Dream Developing

— Josef Strau

What is so sinister in the dreams especially the ones that torment so much without even telling a terrible thing especially in the most horrible dreams like right now and the ones you wake up from as if you were pulled out of a horrible depressive and unholy grease and even if the dream is as normal as possible it is totally depressing and sinister in result? I lived in an old city district or just moved in there and such landscape theme already expressed, the terror began although we thought the district was quite nice actually, compared with the former remembered dream districts but then we knew it is all totally devastating, the word used in the dream for now to communicate an otherwise never used word was “impoverished,” and many people everywhere, who seemed stricken, depressed, the dream showed all of us that there was no upliftment so to speak nothing ever pleasant, but it is so that there is pleasantness, but it is not experienced, it passes unrecognized through the landscape, as if the theme was produced by myself as it passes, that is, they produce more so much more unpleasantness in the night than in the day ever is produced, and right now, I just escaped and woke up imagining that the unpleasant there also comes from a decay, from a corruption that seems not quite subjectively produced or it comes maybe also from a real environment, from the city but not necessarily, but then I think it seems unbearable, sometimes it’s just the lack of lightness and of resolution alone that makes the dream places so depressed but that’s also true, it was more of a phenomenon that comes up or appears on the dream screen while now it sort of constitutes myself or rather produces a disintegration of the personality, the main problem that needs to be clarified first is if this perception of inner disintegration or corruption is really irreversible or if it is a temporary phenomenon, I know from experience that this is an experiential horizon, it must be assumed that it is a deception. It was a hybrid of cutting different dream types, but I was content, although I was rather homeless, once again looking for where I could live, I was in ny or at least, I thought I was there, I recently arrived there again and I always wondered and thought about the fact that the people in the dream are much stronger and I also wondered in the dream why I use the term “stronger” at all, even in a dream, would never be real, but I was very taken with it, and the presence of the word made the dream somehow darker of course and more uncomfortable too, it was partly like in a movie with the director too much intending it to be dark, it was a landscape by the sea, it was also a bit of a harbor landscape and a lot of the people I kind of already knew from reality were walking around in the sun and seemed very physical, too, bodily and were always active, it felt this time like I was kind of happy with that and if anything negative was in the thought was that this strength could certainly become too much for me and maybe everyone could notice that I am not that strong sometimes or always, so I was very happy about the situation, the dream movie was just extremely adapted to reality and acted out of the day to day reality because I finally finished the visa application process and also had the feeling, I have accomplished something and I have finally overcome the tantalizing insecurities because of the lost documents, and the whole lost situation, something that was not asked for because it was repeated from the earlier applications and everything was an insane relief as if I had made it up, the long hill, that was the whole theme all day long, but why did the dream director just emphasize and elaborate on the solemnity of it, the theme of moving back to ny and how the dream was made was so clearly laid out if anything in a dream could be called a message at all, to send a very positive message even though in a way I remained the street figure there in the dream of america, but it seemed like it wasn’t such a big problem, or like there was a way after having so few positive dreams, dreams that serve as a confirmation and depressing dreams are usually given to the depressed one in the night, bad dreams to the good and good to the bad ones, but after waking up could become confirming and no longer depressing, of course I ask now, maybe there was something subliminal in the dream, which I overlooked in the euphoria of transformation to the day from the dream or already within the dream as well as the euphoria of my now very close visa procedure success that of real life, hint for me, now and for the now foreseeable reality of the move back to ny, what I should watch out for? I think it was a dream that reversed an old dream, it was a dream after I came here to g and I was traveling south like sometimes back then and I was scared because it was very strict and tough there and I had a big feeling of insecurity while arriving and was lost in these southern streets, big wide streets in harbor areas, although at the time of the dreaming it was more associated with south of europe or more beyond it and the possibility to live in the south, it was like a harbor landscape and kind of harbor people with leather jackets and it was even more southern maybe, it was loud and bustling and rather poor but in many dreams poverty is shown in the cities while in bright america the poverty shown was outshined by the sun and the activity of the people I knew, but I didn’t notice anyone specifically, no one from my reality, the dream was more landscape based, the story didn’t focus on individuals, so it wasn’t a dream that zoomed in on specific people, they tended to come and go, the dream was generally rather agitated in comparison, acted out in the city reminiscent of b, with quicker shots and surprising angles, b as before only in my dreams of course much more run down and more extended and more sympathetic and gangster-like, or just my behavior was gangster-like, I went to such cafes as before, but rather in really southern regions and not in b and I went to a café and it was actually like I would have dreamed it all young, and it was like an old french movie from the fifties, or sixties, the bar cafe situation was always as if some haggling was going on and it was about money, guests moved here and there in the austerity of the room but did not really consume and I was afraid I went in with too little, didn’t know how to pay and didn’t know what to order but apparently didn’t have to at all and then I noticed that in the next moment I had almost $500 in my pocket, a lot in this