• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    What can I say? Some dreams just call out to be shared. I've always found it interesting to read about other people's dream lives, and now I'm giving them the same chance.

    1. Another Melody Fragment (With Lyrics this Time)

      by , 08-16-2023 at 03:27 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      Melody Fragment (with lyrics)

      I awoke around 4 am from a rather confusing dream in which I may have been singing this, although the conscious ‘me’ seemed distinct from the dream ‘me’, and I have the impression that I woke myself up intentionally at this point since I always try to be on the lookout for dream music.

      This is what I can remember of the melody, with the approximate tempo:



      The accompanying lyrics were: ‘Sam, you are lucky. Sam, you are empty,’ with the first three words corresponding to the initial three notes of each phrase. As a note, it’s fairly normal for me to listen to, play or write things in 7/8, but I can’t say the same about Eb major.

      15.8.23
      Tags: music
      Categories
      non-lucid
      Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails I heard Bush Is Pushing the Draft-dream-15.8.23-1.jpg  
    2. No Rats Were Harmed in the Making of this Entry

      by , 08-05-2023 at 03:51 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      I’m reading through profiles posted on a website. For one, I read, “My story does not begin or end and has no need to stop at these David’s bones.”

      --

      I’m going to a gym or similar. Everybody there is trying to work out some cryptic puzzle. The phrase “traveling in the tail of a sound” is a hint.

      --

      I’m attending a class in a floating city where all the buildings and such look like clouds – almost certainly as a person other than myself. It’s a group of a dozen or so students led by a teacher. There’s a nocturnal atmosphere. Up until this point, I’ve been behind the rest of the class, but something has clicked for me since the last time we met. All of us are supposed to race to find a certain ship (airship, really, although it wasn’t described that way). I start out strong and have a lead from the beginning, and I actually make it there first. (This part is sort of video game-ish.) We do a couple more rounds after that; I take even more efficient routes, having a better idea of the city’s layout, and again make it there first. The third time, which works a little differently, I make it to the ship so far ahead that I actually have time to untie it and bring it around to where the others are still struggling to get past a certain obstacle.

      --

      The next dream from that night is explicitly video game-like rather than implicitly. The dream involves the party going down to the underworld to rescue a comrade. This is a fairly routine occurrence, although enough of a bother to where it’s still better to avoid having to do it. This is the first time it’s happened in this game, so we get a special introduction to Fancrow, who is putting in a special appearance as lord of the dead. Fancrow is an older man, short, Caucasian, with white hair and a beard, wearing a blue uniform trimmed in yellow – just how he looked in the previous game. There are a number of little references to his role in that game, where he was a side character: there, you have to win a duel against him to get [handwriting illegible]. I’ve been given to understand that he just lets the dead person go the first time, and also the first time it happens after a solstice passes (which is yet another little reference). But nothing is happening. In addition to the action playing out, there are a number of interface elements visible, including one with a grayed-out sword. That means that we haven’t yet recruited the party member who would be really helpful in this situation.

      It’s also possible for the deceased themselves to trigger their own release, and the dream then cuts to the PoV of the person we’re here for, who’s in the process of doing just that. She jumps onto a flying vehicle, which instantly plummets since it’s set to the gravity of the lower realms. As it goes down, a bad smell becomes more and more prominent – associated with the place itself.

      The dream cuts back to the scene with Fancrow, where something is happening. He’s being hit with small objects in advance of the party member breaking through. Things are looking good now, but I’m still angry at Fancrow for taking my friend away, so I take advantage of his distraction to punch him. But he isn’t taken off guard. He just mirrors my action and grins. I know that now I’m going to be the next one to end up down here.

      --

      To help RD, I go to a place that looks like an abandoned mall to complete some kind of puzzle that involves getting the air to flow into a certain place up high, which is necessary to accomplish something. There’s no place I can stand to get it there directly, so I have to use the extremely larger flowers growing high up on vines there to redirect it. This is a timed puzzle, but I manage to complete it quickly, mentally directing the air along the right path. RD is happy about this. We are part of a small group, and because of this, she will be able to provide the space for us to do something later on. Possibly related, although for reasons that are now unclear, later on, I'm running through mental projections of rat experiments, one after another, changing the conditions as certain aspects become clear so I can get another step closer to figuring out what I want to know. I do tens of thousands of them, although each one only seems to take instants to run start to finish. It seems as if all of this is necessary since I'm trying to actually figure out the causation of something rather than just navigating outcomes.

