Dreams are powerful things. I've been thinking about them quite a bit of late. A few weeks ago I was having a particularly miserable day, moping about my room and burying my face in my pillow, that sort of thing. That night, seemingly out of nowhere, came a dream of which I can now remember very little. The only lasting memory I have of it was a brief episode involving a large bear. The bear was chained up and in the dream I patted it and stroked its fur. There was something very comforting about this. When I woke up, despite having no idea what I was doing in the dream and what the context of the bear being there was, I felt very cheerful and whenever I called the bear to mind during the rest of the next couple of days my mood was lifted.
It looks as though I've discovered my power animal then. I found it fascinating how something so out of the blue, out of my control and seemingly random could provide so much comfort. I mean, as far as I'm aware I hadn't been thinking about bears that day, or seen any. I hadn't even been hanging around any big hairy people. There was no questioning the effect the bear had had on me though. It had grabbed me out of some form of pit of despair and carried me up to its cave in the mountainside. From there I could look out on the forests and be content again. It even gave me some fish it had caught from a nearby stream. Vegetarian fish of course.
Dreams can lead to exciting circumstances in waking life, such as involvement in Martian conspiracies.
This led me to think about other instances where dreams had had dramatic impact upon waiting life. Having a dream about a negative experience you've had, or having a negative experience particularly person can lead to revisiting sadness for the next couple of days. Similarly, the opposite also happens; having a particularly positive dream about a specific person can significantly alter the way in which you perceive them. As with the bear, these can come marauding out of the forests of the night without warning, no matter how far away you may think you have travelled from them.
This had led me to think what it would be like if it were possible to completely manufacture your dreams. There are techniques that you can use to enable lucid dreaming, but housemate Stu, a former practitioner in this nocturnal art, has said that boundaries still exist. The building blocks that the dreams consist of are still you, your subconscious. At times when lucid dreaming he would attempt something out of character for him, and every time the dream would find a way to restore a natural order fitting with his character. I haven't researched this much, but this makes sense. I mean, if you were able to do this then you could make yourself fall in love with your best friend's mother and have the confidence to make some moves on her. Or the pet dog. If you wanted to. Some people might. That's just an example. A random example. Marauding out of the forests.
If he had a private practice he'd be minted.
Being able to do that would require some Total Recall style technology, or the world's only benevolent giant. It would make a massive difference to the medical world certainly, but probably only in places with state-provided healthcare. Otherwise I would envision it being used in a similar way to that in Philip K. Dick's story, 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale', as escapism, a form of tourism. Sure, that would provide health benefits, but market forces would lead it down a less savoury path. This has descended into a science-fiction tangent. Apologies.
All this makes me feel that lucid dreaming could solve a lot of problems. Psychological positivity is scarily beneficial. As someone who plays a lot of sport and likes to deal in performance, it is astounding seeing the difference confidence makes. It makes you think that a man in a suit walking with confidence could probably get away with anything. Then there's also the way in that you could use your dreams to play around freely with vague ideas you may have bubbling under the surface. Take this (relatively) recent quote from one of my favourite authors, Robin Jarvis, from an interview about one of his latest novels:
"Believe it or not...I dreamt the very last scene in every detail. It's the only time that's ever happened but it gave me everything I needed, the title of the book, the characters and their names and other key 'ingredients'. I had to jump out of bed and write it all down straight away - I got 2 and a half pages of synopsis out of it. It freaked me out a bit."
It could be a beneficial way of exploring things you've been thinking about. Road-testing, you could say. There are also all kinds of stories you hear about people dreaming up songs, waking up and rushing to a piano or guitar to note it all down. It's powerful stuff. I think I may have another go at the dream diary as this is held to be one way of making lucid dreaming easier. Being your own big friendly giant could potentially be a life-changing thing, at least on some levels. Worth a go, certainly, and the hours spent attempting it would otherwise be spent lazing around, lying about and generally being unproductive.
In the words of Neil Buchanan, try it yourself. Put a hand on Jacob's ladder and see where it takes you.
