Castilla y Belmonte
08-02-2008, 17:12
Well, this inspired mainly by Akira Kurosawa’s movie called Dreams, which was one of the best movies I’ve ever seen (in terms of the quality of the directing). But, also because the dream I had last night was pretty awesome and I want to write it down so that I never forget it. Unfortunately, I don’t keep paper by me at night; well, that’s a lie, because I have white computer paper next to me, near the computer – it’s probably that I’m too lazy to get up and start writing at night, when I’m sleeping. Regardless, I remember enough to start writing the morning after (I pretty much forced myself to remember during the night), and certain details come back to me as I start to think about the dream. This dream is certainly one of the more interesting dreams I’ve had, although it’s one of the few I remember (given that I don’t tend to remember dreams for a long time, unless they’re truly impacting; i.e. I remember a ‘double dream’ where my grandmother’s ghost appeared next to my bed and I ran away like a little bitch, and then I remember a dream where Moe [from the Simpsons] bought me a prostitute and we started having sex and then my dad barged in and said, ‘Prostitutes no’). But, last night’s was quality stuff and it could certainly make an interesting topic for a book or a short story!
The dream, as I remember, starts out when I’m walking to the Complutense, which is a university (which I hope to go to) in northern Madrid (near Moncloa, which is known for the Arco de la Victoria or Franco’s Triumphal Arch) – to no known real-life building in particular – for a reason I can’t remember. I start a new class, but it was a ‘special’ class and I think I didn’t consider myself a student, which leads me to believe it was a sort of experiment (although I’m not sure that’s something I knew at the start of the dream). I don’t remember what happens between the time I reach the Complutense (where the dream starts), I ask two guys where the build is and I actually get to that building, but apparently I’m woken up at six in the morning in what I assume is that building. What I think is the professor, which is a woman that I probably know from real-life – could be my ex-Spanish professor, or the mother of the two French girls that are renting my flat … not sure, and it’s pretty weird – wakes me up and tells me that I have to meet up with the ‘rest of the group’. Problem is, I fall asleep and I think I wake up in my actual bed (actually woken up, this time) and I’m like, ‘What the fuck.’ It’s pretty weird because I’m getting dressed and the rooms of building are united by a door in the middle of the wall, which apparently aren’t locked, because the son of the guy next door walks in while I’m naked. Lulz, I’m a pedophile (the little boy wasn’t naked, thank God).
So, the rest of the dream is really me going to sleep and waking up in real-life, but each time I dream it’s like a new chapter, or a new beginning to the experiment. In other words, each time I wake up and go back to sleep I ‘wake-up’ in the dream and it’s a new day, but the same story, and the old days still are relevant. It’s something that hasn’t really happened to me before in my dreams, except a few times – sometimes I wish I wish about the same thing, but I don’t. In any case, it turns out the experiment unites several people from different years and eras by using dreams (I’m not sure if it’s because each time I went back to sleep the dream sort of warped, but whatever), and in the last couple of dreams there’s even a guy in Roman ceremonial armor (what means that it had to be a high ranking offer, or maybe a centurion or another non-commissioned officer) and then in one of the dreams everyone had a paper on the chest with the date they were from, which kind of made it obvious (except the guy in Roman armor; I think that makes it obvious enough). All of them were from like 1933, 1944, et cetera – except the Roman guy, which was from anywhere between 100 B.C.E. and probably around 450 C.E. (discounting the era before the Marian reforms to the Army and then the last two decades in which the Roman Empire was already technically dead – not that it matters, I don’t think my dread specifies or it really has an impact on the dream). I do know that with each subsequent dream my time in that day lasts longer – in other words, the dream lasts longer – and in the end the dream starts to become about that. In my second or third dream I make the note that this time I’ve been in the dream longer, and somehow I make the connection (through all my dreams) that each time the dream begins it lasts longer and in the end the other characters say, ‘Now we’re stuck’ and I say, ‘Haha, nope that’s you sucker, and I wake up in my real-life bed at 8:30 in the morning.’