      --

      I have, in connection with (dream-)siblings, made something that had gotten very popular. I'm getting invitations from people all over the world wanting me to have adventures with them. I could travel anywhere in an instant, but that somehow makes it seem less interesting. And what I really want to do is just to get back to the newest musical project I'm working on.

      --

      I'm with a group of people in a small city, chasing after someone. We split into groups to surround them. Something will end when we catch this person, and I want it to be over really badly. I experience the landscape of the dream as having harmonic connotations – in the area where I am, specifically, ones indicating tension. There’s no audible music playing, just a sense of information being perceptible as part of my experience of the dream.

      (July, mostly)
      Tags: class, game, music, ship, wind, words
      Categories
      Uncategorized
    3. Musical Metamorphoses

      by , 07-04-2023 at 04:35 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      All the most interesting dreams from this week involved music in some way. These included:

      -Applying a temporary tattoo of the notation for the amen break to my face, apparently for some event I was going to attend.

      -Working on a piece of music. As the dream progresses, the different parts become associated with characters, and a story plays out among them. The characters all travel somewhere special, like the moon, a number of times. I think it ended with everything being absorbed back into the composition again. Unfortunately, I can’t remember many of the details as I woke up to one of the cats getting ready to cough up a hairball and had to immediately turn on the lights and make sure she didn’t do it on my bouzouki.

      -Programming a couple weather patterns on something that looked suspiciously like a groovebox. I’m doing this at somebody’s request, at the shop he owns. There’s a sense of the machine making the process much simpler than it would be otherwise, just a matter of pressing a few buttons. When I’m done, I make a mental projection of the future to check that my proposed patterns won’t screw up the weather in other places, and since everything looks OK, I confirm them.

      At some later point in the dream, I gain lucidity flying over a place that’s a cross between a highway and a waterway, with cars going one way and ships going the other. I decide to go back to the scene from the earlier dream, and I speak with the man to find out if he has anything else I can do there. It strikes me as an interesting thing to do while focusing on maintaining lucidity. I woke up not long after, though, which wasn’t surprising as it was actually getting rather late into the morning.

      27.6.23-3.7.23
      Tags: music, weather
      Categories
      lucid , non-lucid
    4. Touched by a Yeti, etc.

      by , 06-15-2023 at 04:03 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      Touched by a Yeti

      I have traveled somewhere with a large group of people, possibly by ship. I’m a different person (male, early 20s, with a Spanish-sounding name). We’ve just arrived here. It’s unclear exactly what kind of setting this is, but it’s clearly not contemporary, and maybe entirely fantastical. Everything is currently covered in snow.

      I am happy because I have a new sword, and it is awesome. It’s a long, slightly curved blade, and there are etchings of animals on it – wild boars, maybe others. I have it out, showing people, when a strange creature appears – I know it to be a yeti. It’s white and shaggy, but actually a little smaller than an average human – overall, a very vague visual impression. (Although maybe not vaguer than my visual impressions of dream characters in general. Or, really, people in general, as I am pretty much face-blind and have had to work out other ways of recognizing people.)

      Anyway. The creature is lightning-fast and moves in unpredictable ways, including short jumps between locations. In the brief time they have to react, people are trying to get away from it, but it just moves straight past them and appears right next to me. It touches my arm, which it does something to me that makes me lose consciousness.

      I’m woken up by someone what seems like only a short time later – same setting, only more people are around now, and the yeti is clearly not. I go with some people to have a conversation with someone who can explain what’s going on. The person (who seems a lot like NR) explains that the creature is the guardian of this place, and it didn’t like the sword – or, rather, its symbolic charge, so to speak – what it represented, which was being an outsider here and coming in intending to fix problems as an outsider, without being a part of it, which is arrogance.

      This makes sense to me. I now feel as if I understand the creature – not just from the explanation of its behavior but because I can tell that I now have some kind of connection with it. I know that it’s here all the time, even when it’s not manifesting physically. At some point later, as I’m talking with some other people who haven’t yet heard about the incident, I mention the yeti to them, and I turn around, expecting to see it there behind me, and it is – and from their reaction, I can tell that they can see it there too. I also know that eventually, when the time is right, I’ll take the sword out again, and use it this time, but in cooperation with it.

      28.5.23

      Cycles

      I’m in a room in a house at night, sitting at a keyboard. (It does seem to be me this time. Probably.) I’m playing with settings, designing sounds that I’ll be able to use for projects later on. While I’m doing this, I have a strong sense of my aunt’s presence, which seems connected with the keyboard in some way even though she isn’t there in the dream.

