Sunday 24 May 2015

Dream House



Do you have recurring dreams?  I understand most people do.  Certainly, I seem to have dreamed variations on the same few scenarios most of my adult life.  There have been many changes of personnel, shifts of location, and a varying balance of anxiety and serenity -- becoming a parent introduces a whole new level of anxious terror into the mix -- but, most nights, I seem to revisit the same old scenes and storylines, like a complex role-playing videogame where I can never seem to progress beyond level three.

The Dream House is one of mine, and I believe it's a classic scenario, shared by many.  The Dream House is a strangely familiar, multi-storey dwelling, with a shifting complement of rooms, passageways, inhabitants (both welcome and unwelcome), in which I am sometimes a guest, sometimes the owner, and sometimes something anxiously inbetween.  I am forever finding new rooms, an unknown basement (what, another one?) or stairways that take me into unsuspected corridors, where Tarkovsky-style shifts of mood and ambience take place.  Sometimes the house is more like a block of flats or a college; sometimes it's a weird amalgam of various places I've lived; occasionally it is somewhere I have never lived, but have perhaps often passed in the street.

Playing around with these two digital collages, I realised that I was building versions of the Dream House.  That is, quite real-seeming edifices, but constructed out of disparate elements, always on the verge of dissolving into some new arrangement, and haunted by disconcerting presences. Nothing is quite what it seems.  These may not be places where I have ever actually lived, but I suppose might be said to be places that inhabit me.


8 comments:

Zouk Delors said...

Would that be an angel on the roof by any chance?

Mike C. said...

Well, he says his name is Lucifer ("you can call me Lucy") but his rather charred passport identifies him as Prince of Darkness, wherever that is. He seems to like it up there, which is just as well -- he stinks...

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

I can't remember ever sensing a smell in a dream. Do you smell in your dreams, or was that only metaphorical? If Lucifer self-identifies as "Lucy", shouldn't you use the feminine pronoun (see Guardian Style Guide etc)?

Mike C. said...

Zouk,

As it happens, I have virtually no sense of smell in real life, so don't know whether or not I smell in my dreams ("My dog's got no nose", etc.).

The gender of angels is a matter of dispute, but call Satan "she" at your peril, despite his rather camp manner. Very short fuse, these fallen angels.

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

Of course God could be a bit intemperate too (talk of footstools and the like). Have you noticed you seem to hear a lot more about Goddess now than you did at one time, but less and less about she-devils?

Altogether now: "She offers me protection ...". (Really, Robbie? In what way?)

Mike C. said...

"Protection"? Rhymes with "affection".

Mike

Zouk Delors said...

So, let's see. She offers me ... Injection? No. Dejection? No. Convection? Nah. Protection? Hmmmm... that'll do! (Probably would gone for "interjection", myself)

Mike C. said...

According to the rhyming dictionary, your three syllable choices are:

advection, collection, complexion, confection, connection, convection, correction, defection, detection, direction, dissection, ejection, election, erection, infection, inflection, injection, inspection, objection, perfection, projection, protection, reflection, rejection, selection

Some of those are distinctly dodgy, and we won't take this train of thought any further, thank you very much. Damn good song in there somewhere, though...

Mike