Intro: Dream
It is light.
It is dark.
It is light again.
It is very dark.
Dusk settles - something like dusk - a queasy, night vision green, stamped with a throbbing amber moon.
It is my backyard, but it isn’t. Josh is there and Ben and Ryan, but he’s very young, and then not Josh, and me, and Tony, and Brian Lauers, from high school, and Jake, and then Josh.
They are golfing, and then not Josh, hitting balls, and it is light, silent, and I am watching, and it is dark, and I am not me, but I am watching me, and then Josh.
And there are pigs in the yard - first the impression of pigs, followed by pulsing pig representations - and it is yellow dusk, and the pulsing pig representations are too big, and then Josh, and there is a baby that is not mine, that I need to take care of, that looks like me, and then not Josh, and then Josh, and then not Ben, and Josh is going into the neighbor’s house to take a piss and they aren’t home but the lights are on and I am furious, and then not Josh, and the pulsing pig representations are again just the impressions of pigs and they are many, and the pigs are in danger, I can feel it, and then Josh, and it is light, and the pigs are pigs now - tangible pigs - and have green eyes, and then Ben, and then not Josh, and Marshall is in the house, and I am in the house, and Josh is in the house, and then not Josh, and Kelly wafts through, blinking her eyes wildly, and it is very bright, and then Josh - and where is the baby? - and then not Josh, and I can hear an uncle in the other room, and it is very bright, and then Josh and Ben and Marshall and Tony and my brother and me and a pig and the baby and then not Josh and this doesn’t make sense, I realize this doesn’t make sense, and I realize I’m dreaming and then it is light and everything slows down, comes into focus. Everything is focused and still. Lucid.
The house is mine and I am lucid.
I am dreaming. I say this aloud and the words pulse through the air in concentric circles. I am in my kitchen. Everything is there. It is my kitchen, but more - ethereal, maybe. And Josh and Ben and Tony and Ryan and Jake and Marshall and Brian Lauers and the green eyed pig are just standing still, staring at me, waiting for me to do something. So I put a hat on the pig, with my mind. A beautiful deep brown bowler. Everyone smiles.
I breath. This is my dream and I can do literally anything I want. The laws of physics and morality do not apply to me. I could fly through the air like a crow. I could make Josh do things to the pig. I could combine Josh with the pig to make a pig-Josh and have Ben do things with pig-Josh. I could punch pig-Josh into a billion smaller pigs with spaghetti knuckles. I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I could do it. I could make them all perform an elaborate three part very special episode of Charles In Charge, where the pig plays Charles and Tony plays Buddy, and Buddy is experimenting with PCP, and Charles has to help him and hide it from the kids. It could be brilliant and disgusting. And I could play Mr. Belvedere, hell, I could be Mr. Belvedere, even though he’s not even in Charles In Charge. I could make Mr. Belvedere a member of the Charles in charge universe with my mind. Anything. This world, as they say, is my oyster. I could literally make this world into an oyster.
Instead, I retreat to my studio to record - this - podcast . . .Part I: Lucid Dreaming
In 1902, Willis Carrier recorded a remarkable dream in his dream journal. Two dream descriptions in a row might be a bit much, but bare with me.
July 16th, 1902
Dearest diary,
Last night I dreamt the most remarkable dream. To call it a dream, in fact, does it no justice. It was more than a dream, I believe. Vision may be the word. Revelation, perhaps.
It began ordinarily enough. I was trudging through the disgusting streets of Brooklyn on yet another punishingly hot day, stinking to high heaven as everybody does all of the time , cursing the three piece wool suit that people of this particular point in history are cursed to wear, no matter the weather. My god, life is a nightmare! Good lord, the stench! Heavens to Betsy - the rashes! Oh, the rashes! It’s a wonder that a person ever accomplishes even the most menial of tasks whilst drenched head to toe in sticky, hot sweat, his crotch dappled and scarlet red, itching like the dickens, his olfactory sense barraged from all corners each and every moment of each and every hellish day with the ghastly odor of three million retched, reeking New Yorkers, barely holding on to consciousness as they teeter on the precipice of of heatstroke or wage a futile battle against retching from the pungency.
I was contemplating all of this, praying for the sweet relief of the Reapers refreshingly cold, gnarled touch, when a curious storefront caught my eye. One I hadn’t noticed before, though I have made this walk innumerable times. It was called, “Breezy Jeff’s Emporium”.
