All I Have to do is Dream

A couple of hours cruising the Internet leads me to the conclusion that while lots of people can wax philosophical, romantic, poetic, scientific, and "eruditic" about dreams; no one can say more than "it seems to happen in the brain when you are either asleep, sort of asleep, or maybe a little bit asleep; and your eyes are moving rapidly back and forth - or sometimes not - and dreams can go on for hours, or minutes, or perhaps seconds - oh, and we usually forget them." What I love about this kind of uncertainty is that you can really just espouse whatever you like about dreams and, if you take it seriously - or maybe put it into a neat song or poem - maybe someone else will take it seriously too.

OK, I want to go back to ideas I was playing with a couple of posts ago  - https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2025/09/dreams-harmony-et-al.html - when I was talking about life as a spiral each iteration of which contains some repeated similar - often powerful -  experiences distributed throughout our lives. That reminds me of something I remember reading somewhere about "peak experiences." Probably Abraham Maslow. Wikipedia gives us this:

"Maslow described them [peak experiences] as rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect upon the experiencer."

So, I'm thinking that even if peak experiences are rare, related forms of them reoccur throughout our lives. Think falling in love, birth of a child, committing to a relationship, creating an important expression - a painting, poem, dance, building, garden, novel - whatever. For me "peak experience" and "strongly harmonic experience" are synonymous terms. The idea I'm playing with is that distributed "strongly harmonic experiences" lead to dreams that tie "the circles/spirals of life" together into a consistent set of chords that reinforce our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.

So how to test this notion? Ah, there's the rub. To analyze the content of a dream - content analysis, dramatistic analysis, narrative analysis, rhetorical analysis, - name your poison, makes no difference. To analyze the content of your dreams you have to remember - have access to - the content of the dreams.

No doubt our ability to remember dreams varies widely. My wife seems able to recall dreams in significant detail. Me? Not so much. More like "now I see through a glass, darkly," or "through someone else's glasses, briefly." My dreams usually appear to be peopled by strangers and take place in locales primarily defined by lots of hallways and doors within which I am lost and late for something.

But I am working on it, and as I wrote in that previous post linked above, I have lately had fleeting dream glimpses of both recognizable people and environs. But they still slip swiftly away. I realize there are possible solutions to my murky relationship with my dreams. Some folks suggest "dream journals" that you keep bedside and jot down your memories of your dreams. Think about that. 

There are some problematic assumptions here. Reach out to bedside table. Grab notebook. Find writing implement. Turn on some form of illumination. Oops. Find glasses. No, the other glasses. Now, write down dream in which. . . um, . . . .?  And the idea of using my phone carries a similar chain of requirements - grab phone, turn it on, "Siri, take a note . . ," etc.

What I am looking for is a single button recording device that I can keep in my bed - under my pillow or just next to me. (Debates regarding snoring, temperature concerns, iPad usage and blanket stealing have been resolved by separate bedrooms.) This would, I believe, result in a "grab device, press button, speak - eyes need not be open" process. Such a scenario for dream recording could yield usable data for dream analysis.

Now, I have some preconceived ideas regarding what those recordings will reveal. However my academic history demands that I regard those ideas as merely hypotheses, and those hypotheses must be tested against the data. It's called the scientific method and is, contrary to the idiosyncratic and glibly reversible reasoning underlying much current national policy, necessary for determining our best guess regarding truth. 

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P.S.  A word about AI, which - as should be obvious in occasion font and spacing errors - I will never use.  If I wanted to use AI generated words or styles, I would have written them myself. Jeeez. No wonder American kids rank near the bottom of international rankings of reading and writing ability.

Seeking a Consistent Intelligence

 F. Scott Fitzgerald is often cited as the source for the quote: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function." Apparently some first-rate intelligences debate that attribution. Still the quote lingers on. And the phenomenon sometimes get trotted out in public, where its veracity remains every bit as in question as the literary source.

I am, of course, referring to the contretemps that has arisen over the tragic assassination of the youthful conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. While I doubt Mr. Kirk and I would have agreed on any aspect of politics or policy, I am saddened and distressed by his death - yet another indication of the growing belief in our society that violence is an acceptable mode of political discourse. My distress is furthered by the seeming acceptance of the notion of "holding two opposed ideas while continuing to function" that is being displayed by the White House in its contrasting commentaries regarding this young man's death.

On the one hand the Vice President eulogizes Kirk as "a martyr for the Christian faith", while on the other hand President Trump takes the opportunity to assert, "I hate my opponent!" We seem to have some sort of theological conflict going on here. Matthew 5:44, records Christ's Sermon on the Mount in which he instructs his followers to "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." Instructions that one would assume "a martyr for the Christian faith" would adhere to. Yet Trump, who, when the occasion warrants, professes himself a Christian, declares in Trump 21:25, "I hate my opponent!" So which kind of Christian lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

If this is an indication of “first-rate intelligences” at work, I would be content to be a "second-rater." The founders of our seemingly increasingly fragile democracy were incredibly prescient in separating church and state in our fledgling nation. One need only glance at the violent conflicts simmering around the globe to see what happens when inflexible ideology dominates national interests and policy. When hatred trumps love.

I do feel obligated to once again trot out my "second-rater" personal ideology:

Foster Harmony. Enable Beauty. Distill Complexity. Oppose Harm.

There is enough complexity in trying to live by those simple phrases to keep me slogging along. Not enough energy left to worry about "hating my opponent."