Aww shucks. I am in the midst of a dissertation crisis. On the Sunday just passed I discovered, through a chance encounter, that my MA dissertation needs to be 15,000 words, not 10,000. This freaked me out a little, and threw my (barely existent) plans out of the window.
After a period of two weeks off work I am now back doing full-time hours, and concentrating on essay writing following 7.5 hours of national health service admissions officing is proving tricky. I've so far found getting my mind down to business difficult, which means it's looking as though my weekend is going to be a fairly intense period of academic graft.
There is some respite in the make-up of my MA dissertation: as it is a creative and critical writing masters course I am able to write up to 50% of the work as creative writing. Obviously this will necessitate just as much planning and thought as a critical essay, but creative writing is definitely an easier thing to get into the right mood for. For me it is anyway.
Now, I've yet to attempt any serious writing at any length close to 7,500 words, but I've decided to use this as an opportunity to have a go at a short story idea I've had for a while. The dissertation title is 'Violent Animal Subjectivities in The Plague Dogs'; a wonderful novel by Richard Adams that I would wholeheartedly recommend everyone and anyone to read, following two dogs that escape from an ethically questionable scientific research station in the Lake District. I am (so far) examining how Adams creates the animal subjectivities within the novel, what role violence plays in this, and what wider repercussions these have in general (I realise I need to develop a proper argument still for this. At the moment the most refined argument I have is that the novel itself is a form of animal testing). My short story needs to tie in with these themes, and so what I have decided to do, during this period where I cannot focus on critical writing, is to cook up some form of basic plot outline. Hooray!
* SPOILER ALERT! The following will probably contain spoilers. It will also containing writing of the vaguest kind, as the writer attempts to cobble a loose selection of thoughts into a well-formed story shoe. *
1. The story will open with 3 characters; the Protagonist, the Love Interest and the Antagonist. Let's refer to these as Pierrot, Linda and Anthony. Anthony has, in the eyes of Pierrot, stolen Linda from him in some underhand way. Pierrot is made aware of this, and of how much of a cad this Anthony is, when suddenly, very suddenly, he is killed! He will blame Anthony for this, but at this stage I am unsure how intentional his death will be.
2. Pierrot enters a Limbo area. Here he meets some Divine Celestial Creature. I shall refer to the DCC as Colobus M. Colobus M explains to Pierrot, after a short discussion of what just happened, that reincarnation is available to some degree. The concept is that the soul of the deceased can find itself reborn inside the body of a 'lower being' (probably won't use such a negative term), and Pierrot sees this as an opportunity for revenge. Colobus M warns that the shock of rebirth will lead to the soul suffering from a form of memory loss, and full remembrance will only be achieved through certain trigger events. Something like that. I haven't thought of the logistics yet. Pierrot is happy to attempt this though, being the vengeful type. Colobus M also says you only get three shots at reincarnation. Because, you know, fairy tales and the like always use lists of three.
3. Pierrot is unknowingly reincarnated as a dog/cat! I will chose one of these as they are closest to human in terms of domestic relationships, and so should thus be the easiest animal for Pierrot to reawaken (i.e. recollect his human memories). I think I will probably opt for a dog as it will tie in with the critical essay more easily, and will feel like the type of animal Pierrot might be able to successfully wreak some vengeance as. There will be a brief period of doggishness before Pierrot reawakens, and then rashly tries to kill Anthony, only for some horrible accident to befall him (run over by a car perhaps?) and his first attempt at reincarnation to fail.
4. Pierrot re-enters the Limbo area. Colobus M shakes his head in amusement having witnessed Pierrot's clumsy attempt at vengeance. He warns Pierrot that next time it will be harder, being a 'lower' creature. Pierrot nods, and begins reincarnation number 2...
5. Pierrot is unknowingly reincarnated as a bird/mouse! These animals are wilder than the dog and the cat, still fairly familiar but less powerful. I will probably go for bird as it will allow for a more different style of narrative. It will take longer for Pierrot to awaken, but when he does he will attempt a more calculated manoeuvre to get Anthony. Yet again though, something will go awry. I am thinking at this point the successive deaths of Pierrot should never be attributable to Anthony. So, perhaps Pierrot could try divebombing Anthony only to crash into a window. Something like that.
