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Unsung Joe dream

I was living with some 1930s film people in their 1930s house. I could tell that they were 1930s people because they and their house were in black and white. I was in colour, of course.

We were all doing various tasks together in the kitchen when a man who I thought was the uncle of one of the others in the house tripped and fell forward onto the searing hot metal plate of the range. After lying on it for a couple of seconds, as if paralysed by the shock, he slowly and seemingly without pain turned to face us. One side of his face was terribly burned.

I knew I had to tell people about this. Without stopping to think or to ask how he was, I rushed out of the house. I wasn't going to fetch a doctor; I was heading for an internet cafe.

When I got to the internet place, which was in a modern high street -- all colour -- I realised I didn't have enough money to pay for a session. The minimum charge was 28p, but I had only 26p. I searched all of my pockets, and discovered a 2p piece. I entered the cafe and paid the guy...

Notes for Freudian Interpretation

I have a work anxiety dream every now and again. Usually, the dream will involve me being unable to report the parliamentary proceedings properly because something has gone horribly wrong. These dreams fall into three main types: the "Please shut up!" dreams, in which the members of Parliament all start speaking over each other so that I can't hear what anyone is saying; the "Who the hell are you?" dreams, in which I realise with horror that I don't recognise a member who's speaking; and the "Oh my God!" dreams, in which a riot breaks out in the chamber and I have the impossible task of desperately trying to write down every weird thing that happens.

This dream, although I'm sure it's a work anxiety dream, doesn't fit in any of those categories. That's because it's not about my work in Parliament; it's about writing The Unsung Joe, my other blog. The dream is an obvious dramatisation of the process of researching the private lives of old, unknown movie people with the aim of finding out some interesting, tragic or funny facts about them, and then writing about it on the internet.

Imagine the type of character who'd have a work anxiety dream about writing his blog! Shameful.

I should point out that the anxiety about The Unsung Joe comes not from the act of writing the blog, but from my recent decision to rewrite it as a book, which was suggested to me by a literary agent who got in touch last month. The prospect of undertaking a serious piece of hard work, rather than posting stuff whenever I feel like it, is a little daunting, and is exactly the kind of thing that you'd expect would cause ripples of disquiet in your subconscious, which might result in a dream in which not only is the task of finding out interesting stories as easy as simply hanging out with a bunch of people, but, even though it might at first appear that you simply don't have the necessary resources to complete your work, you'll find that you do, if you try hard enough. It's one of those pep-talk dreams that Freud was always on about.

It's nice to know that my subconscious has faith in my abilities, but I can't help but note that it won't be doing any of the actual work.

Three Choices Dream

What would you do if you and a group of Iraqis had been picked up in the street by Saddam Hussein's police and were being interrogated by a terrifyingly violent policeman, and all you had on you was the cigarette lighter that you'd hidden in your sock?

It's an excellent question, which my dad, my big brother and I were discussing in my dream last night.

My immediate idea was that I would use the lighter to set fire to my trouser leg, which would give me an excuse to get up and rush around the room, whereupon I would be able to take advantage of the panic I would have caused to slip away, unnoticed.

My dad agreed with my basic idea, but not with the approach. He said he'd set fire to the burqa of the woman sitting next to him, because that would cause more panic and make it easier for him to escape. Also, he wouldn't be on fire.

My big brother said he'd set fire to the desk.

As they discussed the merits of the three courses of action, I thought how similar the scenario and our reactions to it were to what happened during the famous attack on New York City by Albino King Kong, which had taken place a few years before. If you recall, Albino King Kong had been spotted wading across the Atlantic towards the city, and the people of New York had only a few days in which to come up with a way of preventing him from carrying out his plan to rampage madly around the island of Manhattan until he'd flattened all the buildings south of Harlem.