      Later, I’m somewhere like the dining room table of my current house, also at night. My parents are there, and I’m showing them something on a laptop: a vst instrument that I’m thinking about getting. It is called The Curse. The sound has an evolving quality to it, and it is accompanied by simple images that change alongside it as it cycles through its various stages. It had six different settings, all represented by images of people shown in bright neon outline against a black background going through different transformations. The first was fairy tale-like – that’s all I can remember about it. Another image was of a woman holding a baby: it showed the woman growing old rapidly and then becoming young again as the baby continued to look the same. Some of the images I didn’t see the cycles for were of a young man and woman holding wineglasses in a celebratory pose, and of a woman in a short dress wearing a helmet like the one Athena is portrayed in – one of the only lone figures – and a man and woman I surmised were in some sort of muse/artist relationship, since the woman was holding a quill pen.

      1.6.23

      Smell Epiphany

      I am a different person (female, Asian, maybe around eight years old) living in a house with my family. The house is somewhat similar to childhood home #5, at least in the size/location of the kitchen area. Something is bothering me – I’ve forgotten some of the points related to this – so I go outside to sit by the garden. There’s a steep, rocky slope lined with trees that leads down to a small garden where vegetables are growing. I sit on the slope, shaded by trees, and stay there for a while.

      Later, I’m in a building with my father and older brother, walking down a hallway. It’s a busy area, and many of the walls are lined with shelves full of bottles and boxes. He seems to be some kind of medical professional, and he is giving us a lesson, something both my brother and I find boring. He tells us to take a certain amount of a certain kind of powder on a shelf, so we do, putting it containers we have with us. He asks us how we can tell whether it’s good quality or not. I know the right answer, and so I give it: by its smell. He tells us to go back to where we got the powder and smell it. We do. My brother goes first, and when he’s done, I lean down to smell it. The stuff looks, and also kind of smells, like curry powder. As I smell it, I realize for the first time just how many dimensions a smell can have. It’s like a whole world. The idea that people can extract meaningful information doing this was just abstract to me before, but now it’s real.

      5.6.23

      Also a Couple Lucid Dreams

      I won’t describe them in detail, though, since I don’t think walking/flying around and looking at things would make for very interesting reading. The first (10.6.23) had an interesting setting – I get lucid after the dream’s ‘plot’ seems to come to an end, fly through a wall, and start exploring. I gain height and fly around an industrial park at night – brightly lit in different colors, with the reflected light from the overcast sky giving it a vivid atmosphere, while lightning flashes in the distance. I go in and out a number of times and make my wings appear at least twice – notably, just based on my shadow, they seem to be smaller than normal, which maybe makes sense as I can fly perfectly well without them, and so there’s no real need to make them look like they’re actually serving some purpose.

      In the second lucid dream (13.6.23), after some dream events I can’t recall very clearly, I’m leaving a school and happen to see by NR looking at children’s artwork hanging in the hallway. He’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat, and so I can’t see his face. I walk past, but then it occurs to me that I should really take the opportunity to talk with him. I turn around and see that he’s begun to vanish, and I realize that I’m dreaming. I decide that I’ll go somewhere else, just leaving the location up to the dream.

      I keep walking towards the entrance, close my eyes, and let the dream fade around me. My sense of having a body, and therefore of having my eyes closed, vanishes completely, and once it’s gone, imagery begins to arise again. In a flash, I see bare tree branches in a thick, white mist. Accompanying the visuals is a strong impression of early spring. Then everything comes into full focus again, and I’m standing in a bare garden underneath a bare-branched tree by a pond. I (wrongly) identify this as the backyard of childhood home #5 and am a little disappointed – just think of all the more interesting places I could have ended up. But maybe there will be some value in revisiting the place here in a dream – it’s not exactly one I have good memories of.

      And so I walk up to the house, jumping through the garage doors but then opening the one to the inside normally for some reason – maybe I just expected it to be unlocked. The layout of the house does not resemble the one I’ve mistaken it for in any meaningful way other than having hardwood floors. I walk through the various rooms, ground floor first, then upper floor. Nobody is around – I only see a couple cats in one of the rooms. My alarm awakens me before I can explore the whole house.
      Categories
      lucid , non-lucid
    5. Who uses the door anyway?

      by , 12-17-2022 at 04:40 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      I am somewhere like a dorm room, which I seem to share with around three other people. The beds are really low, maybe just mattresses on the floor, and we’re sitting on them, listening to a woman in some kind of position of authority who’s speaking to us. She takes a feather comforter from somewhere and hands it to me to replace my current one. My bedding is all extremely tangled and twisted - I’ve slept badly. I tell her that it wouldn’t be that difficult to untangle it, but she still wants to give me the new one, so I take it and set the old one at the front of the bed. She then leaves.

