The Dream of the Tangy Palm Tree
Introduction:
Everybody dreams. Have you ever tried to write down accounts of your dreams? There was a time when I conducted a little “experiment of the mind”, where I would make it a point to try to write down what I could remember of the dreams that I had, shortly after awakening, while the memories were still fresh in my mind. After a while, I accumulated a number of written accounts of the dreams I had.
This is an account of a dream that I had on the night of November 29, 2009:
The Dream:
Tasting the Colors of Sunrise at the Beach
In this dream, I was doing artwork at the beach. The beach was the one close to my house, which I visit rather often. It was very early in the morning, and the sun was just starting to rise, peeking up from the horizon over the ocean, letting out rays of light at a nearly horizontal angle, and casting its reddish light on the landscape. The early morning air was cool, with a slight touch of dampness to it, and a very light dew covered the shrubs and foliage of the beachside landscape. I was trying to figure out how to draw some details of the landscape in pastel media, depicting the way the ruddy rays of sunlight played upon the scene as the sun slowly rose over the beach. I struggled to resolve some color issues involving depicting the way the shades of red from the light of the rising sun were reflected against the abstract foliage in the foreground, and formed bright blends of reds and magenta reds along the edges of the foliage. The vivid shades of red in the dream oceanside landscape had a kind of “tartness” to them; and they even invoked a little bit of a tangy taste in my mouth, like sucking on a little piece of lemon peel or something. They were on the edges of the abstract “shrubbery”, with many intricate shades and variations of reds, magentas and deep orange, with a hint of a distinct outline to them, but then quickly shading into dark tones of purple and blue shadows. I rubbed the pastel sticks into the paper, trying to get “just the right colors” in “just the right blends”, and tried several versions of the image, but couldn’t seem to quite get it. The physical act of working with the art materials gave me a different feeling than when I work with computer graphics – it seemed to be a more physical and and “gut-level feeling”, with my brow furrowing and my abdomen tensing at times as I tried to focus my ethos on the effort. It wasn’t necessarily uncomfortable, but it did seem to take a more “down to earth” and “gutsy” kind of effort as opposed to the more “cerebral” and “mind-based approach” that I seem to take when I do computer art.
The Dreamy and the Gutsy
I had the strange feeling that I was working at a desk while I sat at the beach, because it seemed that I would put the materials that I worked with down on the desk at times – or at least had some impressions and slight memories of so doing. Sometimes, I would feel as though I was sitting comfortably at my desk at home, cozy and sheltered. At other times, it seemed that I was physically out in the open at that beach, feeling the cool dawn breezes blowing past me, and even having a little hint of the smell of the salt air teasing at my nostrils. And then afterward I had the strange feeling that I actually had been at the beach all during the time, with the memory of putting the art materials that I was using down on “some desk” that I was sitting at. And so these feelings of cozyness, and then of being out in the open, and of working with familiar tools, and then of working with unfamiliar tools, seemed to somehow to alternate, and yet be intermixed and superimposed into each other, all at the same time. (I know that this kind of description must seem strange, but I am trying my best to describe the feelings that I had in the dream… Aren’t dreams strange?)
NOTES: I don’t think I was able to resolve the color issue in the work that I was doing in that dream, but can’t help but wonder if it reflects the feeling of struggle to resolve the issues of the media through which one is trying to express their inner feelings or ideas.
Some people seem to feel that colors have a kind of symbolism in dreams. And I’ve heard some people say that they can only recall black and white images in what dreams they are able to remember. I personally cannot really recall having had any dreams in black and white; as far as I know, they have always tended to be in color. But for some reason, the colors in this dream seemed to be especially vivid, and I could almost “taste” some of them!
The Dream of the Tangy Palm Tree
The Dreamy and the Gutsy