The population divided around three options. The first was to set fire to Albino King Kong before he got to the city, but it was generally thought that his fur would be too wet. The second was to set fire to the city before Albino King Kong got to it, which was thought to be sensible because, if the place was going to be destroyed anyway, it would be much better, safer and fairer if the citizens did it themselves. The third option, which was suggested in the middle of the night a few hours before Albino King Kong was due to arrive, was to go to the apartment of the evil man who was controlling Albino King Kong, get him out of bed and set fire to him. This was done, because it was obviously the best idea. As the man, still wearing his pajamas, was burned by the mayor and other elected officials, Albino King Kong, many miles from shore, toppled slowly into the sea, smoke pouring from both ears.

Notes for Freudian Interpretation

Often, it's obvious to me where certain elements in my dreams have come from, and I generally like to be able to have a lot to say in the notes for Freudian interpretation section of the post, but I'm completely at a loss this time, as I'm sure that nothing in the dream had come up during the day (although I had spoken to my dad, and we'd mentioned my brother, who had been promoted to acting sergeant of a police station near where I work).

All I can say is that this was one of those very exciting dreams that leave you with a satisfied feeling and the conviction that they'd make a brilliant film, which is a firm belief that you hold only until you write it down...

George Lucas dream

George Lucas had released yet another Star Wars film, this one a live-action movie featuring minor characters from the first films. He knew that everyone was sick of him and his ceaseless attempts to wring every last dime out of his franchise, so he'd decided to employ a gimmick to get initial viewers into the cinemas to see it -- it would be released in three half-hour chunks, which the audience would watch in three different cinemas in their towns over the course of the evening. 

I showed up for the first showing and spent a little while trying to get a good seat in the huge theatre where the first chunk was being shown. Eventually the film started, and I noted with a little sadness, though no great surprise, that it was almost indescribably bad. I'd expected it to be a bit rubbish, obviously, but it was beyond even The Phantom Menace's incredible level of rubbishness. The first scene went like this:

A group of cute teenage alien bounty hunters stand before Jabba the Hutt in his palace as he describes their mission to them. Suddenly, some cowled figures behind them remove their robes and reveal themselves to be imperial stormtroopers. Everyone then begins to sway from side to side as they sing a sort of barbershop-quartettish song outlining the history of the Star Wars saga so far, which goes on and on and on.

The chunk ended, the lights came up, and the audience removed themselves from the cinema, grumbling about how dreadful the thing had been. I walked through the dark streets along with them, on my way to the next cinema to sit and watch the second -- and possibly worse -- installment.

Notes or Freudian Interpretation

I'm not going to go on about George Lucas and his stupid films, as there's quite enough of that on the internet. I'm a male who was born in the early 1970s, and my opinions about the first trilogy and the second trilogy are exactly the same as those of every other guy in that demographic. 

Grrr.

 

Two obvious things during the day resulted in this dream. The first was that I listened to Mark Kermode's review of the Clone Wars cartoon. He explained that it was a very poor piece of film-making, and I was sure he was right.

 

The other thing was that, in the evening, I was scanning through a DVD of The Adventures of Robin Hood, the Errol Flynn film from 1938, looking carefully at all the people in the crowd scenes to see if I could identify a certain extra who I've discovered was working on the set of the film when he was picked up on a murder charge (it's for an Unsung Joe post, obviously). I couldn't find him -- there are hundreds of extras in that movie! -- but I kept noticing scenes and shots that were obviously, you know, influential on the Star Wars films. For instance, when the merry men ambush the sheriff's troops by jumping on them from the trees, my mind immediately flashed on the bit in Return of the Jedi when the ewoks attack the stormtroopers in the forest. Also, the scene where Robin Hood is about to be executed but escapes with the help of his friends, who are in disguise in the crowd, is exactly the same as the scene where Luke Skywalker is about to be thrown into the Sarlacc pit -- I mean exactly.

 

I doubt I'm the first to notice any of this, so I assumed that a little light googling would immediately confirm my theory, but I couldn't find any reference to the steals. Perhaps there isn't a great crossover between the Star Wars fans and the Errol Flynn fans. Although there should be.

 

The picture above is a detail of an annotated picture on this page, which is absolutely fascinating, if you're a certain type of person.

Sgt Pepper's dream

I was in a large concert hall, watching the Beatles play a live version of the whole Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album. The band, who had reformed for this tour, were dressed in the colourful, shiny costumes that they wear on the album cover, and were about three songs into the set.

