excerpt from work in progress

TWO:

THE “PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY”, THE “DOORS OF PERCEPTION, THE “POLITICS OF EXPERIENCE”, AND JUST WHAT ARE THE STUFF OF DREAMS? AND WHY DON’T THEY LEAVE ME ALONE?

Dreams are something that comes to me at different times of the day. I mean, since I started taking Trazadone, there are no more nightmares or any other kind of sleep associated dreams that I am aware of. But throughout the day I get flashes, like a series of grainy black and white photographs, that run across the field of my awareness. Often they manifest themselves in what I am writing, like misshapen ghosts, weaving themselves through the narrative being poured out on the page. Sometimes they appear like a film clip, in full color with a background score, unreeling in slow motion, then stop abruptly. Mostly they are dark, violent visions, bloody, filled with death. Occasionally they are like the statements of an, as yet, unformed philosophy. And once in a while, they are my memories, my experiences, in a crystal clarity that seems to allow me to remember them, to focus on them, with a freshness uncluttered by what was going on in my head at that particular time.

That is what this book is really all about. Memories, experiences, philosophical meanderings, all seeking to find resolution, closure, perhaps even some answers or the odd bit of truth about myself. Earlier in my life this book, this opening up, laying bare my life, would have been impossible to do. But as I crowd the half century point of my travels, it is time. No, it is more than time, it is like some ancient surgeon bleeding the patient to remove the negative humors. As I indicated in the forward, this book jumps back and forth through time, yet they all are dots that connect. And I have tried to be as honest, as frank, as any individual can be. So if my dreams, my experiences, my ruthless approach toward catharsis is unsettling, that’s life.

A great deal has been written about dreams and their interpretations. In times long past they were part of the standard repertoire of soothsayers, oracles, shamans, advisors to the crown, and so on. Today three names stand out in this arena of human endeavor; Freud, Jung, and Joseph Campbell. Using these as a kind of guide to the denizens of my subconscious, I have tried to sort out my own personal spectres.

Film and literature, having played a significant part in my development, has given characters, dialogue, and landscape to my dreaming. I have chosen the path of an artist, a writer, for my life, which has made me a social outsider, isolated by the very nature of the creative process. My illness, in part biochemical and neurological, has added a further element of peril to an already precarious kind of existence. My lack of desire to compromise, to yield to outside social pressures, have fueled the mass of stress and anxiety to critical levels, and that is the stuff that comprises my very being. The result of these various components are a trail of broken marriages, failed relationships, more jobs than I can remember, adventures and experiences of every type, alcohol and drug abuse, a frenetic and frantic odyssey across the landscape of the second half of the twentieth century. It has tested me and forged me into who I am.

The dreams then, are the sum total of my experiences, philosophy, my life. The key to understanding them, in remembering them, lies in a two fold process. The first being to accept myself, who and what I am, my illness, and the validity, the reality, of a person who is, must be, an architect of creativity. The second is to purge myself of all the disparate elements of my li fe by telling them, opening them up, to both the world and to myself. Thus comes this book, and hopefully with its writing, its completion, some answers will emerge. Perhaps not all good, but then again maybe not all bad.

I am my dreams, and I am the dreamer. As Huxley said, here are the doors to perception; as R.D. Laing said, these are the politics of your experience; and as Dali said, there is always a persistence of memory. So I sail across an uncharted sea in a vessel overladen and taking on water. Bon voyage, and Bon chance.