6. Pierrot is back in Limbo again and Colobus M. is distinctly unimpressed. Particularly with how Pierrot's human instincts are the ruin of these perfectly fine animals. He warns that he has one final shot at this vengeance, and Pierrot grimly steps forward towards his destiny.
7. Pierrot is unknowingly reincarnated as a spider! On paper the weakest of all these animals, and furthest removed from the human. However, the spider has the fear factor on his side. Unwittingly, Pierrot the Spider will somehow manage to depose Anthony, either through scaring him away or accidentally killing him through fright. The irony will be that this will happen without Pierrot awakening. Linda will see this happen and of course be very upset. Angered, she will take it upon herself to kill Pierrot the Spider. Pierrot will somehow perceive that this big human lady is upset, which may in turn awaken his human memories just as the rolled up newspaper is crashing down.
*SPOILERS END HERE*
My fear is that this may be too similar to Irvine Welsh's short story, The Granton Star Cause, which focuses on a character being turned into a fly (or bluebottle?) by a vulgar Scottish God for wasting his life up until that point. I will have to reread it to make sure it's not too similar. The plan is for this story to illustrate the inhumanity of humans in contrast with the nature of animals as others, with a view to playing around with different narrative voices in order to contrast the human and non-human and hopefully avoid sloppy anthropomorphism. We shall see. It's an idea that's been bobbing around in my head for a while, so it will be good to finally get it out onto paper. Once it's finished I'll post it up on here.
A year ago I wrote a wee polemic on this blog regarding the annual rematch between two of Exeter's historic 5-a-side football teams; the Brotherhood of Justice and Team Laser Explosion Mob (here on referred to as BoJ and TLEM). Whereas that post focused mainly on the rivalry between the two teams and the imbalance in the results of these games over the year, as well delivering several well-aimed broadsides at the good ship TLEM, this post will focus more on the city of Exeter itself. It is, after all, a city worthy of note.
After a gruelling 5 hour journey (one hour train delays ftw) I stepped out of St. Davids station into crisp Devonian air. There is often a feeling of calm around the city outside of its immediate centre, something that I've not noticed in Brighton. It was into the immediate centre however that I would be headed, to the Old Firehouse, a popular haunt for the student populace on account of its cheap wine, late hours and delicious pizza. It is a large place, spread over several floors, and this spaciousness combined with warm and gentle candlelight, cheap wine and pizza makes it a wonderful place to relax, chat, and drink lots of wine. Team BoJ didn't hit it as hard here as we did last year; the hangovers of 2011 were fairly debilitating and we were keen to improve upon our previous results. So, after significantly less wine, beer, rum and pizza as may normally have been expected, we headed to Team HQ for the weekend - Globe Backpackers.
This hostel has been revamped significantly over the past year. Although we rarely make full use of its facilities I can assure you that the 4-person dormitories feel akin to modest hotel rooms, and that their new individualised showers are positively luxurious. Seriously. They've gone from leisure centre swimming style cubicles to fully tiled shower rooms, with water cascading mightily from the ceiling like a composed Niagara. On Sunday morning I took a good twenty minutes sitting cross-legged underneath the warm jets, meditating like Odin hanging from the Yggdrasil. It takes a special shower to inspire me to do that.
We had breakfast at the Imperial, a grand Wetherspoons close to the station. I find that Wetherspoons pubs fall into one of two camps, usually determined by where they are situated in a town or city. You've got your gritty grotty ones which attract a loud crowd through the promise of the cheapest alcohol around, and then you've got your darkly sparkly ones which are in interestingly converted buildings. There is a particularly nice converted church in Ayr which I would recommend, complete with pulpit. In fact, more churches should be converted into pubs. Or at least have bars within them. Churches are wonderful buildings, what with their high ceilings and intriguing stonework. Anyway, we had breakfast here before marching on up to the University's sports park, via the main campus to see what had been going on.
