April 5, 2010

• five

  Dreams and Music

  Last night I had what was perhaps the strangest dream I've ever had. It started off with me being in the minds of a number of people experience weird reality altering aberrations. They were sort of reminiscent of the "signs" of the dark lords prison being broken in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. Only the characters were much darker and more gritty down to earth people. It had a very fatalistic feel, like I was trapped in the minds of people who had lost all hope and had resigned themselves to seek pleasure in the now above all else.

  Then in the end of the dream there were like visisons of tidal wave forces striking the East coast and people fleeing inland. My perspective kept jumping around from the people on the East Coast to television broadcasts detailing the chaos to people on the West Coast on the beach enjoying themselves wholly oblivious.

  The vision came to a head when my perspective jumped into the mind of the one person on the beach on the West Coast, who was somehow aware of what was going on on the East Coast and felt the urge to shout a warning. But then, in like a flash faster than a bolt of lightning, I was stuck underwater and drowning and there was no air and no Earth anywhere to be seen. It was just endless water. *I*, my overarching perspective, knew that the West Coast was simply gone, that it had been swallowed whole by unimaginable tidal forces. I was trying to swim up to find some kind of salvation but it was a hopeless endeavor.

  That's where my dream ended. I woke up and it was about 11:48 PM. I'd fallen asleep just a couple hours earlier unintentionally.

  My very first thought, was wow this would make a great story! Of course I didn't remember most of the details of the characters and their lives but I felt they were deep and interesting characters.

  My second thought, was woah, that was creepy! I don't dream that often and what I do dream I rarely remember. But to have an End of the World Dream during the last moments of Easter Sunday of all days was immensely disturbing.  I started to wonder if other people had had a similar dream at that time. Because if everybody had like a world drowning in water dream during the last thirty minutes or so of Easter Sunday well then I might start to think there might be something to all this religion stuff after all.

  That's not to say that that would be enough to make me believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible or even that there is a real God. But it might make me believe that there is some sort of powerful entity out there effecting our dreams that knows something about the Easter Holiday and is using it to send some kind of warning sign to people. Even then I'd wish whatever force it was could be more efficient and specific. There are things he could tell us more directly that would certainly be more likely to spur me into action.

  So how about it? Did any of you have weird end of the world dreams yesterday night? If not, I guess it's just my overactive imagination again as usual.

  In any case, I probably won't be moving to the West Coast anytime soon. That's kinda a crazy place to live anyways. Everybody knows about the fault lines there and the enormous risk of Earthquakes.  I'll take my nice flat safe  middle of the country thank you very much. Dodging tornados I can do.

  It's sort of funny that later after I woke up I heard about the earthquake that hit Mexico and California earlier that day. Well funny in the even more creepy kinda way. (My roommate says I'm probably a bit psychic, I say she's more than a bit insane ^_^) However, it also gave me a viable explanation for why I might have had such a strange dream that is not grounded in the world of mysticism or religion. Just before I went to bed I was reading through my twitter feed, just glancing through without paying attention. It's entirely possible that before I fell asleep I read something about the Earthquake that struck Mexico. My subconscious mind took note of it and incorporated it into my weird ass dream. That together with the history of lore surrounding Easter and Christiantiy and the fact that earlier that day I had heard an interview with a woman who studies crazy right wing "end of days" cults fully explains the phenomena.  It just means my subconscious mind is deranged and hates me.

  Phew.  That was a close one. I was on the verge of becoming a believer!

  All of this reminds me of a song or two. First there's these lines:

  "I'm still alive but I'm barely breathing
  Just prayed to a God that I don't believe in
  'Cause I got time while she got freedom
  'Cause when a heart breaks, no, it don't break even"

  That's from a beautiful song Breakeven by the Irish pop rock band known as The Script.  Now why does this completely arbitrary song about heartbreak come to mind when I have dreams about world changing climate disruptions? Well largely it's because of the line "prayed to a God that I don't believe in". 

  That line I think is just amazingly human. People really do do that, whether they believe or not when things get to their most disastrous points, people so often silently ask or even beg something, anything for help. I've done it. I've prayed more often then I like to admit. That's not to say that I believe in God or even in any power beyond humanity. It's just that I too have these tendencies. And when times are dark I tend to cling to hope. It's an entirely emotional response. It's what we do when we're hurting. We ask for help. Even if we can't do it in words to people we know, we ask it in our hearts to forces that may or may not be wholly imaginary.

  And I guess just the thought of a global disaster would cause so many people to pray, atheists, agnostics, secularists, and followers of all manner of religions. It's that ingrained in our consciousness. Our need for hope in times of despair manifests itself in these rituals of invocation that are so common in our communal memory. It's sort of fascinating to think about. It's one of those things that reminds us of how similar we all are.

  The other song that comes to mind is Ruler of Everything by Tally Hall.  Once I understood this song I came to love it. Basically it's a song about a person arguing with Time itself. On the one hand you have a person trying to say how important his life is how amazing it is, how substantial and meaningful it must be. On the other hand you have Time explaining the person's real place in the grand scale of the Universe, how we're all just dust in the end and all our works amount to nothing.

  And yet the song is not negative about Time. Quite the contrary. Time is described as the person's "one only friend". It's in effect saying that our short lives in the context of that greater history is in fact what gives our existence meaning. It's what causes us to strive. It's what makes life important enough to cherish.

  Now there's a LOT in this song and you could probably write a decent term paper analyzing it, but for me I just enjoy the thought of the endless human struggle against Time itself that has been a part of our existence since the beginning.

  Indeed, I'm watching right now on the Science Channel a program about Ancient Egypt and the creation of the Great Pyramids and the Sphinx. If you think about it, ancient Egyptian culture was ALL about that struggle against time. Their entire society was devoted to making monuments that would withstand the test of time and make them effectively "immortal" as was a part of their religion. Their struggle was all so that their civilization nor their rulers would never be forgotten.

  And yet even their efforts are nothing compared to the great test of time. Eventually even the pyramids will vanish from this Earth  and leave not a shadow of a shadow of a memory of their existence. IT will happen. It's the way the world works.

  I think it's pretty clear how this related to my end of the world dream. We're all lost in the end. Noting lasts forever not even this extraordinary civilization we have today. But that's not something to worry about really. Time is still our one and only friend. It's the striving and what happiness we can achieve in the process that matters, not the results.

  Anyway, below I'll post a playlist with these two songs.  Please recommend songs that remind you of these kinds of concepts. End of the World songs as you may. I'm always interested in being exposed to more music.

  And of course, I'll write more tomorrow.

  

  
  

  • 8:36 pm
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