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.

The Long Arm of Gravity's Law

What goes up, must come down, right? 

Not necessarily in dreams.

Maybe.

The impossible can happen in our dreams. Readers to this blog have sent in all sorts of impossibilities that they've dreamt up, as far-fetched as brushing one's teeth with a killer whale, to snorting Allen Ginsberg up one's nose, to being a super hero in the form of a frozen novelty dessert. Weird stuff. On the simpler side a dreamer in Paris dreamt that she saw fish flying up into the sky, going off and away, never to be heard from again.

Maybe.

It is possible that things exiting one dream could return in another. It may even be possible that these items could leave the dream of one dreamer and enter the dreams of another. The odds of the happening might be greater than we think since we don't know what other people dream about most of the time. But 31 Dreamers is a place where dreams collide, overlap, run tandem to one another. And fishes flying out of France may just migrate to Montpelier, Vermont, where Trish dreamt this up during her afternoon siesta:

At a large family gathering I’m looking through the house for my childhood chest of drawers. My mother shows me all of her new cheap/modern but ornate furniture. Out the window I see a crowd of people gathering at the bottom of the hill the house is on. Trying to make sense of the scene from a distance, I grab my mom and some family members and we realize that a couple of police cars have crashed into the yard somehow. I burst out crying when I see people dragging an old man out of one of the cars. I assume he is dead. Two LOUD bangs like gunshots ring out and the crowd scatters or hits the ground, covering their heads. I run through the house and into the garage/front yard area to SHOUT over the noise of the party that there are gunshots and everyone should stay inside.

I run into the room where I’m staying to get dressed to go outside and scope the scene. Someone (a female cousin?) comes into the room to chat while I get dressed and distracts me. In my haste I put on an overly glamorous shirt (inappropriate for the situation) and only one very thin sock with the other foot bare inside pointy black snakeskin bootlets. They don't fit comfortably and it is snowy and wet outside.

I run out to the distraught crowd to find them gaily fixing the lawn where the grass got ripped up from the crash. They are gibber-gabbering about neighborly things and seem to be having quality community time together. A lady remarked that they thought someone had been shooting because she "saw a bottle (of alcohol) that was left in the deer hunting platform on her land across the street, but really the noises had happened because it had been RAINING FISH."

I was dumbstruck and began walking about in a daze, until I fell over a berm in my snakeskin boots. Stuck on the other side, I had to trudge through an irrigation ditch between the berm and the road. Sulking, I waded through the cold water trying to get to the highland of the driveway until I saw indeed—it had rained fish! There were huge, long, beautiful fish flopping out of puddles of water too small for them!

With glee I ran to the house urging my kid brothers to take my 5-year-old son down to the road to see/catch a fish. They walked down the hill to where others were catching fish as well. In my haste to find fish-catching gear, I tripped over a rocking chair and smashed a tiny hard-shelled egg under one of the rocking rails of the chair. I stayed in to resentfully clean this up while the boys excitedly tried to catch the fish with bare hands. As I walked downstairs to get a towel, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Looking back, I was horrified to see that the hand stayed on my shoulder as I continued to walk down the stairs. My stepmom stood stationary at the top of the stairs and her arm stretched like taffy down the whole length of the staircase—Ewww! I shooed off her freaky hand/arm and she just laughed. I had to laugh and smile too and I could hear the children splashing and laughing in the distance.

Trish, for a short nap you can really pack it in. Here's what I got:

You are trying to go back to finding what you value. Your mother doesn't share your values and in the face of disaster you take the lead. The reality is that there are bad things happening and people dying all the time while a lot of us just eat cheese and crackers with pinkies akimbo like folks aren't being shot right in our own front yards. For the others in your dream, what happens outside the window might as well be on the other side of the world. For you it doesn't matter where it's happening—it's real and the people that it's happening to are real. You want to respond to these situations, to save the world and get those closest to you to give a shit about something for once, but you also just want to play dress-up and have fun and not worry about this stuff. In the dream the interface of these two desires makes for some uncomfortable attire while your neighbors blab about nothing and patch problems up as if they'd never existed. Meanwhile you're flummoxed to the point of being dizzy, feeling aimless, unsupported and stuck in a rut and looking like a glam-rock has-been to boot. Its a bad place to be.

But Trish—there's hope! The world is full of wonderful and spectacular things! Did you know that it actually can rain fish? Yep. Small fish, frogs, squids and other aquatic creatures sometimes get sucked into the air by tornadoes and gale-force storms. Up they go, and down they come! (Really—read this BBC article about it). But in the midst of this fantasticness you put family first, sending your son to catch fish while you contend with a household where you always feel like your walking on eggshells, unable to fully be yourself. Your stepmom seems to be the law in this place and she mandates you be a certain way from her position above you. Meanwhile your brothers are free to do whatever they want—y'know, guy stuff. You want your son to be independent and do the things that he wants to do, but will he turn out like them in the process?

That's what I got. That and a little pocket-sized book called Pond Life: A Guide to Common Plants and Animals of North American Ponds and Lakes by George K. Reid. Sometimes when things are a little tense there's nothing better than looking at colorful illustrations of plants, insects and fishes and learning fun facts about the way ponds are formed. It can take one's mind off of the trivialities of the human world, diving instead into the real wonders found in nature. Then, when we're done reading, we might look up and see that everything's gonna be alright. I myself read this book on election day. It worked.

"Raining Fish" illustration at the top of this post by Brett Ryder. More photos of this commoner-than-you'd-think phenomenon can be found in Wikipedia's article "Raining Animals."