A Waking Dream of Greater Vision

Last January I stopped dreaming.

Largely because I was so taken by the dreams of others.

SoI gave up my job as a dream-reader. And now I'm on a mission to make you make yourself see better.

(If you like.)

For the past decade I've been studying and using techniques for improving the vision—the interface between the eyes and the brain that makes up our sense of sight and portions of our other senses as well.

I'm posting an "eye exercise" each day for this month, just as I did with your dreams last year. Come February these will be compiled into a publication, available at the 6th Annual Fun-A-Day exhibition in Philadelphia.

Click here to check your eyes into a new blog that hopes to multiply your vision 15-fold.

31 Dreamers: Live in Vermont

Yo Dreamers. While the blog takes a nap the dreams run rampant in the frozen wilds of the northeast. The 31 Dreams that saw the limelight of gallery life at Fun-A-Day 5 in Philly went at it again in a week-long residency at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. The connection: the dreams of Maggie, Trish, Jules and Bronwyn are the dreams of Goddard students and alums. Lindsay's dream was also featured as part of a public reading and received a whopping 9.6 on the laugh-o-meter. Thanks again to all 31 Dreamers for your participation.

Now, please send in your dreams for the next round of 31 Dreamers.

31 Dreamers at Fun-A-Day

Philadelphia's 5th annual Fun-A-Day show happened at Studio 34 in Philadelphia on February 14th, 2009 and lemme tell you, that jawn was PACKED! I rolled in around 8:00 p.m. and there were literally hundreds of people looking at everything. With over 70 contributing artists who'd made or documented one thing per day for 31 days, there were over 2,100 things to look at. 31 of those things were your dreams.

Transferring your dreams from the web and into a onto paper, I realized how long some of them were and that the interpretations were even longer. I ended up abridging most of them and printing them out on cards, which were folded in half and placed on a table for people to peruse. Here's Jason with his "Lazy Laaaazzzzz" dream, a personal favorite of mine. 

There were a lot of inquiries about whether or not 31 Dreamers would continue, and I told people, "As long as people interact act with the blog, the blog will interact back." That's a hint folks: leave your comments and send in your dreams! Maybe we're taking a little time off, but we can jump back into it with a little more 2-way traffic. Deal? Deal.

The Dream of the Drop

Like the available flavors of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, 31 Dreamers began as a project to collect a dream a day from 31 different people around the world. 31 Dreamers had a time limit: the month of January 2009, and that time has expired. Your beloved dream-reader (that's me) is moving on to pen fables, carve blockprints, and tour with theatrical performances and workshops. Leave a comment here if you want info on any of this stuff, or if you want me to keep interpreting dreams. I cater to mob rule here.

It's time now for a re-cap of people's favorite dreams:

Top Readers' Picks

1. Teenage Ninja Brushes With Killer Whale
2. Take Me Black Where I Belong
3. Брокколи
4. When The Cat Flips The Bird
5. U2...Can Be President

I agree, these were all great dreams, yet it's no surprise that your typical Net-surfer would ogle dreams about Obama, Madonna, Naruto, and Japanese girls wearing blackface. The hankering for Russian broccoli is a total mystery to me. My personal picks are below.

My Favorite Dreams You Sent In:

1. Choco Taco Thwarts Identity Theft
2. 2-for-1 Special
3. This Is The Grassroots Work I'm Gonna Do With You
4. The Oaten Exorcist
5. Giraffic Park

But really, they were all pretty great. What was your favorite dream? Your favorite interpretation?  Leave a comment below and tell the world.

Hope to see some of you at Fun-A-Day events around the globe in the coming month. Until then, keep dreaming. 

The Mad Crapper

Dream dreamt in New Hampshire on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee by a final, unknown dreamer a few years back. Animation created by Darren Blondin. Interpretation embedded in video. Accompanying book of the day: The Humanure Handbook. 

Thanks to all the dreamers out there for making this blog a success. If you're in Philly on February 8th, come to the Fun-A-Day show to see this and dozens of other amazing projects in the flesh. And keep sending in your dreams for the new weekly version of 31 DREAMERS!

Trepidatious Trainhopping

We're down to the last two Dreamers on our daily oneirocritical excursion. So many of you have asked if 31 Dreamers will continue and the answer is yes, Beginning in February we switch to a weekly format. We might have to do some sort of Baskin Robbins promotional tie-in to justify the number "31" in the blog's name.

If you haven't checked out some of the other online Fun-A-Day antics, now's your chance. Round two of shout-outs goes to Karen's delectible Pie-A-Day, Timothy's economical Fake Poloroid-A-Day, P.Shaw's visionary Comic-A-Day (pictured here), Emma's toe-tapping 12-Bar-Blues Song-A-Day, Dee's frenetic Self-Portrait-A-Day, and Cait's do-it-yourself Batch of Vegan Muffins-A-Day (with recipes!) Acomplete list of other Fun-A-Day links can be found in the sidebar on the left.

