A Shift in the Dream Landscape

In the last couple of weeks, something unusual has been happening in my dreams. I've been in control, and they've been remarkably anxiety free. Two of the major dream paradigms of my lifetime have been, essentially, turned on their heads.

The first is the horror movie dream. Since I was in junior high (and maybe even earlier), I've been haunted by the dream where a killer (usually Michael Myers from HALLOWEEN) stands silently in my room while I lie motionless in my bed. I know that if I make even the slightest motion, the killer will know I'm there and stab me to death. These static dreams go on for what feels like hours in my sleep, and I often wake up feeling exhausted by the strain of balancing absolute stillness with petrifying fear.

I haven't had this one as often in my 30s, but I felt a strong connection to it the other night when I dreamt I was producing a horror movie out of a cavernous office space with my old colleagues from Civilian Pictures. I felt absolutely in control and excited about finally producing my own feature. The film, which we were shooting in black and white, was a modern interpretation of VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, and we'd assembled the creepiest looking army of blonde children. They were milling about the set, smiling when off camera and the embodiment of evil when the cameras were rolling (incidentally, feel free to analyze what making this particular movie in my dream has to say about my childless status- I have).

When I woke up I felt empowered and refreshed- now I was calling the shots on the horror in my life.

Who's in control now?

The second major recurring dream theme has been plaguing me steadily through my 20s and 30s. The details of this one change more often that the killer dream, but the essentials are that I've been skipping a college class all semester long, and now I have to return for a big test and face the music. A common wrinkle is that I haven't been to the class in so long that I've forgotten where it's held and/or I've forgotten where the building it's in is located on campus. I ransack my room looking for the list of classes I'm enrolled in that was issued at the beginning of the semester, but I can never find it. I basically wander around the UNC campus (which always looks pristinely beautiful) gnashing my teeth, beating myself up about waiting so long to address the issue and thinking "How did I think I would get away with not going to class all semester!" (Incidentally, I was a big believer in the "if you go to every class, you don't have to study nearly as hard" school of thought, so this dream pattern isn't even really related to any real-life experience that I'm conscious of.)

I wake up feeling exhausted and depressed by these dreams too, and always deeply disappointed in myself (which as you know is one of the least pleasant emotional states).

Last week I had a dream that turned this one upside-down too. I don't recall the details that well, but the gist of it was that I was now on the faculty at UNC. I sat up at the front of the class, serene and confident, and watched the young clueless students file into my class and then hang on my every word.

This one had an even more profound effect on me when I woke up- I could physically feel that a weight had been lifted, that a chain had been broken. Of course, it's too early to say that I won't be having either of the predecessor dreams any more, but it sure doesn't feel like it.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the catalyst for this internal transition was joining Facebook about three weeks ago. I'd fought the notion of Facebook, thinking that it would a big time-waster and filled with uncomfortable small-talky reunions with people you no longer cared about and/or actively wanted to steer clear of. I joined primarily because it's constantly referred to as an outlet or destination for marketing strategies by the people I work with, and I felt like I could no longer pretend to nod my head knowingly about it.

By connecting to dozens and dozens of people who used to occupy a lot of my headspace but have since drifted away for one reason or another, and doing it all at once, I think my unconscious was forced to assess where my own life is now. More than that, I was forced to see something that I already knew but I suppose isn't all that apparent in one's own day-to-day continuum- I've grown up. I really am 37. I really have friends who have teenage children. I really am looking down the barrel at my 20th high school reunion. And so are a lot of other people... it's happening to everybody.

Thankfully, it seems, the producers of my dream life appear to be growing up too.

Life Hyphens

I was reading an article ("Sleepy Eyed Writer, Wandering Byzantium" by Charles McGrath) on the novelist and screenwriter Richard Price in the New York Times Arts & Leisure section yesterday when two things jumped out at me.