Sometimes Size Does Matter

 I'm talking about images here. There are times when I think that I should make an image a little bit bigger. OK, maybe a whole lot bigger. You have seen this image before:

It is called Beltline Boogie and was done originally as a giclee print from my original drawing that was 4x3 feet. But then fate, in the guise of the North Carolina Department of Transportation, took a hand and sponsored a contest looking for images in which to wrap Raleigh's city buses. I entered and a few weeks later Beltline took to the streets supersized and wrapped around a full size city bus. It was a very, very cool feeling to see Beltline cruise by my office window.

That was as big as I ever went. But big retained its attraction. The next sort-of-supersized image followed the giclee process. It sits above my "marker storage desk" and measures 4x5 feet.

It is called Through Every Window,  and I'm not sure if I have shared it with you before.

Back when I had a rather large office in Raleigh, my "go to" size was 4x3 feet giclees and I had a bunch of them. Here are a few:

But since that time I have pretty much stayed with the 20x24 inch format that you recently viewed. But  recently the "go big or go home!" bug bit me again.  It started with a photo I took of one of our Christmas pieces. A couple of wagons with no horses:

Which, naturally I felt compelled to turn into a template for a drawing:

Of which I did a couple of versions:

But that is when the "big bug" bit. You see those images are only a small part of a much larger concept that measures 46x36 inches:

Horseless Carriages

This is about half of the image in process. Too big to fit comfortably on my drawing table, so I shift it around. And there is an awful lot of white space left to be filled. Sigh.

I'll keep you posted.

Dreams, Harmony et. al.

Dreams are funny things, and apparently quite flexible. For most of my life - those that I can recall anyhow - my dreams have been defined by a couple of constant characteristics. They were peopled by strangers and took place in anonymous locals - usually large structures with many hallways in which I was often lost and late for something.

Exceptions to those parameters appear to be creeping in. Most recently I dreamt I was back in the house in which I was raised in Springfield, Ohio. I was in the kitchen, clearly defined by the large cut out of Peter Pan (from the Disney movie, circa 1953) affixed to the door that led to the backyard or the basement. I was discussing something, maybe arguing?, with my parents. We were all represented as age appropriate for the era - so probably when I was in junior high or somewhere around there. I have no recollection as to what was discussed. But it was fairly calm, no raised voices or confrontation.

Not long before that I had a dream in which my daughters were present. K-12 ages in Raleigh. Again, no recollection as to specific content. Just a rather bland interaction. But I was confused as to why these seemingly "real world" venues were making their way into my previously uniquely "fictional" nocturnal dramas. I have worked out an explanation that makes sense - well, sort of anyhow - to me. Let me attempt an explanation.

First, a quick refresher of "Chord theory." Building on the framework of quantum mechanics in which we find string theory, my extension, "chord theory" asserts that since everything in the universe is built - on its most fundamental level - on tiny vibrating strings, then we too are made of tiny vibrating strings. And since vibrating strings, no matter how tiny, make music - we too are made of music. Furthermore, as our DNA (made of music) is unique to us, we continually vibrate to our own unique chord. Chord theory asserts that our relationship to existence - friends, family, lovers, enemies, jobs, music, art, food, locale, everything - depends upon the degree of harmony or discord between the chord of those individuals or entities and our own unique chord. We seek association with harmonic chords and we avoid those that are discordant. OK. Hold on to that idea.

Now, let's move on to circles. You may remember that when I posted the image "Painted Ponies," (https://schragwall.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-painted-ponies.html) I drew the title from Joni Mitchel's 1966 song Circle Game. Well, that tune is but one small element in a staggering number of assertions that life can be seen as a circular experience. The Lion King: Circle of Life. The circular representation of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist symbolism. The old gospel tune, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Circle dances in the Judaic world. The Medical Circle in some Native American traditions. It's enough to make your head spin.

Well, let me put a bit of a twist on the dominance of the circle, and assert instead that life is a spiral. Where a circle eventually closes where it began and becomes a static entity, a spiral, on the other hand, moves. Seen from above a spiral does appear to be a circle, but viewed from the side, in three dimensions, it reveals itself to be a spring. Which, as an existential model, implies progress, growth,  perhaps an increase in harmony. Which doesn't really contradict some circle-based ontologies which often propose movement to a "higher" plane of existence or spiritual awareness. So maybe one can think of a spiral as a bunch of circles with ramps. But I digress. What does this have to do with somewhat realistic dreams from another era?

I'm glad you asked. OK. Get an image of a spiral in your mind:

Like this:

Now image a line dropping down the edge of the spiral, like this:

The line represents when you were at similar points of the spiral segment (analogous to a circle) at some earlier stages of your life. It is my contention that the various intersections between the spiral and the line, share, if not unique, then powerful, harmonics. Meaning that at some point in your past you found yourself in a situation very similar to your current point in time. And it is those shared moments, shared harmonics, that propel images from those disparate eras into our dreamscape.

So why are these particular moments from days gone-bye just now entering my dreams? Why not moments from everywhere the line - or any line for that matter - that intersects with any part of the the spiral? Obviously, I do not know. But to further hypothesize, I would assume, as implied above, that there were harmonics associated with those intersecting moments that are somehow uniquely in sync with those moments dominating my current life.

But the dreams, as in their wont, decline to clearly reveal those connections.

I will continue to cogitate.

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PS. As some of you know, we currently reside on the outskirts of the failed city of Chicago where we regularly dine and attend a variety of cultural events. It is our fervent desire that the President will act so National Guard troops will - over the misguided objections of all our elected officials - be sent to our city to address the current threat to national security here in the Windy City - a criminal scarcity of on-street parking. A situation obviously attributable to flagrant criminal parking abuses of shadowy Albanian gang members driving large SUVs.