Freaks Fun Friday: Dreams

I am a freak, I admit it. When I was younger, I actually enjoyed going to school (go ahead, laugh at me) — not because I wanted to meet my friends, but because I loved learning new stuff. It hasn’t changed all that much. I’m still delighted if I manage to smuggle facts into my stories without anyone noticing. at this place, I’ll give you access to my twisted mind. Welcome to a Freak’s Fun Friday.

For one of my projects, I researched dreaming. I was sure there had to be more behind the rapid movements of a sleeper’s eyes (REM). What I found is discouraging. Sure, scientists can measure a lot of things like REM, the heart rate, and brain activity. They can even pinpoint the area of your brain you’re dreaming with, but they cannot tell you what you dream and even less what it means.

So, I turned to dream interpretation. This subject is very vague with lots of it based on psychology (more or less Freudian). Nothing I found was satisfying for me. I do not believe that my brain floods me with symbolism. I mean, it provides me with symbol-free stories the whole day long why would it change this during the night? I gave up on the science of dreams, but not on the idea about a dream-scientist trying to build an effective trap for nightmares. I will write it some day. Until then, I’ll tell you one of my favorite dreams:

I’d been invited to the Munich outlet of a big bookstore chain for a reading event. So I booked a tiny room in the most famous hotel for artists, the only place I could get. I arrived late after a long and tiring train journey looking forward to a night’s sleep, but the minute I lay down, someone in the apartment above me began playing AC/DC. Don’t get me wrong. I love their music (well, most of it, together with Blues, Classical Music and the Beatles), but in my dream I was too tired to appreciate it. So I got up and walked upstairs to beg the hotel guest to turn the music off. When I knocked, a stranger opened the door. He listened to my plea politely and then asked me if I didn’t like the music. We got talking. Some time later, I mentioned that I thought Angus Young looked much older than his years. The man laughed and called over his shoulder into the room, “Did you hear that, Angus? I told you, you need to sleep more.”
The man at the door was Brian Johnson, AC/DC’s lead singer, and I hadn’t recognized him. When I woke, I had the sad feeling that this happens to artists all the time. People love their music, their paintings, or stories, but many never remember who created them.

There isn’t much to interpret in this story, don’t you think?