Art of Dream Recording

8 June 2024

The Art of Dream Recording

I spend a lot of time writing stuff: short stories, journals, reviews, political/social satire. But then it occurred to me during a writer’s group gathering, that dream recording is a unique form of narrative writing, unlike every other form of writing—whether fiction or nonfiction. Writing down a dream calls for completely different mental conditioning, along with what I can only describe as “fast handwriting skill.” (More on that below along with “Why bother?”)

The interesting thing from a writer’s perspective is this: You have to write EXACTLY what happened as best you can remember, with no frills, no matter how bizarre or disconnected the elements may be.

You can add notes to yourself about what might or might not have happened, you can put things in question marks❓– but here’s the main thing: you cannot add material to make sense of things! (Except in a postscript). Imagine watching a movie where the characters get in a car, drive to a location and then get out of a different kind of car, or even a bus…and don’t seem to notice. And there’s no indication that the director is playing a prank — it’s just what movie editors call a “continuity error.” But with dreams, there are no continuity errors. Things just progress.

Now, afterwards, you can speculate all you want as to what instigated the dream but the dream narrative itself has to be “pure.”

The trick is to write things down exactly as they happen in the dream without elaboration or trying to make sense of things. In a sense, it’s really a court transcript. And this is where fast handwriting (or typing) comes into play. Every minute that you waste—making coffee, adjusting your socks, using the bathroom, making the bed—costs you dearly. In fact, there’s a chance you can lose it entirely. I have read, and can confirm, that each physical activity you engage in upon waking can work to damage the dream integrity. You may even start to mentally fix plot elements without realizing. Because that’s how we’re trained to remember events.

So the best method is to keep a notebook handy and just start writing stuff down as fast as possible, not trying to correct grammar or spelling…just jam it down on paper and worry about style later.

In every other kind of story, whether it’s something that happened to you personally or something that a friend related to you, you try to make sense of it, perhaps filling in blanks. If you  went across town you can assume it was in a car and happened on the same day. But in a dream you may find that all of a sudden it’s a week later…and you lost your bike!

The difficult thing is to studiously avoid trying to make plot or narrative connections that are not in the dream.

<You’re driving in a car 🚗 somewhere and you get lost and next thing you know you’re buying groceries in a funky European store and can’t find your list and there is a costume contest that you really don’t want to be in…>

Amazingly, dreams — at least mine — often have very specific names or numbers incorporated that don’t seem to have any real-life referent. I’m guessing that there’s an inborn narrative logic-control that simply supplies a specific name or number to keep the dream going.

Next. I strongly suspect that dreams sometimes “morph”—that is, two dreams kind of combine seamlessly. But is the dream doing it or simply your waking memory as you drift between dream states? Some dream commentators talk about so-called “lucid dreaming” where you’re technically asleep (according to the instruments the experimenters have attached to you) but you’re somehow able to control the dream narrative. In brief, “lucid dreams” are when you know that you’re dreaming while you’re in REM sleep mode. Supposedly, you may even be able to control how the action unfolds, as if you’re directing a movie in your sleep. I put this phrase in quotes because I’m a bit skeptical about a lot of the research on this but there does seem to be at least some instances of a person controlling the action.

Once you’ve got the dream on paper, you can relax and come back to typing it up later. That’s when you can insert marginal notes, questions and fix up the vocabulary and grammar.

The final part—and I’m not going to get all Freudian on you—is to consider possible “instigations.” A lot of the time I have no idea as I’m scribbling down the narration. And then, later, it suddenly occurs to me:

Oh, I had a table of messy papers the other day and was annoyed that I couldn’t put them in order so maybe that accounts for why I couldn’t find the paper I needed in the dream.

Or,

I was so frustrated two days ago when I couldn’t figure out how to get out of that stupid parking lot…

Sometimes it just clicks and you can immediately say Yeah, that was it!

Now, as I recall from my college Psych major days, I seem to remember Freud said that most dreams recount some event from the previous 36 hours. (I may have dreamt that up.) I do think that a lot of dream narratives recount something from the recent past—usually the past few days, but often the day or night before. However, I have a fair number of dreams going back years, like when I dream of volleyball matches or golf—neither of which I’ve done for many years.

