11.13.02

I don’t know if it’s the massive amounts of information that I’ve had to process to work at Borders or if it’s something else, but I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. And when I dream, there are many times where it’s a first-person perspective dream, where I am the character doing all the action. But more often than not, I see my dreams as I would a director on a film, in a third-person, eye-of-the-camera perspective. I’m sure it’s due to my...occasional intake of a movie, but sometimes I startle myself with how well the shot works in my mind.

For example, last night I dreamt that I was filming a sort of spin-off with Thora Birch’s character, Enid, from the hilarious, offbeat film, “Ghost World”. In the film that I was directing in my head, Enid bought a digital camera (which is really out of character for her, but whatever). She then began running around the place she lived, which looked more like the subdivision I live in rather than the city in Ghost World, snapping pictures. However, when she previewed the pictures on her LCD screen, she realized there were people in the photo who were not there when she took the shot. It soon occurs to her that the “people” are actually ghosts that haunt the surroundings and somehow the camera is picking them up. At first she’s pretty stressed by this idea, as I think just about any of us would be, but soon decides it’s kind of cool. So she takes her camera out and begins looking for places that would seem a likely spot for a haunting and begins snapping pictures.

And this is where I get into the technical film jargon.

In my dream, I had this great tracking shot where we follow closely behind and below Enid, as she begins taking pictures in an old neighborhood in town filled with all these great old tenement buildings that are built so closely together one can walk across the roofs from one to another. Enid keeps taking pictures as she walks and we can see that on each of the LCD screen previews of the shot she just took, is the same spirit following her up on the rooftops. In my mind, I’m saying to myself, “This is just like the shot in Godfather II when DeNiro is creeping along the rooftops, looking down at the parade below, stalking his intended victim, the current Don of New York.” Only here, the spirit is stalking the young woman who is taking his picture.

Sadly my alarm clock went off right about here, so I don’t know how the story ends. But the important thing is, I almost seemed to be directing the film in my head. I mean, I consciously knew that this was a tracking shot and that it was a direct homage to Godfather II. When I woke up the first thing I thought to myself was, “That was pretty cool”, before stumbling my way to the shower. But as I thought about it today – which is rare because I’m often hard-pressed to remember more than a splinter of my dreams – I couldn’t help but wonder if all of these cinematic dreams that I have (which this was definitely not the first) are there for a reason.

Do you ever wonder if your true calling is something other than what you’re doing? Sure you might be happy repairing computers or driving a semi-truck all day, but what if you actually have a natural gift for ballet?

That’s such a bizarre concept to me – the idea that you might be completely suitable for a different career entirely, but you have no interest in it whatsoever. Or worse, don’t even know you’re perfectly suited for the career. For all I know, I could easily be one of the greatest martial artists since Bruce Lee…if only I signed up for a karate class. But I have no real interest in doing martial arts, so I don’t think I’ll be remaking “Enter the Dragon” anytime soon. Maybe I could be the next Orson Welles or Alfred Hitchcock, but I wouldn’t know because I’ve never made a movie before. I’d love to make a movie, but when am I going to have the time, the money, the equipment and the actors to make a film? The chances are much better that I’ll never step behind the camera for anything more than home movies.

Is this where our dreams take over sometimes? Is our subconscious directing us towards who we’re really supposed to be? Those sex dreams (admit it, we’ve all had them), are they telling us that we should be with the person in the dream? That real-life could be just as wonderful as the dream – if only we’d take the chance?

Of course then you get to thinking on a very different plane of thought – is the “me” in my dream living the life that I should be living here? Is the dream-world Space Monkey X a huge Hollywood filmmaker, working with up-and-coming stars like Thora Birch? While the real-world Space Monkey X is only a big film fan and nothing more? Hell, if we’re really playing with reality, is the dream-world Space Monkey X a happily married guy with two adorable kids, a great job and a house with a white picket fence? But then you get really existential and ask if the dream-world SMX is seeing the life of the real-world SMX in his dreams and considers it a nightmare.

Obviously there’s no answer to any of these questions. And frankly, the more you think about them the more it’s going to piss you off and drive you insane. But at the same time, I have to wonder if there are things that our mind is trying to tell us through dreams that we should try to do in our real lives. Maybe I should try to make a film; maybe I’m the next Kurosawa and I don’t even know it. Maybe I should call up Salma Hayek out of the blue and tell her I’d like to buy her an ice cream cone; maybe at that exact moment she’ll be in the mood for some mint chocolate chip…with whipped cream…and silk sheets…and candlelight…and Barry White playing in the background. Sorry, I slipped into one of those dreams that we all hate to admit we have, but love having them when we do.

I think there’s more to learn from our dreams than we really give them credit for. I’m not sure every dream can be interpreted as a sign from the subconscious – especially some of those ones we have after eating too much pepperoni and sausage with anchovies and extra cheese – but I do think we should listen to them more than we do. Maybe I’ll save up my Borders paychecks and buy a cheap video camera. Maybe I am supposed to be a filmmaker. And maybe Salma is supposed to star in my break-out film…as a strict librarian …with a bathtub full of orange Jell-O…and me, the naughty boy that I am, the books I checked out are overdue by a week…

*Ahem!* Sorry…

Space Monkey X