was your last week here or I would have said goodbye properly earlier. Anyway I’m glad to have met you and it’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better. Goodbye, and good luck at your new job. / Goodbye, good luck, have a nice life!

It’ll feel strange here with you gone.

A, I wish you all the best in your new job and wherever else life takes you, I’m glad to have known you.

A, I’m really glad to have met you, I wish you all the nest in your new job and wherever else life takes you

A, I’m really glad to have met you, I wish you all the best in your new job and wherever else life takes you.

Name, I know I already left a goodbye message in the card but it was difficult to fit everything there is to say in just a sentence. Also I prefer to say goodbye to people in writing because I’m not very good at talking, maybe you / you might / maybe you noticed.

Name, It’s a shame there [page torn out]

Name, It’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better, but I’m glad I got to meet you. Goodbye, and good luck at the new job.

I can’t just wallow for a month straight. I cried, I never cry, and spent a week of time miserable. I can’t sleep, my appetite is gone, and after you actually leave it’ll be ten times worse. For the next couple weeks I need some stability or I’ll go mad.

The same bright white head of hair again, only when I sleep now.

Name, It’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better

Name, I’m really glad to have met you, it’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better. Goodbye, and good luck at the new job.

Name, I’m really glad to have met you, it’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better. Goodbye and good luck at the new job.

Name, I’m really glad to have met you, it’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better. Goodbye, and good luck with the new job.

Name, I’m really glad to have met you, it’s a shame there wasn’t time to get to know you better. Goodbye and good luck with you new job.

I just wanted to say that I

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you

____________________________________________________________

Ok, now you’ve made it through all that faggotry here’s an explanation. I did write an introduction intended to go before all of what you just read, but I’ve decided that maybe it’ll be a more interesting read if at first you don’t quite know what you’re reading. The introduction I originally wrote is below. I hope you found this post interesting, a little change of pace compared to what I usually write.

I’ve had some trouble writing this week. I did have an idea planned, another “describing my day” style entry, but I found it too close to the walk around Rome one from a few weeks ago. I went to a museum on my own, I went to some old places I used to visit when I was young a lot, I listened to some music, the usual. I had a lot of thoughts to share, and perhaps some will come through in later posts, but I’ve decided to scrap that entry. I had started on it though, and written quite a lot, so now it’s Saturday and I’ve got nothing at all and I’m working the next couple of days. I need to upload something or it’ll start to bother me.

Now today I was looking through an old notebook from a couple of years ago, which I was using as a sort of “dream journal” among other things. I have quite a few of these old notebooks, before I had this blog I’d write to myself just to get my thoughts out. Think of my more erratic posts, but far shorter, if you want to have an idea of what I would write in these things. A paragraph or two or any one subject at most, sometimes nothing more than a single sentence. I’d just write down ideas I would have, lines I thought sounded cool, and other similar kinds of things. I still keep a notebook, actually I was gifted three small ones when I went to Rome, but now most of what I write down in them relates to this blog.

Anyway as well as this I was also trying to keep a record of some of my dreams, as I’ve said. And reading back through that section today, not that there was too much because I kept forgetting to do it most mornings, I actually found myself enjoying reading it. Every morning it seems instead of starting a new section for another dream, I would just add to what I had written the last time I woke up and actually remembered to write. When we wake up we simply pick back up where we left things the day before, maybe instead of viewing dreams as distinct, we should see them as connected in some way like this. Sure, any two dreams will usually seem wildly different from one another – there isn’t that experience when you fall asleep as there is with waking, where you begin to refamiliarize – but often so can any one dream’s beginning when compared with it’s end.

I’m not too fixated on the idea, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about a little today after reading through these old notes. The technique works I think, for recording dream if you are someone who does so, it has a flow to it that mimics the feeling of the dream experience. And that’s what I think I was trying to do, and still am in some of what I write these days. To capture not just the content of dreams but the essence of dream in writing is something I’m interested in trying to pursue. I am also drawn to the writings of others which I think also attempt this in some way, as I’ve written about before a few times.

So today, or maybe tomorrow morning if I can’t finish tonight, I’m going to transfer those pages from the notebook to this blog. I’m going to fix any spelling mistakes and maybe I’ll edit it slightly, but I’m going to mostly leave it as is. The changing tense (I seemed to alternate between past and present freely), any other grammar issues or weirdness, I’m going to leave in. I think it adds to the effect I was going for in fact. There’s a little note I wrote at the start which I’ll leave in too, and the ending begins to take on a slightly different tone as it bleeds into more real events. I don’t know how far back I started, possibly around the time I first started working which is about two and a half years ago, but the descriptions towards the second half begin to concern events which would define the early days of this blog.

It ends where this blog begins, the line between the two worlds which had begun to blur being fully crossed by the end. I wasn’t really writing about dreams much by the end, but for some reason I don’t remember I decided to write it as a continuation of the earlier stuff, and so I’ve kept it in here as well. A lot of what ended up being that first post was written alongside some of what I’ll present today in fact, before I was sure I would start this thing. So, I hope this is a nice insight into what came before this blog, and a good way to show how far I’ve come in my writing since starting to really take it seriously again.

