Dreamtime vs waketime again
Another fine example of dreamtime vs waketime imagination, as mentioned earlier. This was an episode of Blackstone Magic Detective, a low quality series I've been using at bedtime for the last month or two. I've established a consistent setting for each episode. Tonight I woke up immediately after a dream, so I could see the transition from dreamtime location and script to the familiar standard representation.

In the actual episode, a crowd is gathered on a bridge anxiously waiting for Blackstone to perform an underwater escape trick. A truck with a crane is lowering him down toward the water inside a "sealed" box. His assistant Rhoda is exciting the crowd with a description of the unavoidable drowning if Blackstone can't escape. The bridge in my wakemind is a standard location I use for all bridge scenes in books or radio shows. (Efficiency over creativity!)

In the dream, the crowd was gathered inside a concrete building in the OKC Zoo, anxiously waiting for news of an escaped elephant who might break in and trample us at any moment. Rhoda was an annoying female TV journalist who was using a payphone to call her station (Channel 70), exciting the viewers with a description of the mayhem that an elephant could cause.

Waketime = efficient amortization of prebuilt set modules. Same procedure I use in programming and graphics.

Dreamtime = instant and total originality in location and script.

= = = = =

Clearly two pieces of the actual sound filtered through to the dreamworld. The idea of escaping, and Rhoda exciting the crowd. After you add elephants to the two pieces, the rest is a consistent and well-formed narrative. But where did elephants come from? Nothing in the current playlist suggests elephants or zoos, and I hadn't been thinking about those subjects.

Where did Channel 70 come from? OKC's channels in the analog era were 4, 5, 9, 13, 25. I know them as well as I know any set of numbers. 70 would never have been a "news" station. The UHF band above 63 was short-range and used largely for quasi-closed-circuit systems like school district lecture channels.

Labels: Alternate universe

  ¶ 11:45 PM