I try to post every week, but last week, coming back from an exhausting out-of-town wedding, I fell sick and ran a high fever. I spent a lot of time dozing in bed, too weak to spend long at the computer. But there was one interesting result from the experience: The high fever, coupled with a side effect of prescribed antibiotics, generated a spate of vivid dreams of hallucinatory, technicolor beauty. All of the dreams focused on getting from one place to another despite obstacles that ranged from the mundane (a missed train) to the frustrating (a confusing foreign hotel) to the daunting (a vast primeval forest). I realized that each dream offered, again and again, a diagnosis and solution to a problem of transition--an issue I had been wrestling in a current writing project! Thank you to my dreaming self. As Carl Jung once noted, "the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic." It made me wonder about more significant creative results from dreams. Among writers, Stephen King says dream scenes inspired a number of his books, including Misery; Mary Shelley created Frankenstein based on a nightmare; and Robert Louis Stevenson conceived The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from a dream. Clearly dreams are better inspirations for horror and fantasy than light romance! Consider these other examples of creative dreaming: Supposedly, Paul McCartney first heard the tune to "Yesterday" in a dream. Scientists Otto Loewi, Friedrich Kekulé von Stradonitz, and Srinivasa Ramanujan all claim to have discovered in dreams, respectively, the chemical transmission of nerve impulses, the structure of Benzene, and mathematical formulae including the infinite series of pi. And a dream even helped Elias Howe invent the sewing machine. When the eyes are shut and the unconscious mind is open, the dream theater can put on some inspirational shows! For more, see http://brilliantdreams.com/product/famous-dreams.htm
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