Sleep like a pillow, no one there

I had another dream the other night, two separate dreams really but in one night. It’s funny how that works, you’ll have long periods of time sometimes with no dreams worth remembering and then when you do have those more vivid experiences they come all at once. When it rains it really does pour, in the etheric realm anyway. Like an anthology of stories almost, I do believe there were a couple more dreams that night but a few days have passed and these are the two that I’m still thinking about. I don’t really know if there’s anything to actually glean from either of them, despite my fascination with dreams and the ethereal (which I suppose we all have) I’ve never really studied or read a great deal on the subject. Therefore I’ve also never really been too interested into looking for “meaning” in my dreams or anything like that, like how people say if you see certain images/ symbols or find yourself in certain situations in dreams it can supposedly reveal something about yourself. I don’t think there’s any truth to that, I’ve come to kind of disregard that whole idea. What I think is so fascinating is the alternate state it puts you in, where the physical rules of the universe no longer exist. Time is convoluted of course, the physical environment morphs constantly and the thing that really gets me is how you will just be entirely unfazed by any of it. It’s a world of representations of material things, they exist to ground us just enough but no more. Because without some kind of material reality or at least the perception of it there can be no cohesive thought. Because our own method of thought developed in such an environment we need something like it to stimulate the mind perhaps. Not that all the environments of our dreams are always places we have personally been to, or even seen, but they resemble a world that is familiar always. Often in fact you’ll believe (or at least I experience this) you’re in a location from your own life, a school, workplace, park, library, your own home, etc. and yet when you wake up you realise that the place you were in looked completely different and had a layout of some entirely different place. For whatever reason, it had some kind of essence of that real place that made you believe you were there despite it actually being some creation of your unconscious mind that might not have any equivalent in the real world.

I don’t really like Jordan Peterson but I have to credit him with making me aware of this in his lecture series about some of the bible stories. I don’t remember exactly which one but at some point he talks about how early attempts at artificial intelligence where they believed they could create a metaphorical “brain in a jar” were unsuccessful because all thought is filtered through material experience. In a somewhat paradoxical way I suppose, in order to have any kind of objective view on things (or at least be trying to get there, if in vain) you must have a subjective/ limited cognitive experience. If there’s no starting point to work from, you can’t form a worldview or come to an understanding about anything because you’re all possible interpretations and conflicting information at once. I mean even the idea of an “idea” is something that would be impossible for this hypothetical disembodied intelligence because something that doesn’t inhabit the material world can’t possibly categorise and separate. That’s omniscience right there, that’s God I suppose, or enlightenment. You know because if we go back to my favourite subject, the ascetics, a lot of them (particularly eastern ones) have this idea that by rejecting the physical/ material world and their worldly desires they will achieve enlightenment. Well I suppose maybe they were getting at something, it seems to me anyway when you take this idea into account. It’s interesting when you think of how heaven, or paradise or similar ideal “end points” I suppose you can call them are described and represented. They’re places you can do no wrong, an eternal bliss. I remember my dad talking to me about this when I was quite young, and he said that to him heaven (I think he was really just talking about the Christian or more specifically Catholic conception of it, being born to that background) sounded like an opium den. Now that’s partly his typical Gen X cynicism talking (something which I think he should have done a better job of keeping more contained around me growing up) but there is something to it. Opium, heroin, and other similar drugs do have that effect of detaching one from their instinctual desires. People will go days without eating or sleeping, or doing anything at all, and on the surface it does seem a little like the behaviour of the ascetic monks of the world. It’s not actually if you dig a little of course, the addict is not rejecting these physical needs out of sheer force of will but rather tricking the brain into thinking such needs have been satiated because it’s overloaded with pleasure. It’s cheap, a false prophet you could say. See even in Christianity the end point might not be enlightenment but it kind of is because they say heaven is where God dwells. Only in death (losing your body) can you lose that restraint which keeps you from having a total understanding. Everything can very easily be confused for nothing, because it isn’t something.

In an article I read about the subject (artificial intelligence and how they need to give it a body in order to get anything we could actually recognise as intelligence or even just consciousness) on some online science journal they talked about this ancient idea of the separation between mind and body and how this somehow proves it to be the wrong way of looking at the situation. I disagree though, if anything it’s further proof of such a separation. Because we’re flawed aren’t we, we’re fallen. We may have eaten of the tree of knowledge but we are not knowledge unbound, we’re just something more than mere beasts. Speaking allegorically of course, I don’t believe there was an actual Adam and Eve. I hope whoever reads this understands what I’m getting at, because I know I’m not very articulate or intelligent and I’m just scraping at the surface of subjects which are far beyond my understanding, because it’s fascinating stuff and to read or listen to the people who really know what they’re talking about is very satisfying for me. I suppose there’s this arrogance in that conception these scientists (or more accurately the science journalist who wrote the article) have that bothers me, because they forget that the material form which grounds us and gives us a starting point for understanding also limits us. Because knowledge builds on itself, ideas build on other ideas, and so if you have no starting idea (food keeps you alive, etc) you can’t get anywhere at all sure. Also though, you’re always going to be constrained, it’s not that there isn’t a greater unlimited intelligence but rather that we just can’t interact or even really comprehend it because it is completely intangible. I’m reminded of something I mentioned briefly before in a different entry, about language. Of course the idea is something plenty of people have talked about, and it’s something I’ve thought about for years before starting this blog, but the idea of language as both our liberator and jailor. I think it was in “Living up to my shitty blog title” which is still in my opinion the best post I’ve made so far. Because without language you can have all kinds of ideas but can’t express them, and also there are ideas and ways of expressing things that are now locked away from you at the same time. So your potential is expanded greatly and yet also given a limit. Hopefully that helps explain what I’m getting at here, a body provides the gift of perception and yet will always prevent you from having a total understanding of things.