I can’t remember anything else, unfortunately – maybe more will come as I think about it. I mean, even though the dream (or the series of dreams) doesn’t really give the background story or anything, you can make pretty interesting conclusions. In fact, during the entire dream I don’t think the word ‘experiment’ is mentioned; it’s just something that you gather from one of the deductions I make during the dream – that the professor is uniting people from different eras. I mean, certainly nobody is suspicious and it seems that everyone except me knows (and that I don’t really care about what it is). It would be a pretty good storyline for a novel or a short story, wouldn’t it? I might start writing a short story based on the dream and publish it online and see if anybody likes my writing (the writing style would have to be completely different to that I use on NationStates, though), and maybe publish stories related to dreams (like Akira Kurosawa’s movie) and see how they go as short-stories. The problem is that I forget dreams fast, and while I have the general story the specifics I might not remember (for example, I only remember what one character wore – the legionnaire; I remember my next door neighbor in the building wore brown and had a son, but that’s all … they seemed like the people from the 1930s) – so I would have to make that up. In effect, the dream would probably be about some 20-year old guy in Madrid (Spain) that signs up to a certain class (have to invent one that makes sense) – perhaps a university-funded experiment that I’m not exactly sure of – and in the end it turns out that in the university they do something to him that he doesn’t remember and he’s woken up in the morning (6 in the morning; I seem to remember that as the specific time) and he’s united with people of different time periods. Then, he wakes up and ends up in his flat in Madrid, as if it was all a dream. So, what could have happened in the university was that they did something to his brain that altered something in the way that it allowed the professor to unite everyone of the different time periods. Why I was the only person from my time period, I don’t know.
I mean, you could alter the story in a thousand different ways to make it interesting. What do you guys think? I’m going to listen to music so that I can think about the dream (music makes me think, for some reason) and see if I can remember more.
- Oh yea, the legionnaire stabs some guy and kills him; c’mon, every dream needs a Roman legionnaire stabbing some dude in the experiments.
I could even make things up and try to make some sort of political statement through the dream. Perhaps, in the story the professor turns out to be semi-mad and the experiment was to see if she could reunite several people of the past and present in a hope of reuniting the greatest minds (hers included, of course) in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. The message would be something like – the future can’t be solved through the past (in other words, progress and not retrogress); it would be related to perhaps Bush wanting to be remembered in the future as a great president (what matters is that the country flourishes and not that your name remains in the history books), or people citing the pass to present problems for current problems (Saddam Hussein related to Hitler; the Jews in Palestine citing the hundreds of years of tyranny in Europe between the 12th and 17th centuries and the Holocaust; et cetera). It would, of course, be controversial, but that’s what attracts people, no?
Anyways, it’s just an idea. There could be dozen of other messages (although it will have to have message, otherwise it’s pointless – perhaps a way that I interpret the dream). Otherwise, I could tell it as if the main character (me or the person representing me in the story) lived in a world of utter shit and therefore dreams to get out of it (of history; but people like history and it represent him not living in reality), but this storyline is pretty much already taken by Pan’s Labyrinth. I don’t know – in the end, any attempted short story would require equal length preliminary writings about the characters and such. It would take a long time, but it might be worth it. I don’t know how I would ‘publish’ it online, given that I’m not going to start my own writing website and nobody really knows me enough to interest them in reading what I write. Maybe I’ll post it around some forums and gather some sort of ‘fan base’ (people that like what I write) and then start some sort of site, but I doubt that this little story will take it that far (another story line: the character is a dreamer and his goals are so ambitious they never come true, so he’s left with his actual dreams – I mean, Roman legionnaire, the guy from the 30s could be someone from the Spanish Civil War and the guy from the 40s can be someone from the Second World War). In any case, I’d like to start writing down all the dreams I can remember and store them in a box or something, and then see what they can give me. I mean, that’s basically what Akira Kurosawa did, although he was a step ahead of me and was a movie director. I’m a poor unemployed twenty year old that isn’t even clear about his own future.