Choosing today's dream has been a challenge (tomorrow's has been picked out for weeks...) So many of you have sent some really fabulous dreams, many of which are on file and may crop up on the new weekly version of this blog. The penultimate of these first 31 Dreamers (really 33 Dreamers, but we'll deal with that later), is fellow Fun-A-Day-ista Molly McIntyre, who dreamt thisin Oakland, California:

My friend Andrea and I were waiting for a train. We were waiting for a really long time. When the train finally came, I didn't have my stuff together. I grabbed my wallet and ran to the train, but the rest of my bags were still on the sidewalk. Andrea was already on the train, and I was holding on to the outside, like in a movie. I yelled, "I can't do it, I need to get my stuff!" and jumped off. Andrea jumped off too. Then we realized that we could get a ride from some people we knew, so it was okay that we didn't get the train.

Then I was sitting on a couch with this boy that I dated for a minute last fall. He was cracking jokes about something. His sister came in and she was beautiful. I thought to myself, "Damn, this guy is pretty weird looking, but his sister's so pretty—I bet we would've had really beautiful children—I should've hung onto him!"

Molly, are you the sort of person that's prepare the night before you embark on a trip? Or do you tend to be a maestrom of frantically teying to pull things together and throw them in bags right before it's time to head out the door? Regardless of how it is when you're awake, you're not ready, or even really willing, to take this train in this dream. You've been planning this trip with your friend for so long, but where is it going to take you? Maybe someplace permanent, some commitment ofr situation that you're not sure you're ready for. And then you have your Slumdog Millionaire moment, only the jerkface brother doesn't let go of your hand because Andrea isn't the jerkface brother—she's your friend and will stick by you no matter what you decide, so instead of letting you go, she goes with you.

Deciding to travel by car instead of by train means that you opt for more flexibility, both in deciding where you're headed and how long it takes you to get there. You visit one possible past-future—a prior abandoned train ride with "this boy." You question your decision to jump off of his train, thinking, "I could've just done this, gone further down the track with him, maybe to the very end." You see his sister and kinda wish he was his own sister (or that his sister were him), maybe finding more comfort and camaraderie in the company of females and wishing that the men in you life could be a little bit more like the women in your life. This boy would have never jumped off that train like Andrea did. He would've said, "What the fuck? Just get on the train!" and probably would've ended up going on without you. 

Honestly Molly, my first thought when I finished reading your dream was, "Why not have children with the sister?" I'm casting all biological assumptions aside here, but anything is possible in dreams anyway . . .

––––– –– ––– –––––

. . . Speaking of anyway, for those of you who might go into withdrawal from not having at least one dream to gape at every 24 hours, there are lots of books to ogle out there. Today I actually took a gander at David Fontana's The Secret Language of Dreams and it's not too bad. But yes, it's no substitute for 31 Dreamers.

Papercuts at the top and bottom of this post by today's dreamer, 

Molly McIntyre. See more art and stop-action moies on her 

wonderful website. Or tell her how awesome she is here.

The Subconscious Songwriters Union

This dream has a soundtrack. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I'll take suggestions from you if you have any. In the meantime, you can play either one or both of these:

Today we have another California Dreamer, third from the end of our 31 Dreamers lineup is Bronwyn, who writes:

I dreamt last night that a faerie-like girl was singing to me, she was singing the most beautiful song, and playing an unusual and vague instrument with strings that was otherworldly. She wrote a song for me, and I felt like I could take on anything, and I knew that I would never die as long as I was rooted in my will to live.

Sweet dream Bronwyn, and one that doesn't want too much interpretation. Some schools of dream-work take every component of a dream and equate each with a particular meaning. Others state that everything in the dream is an extension of the dreamer (which is true to the extent that the dreamer did make the whole thing up). Fans of 31 Dreamers may have figured out that this blog takes a different approach every day, with a little lean toward the politics of dreams plus a good book thrown in for good measure, for most good books are made up of dreams. 

For this dream Bronwyn, you can probably see your own face in that of the færie girl and hear your own voice in her song. What was that song? Your "Bronwyn Kicks Ass" anthem. If you haven't taken up an instrument and written yourself a song yet, now may be the time. Or at least get in the habit of humming or whistling the theme to Fame wherever you go.

In a similar vein, I'd like to share with you some of Eduardo Galeano's imaginations for a future we might want in the upcoming millenium/century/year/hour. He's got a long list in the final chapter of his book Upside Down: a primer for the looking glass world (with woodcuts borrowed from J.G. Posada). Here are my top 10:

• People shall work for a living instead of living for work. 

• No one shall die of hunger because no one shall die of overeating.

• Cooks shall not believe that lobsters love to be boiled alive.

• Histories shall not believe that countriees love to be invaded.

• In the streets cars shall be run over by dogs.

...and furthermore:

• People shall not be driven by cars,

• Or programmed by computers,

• Or bought by supermarkets,

• Or watched by televisions,

• And no one shall be taken seriously who can't make of fun of themselves.

Okay, dear dreamers, turn off your screens and start dreaming of those songs to make us feel like we can take on anything. We've got our work cut out for us.

Music (for now) by the Mystical Unionists. Submit your ideas for the song from Bronwyn's dream. The mixtape will appear in a future episode of 31 Dreamers.