I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole, but I’ll give that description of the two dreams I had. The first one had me in this sleepy town, or maybe it would be more accurate to describe it as a large village. I don’t know where it was, but it was snowing heavily and there was only one way in or out. There was this huge road that wound all around and up above the town, along the edge of a cliff almost. I arrived down from this road and came to this small church car park (I was able to drive in this dream) which was completely desolate. It was the first place I saw after coming down from the road above, and other than that there were just narrow streets. There were only a couple other cars, and maybe double as many empty spaces. All the cars were kind of old fashioned looking and clearly aged quite a bit, even mine. I don’t exactly remember getting out and moving but I remember being in the graveyard right after this, and in the centre as it snowed around me I stood and looked up at this great granite statue of an old woman holding up a celtic cross with both hands almost like that scene at the beginning of the lion king. It was dark, with just the light of the moon to help me see, and so I couldn’t see her facial expression. Also in the background there were some houses, terraced it looked like, so I felt fenced in in a way. The graveyard itself was very small, but other than that I don’t remember anything else about it. I don’t even really know why I was there, I vaguely recall being sent there for something but I don’t remember much more than that. I remember walking along one of the few streets there, and none of the houses had their lights on. My memory is hazy I’ll be honest, I remember waking for a moment not long after this and feeling kind of disoriented before returning to sleep.

The second dream was entirely different in feel, instead of the spooky and silent streets of cobbled stone we were in this bright and warm building at mid morning. I say we because I wasn’t alone this time, with me was one of the girls from work. Not one I’ve mentioned before here, or ever had appear in a dream of mine before. This building we were in, a huge room with two levels under one roof, kind of like I was talking about earlier was work to me. It was the shop, even though it wasn’t even a shop. If anything it was more like a library, a big old library with an old stone façade and this wonderful art deco interior. Rich mahogany furniture, bronze cladding on the small escalators that took you to the second level and chandeliers with misted white glass. Now looking back this is really weird, but in the dream it made total sense to me, again like I was talking about earlier. My co-worker, the girl who was there in the dream with me, said that the manager had told her it was my job to make some mayonnaise. There was some kind of meeting or lunch and I had to have it ready before then at midday, luckily this library also had an open kitchen. Now the funny thing is I don’t know how to make mayonnaise and I don’t really like it very much, but there’s this scene from a tv show I watched as a kid that has for whatever reason stuck with me to this day. I mean seriously I was maybe six or seven years old at the time I first watched it. In the scene this kid who wants to be a chef when he grows up makes some mayonnaise when the party or whoever he’s with run out, I don’t remember the details, and it only takes him a few minutes. I’m pretty sure he used eggs and maybe vinegar or something (yes, it’s been over a decade and a half and despite telling myself that day I’d learn to make it too I still haven’t even got around to checking the recipe) and this kind of blew my mind at the time. See to me it was just this white goo that came in jars, like one of those jokes people make about americans who think food “comes from the supermarket” in a way. Of course I was aware all non naturally occurring food had to come from somewhere but this moment made it real as opposed to some abstract thing I didn’t ever give any thought to.

So in the dream I still didn’t know how, but I was too prideful to admit it and I think I just threw some eggs in a blender without even cracking them open. I left to go to the second level where the toilet was, and there were two small cubicles. They were right in the middle of the room, and weirdly shaped like big books almost. Long, but really narrow so inside both walls were pressing on you, and in turn both the cubicles were pressed against one another. As I went in to use one, she followed and went into the other, and as I left she left hers. It was very strange, she gave me this really odd and kind of villainous grin. I went back down to the main level and she said something about how the omelette better be ready soon as I was running out of time. It wasn’t until I woke up later that I realised something had changed, not that it mattered because soon after that things had changed again and now there was no kitchen or lunch to prepare for. I noticed there was a huge back area around the side of the escalators and somehow a bunch of people had got inside. They were sitting all separate from one another at these long cafeteria tables reading books or newspapers or magazines and I started shouting to get them to leave. “We haven’t opened up yet, how did you even get inside?”. Now we were librarians, and always had been. I distinctly remember coming down the escalator earlier in the dream before this now looking back and appreciating the emptiness though. In fact it’s that specific moment which has really stuck with me, it’s been four nights now and every night since before I go to bed some part of me is hoping to go back. It was a really comfy environment, and also it was nice to get to know this co-worker of mine better as well because I’m quite shy and reserved and I never speak much with any of them. I didn’t mention it before, but we also got to chat a bit in the dream and it was really nice. In a wholesome way as well, not ruined by the primordial urge. I’m not saying she’s not a pretty girl, but for whatever reason I’ve just never seen her in that way, which is why that whole weird bit with the bathroom freaked me out so much.

There’s not much purpose to this post, it’s admittedly aimless but so am I right now. It’s not a bad one though I don’t think, if you like what I do here this should be enjoyable. I haven’t had any real ideas of my own lately, but the stuff I talked about in the first half has been on my mind a lot. I almost didn’t write this entry at all, after the last entry which I thought was one of my better ones got no response for days I thought I had been totally abandoned. I still practically have, for just under two weeks I didn’t get a single person despite there being two new uploads in that period. I get it, most youtube channels I take interest in (the closest thing I have to compare with this blog) I also lose interest in after a short while and stop returning to. So I really do understand why people aren’t coming back anymore, I’m not entirely on my own yet but it seems inevitable now. I don’t want to stop though, and shit if having people read what I post is so important I can shill on r9k and pretty reliably get one or two anons to give me a read. That’s how I got this entire blog started, and also I linked my post about school shootings in a thread on a similar subject once and people seemed to appreciate it. I like having this little hobby, something to occupy my time when I’m not at work instead of just mindlessly refreshing the catalogue. The lonely journey is preferable to returning back to stagnation.