case, and not nothing, got nervous where it suddenly came from – the 500 – and pressured by nervousness about the money input and by my lostness but my sudden desire to stay here in the town being closed in the room with the unknown people, suddenly as if zoomed in saw the old american public phone on the wall next to the bar, was going to call anyway and say on the phone that I was going to stay somewhere longer and get to some other town later and then I noticed that my dad was on the phone complaining that I was late again and not in time like I had promised, just like in reality when I was maybe fifteen, him always expressing this disappointment that I wasn’t going to do what I had planned even when I didn’t know I had promised, but when I woke up thought that it is because of my traveling to vienna and to ny and the dream director answers with my father that I should not come to vienna on time and postpone something although it is good for me to stay away because I finally have more money, but this voice, I thought when I woke up, comes from the past and referred to the present and that I should still move on time as planned on january 1st, even if it is against the potential advice of the dream and that all father calling came because the book I read not long ago from Sylvie Weil and she in the beginning so eerily describes how she was at a party once and was asked to go to the phone and her father, the brother of Simone Weil, although after his death, has called her and later Simone herself called too and when I read the incredible book by Sylvie Weil about her endless suffering from the fame of her aunt and having even these calls, it was in the dream with my father I stood in the rundown gangster café in the heat going in with no money no home and wanted to take the phone to tell just anyone on the phone that I am not staying where I am, without knowing who I’m talking to on the phone and only when I said everything did the dream phone play my father’s voice and not someone from the art scene as in other cases and so it was my father’s turn and he was starting to complain that I wasn’t driving when I woke up. And now what? What is the realization of the dream? It was a good dream so unlike the ones that felt they were made and were close to some black hole where the image almost fell apart and the resolution disappeared in darkness, I think again of the texts of Bachmann, that even when she does not describe her dreams she writes like a dream might write, that or the way of writing I develop more or less by myself in the dream description, I think of the special close relationship to her texts that has developed even more in the time when I produced the dream texts and thought to come to the realization that the little recognized secret of her way of writing is that she writes like someone who wants to reprogram her dreams, like someone who was connected to the dream director and like someone who gives additional dreams to the readers, and has herself become a dream director for others, for her readers and produces the same task for the readers as the own dreams of the respective reader would do, namely by zooming in on very banal everyday occurrences and the apparent arbitrariness of the thoughts she can reorganize her deep brain as if in sleep, always in the stark ultra-contextuality of what is told, staying below the radar of reflection and interpretation, strictly under the radar with which the intellect can quickly produce again a so-called sense, with which we can communicate with the dream director as with the texts of Bachmann and of course many others, this is her skill of course, not only hers, but it is special of her and I would so like to know what she would have thought about it, if I had explained to her the dream theory, that certain writers or artists have become dream directors with their observing very banal situations, maybe just in the sixties by acting out on the flow of writing independent of their intention far away from the intellectual cognition and the repetitions of their so called discursiveness, all against interpretation, so to say a dream does not interpret, it is in a place far away from it, representing their life in conceptual terms too and not only drawing maps of banal reality, this original objectification with language, with primitive language so to say, was also done by others, but it was a special technique of the time at the beginning of the second half of the century one notices in the writing method of the non-interpretative or the as little as possible interpreting, or interpretation always avoiding writing the dream writing method of adaptation to reality, adaptation with text fragments that seemingly randomly collects small objects to navigate the landscape, the great landscape, then you realize after some time, that one can go much further distances of writing down, navigates long ways, even if it always remains seemingly banal, but one finds then further from one to the other, always the landscape in the eye and one can hold out long distances in the textual fabric of the topography, like Bachmann and many others in comparison to the discursive writing, the category writing, by wanting to tell the intelligent imaginary other how to think, and then no adaptation process or any pattern subversion at all is set in motion in the reader, in the unconscious, but only ridiculous confirmation, that is the far-reaching of the dream-writing theory according to which writers and artists assume the role of the dream director, who cleans the brain as in the dream in the night in which he or she or whoever writes stories and who, like the dream director, disturbs in his own brain the course of the cartography or the permanent reading of reality, the interpretation, in order not to have an overweight interpretation in the brain and so to disturb the interpretation processes, like with ai or with the famous self-driving car, which would become even better in reality interpretation, if it incorporates a second entity within its artificial brain, a second entity like a far away interior entity, as the faraway unreachable human dream director, that disturbs and stretches the interpretations to disturbances in the internal screen of the reality cartographization, and such a “disturbed” car consciousness makes then also the experience stronger, not only having the self experience to be a car, but to be a driver and experiencing one, the driving might be like the books of some writers like Bachmann or Proust or whoever are describing and disturbing and stretching at the same time below interpretation resulting in greater