Shifting Scenery and Flying Dreams by Ragland Parks

"Ne plus envisager l'art comme distraction, mais comme un sacer doce"
Jean Cocteau

...some of my earliest recollections are dream based, or have the appearance and language of liminal states. The fabric betwixt consensus reality and the dreamworld being more tenuous than i was taught, these early gnostic revelations served me well, and prepared me for a life between the worlds.

My first flying dream came at a very young age and starts with me waking up to the sound of the door being knocked upon, i rise to go and see who it is. From the landing, i look down the stairs to see the door has been opened and several of my friends are there, and they've brought with them a large, friendly lion to see me. Nothing about the situation seems strange to me, just perfectly natural to have a large lion waiting to be invited in, but i remember having no desire to meet this lion, nor did i want it to cross the threshold. In fact, so strongly did i feel about keeping the lion out, i raced to the door so as to close it, and it was at this point i realised i wasn't using my legs at all as they were tucked under me in what i later learned was the lotus position, a position i might have seen in conjunction with flying carpets, of which i had no use as i was simply floating down the stairs resisting the temptation to accomodate the lion (he did look very friendly), whom i instinctively didn't trust. It's only years later i came to see the lion as christianity, a concept which fascinated and repelled me from an early age. In memory, the scene has the feel of an actual, experienced event, only confirmed as a dream by the floating element.

Another dream which my memory treats as reality, is one where, again i wake up from bed, to this time look through the window into a neighbour's bedroom window across the way, where i see a spaceman, that is, a humanoid figure dressed in full NASA spacewalk clobber, leaning over my neighbour's sleeping body, observing. There was no malice or intention to abduct that i could sense, but the moment i saw the spaceman, my attention was felt and he looked my way, and as we locked eyes the fragment fades...

The next dream i'm going to try to describe was a re-occuring one, many times i had this dream and many times i tried to describe it to people, but it's a hard dream to pull into the daylight, being made up of strong emotional elements and little in the way of the visual, although it was always on water, in water, surrounded by water, sometimes i'd be in a boat, sometimes i'd be in the water, and at other times i'd just be there, afloat. Many times i recognised it as a dream i'd had before and would be lucid and observant, but just as a participant, an observer, i had no control over it's course; at other times it would segue in from another dream scenario and i would gradually 'awake' into it, often when i realised i was on the water again. If this dream had a soundtrack it would start with low rumblings from the cellos suggesting imminent danger, a stark pizzicato motif would be picked up by the violas and then violins as the water would start to whip up where previously it had been calm, then the horns would herald the arrival of two massive monoliths rising from the depths signifying the approach of something momentous, earth shattering, then these super structures would proceed to draw closer to each other as the rest of the orchestra joins in the cacophony. As they get closer and closer, i often get the feeling i'm there to stop them meeting and try to get between them, not fearing danger for myself i try to hold them apart, but they are really big and nothing is going to stop what is about to occur, i am just here to observe and maybe report it seems, although when i did try to describe it to somebody, the images would fade and words would falter and i'd be left with just a deep feeling of dread which would sometimes follow me around and colour my day. Even now i can plug into that visceral feeling of dread and immanent danger, but can't remember what happens when the monoliths meet, if in fact they ever did. (There is a video by Alex Gray for Tool's Vicarious which has an element so familiar in it i thought Alex Gray must have pulled it from my brain, at about 3 minutes in, two glass like structures meet and shatter as momentous things occur, but in this video it is played out over the polar opposite of my waterbound vision, this time we're in a barren desertscape.)

This wasn't the only set of dreams where i'd 'wake up' to find myself dreaming, i started to find myself observing places i knew which seemed unreal but totally familiar, gradually realising that it was the angle that was strange and not the places, i was flying again and often this was a cue to me that i must be dreaming, because people don't fly do they, not generally. Up here i could see rooftops and treetops and the streets laid out like maps, and at first the realisation that i was dreaming would shake me out of it and i'd wake up thinking, just for a moment that people do in fact fly. Gradually though, as the feeling became more familiar to me, i began to be able to remember i was dreaming and not to wake up, and these moments would begin to stretch out until i was fully lucid and in control. Able to direct movement and not just observe gave me the freedom to go where i wanted, and i could also land and take off and interact with characters there, although they never seemed to be aware of where we were and would grow vague when questioned. When flying i could choose where i wanted to go and would be there instantaneously, or i could just float there. Tentative enquiries with friends led me to believe that this talent wasn't common, and nobody i questioned had done it, nor did they have any concept of what had become normal to me, so i kept the details to myself and cruised through the days looking forward to sleep where i could again fly above the trees and houses where my friends slept. I had still had no concept of astral flying with which to rationalise or explain to anyone, so i continued a series of experiments designed to give me more and more control over my dream environment. Little by little, over a course of years, i got to the point where i could conjure up environment, characters, activities, props, whatever, and think about these things as i fell asleep, and the next moment i would 'wake up' into this dreamscape i'd designed. Fully compus mentis, i could control the events from moment to moment, dropping elements literally at will i could change anything and everything as my dreamworld took on more reality and import and the 'real' daytime world faded into a boring automaton driven universe of effect following cause, a black and white land of robots while my dreams were multi coloured worlds of endless possibilities.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, i started to develop a theory that i was the only thing in it with free will, maybe the only real thing in it at all, or maybe a Truman Show-like situation where everybody else was simply acting out their role in it, keeping me entertained, too busy to see the holes in the plot and the shifting scenery. I could never find out the reasoning behind this subterfuge until i caught someone in the act, then i could confront them and get to the bottom of it. Again, i cautiously questioned 'friends' and 'family' about these things, careful not to 'let on' what i 'knew' in case 'they' were alerted to my state of awareness, watching them carefully for signs of any nerves hitting, i deduced i was alone and devised more experiments, this time to test the veracity of my so called real world. Whenever going to a new place, by either car or bus, i would monitor speed and direction,in an attempt to catch 'them' at it, expecting to go round in circles whilst my 'hometown' was re-arranged for the next scene, and whenever we did seem to go out of the district i figured 'they' didn't have much time to 'set things up', so i'd run off up side streets, peering round corners to see if the 'illusion' or 'scenery' extended out in all directions, testing it for 'real'-ness and permanence, sometimes impressed by the speed in which it had all been assembled, at other times disappointed by the repetition of certain streets and corners and little alleyways that seemed to be 'stock',  like the hasty constructions had to be forged from whole areas that had been used before into a hodge podge that made little or no sense, whilst the characters that peopled these scenes were sometimes full of people i knew, pretending to be other people, and i'd question these people too, about the town, and about my town and whether they knew it, always on the look out for the tell-tale twitch, or the drip of nervous perspiration, of their being caught out, or the scenery to fold back revealing...i know not what, but at least revealing to me someone who knew more than everyone else i'd questioned over the years, someone who could maybe give me some answers! i'm still looking...

...

Archons and Archangels drift into view
Acting like people i knew
See through their eyes and their hasty disguise
To the truth their alluding to

Shifting scenery and drifting sands
Slip right through my hands
Lucid visions of flying dreams
All is not what it seems, here i go again

Racing round corners to see right behind
Mirrors and smoke's all i find
Look for the One on whose will has been done
This illusion is well designed

Shifting scenery...

Flying real high over landscapes i knew
Search for a new point of view
If death cannot hold me then neither can you
In control i will sleep right through

Shifting scenery...

Now is the time and is always the time
No other reality here
The future's a son of the past you begun
The present a gift of right now

Shifting scenery...