My favourite band: Part 3

It’s funny that only recently I was talking about dreams, because dreamlike is the first word that comes to mind when I think of Disintegration. It’s touted as this great return to the gothic gloom and doom of earlier Cure records, and it’s certainly more similar to those than the more poppy albums I talked about last time, but it’s quite a different experience to either. It’s more like a third direction, and the following records which sound very similar to me (especially Bloodflowers) further support this idea. Another thing I like so much about this band is that in most cases if asked what a specific album sounds like you can point to the art on the cover and say “well it kinda sounds like that”, and Disintegration is a perfect example of this. Sure the general goal seems to be to capture the feeling of the record visually with most album art, but in my opinion it’s not usually successful. It all makes sense even if everything seemingly doesn’t fit, just like in a dream. The colour palette as well is so perfectly suited, the deep blues and greens further draw you in to this spectral realm. Listening to this album is like taking a lonely evening walk through a haunted fairy tale forest, the navy blue shallow pools reflecting the gradually darkening sky above you, and the details on the leaves becoming harder and harder to see as night slowly falls. It’s just undeniable that Robert Smith (and yes it really is in this case mostly just Robert, this album was initially planned as a completely solo project) makes his best stuff while taking lots of drugs. In particular, psychedelics like LSD, which his return to regular use of in part inspired him to create Disintegration. I think this view of Disintegration as a concept album of sorts, telling the story of a pensive evening stroll through the woods just really adds something to the experience. There’s certainly a common theme, this anxiety over reaching the age of 30 and not having a real legacy to leave behind which is partly what makes this album while similarly gloomy like the early gothic trio feel more mature, and it gives this album more wide appeal than those also. After all this concern is a natural part of the human condition, think of the famous (and probably quite embellished) story of Julius Caesar weeping in front of a statue of Alexander the Great.

The album starts with a mostly instrumental intro, with only some echoing and reverberating vocals coming in towards the end. There’s a good ten seconds of dead silence to start with and then slowly a twinkling sound can be heard, at first so muted you might not hear it unless the volume is up fairly high (which it should be, the original copies came with a little note specifying that the record was meant to be played loudly), then after gradually getting closer to you it explodes. The effect is like fireworks in audio, it’s beautiful and you just want to focus on it and ignore whatever else is going on. There’s the occasional heavy drum being beaten in the distance somewhere, not like a consistent drumbeat throughout instead it’s quite sporadic. After a couple minutes the vocals come in, it always seemed to me like someone going over a past conversation in their head. With the “you said” being repeated over and over and there’s also the echo effect adding to that. Then the singing comes to a stop and the guitar (I think it’s a guitar) which had been there most of the track but not prominent becomes the focus as the song closes out. After that is Pictures Of You which I don’t like so much, maybe because I find it harder to relate to the things he sings about on here but then again I really like Lovesong which is much more explicitly a song about romantic relationships. Anyway it’s not really the lyrical content that is the issue here, in fact when listening to this album with my friends last spring this is the one that we were all singing along to. Maybe that’s it actually, this album is kind of meant to be listened to alone I think I even remember reading an interview where Robert himself said that, but this song is clearly better enjoyed in good company. So it’s a little out of place, although it still has a very similar sound to the rest of the album. The twinkling chimes, the specific kind of effect he gets with his guitar, etc. Third in the tracklist is Closedown, which is a kind of conflicted song in my opinion. The words are not very cheery at all, describing the state of being Robert was in while recording the album. Sleep deprived and back to regular drug and presumably alcohol use, it’s not too different from the environment which led to Pornography although this time more deliberate and controlled. Speaking of Pornography, the way the words are actually sung also reminds me of some of the songs on there quite a bit. The rest of the music though is quite uplifting, it sounds almost like something from The Lion King at first before the guitar comes in. Lovesong is exactly what the title suggests, if it wasn’t for that trademark undertone of melancholy which can completely change your interpretation of the lyrics it would feel totally out of place on the album. I’ve heard a couple of covers of it and they demonstrate this perfectly.

Other than Plainsong though up until this point the album is at it’s weakest, the last two thirds are the real experience. Last Dance is what starts off this run, and it’s so integral to my experiences with this album (especially the first time hearing it, which was the first time listening to a Cure album in full) that I was really surprised to find out that on the original releases it wasn’t even included and only later in CD copies was it put in. Another drawn out and minimalist intro starts this off, before the song really kicks into gear and you realise the huge scope. It sounds like it’s all around you, like you’ve floated up into the stars and there’s so much empty space between all the different parts. It’s very reminiscent of the last section of Pornography which starts with the song Cold and very cleverly this song includes a hidden line from that song whispered softly “your name like ice, into my heart”, which I never noticed myself while listening but read about online. Lullaby is next and is one of my favourite songs from the band and just one of my favourite songs generally speaking. I don’t think I really need to go into detail talking about the music, overanalysing might have a negative effect if anything. It’s just so… pleasant. I can’t really explain why, it just has this calming effect on me so I suppose it’s appropriately titled. The lyrics talk about this “spiderman” creature, a half man half spider which ate little children and was a regular feature in the bedtime stories of Robert’s uncle according to interviews. Fascination Street follows immediately after and completely changes things up, being much faster and energetic. The drums are much more prominent on this than the rest of the album, and these bell things like maybe cowbells are used as well I’m not sure exactly what they are but they work really well. It has a really triumphant feel to it, which carries on onto at least the intro of the next song Prayers For Rain.

