Sunday, March 27, 2011

Adventures in Hypnotica

Here begins the newest, most amazing musing from The Loudest Fan. Bow appropriately:

Lookout, folks. This post is a dreams post.

I know what you're thinking. I've read the Cracked article that argues that nobody cares about your dreams. And Dan O'Brien is absolutely right: nobody cares about your dreams. My dreams, however, are a different beast entirely, and this post will prove that right in your little face.

Usually, I don't remember my dreams, since my day-to-day life is plenty exciting enough. However, on the few occasions where I do remember them, I bask in how well my brain can entertain and/or mess with itself. It's really quite masterful. Let me show you how via my most recently-remembered of dreams:

NOTE: I will not bog you down in specific details of plot, character or imagery- this is gonna be more about how my dreams raise the stakes intellectually over all of your inferior dreams.

First off, my dream(s) took a page out of Inception's book last night. That's right: I had a dream within a dream within a dream. Unlike the Nolan film, I started out in the deepest layer of Hypnotica (that's the continent where dreams happen. Duh.). I don't remember a whole lot from this layer, except that it involved the usual trope of losing teeth and that an ex-girlfriend from a few years back made an appearance. Christ, those are always the worst.

"Really? Her?" (credit.)

So far, this is pretty usual fare for Dreamlandia (a sovereign nation within Hypnotica). The losing teeth bit is a common trope that supposedly indicates anxiety. Sure, your Loudest Fan has his share of anxieties. He is mostly human, after all (the touch of divinity has yet to be scientifically proven. It's only a matter of time, though). They're just better and more awesome than your puny anxieties.

You see, my next layer of Dreamwood Forest (that one should be pretty straightforward) involved me waking up in my parent's house, with most of a mouthful of teeth falling out. Realistically so, with blood and parents freaking out and all. What makes this scene particularly novel is my conscious realization of, "Hey, this is a pretty clichéd scene for a dream. That must mean I'm dreaming." I was able to calm-down myself as well as my family just with that; my mouth was going to be fine in real life, this was just a self-aware dream. So I figured, "Why don't I just wake myself up and get this over with?"

So I did. Into the final realm of Hallucinatopia. The funny thing about this one was that it was the exact same setting and involved the same set of characters as the previous one. This time, another significant quantity of teeth were falling out in the same fashion, but they were different individual teeth, and this time felt even more real. I went to a mirror and slapped myself in the face to see if I was still dreaming (still self-aware, I was), and I totally felt it. When I told my parents that I was certain I was not dreaming this time, they became as worried as I was. Of course, I somehow didn't pick up on the strangeness that they would remember the events from the previous dream-layer. I guess my dreaming only gets selectively self-aware. The remainder of the dream was occupied by arguments and discussions over what the dental bills were gonna be like. Finally, I awoke in an apartment with a complete set of teeth and began writing a draft of a blog post about the whole experience [insert spinning top joke here].

In summation: my dreams are better than yours, since they involved an amped-up brain that takes pleasure only in screwing with itself in the most complicated ways imaginable.

23 comments:

  1. Dreams are pretty interesting, even if it is mostly true that no one cares about anyone's specific dreams.
    Do you have a dream journal? I keep a little notebook by my bed and try to get into the habit of jotting things down. Half the time I'm practically still dreaming when I write, it makes for some funny reading.

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  2. I used to get so many lucid dreams when I was younger, I think maybe that now I get less sleep I don't have them as often.

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  3. I'm not really sure if I every made it.

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  4. Lol. Does some dream version of Robin Hood live in Dreamwood forest?

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  5. Not sure. He definitely dreams there, though

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  6. dreams are bizarre, but i wouldn't put much stock in them

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  7. Lucid dreaming is interesting, I'm reading up on it.

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  8. What did i just read , hell of a weird dream

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  9. I look forward to lucid dreaming every night before I sleep and it's a skill i've been working on many years now. tl:dr everyone should lucid dream.

    +1 follow

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  10. Hahaha honestly bro, sounds like your dreams are better than mine at the moment ;)

    Following - Awaiting your next post! Hope to see you round my blog soon!

    Cheers,

    Mike.

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  11. you lost me at Arrested Development. :D

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  12. Dude, my dream beat yours last night; yours may hold the belt for complexity, but mine was sheer awesomeness. I had to take back a palace from a highly functional zombie Queen Elizabeth I and her minions... And somehow I realized that I was dreaming (but couldn't wake up)... but that realization unlocked my "power," so to speak. It turned lucid; I was able to warp the world. It was Matrix epic. Win, period.

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  13. good post, nice job

    + follower:)

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  14. My dreams usually involve flying and lasers. And I'm really such a pacifist!

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  15. i have som e pretty awsome dreams aswell yo

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  16. awesome dreams, sounds like drugs XD.

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  17. dreamlandia/hypnotica lol i love dreams :D

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  18. I could probably start a dream blog, I have some crazy dreams also

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  19. I always dream about waking up and checking my phone.. and when i grab my phone i wake up.. it's messed up. Great post btw

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