Weaving The Dream

1. Honor the Dream!

Many people assume that sleep dreams are nothing more than a rehash of the day’s events.  I speak from personal experience when I tell you that they are so much more than that.  Most dreams, like a fine work of art, are multi-layered, and offer much in the way of inspiration, guidance and motivation if we give them the honor of paying attention to them instead of deleting them or tossing them into the recycle bins in our minds.

2. Keep a Dream Journal

One of the best ways to honor them and to mine them for their creative wealth is to keep a dream journal, recording our dreams on a regular (not necessarily daily) basis. Give your dream a title, record its date, and then write the dream down in present tense.  Why?  Something about the way the brain works—if you record it in present tense, you remember things you might otherwise forget.

Writers, from Dante to Poe to King, used dreams to feed their writing.  William Blake used dreams for both visual and verbal inspiration.

3. Use those Dreamscapes

If you are a painter, making use of the dreamscapes of your dreams can be a straightforward matter of painting the image.  If you are a writer, playwright, or choreographer, consider the dreamscapes as settings or backdrops for your story.

Examine the landscape for mood, colors, odd juxtapositions of images or visual puns, and for time period and place.  Record any scene that captures your imagination in as much detail as you can, either verbally or visually or both.

4. Who are those Very Important Dream People (V.I.D.P’s)?

Just as the people that cross our paths in waking reality are grist for our creative mills, so too are our dream characters.  And they will fade into the ether never to return if we don’t capture them in our dream journal.

First, record or give them their names.  If you have no name, then give the character a name according to her role in the dream, for example, “mother”, “scary old man”, “benevolent guide”.  Then, write a description of the character, including clothing.  Is there something about this person’s character that plays into your current project? Does he take center stage, or act in a supporting role?  What does she have to say to you if you dialogue with her?

5. Ask for a Dream

If you could ask your creative muse a question, what would it be?  Make the question as succinct as possible and then write it down and put the paper under your pillow. Yes, I know this seems a little out there but, for whatever reason, it helps.  Think of your question as you drift to sleep.

 You may find the answer floating to the surface of your hypnogogic (that time just before sleep) dreams, or it may come to you in a spontaneous dream.  Record your dream or whatever images, words, or feelings come to you.

Don’t discount anything even if it seems too far out in left field to be applicable.  Remember to look for puns and other verbal riddles within the dream.  And finally, be patient.  The answer to your question may not show up the first night, or the second.  Sometimes it takes a week or more.  You don’t have to ask every night, but at least do it several times a week, trust in the process and stay patient.

Whether you need to break through a creative block, figure out the next scene or step in your project, or want an idea for your next book or painting or song, dreams are an unending source of inspiration and one of the best tools for a meaningful creative life.
 

More than twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to spend three weeks in August at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, while my mother and husband took care of our three sons, who were between the ages of eighteen months and six years.  It was a special time for me to explore my creativity after constant childcare since the birth of the first of our sons.

One night, I entered the women’s bathroom and found a woman at least ten years older than me, standing over the sink and crying.  When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that that day would have been her son’s 20th birthday but he had died several years ago in a car accident.  I didn’t know what to say so I stood and listened to her tell the story.  And, of course, I felt the fear that every mother fears when she hears stories like this—what if?

I have a nephew who, with his wife, lost his child to a rare disease before she had a chance to reach her first birthday.  Attending the funeral, I watched the mother grieve and thought—why?

I have a friend who, as a single mom, lost her only child, a son, to cancer when he was in his teens.  Her journey through grief has been one of desperate courage in the midst of pain and depression.  And I wonder—how?

When we give birth to our children, we give birth to hopes and dreams and possibilities.  But we also give birth to our worst nightmares and to nights of constant worry.  To crossed fingers and endless prayers.  And to all the whys and hows and what ifs.

Once we give birth, become mothers, we are always mothers.  There is never an end.  It is who we are for the rest of our lives.  Even when those we mother are gone before us.

Today is Mother’s Day when, if we are lucky, our children send cards or call to wish us Happy Mother’s Day. 

But what do we say to those mothers whose children are gone?  Happy Mother’s Day seems wrong somehow.  And yet they remain mothers.  Mothers who need to be recognized and honored for the love they gave and for the love they still bear.  Mothers who need to be held and supported as they remember the sons and daughters they have lost to illness, violence, and war.

Being a mother—or a father—takes great courage in today’s world.  And great love.

Here’s to all the mothers on Mother’s Day.