Things slow down again here, and the lyrics are the most depressive and gloomy on the entire record “I suffocate I breathe in dirt and nowhere shines”, but the drumbeat throughout feels like a lifeline of sanity that will allow you to come out on top. The hopelessness of Pornography is not really present on this album, the next song The Same Deep Water As You is the only time it slightly approaches those depths of despair. I’m not really talking about the lyrics here either, a lot of people have read into and wrote their ideas about the lyrics on this and I’d only do a worse job so I won’t bother. The music itself though, the way it drags on for almost ten minutes and captures this feeling of total emptiness reminds me of Faith (the song and the whole album) a great deal. The “prayers” were answered as well it seems, as there’s this rainy/ stormy effect on this track so it sounds like you’re sitting in a small wooden cabin or under a thicket of tress with the drops hitting something above you. Then a smashing sound, like a window being broken and this upbeat drumbeat hits. The title track is actually surprisingly cheery, although after the last song most songs would seem to be. The guitar offsets this a little with a more melancholic melody, leading to that trademark undertone I mentioned earlier. It’s something they’d been doing since the Japanese Whispers era, but was perfected on this album. Honestly this album is where they perfected everything they’d been developing and doing, it is the first album with the famous Cure “sound” and everything after while enjoyable mostly feels derivative or when they do try to experiment it fails. It’s the band’s peak, and this song is the best representation of the album as a whole so it feels appropriate as the title track. It’s not the end though, Homesick and Untitled are what end off the record. Another two long drawn out songs that go for the gloomy vibe, but don’t quite do it as well as The Same Deep Water As You in my opinion. If it’s not obvious I love this album, I don’t really have any specific memories tied to it other than it being my first Cure album and getting my friends to listen to it in full also for the first time for both of them last spring. I have maybe listened to it half a hundred times and still keep going back.

Next came Wish, and as I just mentioned it does sound very much like Disintegration. It’s just missing the soul of that record though, Robert Smith managed to forge the legacy he was so concerned he wouldn’t manage to do with that record and it’s like since then he’s been trying to recreate that. The song Trust is a perfect example, it seems to have all the components of the classic gloomy Cure songs but just doesn’t stick the landing for whatever reason. I can’t really explain it, it’s just an intuitive thing. On Wish he seems to not want to fully commit to this anyway though, so there are also tracks that feel more inspired by the stuff from Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me which just makes the album feel tonally inconsistent. There are some tracks on here that are absolutely fantastic of course, both moody and cheery ones, but it feels more like a compilation of songs rather than a proper record with a distinct identity. The opener, Open (haha), has this great mechanical sound to it. From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea, Doing The Unstuck and the closing track End (haha) are the highlights here certainly. A whole album of stuff like these three would have been something special. It’s only really on these where the balance between Disintegration and Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me is actually handled well. The singles from this album I really do not like, other than Friday I’m In Love which is actually quite catchy. High and A Letter To Elise are the ones I really have a problem with, the sounds just all seem to be mushed together so you can’t really pick anything out, they don’t reward you paying closer attention. It’s like they were designed to be background noise while driving to work or walking around in the supermarket. Apart is another song which tries very hard to capture that Disintegration spirit, and does a much better job I will say. If it had been included on there it wouldn’t seem out of place I don’t think, as Trust would. It has the whispery vocals from some of the songs on there, and the eerie feeling to it that was all over Disintegration. In fact if this song and Pictures Of You swapped places it’d make more sense. To Wish Impossible Things is one I’m coming around to, the violin is really nice on it and an instrument quite rarely used by the band. In fact I’m warming up to the album more generally speaking, there’s definitely a few songs I doubt I’ll ever be able to enjoy but having to listen to it a few times for this entry and more closely too has given me more of an appreciation for it.

Wild Mood Swings which came after is certainly an attempt to go in a new direction, which is appreciated, but as I said from this point forward it’s mostly attempts to relive the glory days of Disintegration or failed experiments. This is one of the failed experiments, and not just in my view there seems to be a consensus that this is one of the worst Cure albums. A lot of people say it’s the absolute worst, and I think I might agree. It’s certainly fighting with Three Imaginary Boys for the bottom spot, I can’t decide for sure. It’s very similar to The Top in my opinion, both in the frenzied or even wacky vibe it goes for and the various influences from all over the world. The 13th sounds like there’s a mariachi band backing Robert, Gone! has these brass band style horns in the background, there’s an oriental sound at the very opening of the song Numb etc. However unlike that album which grew on me quite a bit after a few listens, a lot of the tracks on here still just sound abrasive and even grating. I had to go through it again for this of course, and I did kind of want to skip a couple. The second song Club America is one of the worst and a great example of what ruins this record, it has this awful electric guitar that’s way too loud and keeps schizophrenically switching to play a completely different tune. It’s so loud and at the forefront it makes it impossible to focus on anything else, in fact this is kind of a problem all over the album. Almost the complete opposite of Disintegration in a way, with that feeling of spaciousness it created, everything on here feels so close like you’re in a small room with the band playing live all crowded in and squeezed in there with you. All the different components that make up the music don’t get any room to breath, you can’t focus in on something in particular you really like on certain listens. Even on the tracks on here I quite enjoy, Want, This Is A Lie, Strange Attraction, Gone!, and Trap (notice the quick snappy song titles, which does kind of reflect the faster pace of this album) that problem still exists the different parts just seem to fit together more harmoniously so it isn’t a total mess. They’d still be better given some space I feel anyway, but then again I’m not a musician and I don’t know anything about how to make a good song I just know what I’ve liked and disliked. I guess it doesn’t really need to be said, but I rarely put this on and don’t have any real memories or emotional attachment to it. I’ll certainly listen to it again on occasion though.

