The dream never holds up

I want to talk about dreams. And not the ones that really do come true when you wish upon a star - those, presumably, do hold up, at least most of the time. No, I mean the ones you have while you are literally asleep.

Almost every even slighly creative person I know has experienced this: the dream story, song, painting, whatever...the idea that comes to them while sleeping, the most fantastic painting, the perfect play, the song that sounds like no music on earth has ever sounded. And because you don't know you are dreaming, you think, my God, this is GREAT! Finally! The inspiration I've waited for, the moment I've learned all that techique for, the great art I knew I was capable of, here it is..." There's great relief, for me, when I have these creativly productive dreams.

And sometimes, like last night, it's accompanied by a sort of tandem meta-dream, particularly cruel, in which you dream you wake up, and dream you tell someone, "I had this amazing dream, and I came up with this great story..." and then you tell your dream listener the story, and when you're done, you think how great it is. You think: "Gosh, I always have these dream ideas and then when I wake up, they make no sense - or, more often, are just kind of stupid, but this time, it still holds up. You heard it, right? It's GOOD. I'm going to go write that down..."

And then, of course, you wake up.

The dream I had last night was a long and elaborate story, of a new drug called Pure, which simply made anyone who took it very happy, and this drug use quickly spread worldwide. Except the catch was, it was toxic for anyone who did not take it. Pure seeped into the groundwater, and the farm soils, and anyone who had refused the drug - suspicious that happiness can come from pharmaceuticals, or already happy (those few) - had terrible reactions to Pure. They had burns from Pure-contaminated rain...hives from walking in Pure-sodden fields...fevers from eating Pure-poisioned food. These people wanted to live Free from Pure, but of course, the Purists wanted to keep being happy. So they tried to convince the Free People to just TAKE Pure, and they wouldn't be sick anymore...

And it all sounded so good, until I woke up and thought, what the hell was THAT all about? Sure, it's kind of intriguing, as an idea, but where do you go from there?

On a side note, a work aquaintence (someone I see on occassion but don't really work with) of mine, who is kind of an odd bird and into things esoteric and New Agey, told me today that she dreamed of me last night, and basically we were running around in this scary, gang-infested violent post-acpocoplytic world. Just me & her. I like that she was comfortable telling me, because it was pretty inappropriate.

So, I don't know...maybe it was something energetically in the air - warnings of impending doom floating around the globe last night, ready to swoop into the minds of anyone attunded to that sort of thing. Maybe it was the delicious ribs I had last night - isn't red meat supposed to give you strange dreams?

Who knows? Stay Free, man, but don't get Pure!