Another idea that has just occurred to me, while making myself tea. Who was that French philosopher that said that real life was our dream and our dreams were real-life? He said this because he dreamed of being a butterfly or something like that. This could be made into something similar. For example, the movie’s message is that everyone is dead and life is just a dream, and in the end your sleep is a return to that death (but your life continues in the morning) and one day you don’t wake-up (your death) and so you’re in an eternal dream (which would be death). In the main character’s case, he escapes death at the last minute. The character could be made into a twenty year old that perhaps wants to commit suicide because his life sucks and in the dream everyone from different eras begin to tell their lives, and one thing leads to another (have to think about this part, really) and the character decides he wants to live and so he escapes death. In the story, he could be made taking pills to kill himself the last night and in the end he decides he wants to live. Other than death and what is real, it could also send the message that life is your own and it’s up to you whether you want to live it or not.
I might actually start writing …
The dream, as I remember, starts out when I’m walking to the Complutense, which is a university (which I hope to go to) in northern Madrid (near Moncloa, which is known for the Arco de la Victoria or Franco’s Triumphal Arch) – to no known real-life building in particular – for a reason I can’t remember. I start a new class, but it was a ‘special’ class and I think I didn’t consider myself a student, which leads me to believe it was a sort of experiment (although I’m not sure that’s something I knew at the start of the dream). I don’t remember what happens between the time I reach the Complutense (where the dream starts), I ask two guys where the build is and I actually get to that building, but apparently I’m woken up at six in the morning in what I assume is that building. What I think is the professor, which is a woman that I probably know from real-life – could be my ex-Spanish professor, or the mother of the two French girls that are renting my flat … not sure, and it’s pretty weird – wakes me up and tells me that I have to meet up with the ‘rest of the group’. Problem is, I fall asleep and I think I wake up in my actual bed (actually woken up, this time) and I’m like, ‘What the fuck.’ It’s pretty weird because I’m getting dressed and the rooms of building are united by a door in the middle of the wall, which apparently aren’t locked, because the son of the guy next door walks in while I’m naked. Lulz, I’m a pedophile (the little boy wasn’t naked, thank God).
So, the rest of the dream is really me going to sleep and waking up in real-life, but each time I dream it’s like a new chapter, or a new beginning to the experiment. In other words, each time I wake up and go back to sleep I ‘wake-up’ in the dream and it’s a new day, but the same story, and the old days still are relevant. It’s something that hasn’t really happened to me before in my dreams, except a few times – sometimes I wish I wish about the same thing, but I don’t. In any case, it turns out the experiment unites several people from different years and eras by using dreams (I’m not sure if it’s because each time I went back to sleep the dream sort of warped, but whatever), and in the last couple of dreams there’s even a guy in Roman ceremonial armor (what means that it had to be a high ranking offer, or maybe a centurion or another non-commissioned officer) and then in one of the dreams everyone had a paper on the chest with the date they were from, which kind of made it obvious (except the guy in Roman armor; I think that makes it obvious enough). All of them were from like 1933, 1944, et cetera – except the Roman guy, which was from anywhere between 100 B.C.E. and probably around 450 C.E. (discounting the era before the Marian reforms to the Army and then the last two decades in which the Roman Empire was already technically dead – not that it matters, I don’t think my dread specifies or it really has an impact on the dream). I do know that with each subsequent dream my time in that day lasts longer – in other words, the dream lasts longer – and in the end the dream starts to become about that. In my second or third dream I make the note that this time I’ve been in the dream longer, and somehow I make the connection (through all my dreams) that each time the dream begins it lasts longer and in the end the other characters say, ‘Now we’re stuck’ and I say, ‘Haha, nope that’s you sucker, and I wake up in my real-life bed at 8:30 in the morning.’