navigation, now I began after years of waking up in total paralysis to ask rather then, interpreting and wondering why this or this dream landscape was so evil, asked instead the dream director every morning careless of what could be meant with all of it in relation to real life, I asked and wrestled with him, why was there such weak directing and lack of cinematographic language, even and often almost no colors, also the resolution, the coarseness and the lighting, the colors, as well more of the short dream videos or gifs can be demanded from the dream director the other far off self … or why always so much repetition from earlier dreams, cut and paste, these things depressed more than the horror itself, created that metaphysical ominous terrifying space more than the dream story itself and since I wrote down all these quite technical complaints and demands immediately most mornings, emphazing that a torturous dream could be made much better and still disturb my mind well enough to gain the daily repair, possibly following from such conversations with the director was why things in the morning became much better since, like seeing more of the early morning blue delivered and so on …

It’s hard to think even after waking up, that such dreams are not produced by some exterior entity but in fact should be better thought of as a replacement of the idea of the external director by one’s own self, in any case to continue writing down the last dream without drinking coffee and with little light in the room before sunrise and no light on, it didn’t come much as you can see but it is like as the writing training program suggested, hoping to further the contact to the dream director although I sometimes just get headaches from it firstly, mostly when I don’t drink coffee before, as somehow prohibited, and secondly because this thinking what I should think, this self-reflection and self-observation is not the crucial part of the exercise, but the writing at the same time of the first awakening and the simultaneous connection of the concentration to the flowing of the first memory of the dream, as in the dream the inner outside is the other encapsulated self, assumed that it is very difficult to bring it back to oneself and probably would not be so good but in writing, in this particular writing exercise it would be good to make a connection as if both the encapsulated dream producers and the reflecting daytime self were one or were a kind of double self, the dream was this time made with comparably very good image resolution and with quite good lightness within its spaces, in general the lack of these qualities was usually the most pressurized trigger for experiencing the worst nights and the most ominous metaphysical fears, I think I even observed the image resolution trigger already while dreaming now and as I remembered it could be I welcomed the dream already during the dream and more was it welcomed as I met s again who is a good messenger often even after more than thirty years not seeing him, plus it happened in his first apartment the one he got after moving out of his mother’s and in the dream as usually, I talk with s always, I am in the apartment with him as his guest, and we talked about hasids but then not so actually, he does not talk to me about it really, only I want to, but he mentions that now many hasids live in his area and so we talk about it indirectly and then, he says he also celebrates the holidays with them and that same moment, a Hegel book falls out of my suitcase on the table and I say right away very quickly to s that Hegel really doesn’t interest me, and I read it for another reason that has nothing to do with Hegel himself and I don’t only want to hide Hegel but also lead the conversation from Hegel away to what actually interests me, namely the hasidic life, but I do not succeed so with s for strange reasons and I become unsure whether now I can stay another day without getting on his nerves so I call n and I want also to ask only after talking around it, that I want to meet because otherwise I should better go away from vienna again, I don’t dare ask because she is very busy and then I finally ask and she says yes we could meet but only after 9 o’clock, then it’s kind of over, only now while writing it, it occurs to me, that the connecting term for everything is vienna and I will soon visit vienna, but then if looking for traditional belief in interpretation or hermeneutics instead of my new successful technology inspired dream interpretation, and instead of asking the dream cinematographer for better work, I first thought, why the Hegel appearance and the immediate Hegel denial in the middle of my urgent hasid-related questions and more so maybe, why the H in the beginning of both words, only Hegel might be the strange one remembering that yesterday I talked to e whether it would be appropriate to write a text for may revue about the hasid psychiatrist Twerski or asking whether that would be too much of a poser writing or if it should not be done for piety reasons, and because I shouldn’t pretend to be hasid and don’t want to talk about it and that was the dream that tied it all into the viennese landscape and Hegel was that general name for the philosophical demon that still haunts the art magazines and as I convert away from, and actually the center of all is, that Twerski made the impression on me that the first I believed that the low self-esteem theory could be in fact quite a good thing, very good in his case, it wasn’t a scary or otherwise ominous metaphysical dream it was great and the very first good and safe dream in a long time and you could almost say a caring dream, the key dream the old fashioned interpreter would suggest, after all the struggles and wrestling with the dream cinematographer, as if suddenly the dream director was worried and had to take care because he or she in the day has overheard the conversation yesterday with e and thought he had to help with the slightly different dream themes than usual so that’s why the dream appeared and why I wonder why there is such a rare and rather leaky communication between me and the dream director that he first notices something that is bothering me, why is there no more inner observation of my worries and problems no inner connection, so if the dream director or personified dream generator as a whole would form an entity with me, why does he prefer to use motives generated from what I say and less from what I think and feel? It just doesn’t play a very big role in his or her and the general secret inner economy.

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