But that’s all I’m going to speculate about “dream analysis.” (I had enough of that in college.)

The main thing is to train yourself to write it down exactly as it happened without trying to “fix” the oddities. Just let ‘em broil around in your brain and accept them as never-to-be explained gifts from the great beyond.

Why Bother?

Of course the big question, the overriding point is: “Why bother doing all this?” There are a few points in favor, all mystical and psychological motivations aside:

1. It’s excellent practice for recording events that are happening to someone else — and, after all, the participants in a dream are sorta like “someone else” — without trying to put an observer’s spin on the action. You’re just recording what you see.
2. It’s good practice for describing things that may seem impossible without trying to explain them. “Hey, I’m just tellin’ ya what I personally saw.” So if you were in a courtroom and the lawyer asked what you saw, you could say “I saw a spinning balloon emitting sparks and being swallowed by a crow…but I’m not saying that really happened; it’s just how I saw it.”

But on the personal side:

3. It could give you an insight into your own daily concerns that maybe you hadn’t been fully aware of. For me, I get lost a lot while driving around, even routes that I have taken many times. I am concerned sometimes that my desk or dining room table are getting cluttered. I do a lot of bicycling. And these are all themes that show up, sometimes in disguise, in many of my dreams. Now, why volleyball, golf and softball—sports I haven’t done for 20 years—keep showing up…I have no idea! Maybe my dream persona just uses them to help distance myself from more current activities…but that’s getting more psychological than I really intend here
4. Over time, you might start seeing themes or motifs that are undercurrents to your life. Nothing psychodynamic about that…they’re just themes.
5. And to put a final, perhaps silly, conclusion: It can help you to write fast, get words down quickly, just as you did (or tried to do) in college taking notes where you didn’t have a recording device. As it happens, I have excellent handwriting, superb even…except when I’m scribbling down a dream. Then it’s a hot (but readable) mess.

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A sample dream:

I’m going to pick up some supplies from a store on my bike. The lady of the house — but not a wife or girlfriend — says she needs something so I say “Hey, I’m going to Target; I could pick up your items too.” She is pleased and I get ready to go. But I realize I’ll need something to carry the various items home so I get a small, fold-up cart, somehow manage to bag it (like a folding picnic chair) and somehow get it stashed and precariously balanced on the back of the bike. Someone asks how I’ll make it up the hill but I explain that my bike has gears so I’ll be able to pedal up and down. Turns out, the hill is too steep so I have to walk it up. At the top, I find myself at a closed garage door and as I go to open it, suddenly it starts rising up. I’m startled to find a woman and child on the other side. They’ve opened the door and are as surprised as I am to see someone on the other side. We apologize to each other. In the process, my bike (and the cart) have overturned and now a small furry black critter comes up and starts attacking one of my gloves. I furiously bat it away but the woman (mother?) says, “No, it’s just a puppy.” Sure enough, the critter turns out to be a cute little furry black dog. I pick it up and start petting it.

My commentary

Going to the store on my bike is a common occurrence for me and it’s conceivable that I might pick up something for a friend or neighbor. But the dream specifically calls out Target and I realize I won’t be able to carry stuff just in my shoulder bag. The idea of a “cart” makes no sense unless you’re a homeless person; but the dream makes it clear that I’m going to pack the cart in a bag and then ride the bike with the bag balanced in the back. Someone mentions the problem of hills but I point out that my bike has gears for going up and down hills. In real life, everyone knows that bikes have gears and so no one would ask that, though they might wonder how I was going to manage. Now the dream takes a very strange turn as I eventually make it to the top. Somehow I’m on the inside of a garage and am about to hit a switch to open the door. But I’m startled that the door is opening. And it turns out a mother and child are on the other side waiting to get in. We’re both surprised. My bike falls over (of course). The small furry critter which comes out of nowhere is attacking my glove—but there’s no indication that I even brought gloves—and then I learn it’s not a small bear but a cute puppy.

So the dream is conflating various elements that may make sense on their own, but not when brought together. It’s almost like 3 or 4 dreams got jammed into a continuous sequence. Of course, as I awaken and rush to my writing table I may be doing the conflating in my memory. Maybe they were totally separate dreams that just seemed to flow together as I was remembering. There’s no way of knowing