It is when sleeping my mind tends to wander, to marinate in thought and action, to find portraits and scenarios in the corners of my dreams. To see beyond what's possible and imagine. It can be interruptive as well, it can make me readjust my sleeping position over and over. It can make me tired the next day even though I slept. Sometimes the best ideas come from those moments of varied slumber.
I am sometimes in a calm and serene setting. Perhaps I am in a hammock beneath a tree where the breeze shuffles the leaves
...in a garden of intoxicating scents.
I sometimes imagine sitting in a comfortable lounger on the beach......there is a slight sea breeze and the sound of seagulls mix with the musical background of the waves.
In these and other scenarios (sometimes in places I long to visit) I am writing....writing and writing....pages of a story or stories. Only I can't see the words, I just know I am writing a book. Characters names float in my dreams rumination......I remember those when I awake but never the story itself for some reason. I am not using a computer, I am writing in long hand with a fountain pen.
And sometimes I am drawing or painting something. Is that a circus I see? Is there a forest? Is that a young girl sitting with a sheep on her lap in the train station? Are there dancers? Is it a magic garden? The themes run rampant in my dreams like a fast moving current and so do their stories.
Are those images interwined in the stories? I know when I create a character I draw and/or paint immediately my mind goes to their backstory....it happens all the time. I've even shared them here on my blog. So the answer would be yes, it's all part and parcel.
So I need to pay more attention because I I know my dreams are trying to reinfoce what I already am aware of...and that is I LOVE to write, I've been a storyteller all my life AND I am an artist......perhaps the time has come to pay closer attention to that combination.
Are your dreams or your subconcsious sleep thoughts trying to tell you something about your creative life? Perhaps it's time to pay closer attention!