I can’t remember anything else, unfortunately – maybe more will come as I think about it. I mean, even though the dream (or the series of dreams) doesn’t really give the background story or anything, you can make pretty interesting conclusions. In fact, during the entire dream I don’t think the word ‘experiment’ is mentioned; it’s just something that you gather from one of the deductions I make during the dream – that the professor is uniting people from different eras. I mean, certainly nobody is suspicious and it seems that everyone except me knows (and that I don’t really care about what it is). It would be a pretty good storyline for a novel or a short story, wouldn’t it? I might start writing a short story based on the dream and publish it online and see if anybody likes my writing (the writing style would have to be completely different to that I use on NationStates, though), and maybe publish stories related to dreams (like Akira Kurosawa’s movie) and see how they go as short-stories. The problem is that I forget dreams fast, and while I have the general story the specifics I might not remember (for example, I only remember what one character wore – the legionnaire; I remember my next door neighbor in the building wore brown and had a son, but that’s all … they seemed like the people from the 1930s) – so I would have to make that up. In effect, the dream would probably be about some 20-year old guy in Madrid (Spain) that signs up to a certain class (have to invent one that makes sense) – perhaps a university-funded experiment that I’m not exactly sure of – and in the end it turns out that in the university they do something to him that he doesn’t remember and he’s woken up in the morning (6 in the morning; I seem to remember that as the specific time) and he’s united with people of different time periods. Then, he wakes up and ends up in his flat in Madrid, as if it was all a dream. So, what could have happened in the university was that they did something to his brain that altered something in the way that it allowed the professor to unite everyone of the different time periods. Why I was the only person from my time period, I don’t know.
I mean, you could alter the story in a thousand different ways to make it interesting. What do you guys think? I’m going to listen to music so that I can think about the dream (music makes me think, for some reason) and see if I can remember more.
- Oh yea, the legionnaire stabs some guy and kills him; c’mon, every dream needs a Roman legionnaire stabbing some dude in the experiments.
I could even make things up and try to make some sort of political statement through the dream. Perhaps, in the story the professor turns out to be semi-mad and the experiment was to see if she could reunite several people of the past and present in a hope of reuniting the greatest minds (hers included, of course) in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. The message would be something like – the future can’t be solved through the past (in other words, progress and not retrogress); it would be related to perhaps Bush wanting to be remembered in the future as a great president (what matters is that the country flourishes and not that your name remains in the history books), or people citing the pass to present problems for current problems (Saddam Hussein related to Hitler; the Jews in Palestine citing the hundreds of years of tyranny in Europe between the 12th and 17th centuries and the Holocaust; et cetera). It would, of course, be controversial, but that’s what attracts people, no?
Anyways, it’s just an idea. There could be dozen of other messages (although it will have to have message, otherwise it’s pointless – perhaps a way that I interpret the dream). Otherwise, I could tell it as if the main character (me or the person representing me in the story) lived in a world of utter shit and therefore dreams to get out of it (of history; but people like history and it represent him not living in reality), but this storyline is pretty much already taken by Pan’s Labyrinth. I don’t know – in the end, any attempted short story would require equal length preliminary writings about the characters and such. It would take a long time, but it might be worth it. I don’t know how I would ‘publish’ it online, given that I’m not going to start my own writing website and nobody really knows me enough to interest them in reading what I write. Maybe I’ll post it around some forums and gather some sort of ‘fan base’ (people that like what I write) and then start some sort of site, but I doubt that this little story will take it that far (another story line: the character is a dreamer and his goals are so ambitious they never come true, so he’s left with his actual dreams – I mean, Roman legionnaire, the guy from the 30s could be someone from the Spanish Civil War and the guy from the 40s can be someone from the Second World War). In any case, I’d like to start writing down all the dreams I can remember and store them in a box or something, and then see what they can give me. I mean, that’s basically what Akira Kurosawa did, although he was a step ahead of me and was a movie director. I’m a poor unemployed twenty year old that isn’t even clear about his own future.
Another idea that has just occurred to me, while making myself tea. Who was that French philosopher that said that real life was our dream and our dreams were real-life? He said this because he dreamed of being a butterfly or something like that. This could be made into something similar. For example, the movie’s message is that everyone is dead and life is just a dream, and in the end your sleep is a return to that death (but your life continues in the morning) and one day you don’t wake-up (your death) and so you’re in an eternal dream (which would be death). In the main character’s case, he escapes death at the last minute. The character could be made into a twenty year old that perhaps wants to commit suicide because his life sucks and in the dream everyone from different eras begin to tell their lives, and one thing leads to another (have to think about this part, really) and the character decides he wants to live and so he escapes death. In the story, he could be made taking pills to kill himself the last night and in the end he decides he wants to live. Other than death and what is real, it could also send the message that life is your own and it’s up to you whether you want to live it or not.
I might actually start writing …