Price also wrote the video for "Bad", directed by Martin Scorsese

The first was Price's reference to Byzantium. Speaking about the Lower East Side today, he said "This place is like Byzantium. It's tomorrow, yesterday – anyplace but today." For a city that's been renamed not once (Constantinople) but twice (Istanbul), Byzantium seems to have been bouncing around in the consciousness lately. My best guess as to why is that the book/film NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN took its title from the 1928 poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by William Butler Yeats, and there's been no shortage of ink spilled on NO COUNTRY of late.

This second quote from Price, who was Oscar nominated for his 1986 script for THE COLOR OF MONEY, is the one that really grabbed my attention.

Discussing Eric Cash, the protagonist of his new novel Lush Life:

He's modeled partly on himself, Mr. Price said. "He's me if what has been hadn't been. I've always been interested in when the hyphen disappears – you know, actor-waiter, cabdriver-writer – and you have to settle for who you are."

Fabio celebrating his win for "Best Actor/Model"

This thought really touched on something that I've thought about quite a bit over the years. As a resident of either New York City or Los Angeles since 1995, I have encountered and befriended hundreds of hyphenates or "slashies". In fact, I've been one myself (screenwriter/development guy), but as of right this moment my hyphen has disappeared.

It may not last, but I have come to terms with and laid to rest my aspirations of being a successful screenwriter, and the time since 4/21/07 (the last time I modified the file of my last script) has been marked by an increased sense of well-being and peace with where I am on my lifetime career trajectory. When I think about it, the part of the decision that's the most meaningful to me is that I came to it on my own and in my own time. There was no final rejection, there was no self-imposed time limit that was reached, and there were no external forces forcing me to "give up the dream" before I was ready.

There was just the sense that I'd given it my best shot, that continuing to try was a study in diminishing returns, and that I could only continue to ignore the writing on the wall at my own peril.

I have reached the age where the hyphen is starting to disappear for more and more of my contemporaries (some, I'm happy to say, have dropped the "day job" side of the hyphenate for full time exploration of the dream side), but there are still quite a few who still toil in an unsatisfying gig primarily to provide the means to pursue the long-shot.

I think its fair to say that the odds get longer that long shots will come in the older we get, but does that mean that everyone should "do the math" and put the dream on the shelf at some point?

No one can answer that but oneself, and fortunately many people can balance the pursuit of the elusive dream with a meaningful and fulfilling pursuit of the reality until the day they die.

But what of the people who cannot find peace and fulfillment unless they achieve the fullest realization of the dream side of the hyphenate? I simultaneously root for and worry about many who occupy this category, and after some deliberation I have two tidbits to pass on from my experience that may be helpful.

1) Periodically, reexamine the nuts and bolts of what your dream career is and where you assess your chances currently stand of realizing it.

Will success as a singer or actor or novelist mean the same thing to you if it happens next year compared with how you imagined it happening at age 18 or 21 or 29? Will not achieving success in the same devastate you now as much now as you thought it would then, especially factoring in up-to-date placement of points on a graph representing your personal confluence of luck, hard work, connections, and talent?

2) Do everything in your power to find work on both sides of your hyphenate that is fulfilling in ways beyond the strictly utilitarian/monetary. No matter who you are, the day job has a decent chance of becoming the lifetime career, so maneuver as best you can to make that day job something that improves you and/or your chances for long-term fulfillment.

If you haven't already done so, Netflix FREAKS AND GEEKS

This line of thinking often brings up memories of a particularly thought-provoking episode of Judd Apatow's late and lamented FREAKS AND GEEKS. Rebellious A-student Lindsay Weir was dating spastic stoner Nick Andopolis, and as she came to the realization she didn't have the same feelings for him that he had for her, she also saw that his wide-eyed commitment to becoming a drummer in a rock band (damn the torpedoes of grades and parents) didn't come close to matching the talent level he possessed, which was minimal.

Her quandary was a difficult one: should she tell someone that she genuinely cares for that he should abandon his long-shot creative dreams in hopes of refocusing him on more attainable goals, or should she encourage him to pursue the dream that means so very much to him despite knowing in her heart that he has no realistic chance of it ever coming true?

