Thread: The Creative Power of (Lucid) Dreams

Anyone ever notice that on occasion, a dream you have will yield a very interesting and possibly great work of art? Be it ideas for music, paintings, or literature?

In 2002, I had a dream about four kids at a party and their next-door neighbor being an extraterrestrial who wanted to kidnap them for study. I always figured it would be an interesting story had I ever wrote and expanded upon it.

This morning, I had a normal dream that I was flipping through a bunch of songs on my iPod. While I didn't realize it until after I got up, each song was a different and catchy tune I had never heard before! They all even had their own album art! I managed to get the last one I landed on committed to memory and recorded a piece of it as a voice memo on my real iPod before going back to sleep.

The music happens often to me. In many of my dreams, I hear coherent music that was entirely fabricated by my subconscious! If I can remember them upon waking, I try to hum out a recording.

Other artists have claimed to get ideas for their works as well. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is an oft-cited example. More recently, the whole idea for Twilight was said to have come from a dream Stephanie Meyer had (and the dream was later written in as a chapter.) Many surrealist artists' paintings look much like something out of a dream.

While I get my LDing back on track, harnessing the potential artistic value of the active subconscious seems very exciting! Who else has managed to get an artistic idea or two from their dreams?

In ETWOLD, Dr. Laberge talks about an artist that goes to an art gallery to find out what she will paint next. Its very similar to what your talking about. Do you know how to read music? If so, keep some staff paper next to your bed, and write down the dream music!!

I posted this in the Draw Your Dreams thread. It's the album art I saw on my iTouch of the song that was playing:



It was by some band called "Nee-Fritz". It had a burnt sienna-olive green-black-white color scheme, and the inset photo looked a lot like the album art from Stranger than Fiction by Bad Religion.

Do you know how to read music? If so, keep some staff paper next to your bed, and write down the dream music!!

I often tape a humming version of what I hear when I first wake up. That's a great suggestion for putting it in something playable later on.

I've got the made-up music a few times, and it's always awesome! Even has a structure and chorus most of the time. The brain has so much creative potential!

Originally Posted by J.D.

I've got the made-up music a few times, and it's always awesome! Even has a structure and chorus most of the time. The brain has so much creative potential!

Yeah this has happened to me in a non-lucid. Awesome music, but I can only remember very small hazy details upon awakening. One of my top lucid goals is to find a piano and write some songs there.

DAMN that is cool! I gotta try to write some songs in a lucid or something like that.

I started a thread about it! If you manage to get anything down on a stave, stick it in!

Definitely! Dreams have inspired artists and musicians for centuries!

Sometime last year when I was really into making zines, I had a dream that I had made a tiny, tiny zine called "look out parachute!" with a very specific color scheme and cover design. I didn't remember the content of the booklet upon awaking, but it inspired me to make one of the same size with the same title and cover design, and it turned out to be one of my favorite ones.