CarrotStu

"To Dream The Impossible Dream"

The internet's digital picture database is officially vast, not to mention imagery archived from the age of analogue. The countless hours to conceive, create, design, construct, then post or publish pictures and video boggles the mind, and is boring to iterate. People spend so much time, so much effort, so much of their consciousness to do what the brain does effortlessly - create and collect pictures. It brings new meaning to the saying, "I could do that in my sleep" but 'I must be dreaming', is hardly ever said in R.E.M. Combinations and amalgams of images, words, thoughts and ideas seem to swirl in our sub-mental, appear; then, organize until we find ourselves in our realm of dreams. Most often we don't know we've dreamt until we wake. The mind conceives, directs, edits; then, produces it's own movie at midnight or three a.m. or during a daytime doze. We read into dreams if we can remember them. Most of us are unable to choose how our dreams will be produced. Will they be in color, black and white, sepia or dual tone? Will it tell a horror or love story? Will it remind us of someone we've lost? What angle will the players be shot from? It seems it depends on the person and the context of all their life. Does it matter if we're mostly right brained or left? I think so. Is there symbolism in dreams? I don't know, I don't think of symbols when I dream. On the other hand the brain has amazing capacity for information storage and retrieval. Sometimes my dreams are just compilations of objects and instances put together in one place. At first the randomness seems senseless, something similar might be said about the sound of some rock or acid jazz. They say you can't dream what you haven't seen, and I can't recall when I have. On the other hand, when awake, we recollect, track and catalogue imagery we dream. Try it and you may find the pictures in your dreams are part of your recent or remote past. Other dreams are evocative of our deepest desire, like to see a dead loved one. When feelings are strong the mind becomes temporal. It traverses time to make a fifty year old feel emotions of a boy of ten, even though he appears to himself as fifty in the dream. He is embraced by his mom who in reality is eighty but appears youthful. He then finds himself in conversation with her about a mop bucket, by this time his mom has the appearance of his sister. The imagery is transient but the dream communicates clearly, the man has mom in mind. Also, unless he tells his dream to a soul he trusts, it's his. How contrary to the medium I use at this moment, or are we all snowed by the illusion of digital privacy? Wanna know a secret? There are none on the internet. Hit send to a friend and your friend and local internet server \ cable company at the very least has what was just known by only you. So, here I've decided to loose my grip on reality, if only for a moment: what an amazing gift it would be to relive tender, private, poignant and important scenes at will; to see our ideas and feelings of nostalgia. What if we could always think of and see our mind's conceptions purposefully and unaided by any electronic device? Mirages, hallucinations and even schizophrenia are samples of the ability to see what's in our mind's eye even while awake. Some see imagery from their brain as sharply as feed on screens. The problem: it's involuntary. These days "i" this and "i" that are everywhere. The marketing is brilliant, but let's not forget the power of the human eye and mind. Hence, a new term, the Eye Mind. Let's hope the Eye Mind eventually puts all the other "i" stuff out of business. Do I dare dream? It seems impossible now, but is the idea completely out of scope with reality? Can one really only dream? Let's hope not, because when it comes to total reliance on electronic visual aids - I mind. For now, hold tight to your dreams, less they slip away as strangely as the realm of privacy. ) :