Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Randomness

There's something about seeing someone that's very "alternative" doing something normal. Its just such a blunt object taken to my sense of reality. It doesn't add up in the equation of my implicit association with them. Sure you've got red leather pants, a original Rush World Tour T-shirt, and a Mohawk, but you're on crutches. Sure you've got a eagle tattoo with the face of Lincoln across your chest, but you're taking out the trash. Sure you've got a tattoo of every Pink Floyd album cover all the way around your neck and a nose ring that has a chain attached to your nipples, but you're pushing a baby carriage. And your wife looks like a manager at an Arts and Crafts store in Duluth. Its just disorienting.

What was it like to dream before TV and Movies? The perspective of those mediums have become so ingrained in our heads people dream and imagine thing as if they were a movie. But before those mediums people had only first person perspective. Maybe also the occasional look in a mirror. The average dream now consists of a dozens images and ways of experiencing those images that you'd find in any movie. Its very common to dream that you're not inside your own body. And their are shots that are framed like movie scenes (at least in my dreams). I assume when there was less distraction, the average dream was "My my my I was standing on a hill looking into a river. It was the Most Chilling and Introspective dream I've ever had." Is there anyone out there that just dream simple things? I've been having a lot of dreams that are only about things that are happening. Dreaming about sleeping. Ugh. I must be very disturbed.

6 comments:

Mo Diggs said...

My dreams are too normal. One time I had a dream that Barry Manlilow made acomeback. I woke up sweating and asked my girlfriend to confirm that it was just a dream.

In one dream I went to a garage sale and thought about Bill Clinton

anthony said...

how do you think movies got to be the way they are? dreams came first, and after many thousands of years of refinement, people started turning them into movies. sure, the content of our dreams may reflect the comparatively recent mechanization of our immediate environment, but the narrative structure? i think that's a fundamental human way of (dis)organizing images and events that is only now being accurately reflected in our auto-depictions.

Baron said...

Haha! Mr Tony!! Hello there. I think that's true to an extent. I'm interested specifically in the frame of reference. Like I said its common that we see ourselves in our dreams. I don't think that came first. Just like painters didn't paint themselves featured in some sort of landscape picture. If they did a self portrait they, looked at themselves for long in the mirror. I think the ability to see oneself in your own dream is only as old as film.

anthony said...

thank you for the clarification. while i agree with you that the shifts in perspective in art and dreams emerged during the same epoch, i still maintain that, at least at the bleeding edge of evolution, art reflects worldview. it may well be that the rest of us knuckle-draggers, dreamers and filmmakers alike, only caught on after seeing it in a sticky-floored movie palace, but someone had to have that vision of disembodied reflection before they could photograph it.

this means that mass media might not have to be entirely soul-sucking. if the thoughtful smarties can get hold of the megaphone, we might be able to help coax the center of gravity of human consciousness into greater wisdom, understanding, and respect.

Kyria said...

I asked Erik Von Vague what he meant by that, and it does make sense. If you need me to explain, I will come to you in a dream tonight and do so.

myq said...

Dreams used to be like plays.
Plays have been around for a while, right?
Plays.