Whoever was in charge of overseeing the development of the Forum on Exeter Campus should be clapped in irons, thrown in the brig and then flogged soundly. And then shot. After a quick bit of research it seems as though the culprits are Wilkinson Eyre Architects. For shame. I don't care how sustainable, green and cultural this new set-up is, the fact of the matter is that it is a futuristic monstrosity, akin to something out of a Philip K. Dick novel. It feels like a cross between a supermarket and an airport (which I guess is what many universities are in actuality) rather than a place of academia. If this had been in place when I had been nosing around on university open days back in 2005 then no doubt I would have opted for Glasgae and developed a fine accent by now.
Fortunately it wasn't, and I went to Exeter and met lots of lovely people, including the members and associates of BoJ and TLEM. And that brings us back to the primary purpose of the weekend trip; the game of football. Last year I made a lot of noise about how TLEM are a big bunch of cads and that BoJ are the true defenders of the people, and whilst this remains true I am trying to write something more measured this time round. So let's deal with the facts. TLEM were ultimately victorious and claimed the Harry Redknapp Literacy Support trophy to add to their untidily packed trophy cabinet. They are a formidable team, amongst the finest I have ever had to play against, and fully deserving of all their accolades. Each player is comfortable playing in any position on the pitch, and the understanding they have as a unit is something to be admired. Multiple hats off to them. The Brotherhood of Justice are not a technically gifted football side. On this occasion we were also bereft of two of our biggest talents who were off working at the Canadian GP and in Dubai respectively. This meant that our team was composed of six players; two of whom had not played football in one year and another two who had not played football in two years. Despite this, we gave a good account of ourselves (admittedly playing with a two man advantage). Sykes was powerful and self-assured in the heart of defence. O'Connell was up and down the length of the pitch like a rabbit at the dogs and provided many a sharp shot. Dunkley came in offered both safe hands in goal and safe feet in the opponents' area. Voss scored the goal of the game by rounding the keeper in manner that was so casually Iberian I wept. Earwaker was his usual self, an ambassador of attacking who certainly knows how to shoot. It is a shame we had to lose the first game 8-2 and tie the second game 9-9, but this is how these things generally work.
After this we went to the Ram for a drink. The Ram is the bar on campus. I will not go into the details of how awful this place is now, but rest assured Wilkinson Eyre Architects were probably involved. It had all the atmosphere of a hotel lobby and came complete with some hilarious impractically-placed lighting. I'm glad to note that Exeter does not offer an undergraduate programme in architecture.
There was some more Wetherspoons action before the next step of the Exeter adventure; the obligatory visit to the Cavern. Saturday night is Indie Disco night and sees BoJ all-rounder Dunkley on the wheels of steel (well, laptop of steel). This was the first club I ever went to and is still my favourite. It is small and feels unpretentious. It is a hot cellar bar which provides cold drinks and well-known music for you jiggle, gyrate and singalong to. In the 6 years I've been going there the playlist has a warm familiarity to it. Recently though they've started running a vegetarian cafe there, taking it to the Next Level. All that Jake needs to do is start playing some Talking Heads and it will be the complete package.
The next day, after some wonderful shower meditation we headed to Boston Tea Party for breakfast. Click on that link. Look at the picture that shows how massive it is upstairs. The second picture. Wow. Like a church, for those whose religion is the hot beverage. Despite tripping on the stairs and spilling half of my coffee on my arm this visit was wonderful. I had completely forgotten how much of a beautiful place this was. Certainly none of the excellently quirky tea rooms of Brighton come close to matching this one for comfort, tranquility and inspiration. I long to be able to stroll down there and sit in one of their most cosy armchairs with a nice black coffee and caramel slice, ready to hit the books or hit a page with a pen. Alas, I made not full use of this during my studies there.
Finally, I headed across the River Exe to visit old friends Becky and Denny Ledger, formerly of Brighton and Aldershot, now of Exeter, along with their adorable daughter Belle. Last time I saw that little dude was when she had nary a hair on her head, and she has grown into one of the most charming and polite 2 year olds I've ever had the fortune to meet. There must be some good parenting going on I reckon. They've got a lovely flat, ingeniously furnished in places, and whilst there I was served delicious roast dinner. Although the weekend's football did not go my way, this visit proved to be a real victory.
