That much of dreaming must be
Psychology suggests that every dream fulfills a wish. Yet, dreaming feels like so much more. Dreams have enabled people to fly without wings and to vividly as in life imagine the impossible. Those who dream not only escape reality —they enrich and transform it. Without dreams that contradict life, life would scarcely be thinkable.
A life without dreams does almost seem like a gallery without pictures. When dream comes into play, impressions overturn and categories begin to tremble. The truth, one gets the impression, clings to reality, while dreams stir reality up. Although they emerge from it, they do something with it that borders on magic. When Madrid is suddenly located by the sea or long-extinct dinosaurs stroll through New York City, the question arises (as with Schrödinger's cat), of what actually happens to reality. Has reality changed, or is it just seen differently? Be it, that dreams exist because there are wishes; dreaming still is not quite the same as a foam party. Because of dreams, it is imperative to ask what reality is meant to be: 'What is this thing that builds our dreams, yet slips away from us?' If reality is indispensable, how can it tolerate being negated? Through dreams, it suddenly resembles a bottle that is bursting from the drink inside. Can reality even stand itself? Then perhaps the psyche is unsuitable for reality? Two who by force unite often harm each other, after all…
Dreams are taken for the truth and are positioned against the truth. Dreams may be inventions. But they largely determine life, the hard core of reality, that is. Dreams else are religious doctrine and state philosophy. In so far, they hold societies together and enact laws. As utopias, they trigger revolutions and create new social systems. Dreams are not helpless altogether. They shape reality and permeate it. On the other hand, they are, like reality itself, changeable, multifaceted, and uncertain. Dreams can aptly be called "democratic," since everyone dreams and everyone can and is allowed to dream. Then again, there are elitist, privileged dreams (of seers, saints, artists and rulers). There are tyrannical dreams that dictate how people should live. The pharaoh dreams both as a human being and as a ruler, his dream entirely personal and yet of considerable importance to the state, free and commanding, well, one must take it as it comes, but none the less a prophet must interpret it. Dreams are famous for the night, but some people dream away through daytime.
Dreams bring fulfillment through the act of dreaming already, yet usually they remain unfulfilled. They delight, exhaust, disappoint you. Much can be said about dreams, yet little of it can be universally true. Dreams are perhaps selfish when they ruthlessly serve the wishes of a single individual, yet certainly collectivist are they when they unite all mankind via dream or when they shape or reshape societies. The nature of dreams is fluid, their substance variable. Dreaming is easy and has unforeseeable consequences. A dream can be a liberation and likewise can cause a trauma. It can, it doesn't have to. When we read the poems of author David Lynch, we notice something: Dreams are an idea of JB Priestley's, some poetry of melancholic resistance, an extension and a correction of reality. It is not so very important that dreams come true, but all the more important it is that they exist. Even if we don't need them, we don't want to be without them. The world without dreams is a computer without Artificial Intelligence. Dreams are marked by poetic flexibility. Beyond processing, condensation, displacement and repression, dreams treat reality in an artistic manner. Watching the films of film director David Lynch, we understand: dreams tend to overflow like water. They can flood reality. They are not omnipotent, but are omnipresent. The dog and the cat dream.
City planning is a dream, the social system a reverie, the future a dream vision. Someone who has lost everything, dreams, someone who has nothing to hope for, also, someone who has got everything wants to dream. Scientists seeking facts dream of discoveries and funding, dictators, desiring to command, dream of mausoleums and eternal glory, popes have in the past dreamed of commissioned art. Mythology, as history books tell it, is an accumulation and a concatenation of dreams. Clerks dream of Africa's wilderness, construction workers of a beer when they call it a day, artists of their masterpiece, various people of big money. Without dreams, the lottery would go bankrupt, would no couple of two in love discover the balm of love and raise children together. The temple of Venus would be deserted. Car enthusiasts dream of exclusive models, investors of beachside real-estate projects. Which brings us to the energy. The dream unleashes it. Whether it is good or evil, chaotic or focused, oppressive or blissful, tyrannical or liberating, inventive or banal, random or controlled, unique or monotonous, decisive or incidental, a dream is always a kind of engine that pushes forward and sets something in motion. Urgency accompanies it. Urgency, however, is a form of time pressure, and in principle even time is a dream. That is why Augustine does not know what time is when he thinks about it. Even dreamless reality reminds of a dream. It is like a zoo where the animals do not fit together, such as a rhinoceros and an eagle.
Dream and reality are connected indeed by my dream of last night: I am standing on the platform of a train station, have thin, elongated white wings, expect to fly up, do rise 30 centimeters above the cement floor, but realize that my wings are made of heavy hard rubber, so I sink and land with my feet right on the railway tracks, in I fear of being run over by the next arriving train. Then I refuse to dream any further. Here we have the ascent and the descent, the hope and the disappointment, the self-indulgence and the fear, the clarity and the ambiguity, the movement and the restlessness, the human as a farce and as an angel, triviality and invention, physics and mystery, prose and poetry, dream and reality together side by side. They in fact never are too far apart from each other. Even in the sleep of death, Shakespeare fears that dreams will interfere. Who knows: with a little luck, dreams will perhaps outlast reality, because they were born after it.
January 31, 2026
Looking for Sumeria by David T. Lynch
For long, I read those texts with their strips of braids, the wise men I nimbly taught in, the knowing hymns I sighed...
And yet: the tacit breezes spurned me on to think about the unbending happiness in a higher land...
New rivers, softer music, warmer horizons, riper moons came about...
I got blurry, richly decorated, and binding. My place for sacrifice was the twilight right...
My aura, by teasing, faked knowledge, and still: the soaring dreams stayed coarse. And my pilgrimage made amends because of itself...
Like some quiet ghost I waded across tribes about to learn. Women's eyes followed and pursued my discretion. Into temptation I turned...
Appeared the sand. My past was longing for itself. Cold nights produced tears and harps... Mirage spared hope. Time grew wider with foreknowledge. My soul was darkness and serenity in one...
I followed the breathing of roses. My heart was silently at rest and observed the unusual cities...
Priests and scribes did exquisitely embrace me like a brother and gave me of their bread to eat...
Eagerly, I was getting inside time. Hesitatingly, I started owning, contemplating and praising tablets...
I lived through resonating halls, generous feasts, blessed marketplaces, salty canals, not so tender decrees, crimson sleeping chambers. The spirit was comprehensive...
The visible gods I got to know as well as the conclusive edginess of gods new. My nights rejected that white mantle of mine...
The untiring quest witnessed my person. Becoming visions did soothe my delicate woman admirers...
Instigating fear then penetrated the isolation. The tears were audible...
Often I stared at the grave temple and saw the children bless, yearn, and die. The seasons dried themselves out...
My deviating solitude took care of the soil and my time of the wind...
And before I let myself be preserved in the nourishing dust, I chiselled my most promising lines:
Uruk, Anu and Enkidu fall apart
A last deity has to come to us in the sand
And with better blood needs to wash off
The crust of non-eternity from our eternity
Image: Unsplash: Lucas Marcomini
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