I’ve heard people say, “I don’t dream” or “I had no dreams last night”.  The truth is, all of us dream every night; in fact if we sleep the usual 8 hours we always have one about every 90 minutes or about 5 dream periods per night.  Trouble is, we just don’t remember them or even remember that we had them.

I’ve learned to pay close attention to my dreams.  As stories of the sub-conscious mind, they, if interpreted correctly, are fascinating indications of human behavior and feelings.  Though no expert in the field of dreams, I would call myself a hobbyist of dream analysis.

One of the most famous dream analyzers or dream interpreters was, of course, Joseph, from the Bible who had a colorful coat.  He was pretty good at it and even got himself out of prison with his talent when he interpreted the Pharaoh’s dreams correctly.  How he ever came up with the answers that he came up with, I’ll never know, but his deduction of famine was a doozy.  Very impressive.

Dream interpretation is really pretty easy if you just follow a few basic rules.
1.    Pay little attention to the stories.  In the attempt to express itself, the sub-conscious mind makes up these usually funny, strange, obtuse stories just to speak through.  It’s not the plot that’s important; it’s the behavior, the doing, the feeling that needs the analysis.
2.    It’s not a story about you and a bunch of other people.  They’re all you.  It’s your dream.  All the characters are manifestations of you or some part of you.  Learn to look at all the characters, not just the central character.
3.    It’s the sub-conscious speaking, so learn to get beneath the plot and rather, into the emotions and underlying feelings of the characters in the story.  If it’s convoluted, so what?  That’s just the sub-conscious struggling with the writing, trying to tell the story in a number of ways.
4.    Think like a writer.  Writers of stories ask, “What does my central character want in this scene?  What is the essence of what he is doing?  How does he feel about it?  What is his motivation?  What is his quest?”  Then answer those questions for all the characters in the dream.  Remember they all represent, in some way, parts of you.
5.    Learn to see under the plot to the universal doings of the characters.
6.    Apply these doings and feelings and fears to your conscious life.  Remember, it is the sub-conscious trying to express itself and let out its fears, worries, expectations, joys, feelings, anticipations, etc.
7.    Your dreams are you.  They are simply you going on while the other parts rest.  Pay attention to the essences.  You’ll learn a lot about yourself.

Last week I had a dream that spoke deeply to me.  In it, it was night.  I was on a yacht in the middle of the ocean.  I slipped and fell overboard.  No one knew.  The yacht sailed on over the horizon leaving me in the water alone.  I began to swim for shore, but I had no idea which way the shore was, so I just began swimming, knowing that If I stayed there, I’d drown.

The waves were huge.  I would swim up one side of them and down the other.  I was not afraid – just determined to make it to the shore.

Suddenly, while I was swimming, a ghost rose up from the bottom of the ocean to the right of me and hovered, standing in the water and watching me.  It was a naked man and I knew it was a ghost because he was very white and translucent.  I knew he was waiting for me to drown and he would take me back down.  I swam on.

Then there appeared on my left a woman in 1890s dress, complete with hat and parasol – she too a ghost, she too watching me and standing in the water.  Then rose up two children, a boy around five and his older sister around eight.  They were holding hands and watching me as well.

Lastly there arose a World War two fighter pilot.  I could tell all this by his uniform and his headpiece.  I knew immediately that they had all drown there in the ocean at different times and that they were all coming up to watch me struggle on, waiting to take me down.  They were not menacing, just patient and curious.

I swam on.  I had the feeling that they wanted to go with me; that they all wished that they were alive to try to make it.

The entire dream was scored with music that accompanied my efforts — a song actually, with lyrics.  The ocean and magnitude of it was reflected in the strings and dramatic synth pads and my energy and efforts to make it to shore were reflected in a driving percussion track that juxtaposed the magnitude of the orchestra.

I woke up.

I remembered the song, quickly analyzed it, saw that it was in a modal scale, wrote down the melody on a post-it and scratched out a few of the lyrics that I could remember.  I then wrote down the story of the dream and it’s characters and described to myself its musical arrangement.

I had no idea what the dream was about.  All this note taking took me about an hour.  I then went back to sleep.

I’ve spent a solid week in the studio since finishing the writing of this song, recording the arrangement, doing all the drumming and percussion and describing the dream in as much detail as I could remember.  I also added to the detail of it from my imagination.

I finished recording the song yesterday and I shall offer it to each of you cherished readers as a free download on Watchfire Music after I mix it at the end of the week.  A present for hanging in there with me through this 5 part series.

So what did the dream mean?  Throughout the writing and recording process I’ve had the opportunity to dig deeply and figure it out.  I have an interpretation that makes sense to me, but you’ll have to wait.  If you think this is like one of those old Tom Mix television serial shows that stop right at the climax and make you have to come back tomorrow for the ending, you’re right.

Tomorrow we discuss dream study in more depth.  Stay tuned.