Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep · 1:22am Jan 13th, 2016
Been meaning to say some good things about Lucky Dreams' "A Light in Dark Places."
Dream sequences are common in fantasy stories, usually as mechanisms by which the storyteller descends with insight or foresight for the character who is dreaming (and for the reader). Science fiction writers do this too, substituting psychology for magic--it's like Folger's Crystals. But this is an entire story told as a dream, parts of which (but which parts?) are true.
The truest thing about this story, though, is the way in which it captures the feel of actual dreams, at least as I dream them. Specifically, there are three elements of Apple Bloom's dreams that have occurred repeatedly in my own:
Words and music--Maybe it's because kids' TV shows in the 60's reran a lot of old theatrical cartoons from the 30's and 40's, many of which were quite deliberate and elaborate operettas (Thimble Theater, Mighty Mouse). But since childhood my dreams have often involved musical themes with distinctive melodies and lyrics which, while nonsensical, are quite compelling (cf Dylan, Bob). And I can always hum or sing them when I wake up, but as soon as I try to write them down they melt away like cotton candy on the tongue.
The advent of Leviathan--I tend not to have scary dreams but when I do, it's usually the same thing. Something is coming, something huge, something that can survey the land from a commanding height. And I'm trying to hide but my hiding place isn't so good and I'm faced with a dilemma: should I stay where I am and risk being seen, or run for a better place and risk being caught out in the open? Fee fi fo etc.
Dream-certitude--People talk a lot about dream-logic and of experiencing things that did not or could not happen (like that time I dreamed I was chosen to fly on the Space Shuttle). But as I grow older I've begun to encounter dream-memory: things that are not presently happening in the dream itself but which I remember, with great certainty, as having happened--despite the fact that they plainly did not.
Give you an example: not long ago I dreamed that my brothers and sisters and I, all grown adults (as we are in fact), were walking through one of the houses where we grew up. And it was not a place I had ever lived or visited: the sun in the windows, the arrangement of the rooms, the sound and the feel of it were like nothing I'd met with. Yet I felt very surely that I remembered the place, and the neighbors we had at the time, and all the family scenes that had played out there.
We know that memory is a tricksy thing even in our waking hours--doubly so, given that when it fools us in dreams we can at least say, on waking, "it was all a dream." But having experienced this eerie certainty I see why people would explain it with visions, prophecies, past lives or the collective unconscious. The confidence I felt in that false memory was as real as that which I felt upon remembering the meaning of "3dB down" after I hadn't had to think of it in thirty years.
I wonder why this story doesn't have more views. It's a charming thing but it has more than charm going for it. Its narrative is complex and subtle, coy about factual truths but forthright about emotional ones. In theme it's as innocent as a fairy tale--and as frightening. And it's quite daring to offer a tale about dreams in a season that has dealt so significantly with them. I think it succeeds in that it makes the unreal feel certain and sure, like memorable stories do.
And memorable dreams:
Strange wares are handled on the wharves of sleep:
Shadows of shadows pass, and many a light
Flashes a signal fire across the night;
Barges depart whose voiceless steersmen keep
Their way without a star upon the deep;
And from lost ships, homing with ghostly crews,
Come cries of incommunicable news,
While cargoes pile the piers, a moon-white heap...
Last night I dreamed about a Nazi journalist, who was walking through the bombed-out streets of Berlin in the final days of World War 2. She was supposed to write a Christmas-themed column on a man who did Jesus impressions, but no one knew where he was, or what he did when he did impressions of Jesus.
So. Which pony should be the journalist?
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Misty of Chincoteague.
I was thinking of when the insane Blaine the Mono or his alter ego says something to the effect that "sometimes, there are dreams" and it is the single most horrifying moment in the whole series.
I've always been fascinated by dreams. I've used them too much, as well.
That's been on my To Read List for a while now, but I think my heart's still reeling too hard from A Candle in the Sky for another Lucky story right now.
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Thanks for the recommendation! I read that story and enjoyed it even more than "A Light in Dark Places.". Think I'll pass it on to WillowWren
I'm so sorry! I read this then totally forgot to comment on it
But I can definitely relate to most of what you say here -- I mean, about the catchy jingles that you can just never remember upon waking up, and then about dream memory and everything.
And also about having the same scary dreams! Except in my case, it's usually about getting stuck in some dark hole somewhere and then not being able to get out... it's not something that normally makes it into my work since I don't really enjoy writing about it. The only exception is a thing from a few years ago, where in the first chapter the main character describes a nightmare in which they try to take a short-cut home through a tunnel beneath a bridge, only to get trapped there. It was straight-up just one of my own dreams I had had the week previously.
(Oddly enough, I'm not even claustrophobic. I mean, I was super into caving back in university... but I'm kind of straying from the point here).