      My old friend Ona, who seems to be one of my roommates, is trying to tell me something now, but she’s wearing something over her mouth sort of like an underwater breathing apparatus, so I have trouble understanding her at first. Eventually, with the help of one of the others, I understand that she’s saying something about a concert she saw me play in yesterday – also something about how she had previously been familiar with only one of the composers whose pieces were played there.

      This next part may or may not be part of the same dream – there were definitely parts after that one that I forgot, anyway. But I’m in a restaurant now. It’s a large, bright space, lit mainly by daylight streaming through full-length glass windows, but a little crowded – all the tables seem to be filled, and there isn’t much space to move between them. Saimi passes by the table where I’m sitting and makes some kind of signal to me with her hand. This somehow clues me into the fact that I’m dreaming.

      I get up and follow her out to the balcony to talk. As I pass through the glass window, I can feel some sensations from it, especially the dividing metal bars, which is unusual and a little surprising – possibly it has something to do with the overall level of realism seeming especially high this time. Saimi watches, pauses for a second, and then opens a glass door and walks out. I jokingly say that I haven’t used a door in a dream for years now.

      We jump down from the balcony and walk around while we decide what to do. It’s now clear that the restaurant is located on a college campus – one that’s dream-familiar to me from at least one dream I know I’ve recorded. Saimi says that before meeting up with me, she was waiting for my Aunt O so that they could see something together. She seems to want me to guess, so I do. A play? No. A movie? Also no. Apparently, it’s something like episodes from a TV series being screened somewhere on campus. She still wants to do this now, while lucid. I don’t think this sounds like a very good idea – looking at a screen for any considerable length of time seems like a pretty good way of losing lucidity to me. It could be interesting to see if my aunt shows up, though, and to talk with her, so I agree to wait with her. Since they agreed to meet in the restaurant, we head back there, flying back up to the balcony and going back where we started.

      I figure I should probably do something to keep engaged with the dream. This doesn’t strike me as a very interesting situation to work with initially. I wonder, though: what if I try to read these people’s minds? I look around the room, getting a read of the atmosphere – just in a way one might in waking life. How should I do this? I focus on one woman sitting at a table near me, trying to access her mindstate. What happens is that the dream imagery itself seems to transform so that now I’m seeing her in something like a large version of a baby’s high chair, chewing a mouthful of food with evident displeasure. So the form of the dream changed to reflect my intention, rather than my experiencing her thoughts as some kind of verbal overlay – fascinating.

      I wake up soon after, but quickly fall asleep again and find myself in the same setting, this time with my cat Ronnie. I’m trying to tie something around one of his paws, but soon I remember that I’m dreaming. I wake up again before I can do much of anything.

      -16.12.22
    6. In and Out and In

      by , 12-04-2022 at 01:41 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      The earliest parts of the dream I can still remember involve going around a house at night so that I can listen to different pieces of music being played on various radios and other equipment. All the rooms are dark, and I think I’m trying to avoid being seen by somebody. There’s a deliberate quality to what I’m doing, like it’s some task I’ve got to complete. Then, walking through a large room, possibly some kind of storage space, I remember that I’m dreaming, and so I can just do what I want.

      I walk further. Up ahead are two large windows set at an angle. I can see scenes playing out on the other side – it alternates between a bird’s-eye view of a large herd of dinosaurs of various kinds that looks a little unrealistic and something else I can no longer remember. (This was circa 4-5 am, not long after I’d finally managed to fall asleep, which would explain the relatively fluid, early-dream quality to some of the imagery.) I decide I want to get a closer look at the dinosaurs, so I jump through the glass when they’re visible.

      I start somewhere above them and to one side, but flying seems unusually difficult. I just feel too exhausted for it and float down towards the ground. But once I land, there’s suddenly someone there – I think at first that he’s my father, but it’s immediately obvious that he isn’t – the thought was probably a lingering remnant of the nonlucid dream that preceded this one. I ask him who he is. He seems a little sad at the question and, in fact, never actually answers it – he only says something that implies my not knowing already indicates some unfortunate state of affairs.

