Even after >35 years of studying psychology, dreams never fail to amaze me.
Sometime last night I dreamed that NBC news anchorman Brian Williams was interviewing the actor James Spader on TV on behalf of some charitable/social justice cause Spader was interested in. At the end of the live interview, NBC showed the webpage for the charity, but only very briefly, which made Spader angry and caused him to criticize NBC vocally just before the end of the interview.
Apart from the fact that I fairly routinely watch NBC Nightly News, I can’t imagine why I had this vivid dream. I have no particular interest in James Spader, and haven’t seen him in anything in years.
I also had another TV-related dream during the night. In this dream, Woody Allen’s Dixieland jazz band appeared on the David Letterman show. At the end of the performance, Letterman walked out and said, as a joke, that the band’s drummer would be signing autographs after the show. It’s an appropriate and reasonably funny joke, since the band has a very famous person in it and the drummer is, well just the drummer. And it’s the kind of joke Letterman would make. I essentially “wrote” that joke in my dream. Again, I watch Letterman from time-to-time, and I know Woody Allen plays clarinet in a Dixieland band, but I have no idea why I’d have this stupid dream.
2 TV dreams in one night, with little apparent connection to my life.
Also fascinating to me is the weird curve of the maintenance of memory of dreams. Like most people, I can remember details of a dream just after waking, but those memories of the dream fade with amazing speed in the course of the morning. I can’t think of any other experience the memories of which fade with that kind of quick, steep curve.
I need to do some reading and see if anyone has floated a good theory about how/why we evolved into dreamers. What’s the survival edge?
Having something really colorful to talk about and alleviate the boredom. You can only cover the practicalities of fire-making, animal sign, and headlice so much before you say to yourself "Is that all there is? ", and desperately want to change the subject lest everyone go stir-crazy and someone gets hurt. The first dreamers were probably like rock stars.
I don’t see how this changes anything. The mundane world of chasing one’s tail turn into “Hey Spike! you’ll never imagine what I smelled in my dream last night, my tail was like a ribbon of fresh emu…”
Come to think of it I can only remember a few dreams with color or smells.
Yeah, the color thing. I’m never quite sure if I sometimes get color, or if the overall color is muted, like washed with sepia or something but some colors stand out more vividly than the rest. Kinda like the look of 300, and just as cheesy, but it’s mine.
Humans learned how to dream from dogs, I’m still trying to learn running in my sleep like my dogs. It would be great to get all your exercise while you’re asleep.
Wake up refreshed along with a big rush of endogenous opioid peptides.
I think other animals are dreamers. If an animal has consciousness, I assume it dreams. I think apes probably have consciousness and mice probably don’t, but I’m really about everything in between.
One thing that’s baffled me for years is how often loved ones turn into “bad guys” in our dreams. Even as a child, I’d have dreams in which I’d walk into my living room and my parents would turn into monsters in front of me. As an adult, I’ll sometimes dream that my husband has done or said something mean or inconsiderate that he’d never do or say in real life (and my daughter’s always having “another dream that you were a b*tch in, Mom!”)
Those aside, I usually get a real kick out of my dreams. One of my favorites is the “endless house” dream, in which I’m in a house that I should know (in my mind it’s either my house or my in-laws’…though sometimes it’s a college dorm or a hotel), but there’s something weird and kind of different behind every door and around every corner, and the place is impossibly large. I like those because they’re usually lucid dreams…I’m aware I’m dreaming, and can enjoy exploring (and can wake myself up, or turn the course of the dream, if it seems about to get nasty).
I had a dream similar to that once. It took a sudden turn, and I didn’t like where it was going, so I just woke myself up. But that only happened once.
And has anyone else has those dreams where you’re running away from something, but the fastest you can run would be walking speed in real life? I occasionally have dreams like that, but I dream I’m fighting something and the hardest punch I can throw is barely powerful enough to break a matchstick.
I have always had nightmares on an infrequent basis but as a child, in the dream, I was never able to cry for help. Nothing would come out of my mouth. After much hard work on my part, I have slowly learned how to make a sound come out of my mouth in my dream. I’ve become so successful that I can now wake anyone up within earshot. My wife has gotten used to this and says that this doesn’t trouble her in the least, she just wakes me up. This worries our current dog to pieces.
I also have dreams that I am in a building with complex passageways and can’t find my way out.
I have a lot of dreams involving water. Sometimes I am swimming in the water (Last night I swam across a large lake), or I am hovering over the water, watching it pass by. Sometimes the situation is a little frightening, where the water gets dangerously fast and the water’s edge is a sheer cliff with no way to exit. In the past I kept a dream journal, recording every dream that I could remember. I even woke in the night and recorded dreams that had just occurred. I can’t say that I was able interpret most of my dreams, but the overall pattern of dreams was very interesting.
Oooo…I have the water dream too! It’s one of my favorites! I’m swimming in a river, going along with the current. It’s wonderfully pleasant…I can skim along, going yards at every stroke, and the water’s so nice and warm. There’s a waterfall ahead, but I’m not afraid…it’s a little like the drops on a roller coaster…something to be anticipated, but not feared.
First time I encountered an “endless river” ride at a water park, I was thrilled, because it was the embodiment of my river dream.
The irony is, in real life, I’m not much of a swimmer. I can manage a bit…if I fall off a dock into deep water, I’m not in danger of drowning (I can get myself to the surface and to any reasonably near dock, float or beach)…but I’m not a strong swimmer, and don’t normally seek out deep water.
Yeah, the old call-to-action slowdown factor. I figured that I couldn’t be the only one. It’s always like I’m up to my neck in glue; can’t run well, can’t evade well, can’t strike fast, and time’s a-wastin’. For me, those are probably my most alarming moments in dreaming, when the fundamental physical competencies (real or imagined), such as would be needed to protect myself, etc., are put in dumbfounding restraints.
Maybe it’s just time dilation and I’m fighting it. Hard not to, though, when a sense of crisis is on you. The thing for me is it seems to be a pretty consistent scenario when it happens. I don’t ever recall having to dream-run when it went as well as, or better than, expected. Odder yet is I don’t ever recall any physical resolutions to the story during such “crises”, either; I’m just panicking at the ineffectiveness forced upon me, and things morph somehow and suddenly there are other dreamfish to fry.
I use to have a whole slew of different unpleasant dreams that involved fights, luckily the wife has a sixth sense about these things as I become very animated in my sleep. She has avoided every flung arm, I think. Had to build a new white oak base board for the bed after I kicked through it one night.
My version of the “not being able to get away” dream is kind of weird. It involves being tickled…specifically, the way it tickles when someone pokes you in the ribs. Now, before you laugh, remember that tickling can be a form of torture. In these dreams, the sensation is intense almost to the point of pain, and I’m absolutely paralyzed and can’t do anything to stop it (these dreams also tend to be lucid…I know what’s going to happen, and I know I’m dreaming, but I can’t force myself to wake up). When I finally manage to wrench myself awake, I’m usually shaking so hard, I can’t lie still, and I’m so terrified of falling back into the dream that I have to get up for a while.
Dreams are interesting things, I think. We all have our own patterns of dreaming, but often the themes are similar…the “not being able to move” or “not being able to move fast enough” one being fairly typical.
Then there’s the classic college student dream: You’re supposed to be in class for a final exam, and you suddenly realize that you haven’t actually attended class all semester, or something along those lines. I still get those occasionally, which is funny when you consider that the last college class I attended was in 1983!