“What kind of name is Jeff?” I thought.
I felt compelled to step inside, so I pushed through its unornamented door.
The most wonderful thing happened as the door opened. I was enveloped by cool, soothing air, the likes of which I have never felt before. It was as if God himself had exhaled upon me! I began to weep with joy.
When I had regained my composure, I looked about myself to ascertain the nature of the establishment, but there was little to see. The walls stood bare, and I appeared to be alone.
That is when it struck me: This must be a dream.
Surprised to find myself so aware of this fact while still in the dream state, I nearly awoke. The store began to fade. Not wishing to ever leave this icy paradise, I willed it back into solidity with great effort and found that I was able to move about of my own free will.
I heard a loud humming noise from the back of the store, but was unable to see its source. I went to investigate and found, around a corner, a strange contraption which seemed to be the source of the noise and, to my amazement, the cool air.
“My God,” I thought. “A machine that cools the air. This could change everything!”
I had to bring this miracle to the real world! A dipped quill and paper materialized in my hands, and I began to make sketches and notes pertaining to its construction.
Upon awakening, I immediately transcribed my dream notes. And I’ll be McKinley’s old mother if I don’t believe this thing can actually work!
I must retreat now to my laboratory to assemble a prototype. This invention, if I am not sorrowfully mistaken, could be our cool savior from the oppressive god of heat and I must waste no time in building it!
Willis Carriers vision was not the first lucid dream recorded in history, but it very well may be the most significant, and is a fine introduction to the topic. The invention of the air conditioner ushered in the modern age, making life bearable for the first time in human history.
How does a man discover something so consequential and practical in the non-dream world while in the dream world? How does he gain the ability to understand that he is dreaming and act proactively within the dream?
The answers are elusive, highly controversial, and, in this podcast, wildly simplified and occasionally misrepresented.
Lucid dreaming is essentially a dream in which one becomes impassive, conscious of the dream state and able to control ones actions and surroundings within the dream. To really understand lucid dreaming you must first understand dreaming, which no one does for sure. You’ll get different explanations for why we dream and what, if anything, dreams mean from scientists, psychologist, religious fanatics, psychics, your mother, or the quiet guys you work with who, when they do finally talk, reveal themselves to be profoundly unpleasant. There is very little agreement even within these groups. One unnerving guy at the office might say that dreams are visions from god while another insists that they are representations of repressed sexual desires. Back slowly away from both of these men. They are the ones who make that horrible mess in the bathroom, probably.
I’m talking about you, Kurt!
A dream is essentially a hallucination - a creation of your mind. You see things in your dreams, but not with your eyes - a real stoner mind-fuck. There’s no particular portion of the brain that these images arise from - that anyone knows of, anyway. It’s kind of biological ocean whose depths are completely unknown to us despite its relative nearness.
There is one theory, variations of which are currently the most pervasive, that dreams are a kind of informational sieve, a way for our brain to filter out useless information and sort the things we need, resulting in a kind of free associative hodgepodge of thoughts and images that really only seem to make sense because of our conscious tendency to string miscellaneous information into a kind of narrative. Sort of like how if you watch a movie on mute, any music you play will seem to sync up with it. The Dark Side of Oz phenomenon, if you will.
It is nearly impossible to talk about dreams, apparently, without sounding like you just took a bong rip.
I have to ask, though: If it is truly the case that dreams are a mechanism for sorting and filtering information, why have I retained such a vast store of knowledge about the Golden Girls and Sha Na Na, but couldn’t, under any circumstance, tell you my wife’s phone number?
Either this theory is bunk or my sieve is broken.
Freud was somewhat a proponent of this explanation, though he added that dreams were a means of latent wish fulfillment and deeper revelations about oneself could be sussed out through analysis. Those deeper revelations tended to be sex stuff.
I’d really like to get his take on which wish I was fulfilling in the dream I had where a group of monks marched into my room to tell me that Jeff Goldblum had died.
Jung largely concurred with Freud, but was much less phallocentric and posited that the existence of common dreams, which he called archetypes - flying, unpreparedness, secret rooms, Jeff Goldblum - were an expression of a unified human consciousness.