Dream Franchise

Moving into a new home means a great deal of new stimuli to absorb, as well as subconsciously letting go of one's previous set of routines and familiar sights. I've found that these sudden shifts almost always cause a sharp increase in my dream activity, that old dream patterns are washed away and a new anthology of motifs and appearances by random faces from the past are featured.

It's not too unlike a new season of original programming after a summer of reruns.

I see horses out my window every day now, and I look forward to seeing them in my dreams

As I've mentioned before, some of my most fertile ideas occur to me in my sleep, as if the writer-side of my brain is trying to send messages to my conscious self that it has something worthwhile. Instead of a ghostwriter... a dreamwriter. Neither one is really you, but both of them quietly fade into the background if they produce something good for you.

Last night I had a doozy of a dream, the kind where you're somewhat aware that you're experiencing a dream but also can't quite shake the feeling that the jeopardy of the dream scenario is very real.

Mrs. Word Player and I had just bought a condo inside a sprawling indoor casino in Las Vegas. Neither of us were excited about the condo, especially because the doors weren't quite attached to the hinges, and the windows kept hovering slightly off the runners they were supposed to be attached to. I kept losing track of where our condo ended and the neighbors' condos began, as the hallways were maze-like and poorly lit. I kept getting frustrated by the lack of boundaries, so I would walk downstairs into the gambling areas, which looked like the interior of an enormous, vaulted-ceiling airport terminal done in tacky Vegas reds and greens.

The hallways in my dream reminded me of the hallways connecting the two realities in LOST HIGHWAY

I kept running into people I knew killing time playing slots or blackjack. I was always surprised to see them, but they were never surprised to see me. Every time I started to gamble, a voice inside my head told me that I only had $100 a day gambling allowance, and not to blow it all too fast.

(It struck my semi-aware conscious self how odd it felt to be privy to the little voice inside the head of my dream self.)

I wandered away from the tables and into a two story saloon-type bar. I emerged on the top floor balcony overlooking the place, and the big crowd down below stopped what they were doing and looked up at me. The only way down to the first floor was a wire that you had to wrap your legs around and shimmy down, pulling yourself with your hands.

I didn't want to go, but the people down below started yelling at me to, and then I realized that a bunch of ruffian types were approaching from behind. I noticed that the floor was covered in shards of brown and green broken glass inches deep. I started making my way down the wire, and everybody on both floors started shouting and breaking chairs and bottles over each other's heads in anticipation of my arrival.

This was terrifying, and I was sure that the mob was going to rip me to shreds when I reached the ground floor. It came as a huge relief to discover that I had entered a theme restaurant where you get to experience a real Western barfight without fear of getting hurt. The glass wasn't real and the chairs were breakaway props. Everybody crowded around me and rubbed my head and good-naturedly punched me in the shoulder in the "we really had you going" way, until we turned out attention to a new guy who'd appeared on the balcony above, and we all started acting crazy and menacing again.

Breakaway glass sure looks like fun.

That was the end of the dream, but it wasn't until a few minutes ago that I thought how cool it would be to have a real cowboy theme bar where you got to participate in a real barfight... something that few of us ever get to (or would want to, in reality) participate in.

In all likelihood the ship-to-shore dream message was something completely different, but that's probably what I'll remember from it.

Tie-ins of the Damned

Because of an uptick in the number of clients I've been writing for, I've been doing a lot more writing in my sleep lately. Some of the work I've been able to remember in the morning has already made it into print, but most of it (sadly?) is for make-believe clients and projects.


For instance, last night as I slept I was working on a cross-promotion for Crystal Light ("Cause I believe in ME!") and the newest FRIDAY THE 13th sequel (which doesn't exist, to my knowledge.)


The promotion is "Camp Crystal Light," where winning entrants get to spend a fun-filled weekend drinking the many fine flavors of Crystal Light while avoiding "death" at the maniacal hands of Jason Voorhees.

Hey, it could happen.