Blue_Opossum

Morning of May 23, 1998. Saturday.

I decided to look over some of my many smaller, older dream journals (ones where I first wrote only a brief outline to write of in more detail in other sources, such as larger notebooks) and just threw this one onto the scanner as is. The original 1998 entry is exactly as it is here from May 23rd, 1998 and I had not even looked at it in several years. See images below. The entry reads (the printed data being May 23 1998 Saturday 143 / 222 Week 21) - this was also recurring a few times:

“Long, vivid dream about a pirate movie. There are many details and there is comedy in some parts, drama in others. It is about a sort of feminine male pirate and a tough, older bearded one and their misadventures in an almost science-fiction-like plot.
I enjoy the movie although it seems very impersonal.”

An additional scan from another part of that dream/dream set:

“In one part I go down into a part of one building and am near one gateway by The Land of the Dead. One asks me what I am doing there since I am alive…”

Looking at my more extensive notes, I see that I was writing a fair amount (almost essay-like) on “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl”.

There is only one little problem. The movie, as I understand it, was not even thought of until 2001…and was released on 9th of July, 2003 (USA)…but there is a bit more, as, precognition often comes in layers, linked to several things at once, even when relating to many years ahead.

The most hilarious connection is the “feminine pirate” reference. Both my wife and myself (only within the last few years - as we did not see the movie until 2008) thought that Johnny Depp was far more feminine in that role as a “male pirate” than a teenage girl would have been - to a point of being near-surreal in its absurdity.

Anyway, in the pirates movie, the pirates were “undead” (which I would not call zombies, by the way). In another Johnny Depp movie (we have not seen “Corpse Bride”), there is the “Land of the Dead” exactly as I wrote it in 1998 regarding the other “movie”.

The “Corpse Bride” movie summary reminds me quite strongly of “Castle of Blood (1963)” / “Danza macabra” (original title), easily the most influential and most “lucid” movie of my childhood, “Gay Purr-ee” (1962) being the second-most influential.

Now, pay attention, very closely:

Johnny Depp says (see page) on (the Land of the Dead) “Well, Tim explained it really beautifully earlier, and so I’ll butcher it but he’ll fix it for me. It’s the idea that in life there is this kind of constant fear and obsession with death and the mystery of what death is and all of that, to the point of where people are unbelievably tense about arriving there, even though we all know we’re going to arrive there at some point. In fact, the land of the living in this thing is sort of super uptight and grey and heavy as a place and going down to the land of the dead where it could be heaven or hell or it could be purgatory, and it’s like 1920s Paris. Flappers and craziness. I thought that it was pretty amazing.“

And here from the information on imdb (on "Gay Purr-ee”):

“The film supposedly takes place in the 1890s, but the montage of painters doing portraits of Mewsette includes Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. Van Gogh died in 1890, while Picasso would not exhibit in Paris until 1900 (and would not paint in the style depicted until the 1920s).”