And so, from there I began the long exhausting journey home, striving onwards despite multiple changes, replacement buses and trapped wind.
The weekend in Exeter had been a success. The last couple of weeks had been mighty tricksy in Brighton on most fronts, and so to take a step back from all of that into another world of happy familiarity along with friendly faces I don't get to see all too often was just what the doctor ordered. It's great to have somewhere like this to retreat to. I would definitely say that Boston Tea Party and the Cavern are two of the greatest places in the UK. If anyone could recommend a tea room or club that is superior then please let me know. We came, we saw, we played, we listened to music, some of us got engaged, we all had a good time. Hey hey, let the good times roll.
Attempting an emetic response towards the general state of being in everyday society. Digging an escape tunnel from the quotidian death camp? Who is that Other on the motorbike, leaping upwards and outwards on the wings of a Valkyrie? Who assigned that role to them?
Seemingly left out from the selection process then,
Sitting in the corner, slowly melting into the carpet
And dissolving, slowly, slowly,
Droplets bleeding into and then through the floor.
Flooding a valley belonging to mites and motes,
Dust collects on the edges of the throat.
Gazing at one's reflection in a dried-out cracked hole,
Former puddle, now bone.
A temple built from entropy and inertia,
Peristaltic feelings pour from within to without,
From her to eternity.
A litanous sea of rousing nausickle plenitude.
Viscously we dissect the problem, excising any right-doing,
Setting it down in a Petri dish by a radiator.
Intravenous questioning proposes to solve mankind's culture problem.
Injecting what is cultured by pharmacists and arms magnates
Sweetens the pill (colour variable) and propels us
To where infinity crosses itself.
It casts the shadow of a shadow, outside the city walls.
The gates can withstand a barrage of light
But buckles at the merest whisper of the dark.
The symptoms of the Other:
Narcopower.
Narcopoetics.
Narcomancy.
These are terms that stand out like advertisements, only the kind whose gimmick you can always remember, as opposed to the product itself.
A camel in sunglasses.
Three frogs riding a crocodile.
Ewan McGregor has given up beer, butter and milk.
The gimmicks are flavourless so that you can't taste the structure when it hits your tongue.
The final solution could be to tie a tapeworm around your upper arm and pour in some language; pure, unadulterated, not cut with any of that dead lexicon which has been pushed on us, from salted pillar to last post since trips began. The text will hallucinate if it has been mixed right, although the manner of these visions is as yet undecided.
"...I would say that what now takes on particular and macroscopic forms, without being absolutely new, is this paradox of a 'crisis,' as we superficially call it, of naturalness. This alleged 'crisis' also manifests itself, for example, throughout the problems of biotechnology and throughout the new and so-called artificial possibilities for dealing with life, from birth to death, as if there had once been some standard of naturalness and as if the boundary between nature and its other were susceptible to objectification...in certain always singular circumstances, the recourse to dangerous experimentation with what we call 'drugs' may be guided by a desire to think this alleged boundary from both sides at once, and thus to think this boundary as such, in any case to approach its formation, its simulation, or its simulacrum as it takes form...this experience may be sought with or without 'drugs,' at least without any 'narcotic' 'classified' as such by the law. We will always have unclassified or unclassifiable supplements of drugs or narcotics. Basically everybody has his own, and I don't just mean stuff that is patently comestible, smokable, or shootable. As you know, the introjection or incorporation of the other has so many other resources, strategems, and detours...It can always invent new orifices, in addition to and beyond those, for example the mouth, which we think we naturally possess. Besides, orality does not open up only to receive, but also, as they say, to emit, and we should ask ourselves whether drug addiction consists simply and essentially in receiving and taking in, rather than in 'expressing' and pushing outside, for example in a certain form of speaking or of singing, whether or not we drink what we 'spit out.'"
Derrida, Jacques. 'The Rhetoric of Drugs', in Points...Interviews, 1974-1994, ed. Elizabeth Weber, trans. Peggy Kamuf and others. (Stanford: Stanford U.P., 1995), p. 245.
