The Creative Process: Finding the “I”

The Dream: I'm with a group of graphic designers. I see them as very cool, and being accepted is important to me. The “leader” is a small, wiry black man, about the size of a 12-year-old. He's very energetic and charming, and recounts stories by acting out all the parts as he tells them. He also thinks things through very thoroughly. When a project of any sort is mentioned it's apparent he's thought of every angle and is prepared down to the details. “He's the first person I've met who is just like me,” I think, and I'm very attracted to him.

I'm invited on a weekend with him and his two assistants, partially a working weekend, but it's clear I'll be expected to sleep with him. I find this exciting—at first. I hop into the front seat of his small but well made convertible; the windows are up and the roof is down. As we pull away, beginning to go into an urban tunnel passing under another road, we have the appearance of being on a lark, a joy ride. But I start to feel uneasy.

The leader's character changes from charming to peevish. I start to feel uncomfortable about the expectation that I will have sex with him. It occurs to me that this group probably take drugs as a matter of course, and that I will be expected to participate. Suddenly the whole “adventure” sours and becomes a source of anxiety rather than fun.

Interpretation: The “leader” is a trickster figure. He looks like my typical trickster: wiry, energetic, and black, my opposite and yet—“exactly like me” in his approach to things. The dream was inspired by a recent visit to an Alan Ginsberg exhibit that reminded me that the guiding lights of art in my childhood were the rebels who stood against middle class morality, often in self-destructive and adolescent ways. (The “leader” is the size of a 12-year-old.) The dream portrays my discomfort with certain aspects of this art world, the idea that it's a place that demands undisciplined behavior and morals. At the same time, there is something attractive about a life without restrictions. Do I see conformity as my only other option?

A basic conflict has emerged here: creativity and freedom versus the straight and narrow. My experience with the graphic designers helps me  get the picture. As the dream goes forward the creative group attempt to put me in their own kind of straight jacket. Each of the two supposedly antithetical groups demands conformity, each has its “standards” and expectations for the behavior of its members. True freedom exists in neither. A conjunctio (a union, symbolized by having sex) with one of the choices does not take place.

A Pox on Both Your Houses

The Dream: Two women are going to be executed. The action takes place in a small town. The townspeople are required to carry out the execution. The action centers on the drugstore, where the druggist, a man, is in a separate cubicle searching for the means to carry out the execution order. He finds two garrotes made of shiny thin black plastic and realizes that this is the instrument that will be used. He is nervous and drops them on the floor, then picks them up and puts them on the counter. Next question? Who will be the executioner?

Interpretation: The two women signal an internal conflict. The small town tells me that the conflict has to do with my relationship to a group: I feel strangled (the garrote) by the society I’m in. The druggist represents the part of me that wants to deaden my awareness of this problem (he dispenses drugs); the cubicle (box) he’s in echoes my isolation. He discovers a way to get rid of the conflict—by choking it off (the two garrotes). But since they are made of plastic (phony) we can guess he might not be successful with this approach. That he has discovered this drastic solution floors him (he drops the garrotes on the floor). In the end he has provided the means where it counts (the counter); but he isn’t ready to do the deed. 

It’s a Free Country

One technique that I find useful—and perhaps you will, too—is what I call a “write around.” When I don’t have a clue about what a dream means, I take it image by image and write whatever comes into my mind. By the time I’ve worked my way through the dream I understand its message.

The Dream: A young man with short, curly blond hair is lying in the front garden, more or less collapsed. I feel he’s trespassing when I see him from the living room window, sunk into the grass. I go out to confront him: why has he taken up this position on my front lawn? I notice he appears to be a homeless derelict who cannot communicate with me; perhaps he is on drugs. I am frightened and leave him where he is.

The Write Around: A young man with short, curly blond hair is lying in the front garden, more or less collapsed. This dream deals with a part of me that’s the opposite of my waking self: a young man instead of an old woman. When did I have short, curly blond hair? Perhaps when I was seven. He has put himself in a place where I can’t ignore him: in the front garden, but he is in bad shape—collapsed. So—a weak part of me, one that relates to my distant past, is coming into my awareness.