      We fly together – it is much easier now, with him. He wants to head back into the building I originally came out of, which is quite tall, almost like an office building. I ‘recognize’ various rooms I see through the glass. Among our surroundings out here, though, I can now see a place that strikes me as familiar among the array of them surrounding us in a rather physics-defying way. It’s hard to describe my impression of it – it’s like I’m looking into a realm that is the night sky, filled with colorful ballooning shapes, a little like kites, which I know to be sentient beings. I have good memories of that place. It isn’t just familiar: it feels as if, in some way, I belong there. I’m reluctant to go back inside when it is once again right here in front of me. But I follow my companion back through the glass, somewhat higher up than the level I exited from. We walk through a close, dark space which I know to be a puppet theater and into the room beyond, at which point I awaken.

      3.12.22
      Categories
      lucid
    7. Boat on a Stormy Sea; Cemetery Campsite

      by , 05-22-2022 at 09:11 PM (The Fourth Factor)
      Boat on a Stormy Sea

      I’m at an event taking place in a large, white tent, with people sitting at long tables in rows. I can’t remember the earlier part of the dream any longer, but at some point, a man on some sort of machine, kind of like a large tractor/open tank, bursts in and starts threatening people while riding up and down the aisles. He doesn’t actually seem to be trying to hurt anyone – yet – but it’s clearly a dangerous situation, so I head off to prepare properly before taking care of it.

      I go some distance away to a much smaller tent, where my own things are, and start by tying my hair back since that thing has exposed moving parts on it, and I want to be able to get close to it without having my neck snapped. While I’m getting ready, I plan, although I don’t think this will be very complicated. I figure I’ll just jump on and start messing with levers. But I’ll want to take out his grapply thingies first so he can’t just move them back.

      When I’m done, I go back a different way, past some fairly large buildings. The area is reminiscent of a university campus, and life seems to be going on normally here. A woman holding a number of small cards approaches me, wanting me to draw one. I do, knowing that she’s trying to help in some way. The cards are made of cardboard and are of varying sizes, as if they’re from multiple decks. I draw one which turns out to have a picture showing a boat on a stormy sea.* There’s accompanying text – I’m aware of having to focus more than usual in order to not instantly forget it (although, unfortunately, I did forget it between then and awakening). I take this as a positive sign. It also somehow suggests to me that it might be a good idea to see if I can get some of the other people in the tent to help out regarding the grapply things.

      * Note: this is the symbol for chords with dominant function in the app I use to practice improvising, which is something I was doing the night before this dream.

      13.5.22



      Cemetery Campsite

      I seem to be camping in a cemetery. Another tent is staked a few plots down – a mother and a young boy, who's three-ish, are staying there. I wonder whether I should tell them they’re camped on one of the graves that’s supposed to be haunted.

      We eventually do meet up somehow, and I show them the way to a local bank at her request. She meets with a couple of her relatives there, including an older woman who reminds me of somebody I know, who is looking after the child (who I now know is called Eliot) while she does something there. Eliot suddenly runs out of the building, and the woman follows, chasing him. I think she may need some help though, and so I wait around the opposite corner of the building and catch Eliot as he rounds it. He immediately starts crying.

      Sometime after that – back at the campsite – the woman has given me a bone with some meat on it to cook over a small fire. However, as I hold it over the flame, I notice there’s hardly any meat there at all – just a couple little scraps.

      Upon awakening, I also remembered a piano ostinato playing – not as a background of the dream, but as if it had somehow been going through my mind at the same time, apart from it. I didn’t check the pitches soon enough after the dream to be able to put it in a definite key, but this is what it sounded like:



      -15.5.22


      Lots of interesting dreams lately. I'm not going to copy them all here, but highlights include:

      -Preparing for a chess match against a guy who likes to send his bishop in for a sacrifice on the f-pawn early in the game. I find this annoying and intend to make sure, through my own choice of moves, that this is not going to be an appealing option for him.

      -Lots of hostels and hotels.

      -Attending a concert on a campus but leaving after my rowdy friends got kicked out since it’s not really worth being there without them.

      -A lucid dream mostly consisting of talking to people and exploring.
      Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails Famous Lucid Dreamers-dream-15.5.22.jpg  
    8. Gotta Breathe Sometime

      by , 04-27-2022 at 10:40 PM (The Fourth Factor)
      I’m in an unfamiliar house with my mother, showing her some pieces of music I’ve written using a playback program on a computer. As the dream goes on, the physical setting apparently vanishes in favor of the scores scrolling before my eyes. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember any of the music except for the clarinet part in one. The clarinet is holding a single note, and as several measures go by without it stopping, I make a mental note to modify the part as soon as we’re done listening. The computer may be able to play it back as written, but a clarinettist does actually have to take a breath at some point.