John Lennon sure looked great for his age. But wait a minute -- isn't he dead? That couldn't be John Lennon -- it was a fake! And, if he was a fake, were any of them who they said they were? Was the whole thing just a gigantic fraud? Was I the only one who knew?

Notes for Freudian Reflection

The second Beatles dream in six months (the previous one is here.)

The evening before I had the dream, the thought crossed my mind while I was washing dishes that my past six months of vegetarianism must have had some sort of beneficial health effect. That led to me thinking of Paul McCartney, as I always think of his vegetarianism as one of the reasons why he looks as good for his age as he does.

Anyway, I realised that I was assuming that Paul would outlive Ringo. Then I decided that wasn't a bad bet, so I didn't feel at all guilty about it. The last stupid thing I thought in this little train of Beatlesy nonsense was that, when Ringo dies, any Paul McCartney solo concert will effectively be a reunion of the surviving Beatles.

Was George Harrison a vegetarian? No idea. He probably was, which kind of undercuts my Beatles-based theory of the health benefits of vegetarianism.  

Colin dream

I was walking back to my flat on a sunny afternoon when I noticed my friend, Colin, sitting in a cafe. I waved, and he quickly finished his cup of tea and came out. He'd been in Edinburgh for a work meeting that morning and was just about to go to the train station to go back to his office in Bath. I said I'd walk him to the station if we went via my flat, as I had to pick up some stuff for work.

I left him on the pavement while I rushed up the stairs. On the way up, it occurred to me that I should thank him for sending me a collection of Ivan Brunetti's Schizo for my birthday, which I'd incredibly rudely forgotten to do last time I saw him.

Notes for Freudian Interpretation

I'm always coming across people who are fiercely resistant to even the most simple and, to me, uncontroversial of Freud's theories about dreams. Perhaps it's the way I explain them. This dream shouldn't cause anyone any difficulty, though, as it's a fairly literal realisation of something I was thinking about earlier in the day.

After work, I went down to the printmakers workshop to keep on working on a large screenprint of 50 or so mugshot drawings that I've been doing for a while. The print is, basically, a grid of small portraits. The various layers of colour and the grid fit together quite precisely, so it takes some time to register each layer before printing it. Here's a rough summary of what went through my mind as I was carefully adjusting the first layer I was printing that night:

"It's tricky, this, but the grid will look great, so it's worth it. Didn't I read an interview with Ivan Brunetti where he was saying how he liked to arrange wee graphical elements into grids? Yes, it was him, in that book of interviews with comic guys that I bought.

Yes, Ivan Brunetti. Colin gave me that book of his collected comics. That was really good, wasn't it?

Yes. But did I mention to Colin that I'd liked it?

No. Hmm, that's bad. I meant to. But I didn't. I should have.

Could I thank him now, after all these months?

Yes. Better call him, I suppose.

I'm always saying that I should call people, but I never do. Bad. Why do I never call people when I know that I should? Because I'm a terrible person, that's why! Very bad!

Oh, that's all very depressing. Concentrate on the print, Diarmid, instead of all this self-indulgent recrimination. Work! Work!"

So I put it all out of my mind and forgot all about it. Now you know the context, it should be obvious why, later that night, my subconscious created a fantasy wherein not only did I not have to call Colin, because I actually met him, but I remembered to thank him for his present. Obvious, I tell you! How could anyone have any difficulty with that?

I should note that the first two prints were very badly registered, due to a small, idiotic mistake I'd made when setting up the press (I hadn't tightened a couple of clamps). In his Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud interprets similar "mistakes" as being punishments that people subconsciously inflict on themselves to atone for sins that they know they've committed but shrink from facing up to, like being such an appallingly dreadful friend that you never phone people you ought to phone. In that light, the two ruined prints become a sort of sacrificial offering that enabled me to clear my conscience.

Now, that's the kind of theory I can understand people fiercely resisting.

PS -- Colin, if you're reading this, thanks for the Ivan Brunetti book, which was great. Also, sorry for not phoning more often...