I don’t dream. I wake up in the morning without giving a second thought to the subconscious, inadvertent neuron firing that filled my night. Depending on your frame of reference, and the kind of articles you read, you may argue that I do, in fact, dream, and that I simply don’t remember anything. Perhaps that is the case. I’m not sure I could prove either perspective. As it stands, I awake each morning to the sound of my first alarm. I snooze it. For ten minutes, I sail the seas of thought between the shores of sleep and consciousness. I don’t dream, then, either. My mind sputters and shivers, and a host of voices rattle into life. The nervous ones awake first. They must be restrained by the slower-to-wake, more persistent, stoic ones. The hopeful ones. When the second alarm sounds, I open my eyes to a dark room. I soon leave it, brush my teeth, wash my face and get to work.
My dad dreams all the time. Practically every night he goes on myriad adventures. I think he watches too little TV, and his brain hasn’t rotted like my granny always told me mine would. His dreams vary in their vividness, but never in their intensity. Cinematic and mysterious, they are everything I wish I could experience. I remember one he told me about that left quite an impression. He dreamt that he was sat at an ancient, wooden desk. He was a craftsman. Watches and wind up toys littered the desk. On one corner of the desk stood a well-loved, black anglepoise lamp. The light it cast highlighted not only the dusty workshop and the glinting items on the desk, but some fishing wire in Dad’s periphery. As he looked up, model planes, ships and other, foreign contraptions hung above him. Hundreds of them flew above him for metres, inhabiting what he guessed to be an underground bunker.
How that picture caught me. How I wished I could catch it, too. I was thirteen when he relayed that particular dream to me, and I tried my best to get the dream onto paper. I enjoyed drawing, but I was never able to create exactly what my imagination conjured up. The lines were always wrong. My drawings never felt as big as the dream did. When I closed my eyes, I could see Dad’s workshop: this secret, magical place hidden away from the world, lit only by a single lamp, clearly full of joy, brimming with possibility. Where was he? Why was he in a bunker? What was he making? Were they just toys, or something more? My drawings yielded no drama, begged no questions. I just couldn’t capture the feeling that Dad’s story had stirred in me. Wonder.
That dream awoke another in me, though. The process of imagining something and attempting to actualise it excited me. No, my drawings of Dad’s workshop didn’t flourish, but other drawings did. I began discovering the delight in creating. I drew—album covers and comics and portraits. I sewed—shirts and bags and seats. The more I did with my hands, the more my work represented my imagination. I bought and repaired a fifty-year-old film camera, and then custom painted it. I restored the swelling, water-stained rings the previous owners of my piano left on its lid. I learned to throw pots and made my own bowls. I designed and built a bespoke bookshelf for my girlfriend’s new apartment. I’ve spent years catching my dreams on film and in notebooks. Like those drawings of Dad’s workshop, none of the things I make are perfect, but the joy and satisfaction I get when I take an idea and sketch it out, build it and live with it are, perhaps, more valuable.
I dream all the time. Every day. Every hour. I dream of the things I can bring to life. A coffee cup that becomes my girlfriend’s favourite. A wallet that my mom cherishes. A picture that hangs in my grandmother’s home. The dining room table my children will eat at one day. A life spent building my dreams out of clay and wood and sweat and love. Sleep is the only way I can escape my dreams.
I still dream of that workshop, maybe I’ll be able to capture some part of it one day. If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.