      -27.4.22
      Tags: house, music
      Categories
      non-lucid
    9. Reflect; Poke

      by , 01-22-2022 at 04:53 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      Reflect

      Part of a longer series of events involving travel from one place to another. The only part I remember well was towards the end, where I’m being chased by a young woman in a rather video game-ish setting. As I run, a handful of parallel memories arise, showing various outcomes to this event, which are all variations on her catching up. Looks like this is a mandatory fight. I also notice that something is different from the memories, something important: I know who she really is.

      I make sure she doesn’t catch up until an open area up ahead, and then we’re both standing there, facing one another. She initially has brown skin and straight, dark, shoulder-length hair, but the image dissolves, and she changes to a shorter figure with grayish skin, rather like Zimmy from Gunnerkrigg Court.

      There’s a short conversation here, which I can no longer remember, and then she attacks, throwing some sort of enormous summoning spell at me. I raise an arm and deflect it back at her with a gesture. What happens next is rather like a lengthy animation playing out, temporarily turning both of us into passive observers as it takes over the screen/dream and practically defeats my opponent all on its own. Moreover, at the end of it, the nature of the encounter seems to have changed, so that now I just have to complete three small, easy puzzles to win. My opponent actually contributes to solving one, in sort of a “yeah, yeah, let’s get this over with” way.

      Poke

      Another vaguely video game-ish one of which I can only remember the later part. In this one, I’m with a small group of people in a town, and there is a man there we have to fight, although it isn’t clear why, and he doesn’t actually seem to be an enemy. I can’t remember his appearance (or, really, the specific visuals of the dream in general), but something about him was reminiscent of Zorro somehow.

      A woman in the group demonstrates to me how to attack via a menu. There’s a list of attacks, most of which seem to be elementally based, but the woman indicates the one that he is apparently weak to, which is color-coded purple and labeled “Quiet”. Oddly, all the attacks just seem to be summoning various ensembles of musicians, who then play music. I select the most powerful option, which summons three of them. I then poke him in the back, which takes a small chunk out of his remaining HP. He’s just standing there and not responding in any way, so I poke him a few more times until he is defeated – or maybe just until I’ve got his attention, which seems as if it might be what this whole thing is actually about.
    10. Ambiguous Spirals

      by , 11-05-2021 at 11:07 PM (The Fourth Factor)
      I’m in a library, doing research for a school assignment. While I’m still not sure what materials I’ll need for it, I figure it would be a good idea to get some likely books since I happen to be here anyway. The assignment seems to involve music, specifically the composer Borodin, so I return to a shelf on the floor directly above the ground one where I had been earlier in the dream. About all I can remember of that earlier part was listening to a song with a couple other people, including my aunt. It had a heartbreakingly beautiful ending, but when I asked my aunt for a translation from the Russian, the text turned out to be a rather banal folk song about two mice.

      Anyway, once I get there, I pull a book from the shelf and flip it open to an analysis – probably a violin part, in either D or E. A very simplified reduction shows the staff with the I note, the IV and V above it a little later on, and then the ii on the octave below. The text explains how the melody avoids these structurally important notes (IV and V) and instead goes in a series of dark, ambiguous spirals that land on the ii each time.

      27.10.21
      Tags: library, music
      Categories
      non-lucid
    11. Districts of Dream-Prague

      by , 07-05-2021 at 03:27 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      I am in Dream-Prague with Saimi, showing her some parts of the city I like. She and I have both just recently arrived there, although it seems as if we’re here for entirely different reasons, and the visits just happened to coincide. We seem to be in the northwest region of the city.

      The place I’m showing her now is one that not many people know about, a neighborhood of winding streets on a hill, neat rows of houses on either side of the streets – a quiet, peaceful place. The houses are covered with what look like enormous cobwebs, large enough to completely cover most of the roofs. I tell Saimi that in the early morning, when it’s misty, they shine like silver.

      We then head down to the tram stop together. This, unlike the webbed streets, is a location that’s familiar to me from a previous iteration of Dream-Prague, although it doesn’t correspond to any waking-life location. On that occasion, the whole area had a much rougher vibe and was also undergoing construction. Perhaps with this in mind, I pull out my cell phone to show Saimi a couple pictures of how it used to look.

