The Quiet American

An old dream I had once:

I was watching a film. Oddly enough, it was called The Quiet American (hadn't heard of Graham Greene at this point). It started off a bit like a Kurosawa film, in the cinematography. It was set after a war of some sort, in Japan. A young woman lost her home and family during this war, and in the beginning she's speaking with another family, who agree to take her in - on the condition that she pretends to be a servant. It cuts to the young woman in a servant's outfit (traditional Japanese clothes of some sort) and she's sitting or waiting in the room where the family entertains guests.

Some guests arrive; from outside the room, the young woman hears the head of her adoptive family deliver some sort of insult. For a moment she is offended, but then she remembers that it is traditional to address servants in this manner. At this point her adoptive family and a family of guests enters. Cut to a few minutes ahead, with drinks and pleasantries being exchanged.

The camera work changes noticeably at this point; there's a lot of strangely done closeups, off-kilter steadicam stuff, swooping around. Reminds me a little of some sort of psychedelic montage. The young woman notices that the head of the family of guests looks uncannily like herself. Cut between closeups of the young woman looking curious, disturbed and increasingly confused, and the other woman exchanging small talk and so on so forth.

Cuts between extreme closeups from this point on - the gestures and mannerisms of the two women are beginning to synchronise. Their lips become strangely flat and sort of spread out. Their mouths open and their gums are really, really weird. They look like razor clams, long and tubular pink structures attached to individual teeth. Some of the teeth are just floating at the ends of the gum-things, and some of the gums just end in floating filaments of pink. The last closeup is of their eyes - at the same time, marking total synchronisation, their left eyes roll up into their sockets while the right eyes stare straight into the camera.

They get possessed or something at this point. Both of them are speaking as if they were an American soldier raping someone. The guests get really agitated and confused.

Lucid Photoshop

I'm walking over a field and realise I'm dreaming. The colours are amplified, sumptuous yellows and greens. I decide to fly forward over the lush bare fields and small hills. I have faith in myself that I can fly much faster than before, which allows me to do so. It's almost as if I'm stationary and the ground is flying past me! A few houses appear. A large red one stands out. Using my thumb and index of both hands, I mark out a small area of the house image, like in Photoshop. It disappears. I look at another building, and want to make the whole thing disappear, willing it with my mind. It doesn't work. I look away and look back. Nothing. One more time... the roof and half of the exterior wall are missing.

Elephant Statue

I am looking at a photograph taken in Thailand, north of Bangkok. The photo is taken at the base of a concrete statue, angled up, so the viewer can see the immense height of it. The statue resides at a temple high above the ground. Clouds surround it, nothing else can be seen.

The photo draws me in, and starts to feel more tangible, as if I'm experiencing it first hand. The Elephant, standing completely upright, is narrow in width, but reaches far beyond the clouds. I'm blown away by what an amazing feat of human engineering it is, on the cusp of being impossible. In centuries past the sheer scale of it must have put the those that beheld it in a state of awe, and even fear, if seen by invaders. A few travelers and monks stand around admiring the statue. There is text below the photograph; a voice narrates, talking about how this statue questions the material body of man.

Open Psyche

Thought it might be interesting to have a depository for any dreams we wish to share. Could be beneficial to our collaborative process; for example, we could offer possible interpretations of dreams shared, methods for approaching or extracting potential meanings, or respond to them in other mediums (perhaps with drawing / sound).