Inner Studio Elective

The Dream

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Immersed in darkness, my eyes begin to adjust and the glow of numerous deep and expansive tunnels begins to materialize. The vast field of shafts extends as far as the eye can see, disappearing in the distance. Walking along the paths between the bottomless pits creates a sense of vertigo as I walk deeper and deeper into their expanse. To my right is a looming darkness, a ‘nothing’. It seems to be growing and takes on a weight that begins to grow; it eventually throws me off balance and I fall down into one of the tunnels.

As I fall I realize that not only does the tunnel go on forever, I realize that people inhabit the walls of these tunnels. Soon I am saved and placed in one of the cells. As I try again and again to get back out, I continue to fall and be saved over and over. Eventually, however, I am brought into the area of darkness that had pushed me into the hole. There is a bright light now, and a man standing there.

He then asks me, “Why are you trying to escape?”

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My dream ends. I awaken.

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While attempting to create a physical representation of the imagined, I have discovered that in recreating, comes perfecting. Colours change and new realization of the image of the dream-world come to reality. As if in memory, the mind wanders to create the image. The colours flow and move to create the atmosphere imagined. For example, the bright light out of the darkness happened to be yellow, and so was her dress as I remember it, however I also remembered her dress contrasting the background, and green therefore felt like the right colour. Once I used it, I felt that this was in my dream. This seemed exactly how I had imagined it, but to describe it, is a different experience than to create it physically.

To demonstrate that I was falling, I had to create a sense of emotion, because in the dream I did not see myself falling. I felt it. This is why there is an image of a naked woman falling, this helps demonstrate the emotion.

Within the real world there is a sense of the ‘finite’, and in this dream, the world imagined is infinite. The horizon stretches on forever; I know and accept that it will never end. The tunnels have no ends. My attempts to escape could continue forever. Why then do I continue to try to escape?