Welcome to my Substack. Long time reader, first-time poster, etc, etc.
I’d like to utilise my debut post as an independent writer to write about dreams. Cliché, I know, right?
Unlike most, I adore hearing about other people’s dreams. The filler that makes them squirm. The demon dinner lady (intentional Horrid Henry ref.) asking for change that you’ve forgotten. The crunch of teeth in somebody’s mouth in the back of a bus.
Let’s imagine something for a moment. You’ve just finished washing-up (or loading the dishwasher, depending on your social class), you’ve cracked open a bottle of wine and you’re settling down for an hour of scrolling Netflix. Instead of brain-dead scrolling through forgotten noughties comedies and the same four Oscar winners, you’re treated with a new surprise. Right there, number one in the top 10 in your country, ‘recently added’, is *literally* ‘Your Worst Nightmare’. Now, this isn’t another Brandon Cronenberg horror starring Mia Goth in some creepy vampire-adjacent lead. It’s way worse/better (depending on your outlook) than that.
It’s a ninety minute feature film written, directed and produced by…you. Well, not literally. Actually, yes, literally. Your unconscious mind, to be precise. I don’t want to get into the disassociation of the unconscious and the obliteration of the self here - we’re going stick with the idea that we produce our own dreams. Now, where I’d like to depart, temporarily, from the real world, is where a device has been created to tease out the worst of these nightmares and turn it into a coherent(ish) production. The question: would you want to watch it? I know I wouldn’t want to watch my ‘Netflix wrapped: self-reflective horror dreamscape’. Maybe you would, you freak. However, I’m almost sure that your significant other, or best friend, would be more than happy - excited, perhaps - to watch yours.
And I bet you’d love to watch their trauma-thon, too, you sick fuck. Of course you would! You don’t feel the writhing ants under the skin that cause their goosebumps. You don’t see their dead gran in the corner of McDonald’s choking on a fillet-o-fish. You don’t hear the German shepherds three doors down chomping at the gates as they walk to school. You don’t have the context. They’re all just things without meaning. Context, or the lack thereof, is what turns a disconcerting Jodorowsky dreamscape into a psyche-breaking, spirit-crushing trauma-fest.
The thing about nightmares is that they’re only horrible to the dreamer/subject/consumer. I’d hedge a bet that there is nothing more personal than a dream (unless you’re a sleep-talker). Even when you recount dreams/nightmares to your partner, I bet you leave out anything that might sound compromising, even though it didn’t actually happen. People cheat in their dreams and feel terrible the morning after. People’s partners cheat in dreams and they hold a grudge for days. But how much autonomy do we actually have in our dream-state? How much does our waking mind influence these theatrical productions written and directed by the auteur in our mind’s closed eyes? It’s hard to say. Many have tried to decipher these stuttering narratives that seem far more complicated and absurd than we’d give ourselves credit for. There’s a wealth of historical discussion over the potential divinity of our dreams. The Ancient Egyptians saw dreams as oracles. They even created sleep temples to induce dreams that could cure the sick. In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope describes dreams “which issue forth from the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them." In Christian literature, there is no shortage of prophetic dreams coming from God.
But where does this leave us, dreamer? If dreams aren’t a hotline to God and they aren’t a Freudian whisper of adolescent perversions, then maybe they’re something in between? It’s hard to say, obviously. But then, this makes me wonder if psychedelics could somehow be a missing piece in the puzzle of our mind’s indefatigably creative subconscious. If you’ve ever done psychedelics, you know where I’m coming from. If you haven’t, I can feel your eyes doing somersaults in their sockets. But hear me out.
Under the influence of psychedelics, our minds take us to places we didn’t know existed. We see indescribably complex patterns and unutterable beauty in the mundanity of a kitchen worktop or wood chip ceiling. If you’re ready to have your mind truly blown wide open, just go outside. But the thing is, like when waking from a dream, it’s incredibly difficult to articulate all of this fantastical drama when we’re sober. You’re given the map to escape Takeshi’s honeycomb maze but come around in a sumo’s embrace with coal on your face (I’m not going to apologise for the specificity of my references, this is MY safe space, not yours).
In the face of all the terrifying weirdness of our nightmares, I feel as though we must submit to the philosophy of Camus. When staring in the face of the absurdity, with its three eyes, upside down ears and a backwards tongue that lolls awkwardly from the side of it’s mouth like a dog with Downs Syndrome, we have three options. We could kill ourselves - dramatic, I know. Secondly, we could subscribe to the Egyptian, Greek and Christian method. We could pretend they’re messages from God, despite our better judgement, and we can use their examples to procure messages about the way we lead our lives. This is the easiest option, but a little disingenuous. The third option, my preferred choice, is that we create our own meaning from the fucked-up things we see projected onto the insides of our eyelids as we sweat in our beds. If we could never imagine ( in waking life) the bizarre, often graphic, scenes of our subconscious mind, then don’t, I repeat, DON’T, let them slip away. They are your gold. Your inner world. Your creative currency. Keep either a notepad or phone by your bed and write everything you remember down. Everything. Even the bits that seem inconsequential.
I was looking back through the dream folder of my notes app, and it’s full of absurdity and narrative that I feel like, one day, I need to commit to screen or print or wherever someone will let me spew it out. One of these rambling, incoherent notes is, in fact, direct inspiration for the title of this Substack: Human Sushi. In short, my brother and I were stuck on a small beach with no apparent exit. We meet a girl who shows us the way to her mega-villa that she shares with her creepy Cullenesque family. At the climax, my brother and I discover that her father is desperate to become the first human sushi master. He’s written books on the human body, its flesh and its taste. He’s a truly mad genius. And we’re trapped there. There’s a bit of Shyamalan, Meyer and Harris in there, of course, but this is an original production, written by the creep in my head who comes out when I’m not watching. Maybe it’s shit, but I can’t believe that this is what the mind produces when we sleep. It’s all worth writing down.
Just because you don’t know why your dreams are strange, it doesn’t mean they don’t matter. Just because they aren’t messages from God, it doesn’t mean they aren’t messages from the self. Just because they aren’t anxieties about having sex with your mother…no, they definitely aren’t that.
