dreams

i watched spirited away last night, and had a weird dream which i think was affected by it. first i started watching the film, got half way though and had a nap (not because i was bored, it's a great movie, i was just very tired), then woke up an hour and a half later and watched the second half. i had a dream that i took a bullet train to an apple store, and each time i looked in my wallet, i had more money. first i had about $100 that i didn't know was in there, then it just went higher and higher, each time there was some kind of explanation, like i realised that i had the 20s and 50s confused when i was counting it, or found a couple of 100s in what i thought was a stack of 5s. when i got to the store, all i wanted was a keyboard. "for the ergonomics", i told the salespeople, because the top of your monitor should be at eye-height, but on a laptop this makes the keyboard too high and uncomfortable. which is true. the salespeople kept trying to take my money, like when i was counting it, they offered to hold it for me to help me count. but they were trying to steal it. i didn't really mind, because i had no use for all that money, except for a keyboard, but i didn't want them taking it because i thought they were just being greedy.

when i woke up, i thought about the no-face with all the gold, and the girl refusing it, saying she had no use for it. and also all the bath employees begging the no-face for money.

i only mention this because i very rarely have dreams, and for most of my life have never dreamt, or at least by the time i woke up, had completely forgotten about it. but one part was very strange, during my dream, i actually thought i might be dreaming. this happened to me once before, and i woke up almost before i realised that i thought it could be a dream. i theorised that perhaps if you realise you are dreaming, then you cannot dream any longer. like neo could not be placed back into the matrix after he had taken the red pill. last night, however, during my dream, i thought that i could be dreaming, and remembered my theory, and decided that i could not be dreaming, because if i were, i would have woken up. obviously my theory was very, very wrong.

campbell and fred and i were thinking about this recently. how if you could convincingly believe that your dream was in fact real life, and never know any different, you could live in a fantasy world. this subject has been explored in films such as waking life, and vanilla sky. both of which i loved. i think there's also something in the art of looking sideways about it.