In my dream of the flood in the studio building, first I see a puddle in the road from a distant vantage point (see previous post). After that I continue to talk to Lauren but the puddle in the distance gets larger, and finally my attention is aroused and I must walk down the street and see what is causing the flood. What I find on investigation is that the water is coming from a broken water line in the building I have my studio in. The ground floor is flooded up to the joists of the second floor, and the water threatens to damage my goods. Now this is a dream, all well and good, it doesn't have anything strange, or shall we say, un-dreamlike in it. But I find it extremely puzzling that the dream seems to have a sort of foreshadowing in it. That is to say, the detail of the water in the street foreshadows the image of the flood. This raises the question, "whose dream is this anyway?"
If it is my dream, and I am making up the parts of it in my own mind, then how can the dream contain foreshadowing? How can there be a question (where is the water coming from) which has to be answered later in time, (from a broken water pipe). If it is my dream then I made it up in my mind all by myself. This seems perhaps like an obvious and dumb question, but it isn't. Even if we postulate that the dream comes from the unconscious, what is this crude, and primitive unconscious mind doing employing literary devices like foreshadowing?
There is another device in literature and screenwriting which to my knowledge has no name but I would call it, "riddling." Riddling is where the composer of the story places an object, an occurrence, or a situation in the narrative, which raises a question which is not answered. The question then remains suspended in the narrative. For example, we are watching a movie and at the beginning a woman opens a dresser drawer, takes out a box, out of the box she unfolds a note, and as she reads it her face clouds over. We are not told, nor shown what that note contains, but we think that it must have something to do with the plot. We don't know. The character knows however, but more importantly, obviously, the person who wrote the story knows what is in the note, and they are not going to let us know till they are good and ready, as the story develops. This is riddling. Some movies begin with a series of riddles, so many in fact that we think, oh come on now, let's get into the story, and stop setting up these confusing puzzles.
But what if it is not a movie or a book we are reading, what if it is our own dream that has presented us with the riddling? We are dreaming the dream so how can we not already know what is to come?
But we don't. We absolutely do not know. Now I do not dream other people's dreams, ever, so I must reason about this dream structure entirely from my own memory. I cannot trust other people's descriptions of their dreams because there is no way to know to what extent someone else's description of their dream is edited, embellished mis-rememberd, or artistically modified to sound either more impressive, strange, or interesting. Indeed, I don't even know if my memory of my own dream is accurate, or retouched with the artist's skills for more pleasant consumption.
This, however, doesn't matter. We dream millions of dreams in our lives and often they have composition, drama, quirky and amazing details, which all exceed our meager creative abilities in waking life. In my dreams I compose music that moves me to tears, make dramatic speeches, and escape danger with unheard of cunning and brilliance, so that it sometimes happens that I wake up trembling, my heart pounding, and I ask myself, "How did I ever dream that up?"
If it is my dream, and I am making up the parts of it in my own mind, then how can the dream contain foreshadowing? How can there be a question (where is the water coming from) which has to be answered later in time, (from a broken water pipe). If it is my dream then I made it up in my mind all by myself. This seems perhaps like an obvious and dumb question, but it isn't. Even if we postulate that the dream comes from the unconscious, what is this crude, and primitive unconscious mind doing employing literary devices like foreshadowing?
There is another device in literature and screenwriting which to my knowledge has no name but I would call it, "riddling." Riddling is where the composer of the story places an object, an occurrence, or a situation in the narrative, which raises a question which is not answered. The question then remains suspended in the narrative. For example, we are watching a movie and at the beginning a woman opens a dresser drawer, takes out a box, out of the box she unfolds a note, and as she reads it her face clouds over. We are not told, nor shown what that note contains, but we think that it must have something to do with the plot. We don't know. The character knows however, but more importantly, obviously, the person who wrote the story knows what is in the note, and they are not going to let us know till they are good and ready, as the story develops. This is riddling. Some movies begin with a series of riddles, so many in fact that we think, oh come on now, let's get into the story, and stop setting up these confusing puzzles.
But what if it is not a movie or a book we are reading, what if it is our own dream that has presented us with the riddling? We are dreaming the dream so how can we not already know what is to come?
But we don't. We absolutely do not know. Now I do not dream other people's dreams, ever, so I must reason about this dream structure entirely from my own memory. I cannot trust other people's descriptions of their dreams because there is no way to know to what extent someone else's description of their dream is edited, embellished mis-rememberd, or artistically modified to sound either more impressive, strange, or interesting. Indeed, I don't even know if my memory of my own dream is accurate, or retouched with the artist's skills for more pleasant consumption.
This, however, doesn't matter. We dream millions of dreams in our lives and often they have composition, drama, quirky and amazing details, which all exceed our meager creative abilities in waking life. In my dreams I compose music that moves me to tears, make dramatic speeches, and escape danger with unheard of cunning and brilliance, so that it sometimes happens that I wake up trembling, my heart pounding, and I ask myself, "How did I ever dream that up?"
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