Bloodflowers is the most similar to Disintegration, it’s basically a sequel. I’m not saying it doesn’t have it’s own identity at all, there are some elements specific to this album so it doesn’t just sound like a collection of songs that didn’t make the cut first time around, the acoustic guitar being so prominent throughout for example. Which is something I’ve heard and even agreed with at one point, but after getting to know it better I’ve grown to appreciate this album a lot more. Robert Smith has said in interviews that it along with Disintegration and Pornography are the three albums which best represent the band overall, or something like that, and he calls them his trilogy. I would personally say there are four essential Cure albums, Seventeen Seconds, Pornography, Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me and Disintegration. Although I’ve read another interview where he says Seventeen Seconds is his favourite, I suppose in a four decade long career he’s gonna change his mind a bit, and of course whenever there’s a new record coming out you have to praise that. There is a feeling I get that the melancholy/ moodiness is played up a little here, which is fine because I like that kind of thing but it’s just done more maturely on Disintegration I have to say it. It’s not that it doesn’t feel genuine or that it’s coming from a real place, just that things are… well played up a little like I said. Anyway, onto the songs. The intro sets the mood pretty effectively, it’s nearly seven minutes long and that was after being shortened supposedly. The longer six and seven minute songs are something else borrowed from Disintegration, along with it’s overall sound and mood. Again though it’s something I enjoy, long drawn out songs that bring you into a different world. You have that acoustic guitar being strummed throughout like I mentioned earlier, and while I’ve never really payed close attention to the lyrics on this album you can pick up on the wistful vibe from snippets here and there. The second track on here is probably what prevented the album from clicking with me for so long, it’s this huge 11 minute epic that takes ages to build. It should be perfect for me, I’ve listened to Carnage Visors (mostly on nightwalks) a bunch of times, which is this half hour instrumental/ ambient thing which has only recently been so easily accessible to people since the re-release of Faith. For decades it was like a bootleg cassette tape you had to track down. So I really dig the longer stuff, but this song just really doesn’t work for me. The intro as well, but this track in particular just doesn’t resonate. I wish I could explain why, but I can’t it’s just how it is. So together what with the long length that’s almost 20 minutes. A really weak first part, and an obstacle that really did stop me from relistening to this album in full after the first time because I kept giving up during this song.

It was worth pushing through when I did though, because from here on out it’s much more enjoyable. Where The Birds Always Sing which is the highlight of the album absolutely and I’d already heard it plenty of times before hearing it in the context of the full album from the early days first discovering the band. If Disintegration was a twilight wander through the forest, Bloodflowers is a walk home during the sunset at the beginning of autumn. That’s the feel I get, maybe because that’s what I was doing when it finally “clicked”. In fact that’s definitely why, it’s been almost a year and that image is still firmly what comes to mind when I hear this record. There’s even a song on here called The End Of Summer, it all comes together quite nicely. It wasn’t a very eventful period for me, just before I got the job actually. I was pretty aimless, I still am but this was the peak, there wasn’t any kind of future in my mind. I was living in a haze staying indoors for often two weeks straight and I might’ve stayed inside without leaving the flat once for that entire five month period (between losing my voluntary job which I took after falling for the “experience” meme and finding my current job) if not for the fact that I had to go to the jobcentre to get my NEETbux every couple weeks. I’d wake up late, I’d struggle to get to sleep every night and then to force myself out of bed in the morning afternoon. I had more free time than ever to play vidya/ watch anime or films/ read all those books I’d been meaning to get around to and yet I ended up doing less of all of those and just scrolling through the catalog on one of my main boards for ten hours a day or wasting my time listening to idiots on youtube repeat the same stupid shit over and over. I’m not trying to whine or feel sorry for myself I understand that I choose to be the person I am, but it was fucking miserable back then. Probably the second lowest place I’ve been in, for an extended period of time that is. Maybe the first I could go into another time. I will take being a wageslave over that any day, even when I have a really busy month and it’s going really shit I have felt far more spiritually satisfied since starting work. So this album and it’s association with the changing of the seasons is symbolic, because it also brings me back to a time when I entered a “new season” of my life in a way.

After Bloodflowers the next release was the self titled The Cure, which is quite ironic because this album to me is the least Cure sounding album of all of them. It’s the least definitive one in their entire discography, and I know I said that Wild Mood Swings and Three Imaginary Boys are fighting for the worst spot but after relistening to this today it might have just snuck in and snatched the title. It’s not terrible, and there are some really good songs, but as a whole I really didn’t enjoy listening to it again. Which is weird, I remember about half a year or so ago I quite liked it and was listening to it quite  a lot. I listened to it for the first time maybe a year ago or something, then kind of forgot and after going back to it I found it a nice change of pace from the other Cure albums. It was released in 2004 I believe, and very much seems to have been influenced by some trends in music at the time. Like a lot of the really accessible nu-metal bands, korn, limp bizkit, and was even co-produced by Ross Robinson who produced for those bands apparently. You can find this shit on Wikipedia if you care anyway, and the influence isn’t that strong you don’t have Robert doing harsh metal vocals and wearing those cringy Halloween masks when performing this stuff. It sounds like The Cure still, but you can feel the influence in subtle ways that are hard to explain for a pleb who doesn’t know shit about music. The tracks where the influence is most noticeable are actually my favourites on here though. Us Or Them has this great really heavy guitar which feels really present throughout and holds everything together, Robert’s yelping fits perfectly and even makes the edgy lyrics “Get your fucking world out of my head” … (gonna be a yikes from me) not sound completely cringe. Labyrinth sounds like a Nine Inch Nails song, which is a good thing because NIN is fucking rad. This grinding sound, like a motor or something is fantastic. Great angery music, it’s like if you took the bitterness from some of the pornography tracks but without the gloom and introspection there to tame it. The intro Lost as well I quite like, with the words “I can’t find myself” repeated over and over like a mantra getting more and more aggressive and the music spiking out at you alongside it. Everything else is forgettable or outright skippable, I hate to say it because I really don’t like skipping tracks when listening to an album but there it is. There’s another over ten minute “epic” right near the end, which again just doesn’t do it for me. It doesn’t totally suck like Watching Me Fall, the long one from Bloodflowers, but it’s still not deserving of all that time being given to it. At least it’s at the end as I said so it doesn’t create this obstacle just for you to get started with the album. It’s still worth listening to in my opinion, every single Cure album is even if just once or twice, but it might have the most duds. I have no problem with angery Robert, and when he does it well it’s great.

