visual auditory sensory theatre

This week's blog title matches the name of a band. Folk might remember the band as V.A.S.T. They've been around for a while and one of their songs in particular packed a punch in terms of its production values. The song was called Touched.

I actually have no interest in spending this week's blog reliving my music memories, I merely wanted to use the band name as the title of this week's blog because I wanted to talk about that moment between being half asleep and half awake. And what the mind is capable of creating in the time before I drift off every night and in the pre-dawn before I am about to rise for each day.

I quote: "a hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid, substantial, and located in external objective space. The latter definition distinguishes hallucinations from the related phenomena of dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness."

Hallucinations can occur in any sensory modality. I can see, hear, touch, taste and smell them. It is also normal to have hypnagogic hallucinations, which are hallucinations that occur just before falling asleep, and affect a surprisingly high proportion of the population. The hallucinations can last from seconds to minutes, all the while I usually remain aware of the true nature of the images.

The images are extensions of the dreams, yet often disconnected from them. This morning was a good example. The dream: I am at a beach when the swell starts to rise, signs of a looming tidal wave; it's a race to get to higher ground, the buildings are not tall enough, a forest and plain on the escarpment about the beach are just out of the water's reach; once I make it to safer ground I visit old highschool friends, friends from science class - Greg I and Andrew G - the smartest boys in the room; they cannot explain the nature of things any more than I can explain my emotional response to the threat. Then, half asleep, half awake, I am in a room full of machinery, unsure which buttons to press to stop the flow. Once fully awake I cannot make any sense of it - why the enormous wave, why is my salvation in nature when I am asleep but in a machine when I am in limbo?

I know, I really should stop trying to extrapolate any meaning from the images my sub- and semi- conscious mind produces!

The science boys permeate my dreams every now and then. A link to the past, memories long faded. My "go to" guys symbolic of problem solving. If only I could make sense of the puzzle my mind is trying to piece together. I'll probably have a Citizen Kane moment on my death bed before any of it makes sense.

post script: my long weekend last weekend was very productive - finished Part 1 of novel number 3 - now 55 pages and 14,000 words written of the next 100,000 installment of the trilogy.