Dreams

[andrewducker]

I just woke up from a dream where I was teaching an Orangutang how to use a cellphone, and specifically how to text someone (in reply to the question "How are you?") with the answer "I got smacked down at Quake".

Which reminded me of a conversation I had a few days ago, where I was saying that other people's dreams were really, really dull to listen to, unless kept to two sentence descriptions. When you get a ten minute ramble of "And then I was in the garden, except it wasn't my garden any more, it was the neighbour's garden, and Bob was there, only he looked more like Derek, and he was telling me off for something I'd done when I was 6 - and I didn't even know Bob when I was 6..." I mostly just want to kill myself - it's like reading Alice in Wonderland, except with even less plot and word games. Whereas "I dreamt my grandmother was telling me off for not writing, only she's been dead for 5 years." could well be interesting if it leads onto discussion of grandmothers, responsibility, etc. and "Last night I dreamt I was on a pirate ship, and Johnny Depp was there, and we had sex in the crows nest" is worth it just for the imagery.

I was, however, disagreed with by surliminal and thishardenedarm, who were both of the "other people's dreams are always interesting" camp.

Obviously, the only way to solve this, once and for all, Scientifically, is with an LJ poll:

[Poll #564674]

Comments

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

They give you more of an insight into the people you care about. So.. fascinating.

[andrewducker]

I think they do, if kept to pertinent details. You'll notice I didn;t both with the whole description of the computer game we were actually playing (whih wasn't quake), because frankly it was pretty random.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

What he said is excatly how I feel. You may recall I didn't say I was intersted in any Tom Dick or Harry's dreams - but I was interested in your dream about your grandmother because it did, i thought, say intersting things about you.

Waking up from a nightmare in sweaty state however to be told "I'm only interested in it if you can summarise it in six words or less" is NOT my idea of the ideal level of post cauchemar support :-)

[andrewducker]

That wasn't supposed to be the support - the hug and cups of tea were supposed to be the support.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I'd rather have them as non situation specific back up, thanks :-)

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I think that dreams are just your brain trying to get signal from noise - what's interesting is what interpretations people put in their own dreams - what it makes them think about - as laserboy says, insight into the person.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

The weirder they are the more interesting.

*was* the Orang utan any good at Quake? :)

[andrewducker]

The game wasn't even Quake! It looked a lot like an old BBC game - or possibly a smartphone game.

And no, it wasn't - largely due to (a) not really understanding the rules and (b) having fingers that were too large for the buttons (which was also causing problems with the texting).

[pickwick.livejournal.com]

It depends on the person, too - my flatmate has the funniest dreams in the world. Maybe it's just the way she tells them, but...I'd listen to her describing her dreams, but not many other people.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

I agree. Maybe we're too literal.

[andrewducker]

I'm happy to be abstract, metaphorical and quirky. Heck, most of my favourite writing is.

But I don't like Alice in Wonderland (for instance), because the imagery isn't a metaphor for anything (mostly), it's just imagery.

Possibly I've just seen too much random art to be interested in it any more.

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

kept to two sentence descriptions

In Hollywood I believe this is called "high concept".

High concept dreams++

[andrewducker]

Well, exactly.

I wanna hear "It was like Jaws, only where Jaws was my Mum." or "I was in War of the Worlds, only they were all made of Jelly Babies". Maybe follow up with a couple of snippets, if they were particularly amusing incidents. Full script can go to someone else...

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

how funny, i just posted a bit of a dream on my bleuuurgh, asking you to switch off at that bit, then i come here and you've gone all poll-y on the dreams. read it and yawn...

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

I tried a dream community quite soon after getting on LJ, and I assure you, other people's dreams are boring... ;-)

Just checked, and there's a lot of dream communities - here's an example...

http://www.livejournal.com/community/_dreams_/

One thing I noticed - many like to write down their dreams without paragraph breaks...