Finally, 4:13 Dream, the last Cure album at least so far and almost a decade old now. Supposedly there’ll be another one, I hope there is. It’s not that this album is bad, it’s pretty good at least as good as Wish. It’s just for a band with such a fantastic career one last hurrah, another real masterpiece if Robert has it in him, would be great. This isn’t that, it’s not a masterpiece it’s kind of unremarkable honestly. Maybe they just don’t have the desire to make new music, in fact they clearly at least didn’t for the last ten years because of the long gap. They still perform, but I’m not and never have been interested in live music so it doesn’t matter to me. I actually completely agree with Varg, the studio release is the version of the music that is truest to the artist’s vision. Also music fans of all types are generally fucking trash, crowds of annoying faggots and concert thots singing along to the famous tracks would just make for a shitty evening. I’m not saying music is always a completely solitary experience, sometimes with the right people and the right choice of music the opposite is true, but I find most music is indeed best enjoyed alone. The first track on here Underneath The Stars is very Disintegration (I’m saying that a lot I know), it even has the twinkling chimes sprinkled in at one point. Most of the album is a lot more upbeat though, supposedly this was originally a double album like Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me but they scrapped most of the songs and this album collects the more cheery ones. Which becomes apparent on the second track The Only One, which has this bouncy guitar sound that I really like. The guitar playing is really nice on this record overall, it’s what saves the song Freakshow which would otherwise really not be my thing. Then you have a bunch of really unmemorable songs in the middle, which just drag on. Sirensong, The Real Snow White, Switch, The Perfect Boy and This. Here And Now. With You. You also have the song The Hungry Ghost in there somewhere though, with this really nice sound effect with the guitar. I had to look up a video of a live performance to figure out what it was they were doing. The guy, some bald dude don’t know his name, waggles that bar that’s on some electric guitars. I forget the name, my dad did tell me once because he knows how to play but I forget. The record finishes with It’s Over, which has this chaotic and really loud electric guitar drowning out the vocals so you can barely understand what he’s saying if you’re trying to pay attention. A mediocre end, to a mediocre record, hopefully not but very possibly at the end of a career that is anything but mediocre.

I’ve been thinking about why I consider The Cure to be my favourite band more seriously since I started this back in part 1. I remember reading this article a while ago, I’ll link it but archived because it’s the jew york times, although in the current year of 2k18 who still isn’t using adblock http://archive.is/poojo. Now the idea that the music we listen to in our youth, the age it gives as most important in the article being 13-16, isn’t groundbreaking news by any means but it’s nice that someone took the time to collect some real data on this. It’s worth reading, but I’m not really here to talk about the article just use that as a jumping off point. See most of the other bands who’ve made music that really emotionally resonates with me are all from that period of my life, 13-16 years old. Not that they were all formed or making music in that time necessarily, but rather they were just what I listened to regularly in that period. Kasabian (specifically their debut album and Velociraptor), Nirvana, The Smiths, Blue Oyster Cult, Summoning, The XX, and some others. The Cure are the only band that affect me just as much and aren’t associated with that time period. In fact they’re kind of associated with a really shitty period of time, listening to the music from the band was an escape in a way. Also the weird and changing mood and style of their music, from completely miserable and depressed to manic and energetic, really makes a lot of sense to me. I’ve spoken here before about how I can get mild mania sometimes and of course this feeling of mental desolation. I don’t think it’s that bad, like people who have actual mental illnesses, it’s not something that negatively impacts my life in any meaningful way. It is there though, and something I have to work with. Honestly though, I can’t really explain what it is about The Cure and their music that just so perfectly works for me. It’s something intuitive that I can’t explain, it’s almost something spiritual. Those other bands I just mentioned can take me back to a happier time, but The Cure and no one else so far can take me away from all the bullshit entirely. Not unlike a dream.

The truth hurts

I saw her again even though I thought I never would and had mentally moved on a lot quicker than I expected to, for reasons I’ve already speculated about in earlier posts. I’m talking about the girl, my “oneitis” for a time I suppose, who left the place we both worked at a few months ago and just before I started this blog. From what I can tell we were at some kind of daycare centre or some place like that, looking after the children supposedly but I can’t actually recall any kids being there now when I think back. It was strange, the walls were a flaxen yellow and there were colourful childlike drawings all over the walls. A rainbow with a pot of gold, a dinosaur or monster of some kind, an attempted self portrait, and plenty more. It was from what I could understand one room in a larger building with several purposes. The daycare/ children’s area that we were in was one big rectangle separated into two halves almost by these metal beds and some wooden book and toy shelves. So there was a little narrow pass near the wall halfway across the room, but the shelves were all quite low of course because kids can’t reach high up so you could see the entire room from either side. There were also toys strewn all over the floor. I remember holding one for a moment, a little painted wooden train.

I can’t even really remember how or why I was in this situation, I just was. I had been trying to send a message to someone else, another woman who I’ve never met before or since and was supposedly lost in a forest. She had an internet connection though, because she managed to contact me somehow and was asking me for help to find her way out. She wanted me to give her the directions which I must have known at the time and they had to be in the form of several brief vocaroo messages. Even though I couldn’t see her as I was in the daycare centre, although unaware of it at the time, I somehow knew what she looked like. She was sitting down against a giant oak tree trunk with her hair in a ponytail, wearing that kind of middle class outdoorsy style of clothing. A quilted jacket and check shirt, wellies without any mud or dirt on them, fine leather gloves and a woollen hat, you know the look. So I sent the first message and then listened back to it as you do, but I had the very common experience of hearing your own voice recorded and it sounding way different to normal. So feeling uncomfortable about that I put my phone away and decided to just forget the whole situation, and realised I was here in this daycare place. In there with me was oneitis (maybe ex-oneitis now, idk what to call her) and another third person I didn’t recognise. The third person never said anything, I think she just faded into the background after some time. I was surprised to see her as I’ve already said, and she seemed surprised as well. She asked me how I’d been, and what I was doing there (I had a reason at the time I’m sure, but it escapes me now) and told me this was where she worked now. She was so friendly, it was just like when we were both working together. Actually no it wasn’t, but it was like the few times when I was actually able to hold a conversation with her. So we were cleaning up or doing something else menial for some time, and she just turned to me at one point and said she got the note I left behind the last day I saw her. I said I was really glad to hear it, I’d worried for a little while if it had blown away or somehow not been seen for whatever reason and it was nice to know that not only was it seen but it was appreciated and didn’t come off as creepy or weird. She told me she had wanted to reply, to text me a quick thank you but had been so busy and after a couple days worried herself it would seem weird to reply because of the time gap and decided to leave it. The whole thing came out of nowhere, a real sense of closure but only after I had first accepted there wouldn’t be. I mean it, I felt a genuine satisfaction that this whole embarrassing lapse in judgement was behind me for good even after waking up and realising it was a dream.

