Tuesday 14 February 2017

Seven Answers I: A Dream and a Crime


You can read about Seven Answers, my slow-cooking polyphonic project here.  

1.  Please tell me about a recent dream you've had.  

I have a recurring dream which varies in its details but retains the central theme.  The dream is that something has been taken from my house.  It is generally a picture or a piece of furniture.  I wake up in my bedroom and look at the walls, still convinced that certain items have been taken, though I am never exactly sure what they are.  I try to picture the things which have been taken but can never fully bring them to mind.  I fall asleep and when I wake later on I realise this [sic] nothing at all has been taken.  

When I wake first I am completely sure that things have been taken but it's not burglary.  It is rather that someone I know thinks there is an arrangement that they can take them due to something I have omitted to say or do.  I've had the same dream for some years now and have been known to wander about in the night checking that my possessions are still there.  

I can see some interesting links with my answer to question 7 here which hadn't occurred to me before.  

7. Tell me about a crime you've committed or a lie you've told.  

I'm too much of a scaredy cat to commit much crime knowingly.  However I do remember coming home from a friend's house when I was very young with something which wasn't mine.  It was a little metal hair clip covered in felt gloves for a doll's house.  I seem to remember thinking that it was so lovely and I wanted it so much that surely I should have it.  It didn't really occur to me that it was wrong to take it until the girl's mother telephoned my mother to say that I'd taken it.  I had to take it back in person and apologise.  

The experience had a big influence on me, before this I didn't realise what it really meant to steal someone else's property, though part of me still felt I should have the hairgrip since I valued it much more than she did!  And now my dreams are all about how it feels when someone takes something which is yours!  

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