The Art Of / Dreaming
As we prepare for our exhibition, ‘resurgence’, much of our work and processes have surrounded the concept of grief and nostalgia. a longing to be back where we once were. a homesickness we cannot place. How does this seep into our everyday lives? Are we human without it? (tickets to our EXHIBITION here)
dreaming, for me, has always been a part of this processing. Have you ever lived out your worst fears in your dreams? perhaps your deepest longings or most cherished memories?
How does our brain choose what to present to us? How do we determine the difference between a nightmare and a dream? Where do we go, when we let our minds wander?
Dreaming has always been an integral part of my creative process. I didn’t learn the power they held until a few years ago, when concepts started coming to me in my sleep. While it’s proven we dream every single night; we also rarely remember them. Everyone’s experience with dreaming is often individual: how often we dream, if we can control it, what the details hold.
Some say dreams mean absolutely nothing. A stream of consciousness that differs based on the parts of your brain that are shut down. Others are adamant they are the key to unlocking everything we run from. They can even be sacred.
According to a Stanford based study, you are incapable of making up any stranger’s face in your dreams. Meaning: each and every face in your dreams you have seen before; whether walking by a person on the sidewalk or seeing them on TV. Even if you aren’t paying attention; scrolling on your phone on the subway; your brain is absorbing. Remembering the color of the person’s hair across from you.
Why we dream is one of the human condition’s greatest mysteries. I’ve always enjoyed hearing the details of other people’s dreaming sequences: reoccurring dreams, symbols, stories. They can be so wildly different from the ones I’ve experienced. And so similar.
I’m not one who functions in the black and white with much. I believe things are ever-flowing and changing, and that there aren’t always set-in-stone answers to why things are the way they are. Dreams are part of that.
While I don’t necessarily believe every dream is meant to be meaningful or life-changing, I have had my share of weird coincidences through dreaming. Some have been warnings of what was to come: a specific event happening in my dream before it played out in real life. Others have been lessons: showing me the truth I had difficulty sorting through in real-time. Things my subconscious was aware of that I refused to see. Others have revealed my weaknesses, my fears– even my wiser, higher self. The last several years, much of my processing has occurred deep in my dream state.
A few weeks ago, I had the most vivid dream of my life.
I woke up and I was 13. 13 year-old-sam who has just woken up from a mid-day nap on my parents couch.
I never took naps. I never had the ability to sit still long enough.
Immediately confused as to why I was there, I started looking around. I recognized this time frame of the house. The older couch we had thrown out years before. I ran to the window, no cars in the driveway. Where was everyone? Why was I alone? More importantly, why am I here?
When my Mom pulled in the driveway, I watched her walk up the long concrete stairs holding her work bag and travel coffee mug. Are these real memories from my childhood?
Hearing her keys in the door, she pauses when seeing me, almost alarmed.
‘‘Sam, what are you doing? Why are you not at practice?”
Immediate DISAPPOINTMENT and annoyance.
I knew I was supposed to be at dance. But that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that I was not supposed to be here. Why am I 13? I went to bed at 31.
more importantly, Why am I aware that this is a dream?
Slicing cheese and crackers at the counter, without even looking up, she told me that ‘these things just happen sometimes. That the universe can drop you back into different points in your life. And once it does, we just keep going. We get to live it out, again. There is nothing we can do about it.’
She says it so matter-of-fact. Like this was knowledge everyone had but me.
I felt confusion. Then, rage.
My body went into full panic. I looked at my younger, tattoo-less hands. My nails were still bitten down to the cuticle. Habits we never seem to overcome.
Is this real? Panic through my fingertips. 13? I have 18 years of life to re-live, most of which are about to get really hard and complicated. My teenage years were the hardest. many of them I don’t even remember.
I thought about all of the traumas that had OCCURRED as a teen and young adult: my surgery, assaults, the death of friends, the breakups…the pain. It didn’t phase me. I knew I could handle those. Got through them once, I remember thinking, the second time will be even easier, knowing what I know now.
The concept I couldn’t handle, however, was the thought of not ending back up exactly as I had before. I had met my soulmates. I had the life and the love I had always dreamed of. I worked so hard to heal and change the person I was in order to be that version of myself. Those are things I wasn’t sure I could handle losing. Anything but that.
I started saying names aloud, places aloud, what about my art? I knew I couldn't possibly make the exact same decisions to end up in the same exact place.
As if she was reading my thoughts, my mom added to it, “even if you could make the same decisions, it doesn’t mean that everyone else could.”
My heart dropped. Nothing could ever end up the same.
All of their faces. The people I’ve collected and had the privilege of loving. My luna, who I adopted from a shelter in a state 850 miles away from my hometown. It’s not possible that I don’t get to love them in this life. I cannot sustain that kind of heartbreak.
I got paper from the junk drawer. I started scribbling names. Places they grew up; Places they were growing up, right alongside me now. We’re all kids again, spread across the country like pieces of scattered paper in the wind.
How can I get to them in this life, to ensure meet? I started strategizing how to get to Connecticut, where Bri was born. How to get my license and drive to Pennsylvania, where Keira was now a few years younger than me. How do I end up back in my bed in Charleston, waking up to the sounds of Luna snoring?
I just want one more day.
Did I take it all for granted? How much was I truly present? Of all of the life accomplishments, the exciting trips around the world, the memories– those weren't in the foreground. Not once.
I saw my entire life scroll before me in the smaller moments. Like I was watching the true highlight reel.
Kyle Justin and Dave dumping their bikes on my lawn in the middle of summer, tar stuck to the bottom of our feet. Packing my first paint set and setting it into the Uhaul; passing palm trees for the very first time. Bri smirking at me while holding her coffee, hair soaked from a sunrise swim. Keira holding her pups and my sister laughing as they kiss her face. Nick leading me through the streets of NYC. Linds and Rach laughing and dancing somewhere I can’t place, their smiles wide and beaming. Bruce carrying Luna up the stairs for the first time, setting her down in our new apartment. Girls around the campfire, the smell of smoke sinking into my skin. Kevin’s roaring laugh at dinner, a kind of closeness that heals you. Maddy and Ashley gleaming in the sunlight. Luke grabbing my hand and patting it gently, the feeling of being truly seen. The dogs running through the sand, paired with the colors of sunset; pausing and looking back to make sure we’re still behind them. The way my heart could explode out of my chest. the way people have loved me, and broken me. how it’s made me who i am. The way the paintbrush sits in my fingers, and how it feels to look up at the moon with someone I love sitting beside me.
I close my eyes. Please, I’ll go through it all again. who am i talking to? begging to take me back? a dream god I don’t believe in?
I will go through Every single moment of heartbreak. Knowing I’d end up right back there.
My mom, not looking up from her snack at the counter, smirks through a subtle laugh and says,
“A love like that is only once in a lifetime, I hope you remember that.”
And then, I woke up.
Sometimes, our dreams have a way of reminding us that the best place for us is right here, right now. a reminder that one day, the life we have now will be a part of that longing; that feeling nostalgia, the twinge of homesickness; to wish we could experience it all again.
some of my work that has been inspired by dreams, the dreaming experience, concepts that have floated to me between the space of wakefulness and rest…
to see available work, please click here.