It’s weird, we think of a dream as “not real” and sure it’s not “real” but we’re still definitely in there. When you wake up it isn’t a hard cut, often after a particularly vivid or intense dream it can take a good 20 minutes to fully separate the two worlds. Usually it’s less, maybe a few seconds or a minute, but nevertheless it still disorients you waking from a dream however briefly. So that’s what I was getting, that warm feeling of knowing my message had been seen and getting to say a proper goodbye which I’d missed remained with me for some time as I was slowly coming around. I went about my usual morning routine, made a cup of coffee and sat down in front of my laptop and immediately wrote the first line for what would eventually become this entry. “The walls were a flaxen yellow”. I knew already the dream was important, but I hadn’t even had time to process it completely and I didn’t actually go back until this afternoon and start writing again. I know it’s been a while, I’ll be honest I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 in almost all my spare time when not at work. I haven’t been this invested in any kind of vidya since Dark Souls 3, it’s so fucking comfy. I have been thinking about the dream and this lingering feeling that stayed with me though, and I realise it’s been a week since I’ve uploaded so I’ll try to get something finished. See, it might not be materially real sure but that feeling I had was as real as if I’d have bumped into her walking around one day and had a similar interaction. At least for a time anyway, after waking that is. I already talked about this before, but I kind of fell for a character anyway not really the person herself. Not an entirely separate person sure, but I suppose the best way of explaining this is to say that when she wasn’t actually around is when I got to know her best.

So what does it matter if the thing that inspired this feeling in me wasn’t “real”, because the feeling itself certainly was. If anything it’s appropriate that an interaction in my head is what it took to bring me some closure. It didn’t last forever, I eventually woke up completely and that feeling had faded. Still I know I felt it, the feeling was as real as can be, the brain processes that would have taken place following a similar interaction irl happened in my head just because of a dream. It was real, real real, materially real, I can’t think of another way to put it. It makes me think of this video I saw a while ago, maybe a year or two. There was this youtube e-celeb I followed for a while, I always tire of these people eventually but he lasted quite some time, and he made this video about a lighter he bought while visiting the US. It might be one of my favourites of his, a brief 10 minute thing. It’s the delivery that I appreciate, he presents things much more intelligently than most on the platform and especially in that sphere of it. Instead of the constant and irksome authoritative statements most of the dunning-kruger faggots on there constantly shit out, he tended to present things as if he was not entirely sure himself. Some would say that shows weakness or cowardice because he’s not willing to commit but that’s misguided in my opinion. I think people who are more intelligent (or at least more thoughtful, I’ve already gone into the distinction in some detail before here) do linger at this earlier stage in the thought process. So anyway he talks about how he kept this lighter, misplaced it for a while and then one day found it again. This lighter, which he’d bought in the US, was like a keepsake. So while the lighter itself was had no real material or monetary value (it had even run out of lighter fluid) it had the good memories from that time tied to it and also served as a little reminder every time he looked at it to one day return there. He had also been to one of the Scandinavian countries since then though, and they have 7/11s as well, in that period between losing the lighter and finding it again. That trip had been more brief and hectic, so he might have picked another lighter up and forgotten all about it, and now he thought he’d found the original but it was actually just another empty plastic lighter among millions. Those memories that were brought back from looking at this maybe-not-the-original-lighter that first time finding it again were just as real as if he knew for certain it was the original. If anything, knowing for certain might sever the connection and so the truth would only be a negative thing. I’d agree because after I’d fully woken up I lost that sense of closure again, but when I was coming to and still between two worlds the connection remained. It was the last thing to go actually, I suppose because I wanted to hold onto it far more than the flaxen yellow room and that little toy train.

There is one crucial difference between the two anecdotes of course, his original lighter and holiday were very much real and if there was a second it was also, whereas my dream was all in my head. Why do I have this attitude that my feelings being a response to a dream make them less.. meaningful though? I mean dreams can be very powerful, plenty of real world decisions made by various important figures throughout history were inspired by dreams. From my own experience, I know I’ve seen a different side to people I know in dreams (as I’m less spergy and more comfortable around people in them for whatever reason) and it has genuinely made it ever so slightly easier to be around them irl. This other side has even turned out to be quite accurate to how they are somehow in some cases. So dreams aren’t just the refuse dump for our subconscious as some people say, they clearly have at least the potential to be a powerful tool of intuition. You can learn something about yourself by looking at the content of your dreams as well, often something you dwelled on very briefly will shows up there weeks later while things you in your most sober waking moments think to be most important never do. It’s rather unusual, at least for me anyway, for something to feel worth paying attention to in both states. I’m not quite sure, I feel like I could have done a better job with this but I’m having a small mental block. It’s really late (or early) and I’ve been sitting writing this for hours. I know, for several hours of time I haven’t got much to show for it. This is what’s been really making me think this week though, maybe I’ll come back to the subject another time more prepared.