I’ve just attended a conference all about lucid dreaming, where I presented a workshop called ‘Wake up your artist! Lucid dreaming as a creative tool’. Fascinating conversations took place on subjects such as whether the ability to visualise goes hand-in-glove with artistic talent, how lucid dreaming can inspire original ideas for plot and characters, and how transforming dream images into art is a way of bringing a dreamlike lucidity into our lives.
Now that the conference is over, I’ve lost my voice – an odd outcome since the whole thing took place online, in literal silence (although it felt very noisy and lively): we had to write if we wanted to be heard. Maybe my voice giving out is a message that I need to be quiet now and look inward, after months of hurtling through the days with ‘to do’ lists as long as my arms and legs put together, due to moving house. Now, warmed by all the lovely dreamtalk, and forced into silence, I have begun to write stream-of-consciousness novel scenes; it’s all spilling out, characters are acquiring names and personalities, and the major events of the novel are jostling up against each other, waiting for me to record them and then work out how the hell they all interconnect.
Here’s a link to the IASD Psiberdreaming conference, which is still open for the next two weeks on a read-only basis.
Hi, I would have liked to go to this conference! I have a dream group and we do different techniques, one of which is working with writing out and developing the dream, another of which is making art from our dreams. These and other tecnhiques have made me feel much more creativity and less boundaries. Earmarked for next year. Thanks.
Hi Clare, hope this finds you well. I came across an fascinating article in the New York Times today, about Grapheme-color synesthesia, which I thought may interest you.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/mapping-grapheme-color-synesthesia-in-the-brain.html
All best,
Brett
Hi Geena,
glad to hear that Psiberdreaming interests you, it really is a lot of fun, a bit full-on with so many posts to read, but it always reminds me how much I love working with dreams. Good luck with your dream group!
Clare
Hi Brett,
all is good with me, thanks, and thank you for the synaesthesia link. It seems to me that all types of synaesthesia seem less ‘rare’ than scientists would have us think – a surprising number of people got back to me after reading Breathing in Colour to say that they had synaesthesia too, and one person said she hadn’t even realised she was a synaesthete until she read the novel, which may sound crazy but if you think about it, it’s not often we ask each other, Do you associate the number three with a certain colour? Or: Do you get a particular taste on your tongue when raindrops fall on your skin?
I reckon the world is full of synaesthetes 🙂
Hope all is well with you.
Clare