My Experiences with Dreams and Creativity

I found the Dreams chapter touching on a personal level for me, because I never remember my dreams. I know I dream, but I can’t recall them right after I wake up. I never fly, fall, or any of that sort of thing. I go to sleep and next thing you know, I am waking up. It may be do to the fact that I had night terrors as a child and would apparently scream and thrash in my sleep, though I never remembered the next morning. I have not had those since I was little, but I may still be repressing what happens in my dreams.

I do have lucid dreams, I think. When going to sleep and just when waking up, I can create a dream on my own and control it, but am also aware of the world outside the dream (I don’t know if you can call it dreaming or just fantasizing). Sleep isn’t something that comes easy to me, when I lay down to sleep, I takes me literally hours to fall asleep no matter how tired I am. (Quite annoying to be honest).

I don’t know about dreams giving me creative thoughts, but fantasizing sure does. I love to write; I am always jotting down book/story ideas that I gain from random day dreaming and fantasizing.

I found the section taken from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra to be very interesting. (If you haven’t read it any of his works yet, you should, very interesting ideas). “A thought flashes out like lightning.” I agree, though I don’t think it is as dramatic as he makes it sounds, but that is exactly what inspiration feels like. I know I’ll often be sitting in class or doing anything and either by a stimulus or out of no where I’ll have an idea for a story, and then begin rummaging for somewhere to write it down before I forget it. The “aha” moment as the book puts it. This moment seems to happen most when my mind is drifting: such as taking a shower with the water blocking out all sounds, but my own thoughts and driving with the radio on, not paying attention to where I’m going, but getting there. In class, I hear the professor and take the notes, but my “real” mind is off somewhere else. (I call it multi-tasking.) The moments usually present a theme for a total story and/or certain climatic scenes for that story, the rest as Housman put it is “brain work.”

These have been a few of my experiences with dreams and creativity; it seems the book matches up pretty well with me on some points.