      I input the password first, which isn’t my waking-life password. This one is also six digits long, and the numbers signify a personally important date – there’s a charged quality to the memories the date pulls along with it. The date is December 22, I think (although I can’t remember the year now, or precisely what the date’s significance was). When I find the pictures, I notice strings of triangular orange flags in some of them, which tells me that I must have taken them during the protests.

      The wait at the tram stop is rather long (justified in-dream, I think, by it being a weekend). There’s a whole little scene here with a man who’s decided to teach his dog another song (it already knows two). It’s a large dog, but friendly: it puts its paws on me, almost knocking me over. The song he’s chosen is one of those old, popular ones most people know: it has kind of a jazz standard feel to it, lots of seventh chords and a melancholy tone. The lyrics are in German. I don’t remember what all of them are, though, and nobody there seems to know them all offhand, so I get my phone back out to look them up. While I do, a man in a red shirt sings a version of them in English – although I have the impression he only remembers about half of them and is making the rest up as he goes, and he also starts at the chorus for some reason.

      Once the tram arrives, I get my ticket punched – I just have a one-use one since I haven’t been here long. The tram heads straight east, neither turning or changing height so that, as the ground level falls, we’re positioned high enough to see most of the city from above. I look out over it. I’m glad to be back here, and I’m already looking forward to walking around all these places again.

      Eventually, the landscape changes. We now seem to be going through a park, which is also familiar to me. I’m puzzled at first – I don’t remember the tram going here. But I do remember seeing the tracks back when I worked in this place, and so it does make sense that it would go here.

      The plot seems to have changed now, with the dream partly drawing on memories of the old wildlife hospital, a different time and place. I still used to work here, although in the dream, it seems to be mostly a long-time crew instead of short-term volunteers. It seems as if this iteration also suffers from financial issues and is staffed at about half the level it should be to run it properly. This is currently relevant since the people on the tram are now coming to work here as well, which brings it about to where it should be – in fact, it seems as if I’m taking them here for that purpose.

      As we walk through the park, I lead the way. I find everybody together out back behind a building, where they're seated in rows on the ground. As I walk between the rows, I happen to glance down at my own legs and notice I’m wearing brown leather sandals and khaki pants that are cut off at the knee. Not far off is the man who’s in charge of this place, who’s grateful to have so many people coming. There’s a sense that there was once some kind of past tension between us that was wrapped up in why I left, and he’d since come to recognize was his fault. But that all seems to be over now.

      There’s conversation now, and something about a ceremony that’s going to take place soon, where Rae, NC and KD’s daughter, will break a staff in two and then remake it.

      3.7.21
      Categories
      non-lucid
    12. Darkness and Light and Cellos

      by , 05-16-2020 at 10:00 PM (The Fourth Factor)
      I am hanging out with co-workers and getting to know somebody who’s apparently just been hired. Her name is Marie, and she’s from Canada. In addition to working here, she’s a grad student working on a music degree, which she's now almost done with. She's currently working on the composition that will be her thesis. She shows it to me – via some sort of electronic device, I think.

      The music is notated on manuscript paper, but instead of the usual note shapes, there are little horizontal rectangles that stretch out for as long as the note is held, rather like a midi display. The inside of each rectangle is patterned in ways that indicate something about the music. I hear it in my head as I read, with the patterns calling up images and connotations in relation to it.

      The first bar begins with two long Gs an octave apart played by instruments in the violin family – I don’t identify them explicitly in the dream, but given that it’s written in the bass clef, almost certainly cellos. The rectangles contain the patterns signifying darkness and light. The impression this makes is hard to describe. Poignant, maybe – a suggestion of a cavernous space vast enough to hold them both at once. It continues, but I can’t remember the part after that so well.

      16.5.20
    13. Mostly Travel

      by , 02-09-2020 at 03:36 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      I have arrived in a green area shaded by trees. It seems that I’m traveling somewhere, and this is a stop along the way. The dream doesn’t make it explicit, but this seems to be the Czech countryside in the early 20th century – more or less.

      Gradually, other people arrive. I converse with a woman there as we wait. A couple large dogs arrive as well and are running around getting in people’s way. I order them to sit, figuring that they’ve just run here ahead of their masters, who won’t be far behind. They obey. One of them lies down, then rolls over on its back, obviously looking to get pet.

      The car arrives – a distinctly old-fashioned one. (Although there is some uncertainty there, as if the dream can’t quite decide on what sort of vehicle it should be. They all tend to be more or less interchangeable in my dreams.) There isn’t enough room in the car for everybody, but since I was there first, I get to be on its first trip. The woman I was talking to has to wait for its next one.

