Live in Your Dreams

Departure of the Winged Ship Vladimir Kush

Believe it or not, living in an Iowan city is not the most exhilarating location. It's landlocked and there's a long drive before you get to see different scenery. By day, it's a mundane life, but when I close my eyes for the night (likely around midnight), I get to live somewhere else, a place that does not exist. The residence of my mind is one where impossible things happen. The setting changes, including towering waterfalls, old cities, impossible paradises. There are scenes of countless glowing gliders in the night sky and slow boat rides through a bog displayed in Hokusai style. Dreams are the relief for a plain life in the living world. 

Dreams have been a source of inspiration since the beginning of humanity. Great movies like Inception have been created about dreaming. Romanticism pulled images from dreams and Surrealism created juxtapositions that attempted to "resolve the previously contradicted conditions of dream and reality," according to famous artist Max Ernst. 

Salvador Dali was known to pull the imagery in his paintings directly from hypnagogic (the stage of falling asleep) scenes. He insisted on recording dreams immediately upon waking. 

“You must seat yourself in a bony armchair, preferably of Spanish style, with your head tilted back and resting on the stretched leather back. Your two hands must hang beyond the arms of the chair, to which your own must be soldered in a supineness of complete relaxation. […]

In this posture, you must hold a heavy key which you will keep suspended, delicately pressed between the extremities of the thumb and forefinger of your left hand. Under the key you will previously have placed a plate upside down on the floor…. The moment the key drops from your fingers, you may be sure that the noise of its fall on the upside down plate will awaken you.” - -Salvador Dali on "slumber with a key" (cr)

The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dali

Romanticism of the late 19th century also incorporated the dream world with "unleashing of imagination, emotions, and nightmares" (Kleiner, Gardner's Art Through the Ages Enhanced Thirteenth Edition). Romanticism countered Neoclassicism and Enlightenment ideas of reason with emotion and freedom in all areas of living including thought, feeling, and action. 

Francisco Goya The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Though not everyone dreams consciously or has dreams depict much outside of what they experience in their waking life, those that do should hold on to what they experience. Dreams can provide inspiration and escape. If you're stuck in one place in life, savor dreams of variety.