L. Ron Hubbard, a lunatic, said that "Dreams are crazy house mirrors by which the analyzer looks down intothe engram bank.” I have no idea what that means and don’t care to find out.
There are a few things we know absolutely about dreams, specifically, which parts of the brain aren’t active during sleep. The motor cortex, for instance. It is responsible for musculoskeletal control – moving your body. When the motor cortex is stimulated during sleep – as is the case with a sleep disorder called “violent sleep”, which has been recreated in animal experiments – the dreamer will act out their dreams. Dogs will dig at the air, cats roam around, aimless and ominous, and humans have been known to attack whoever happens to be in bed with them. A prostitute named Fancy, for example.
Activity also decreases in the prefrontal regions of the brain responsible for episodic memory and integrating information. It’s the reason dreams don’t usually make a lot of sense.
I could go on – about REM sleep, neurological theories, wet dreams – but this is supposed to be about lucid dreaming, so let’s talk about that.
Here’s the thing – We don’t really know whether lucid dreaming is real. Dreams are notoriously difficult, if not impossible to monitor, so the specifics of dreams are kind of beyond us. There’s a very real chance that lucid dreams are just dreams of being lucid, not actual lucidity within a dream. The study most often cited in its favor basically consisted of a researcher telling a subject to move his eyes in a certain way in his sleep. Apparently he did, but it was just side to side.
So we are left with personal testimony, and there is certainly a lot of it.
Lucid dreamers love talking about lucid dreaming. If you begin a conversation with one, it won’t end until you’ve heard all of their tales of flying over psychedelic meadows, chatting with their dead grandpappy about the tofu situation in heaven, and bedding Khaleesi, The Mother of Dragons, and agreed that they are highly evolved mystical super-people. What they won’t tell you is that even their sweet Aunt Kathy won’t return their calls anymore. Avoid them at all costs. In fact, avoid everyone at all costs, just to be safe.
They’ll also tell you how you can become one of them. “Oh my god, you don’t meditate? You have to meditate!” They’ll tell you about looking at your hands, or flipping light switches on and off, or reading a digital clock several times a day. These are what’s known as reality checks. The idea is that if you get used to confirming that you’re not dreaming during your waking hours, the habit will persist into your dreams and you will become lucid when you realize you are dreaming.
They’ll tell you about binaural beats, beats of two different frequencies, one being fed into each ear, which create a third frequency in your brain that, theoretically, produces relaxation, concentration, and, when you’re sleeping, lucid dreams. It’s sometimes called brainwave entertainment – which may or may not also be the title of a Skirlex album, another thing I don’t care to find out – and sounds like a computer attempting Peruvian Pan Flute music.
They’ll tell you about taking B vitamins before you go to bed, as well as an exhaustive list of additional supplements that have not been approved by the FDA.
They’ll encourage you to keep a dream journal, make your own dream pillow, eat cheese before bed to have what they call, horrifyingly, “cheese dreams”, set an alarm to wake you up every 90 minutes, and wear a REM inducing mask, none of which seem conducive to any kind of sleep, let alone a deep one.
They’ll tell you that, if you do become lucid, you should “ask the dream” to let you become lucid more easily next time.
They’ll continue shouting these things at you as you slowly back away from them and they’ll chase after you when you turn and break into a dead sprint.
These people are relentless and will stop at nothing to share their inner peace.
And goddamn if I don’t want to BE one of these people. I’ve tried a good number of their methods, not as an ironic experiment, but in earnest.
I would very much like to lucid dream. It sounds amazing. Passive sleep feels like a necessary waste of time, but conscious sleep eliminates that burden. You never have to stop doing. And I want to pause that recurring dream I have where I’m lost and half nude in a massive hotel with a random assortment of acquaintances and dream people while reports of an alien invasion blast from unseen speakers and finally find that Morrissey concert in the lobby that I’ve been trying to get to for all these years. I want to explore the room in the house that I grew up in that no one knew was there. I want to hear and remember music that doesn’t exist in the real world, music that evidently lives inside me that I don’t have access to. I want to be a whale for a little while and goddammit I want to have consequence free dream sex with Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend Sloan!
Not to mention that the implications or Lucid Dreaming are pretty wild. If you are able actively alter the projections of your Id and Ego, what does that mean? Something, I’m sure of it.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to binge eat some cheese, strap on my dream goggles, and take a brief, hopeful nap.