      I look around as we ride. The man next to me in the backseat is choosing the music that plays in the car via something rather like a touch-screen tablet framed in brown leather – much more aesthetic than the modern ones, I think to myself. Out the window, I see a turquoise river pouring over an oddly shaped stone formation into a lake – a place I’ve seen pictures of before but never visited. I turn around to continue to look through the back window as we drive by.

      I’m aware, as I look around, that in the not-so-distant future this area will be devastated by war. It adds a poignancy to being here in this beautiful place.

      The train – sure enough, it’s decided it would rather be a train now – approaches a platform, stopping under a curved wooden roof from which flowering vines hang down. An invasive species, I note. Parasitic to boot. But quite pretty, and so you can understand why people let it grow like this. In the future, there will be more of a push against it – but not so much here as in other places. A brief image comes to me of the future, of its yellow flowers filled with ash.

      It now seems as if the woman from before is on the train too, and along with another passenger, we continue our conversation.

      When I woke up, I remembered the following melody:




      I don’t think it was actually playing during any part of the dream – my impression is that it was connected to it somehow but happening on a different level of awareness. I find it rather odd that it’s in C# major since that’s not a key I ordinarily have much to do with. Maybe I waited too long before transcribing it and my pitch memory was off? Or maybe it was just in C# major.

      -31/1/20
      Categories
      non-lucid
    14. Demons or Double Bass?

      by , 01-15-2020 at 12:33 AM (The Fourth Factor)
      I am on a computer, looking through files. I’m trying to find papers from an earlier part of the dream where I’d stayed after a math class drawing, and the teacher had brought over a stack of graded assignments he’d apparently been working on while I sat there. I’d just glanced at them and seen that’d I’d done really well on them before taking off, but now I want a closer look, and this was apparently where they were.

      I scroll through small pictures, some of which began to move. One has expanded to fill the whole screen. It shows a house on fire, people running out. It scrolls past a small stage on which two double basses stand, one the traditional sort, another more metallic – electric by the look of it, but still a roughly double bass size and shape. It sits in a sort of flower-shaped metal pad. It catches my attention, and I’m struck by the level of detail.

      I am now – not sure in what order – both present in the dream and lucid. I’m in a park-like area, a clearing with groves of trees and some woods not far off. Another stage is nearby, this one a roofed circular platform on which sits another of those big electric basses. I consider giving it a try – that could be fun. But it occurs to me that I’ve never produced frightening scenarios in lucid dreams before, and I should try it at least once.

      Surrounded by demons is the first thing that occurs to me for some reason. That’ll do. I will them into being. As I focus on the intention, everything around me grows dark, swirling and immaterial. I’m floating, moving vaguely backwards. But nothing else seems to be happening. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll give that bass a try after all.

      I let go of the intention. The original scene immediately returns, and I walk back towards the area I started out in. But not far from it, by a ridge in front of a forested area, I spot a strange figure. Its head looks like a skull, bovine in shape, with horns that curl around to the front and knot around each other, and it’s wearing a black and white herringbone tweed blazer with a thin purple scarf and a long grey-black skirt. It looks like I managed something, at least, although I can’t say it’s especially scary.

      As I approach, it waves its hand, causing a small sphere of darkness to shoot towards me. This startles me a bit, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I keep walking towards it, ignoring its attacks. As I pass the pavilion, I notice the instrument sitting there looks different now. There are also now a number of cats up under the roof, lying in big cat piles that seem to extend upward into tunnels. They seem to just be waking up. The grey and orange tabbies stay where they are, but a few black cats stretch and jump down onto the stage.

      As I turn back towards the figure, I see that it is now a cat as well – a small black one. I pick it up. It doesn’t look happy with being held, but it makes no attempt to escape.

      At that point, I wake up.

      9.1.20
    15. Melody Fragments

      by , 05-29-2019 at 04:55 PM (The Fourth Factor)
      I had a couple dreams with music in them last night, and was able to transcribe some of it. I had forgotten almost all of the dreams themselves by the time I'd finished, but here's what I have:



      And, from a later awakening:



      Couple interesting things about these: first, that they're both in D major, which is the scale I've been practicing speedwork on for the past three weeks or so. I don't have perfect pitch, so this suggests some kind of residual pitch memory at work.

      Also, they both seem familiar, particularly the second. I want to say it's from a rock song? But it's hard to tell whether music in dreams only seems familiar the way things in general seem familiar in dreams or because I've actually heard it before.
      Tags: music
      Categories
      non-lucid
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