Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 168: Cpaffy 2

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

"INCONCEIVABLE!" - Vizzini of Sicily

Greetings friends and welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have the inestimable, incomparable, inconceivable. Calvin Pafford, I run out of adjectives, but I was going to throw a few more in there. I was thinking of them. You know, you keep using that word. I'm not sure you know what it means. I think I don't know what it means. I think I should probably look it up one more time.

We're going to get right back to him in two seconds. Would you kindly like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, always need more volunteer dreamers, viewers for the game streams. Hey, I also stream video games, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Pacific on many channels YouTube, Rumble, Twitch, Trovo, Kick, and on the X platform, pop in and say hello. I'll be doing that tonight on the day of the recording, Monday through Friday.

Long story short on that. If you would like to support my work, you may do so by purchasing one of 17, currently available works of historical dream literature, the most recent, The Fabric of Dreams by Catherine Taylor Craig, lovingly reproduced, recreated, and enhanced by yours truly, if I may say so myself. Also, if you would, of course, all this and more. at Benjamin the Dreamwizard.com, including downloadable mb3 versions of this very dream interpretation podcast. Also, if you'd head on over to Benjamin the dreamwizard.locals.com, you can join the

community there. It's free to join attached to my Rumble account. And for each new video game, I have a custom cocktail. I concoct. I can cocked custom cocktails. I love alliteration. And you can get the recipes only at the locals account. I'm probably going to flash one of them on the screen there. That is enough about me and the shilling. It's the longest intro ever. Calvin, thanks for coming back. It's good to be here. Wonderful. So, uh, you're returning guest. Um, what have you been up to in the meantime, in between time? Anything interesting or, uh, you know, just mostly nothing and a little bit of reading poetry, but mostly nothing. Yeah, when we were doing audio tests, you were doing, uh,

the Raven, uh, by Po. Ah, it's, I forgot that. It really is a great poem. It's a rough one. I, I, I remember I had to memorize that for like a third or fourth grade we did poetry. And this was around the time where all my teachers thought I was illiterate because I wouldn't read books in class. I don't want to read. So I would like, you know, this is my favorite poem. I'll just read that. And I memorized it. And I didn't have to go to special classes after that.

I don't think. I think that was around the time I stopped. I don't think about it. There you go. Well, you just demonstrate to them. Look, I can read. I can remember stuff. Leave me alone.

I'm fine. Don't worry about it. There were times in class when I was. sitting there like this and they're like, Ben, wake up and I'm just listening. I'm listening. What do you want me to do? I got to stare at you. You know, I'm just resting my head on my hand and I've got my eyes closed. Like imagine, you know, like you're not paying attention to the music.

You get your eyes close. You're focused on the music. You're listening. That's how it goes. And we got cat visitors here. Oh, so you got to take the dog out, but the cats are allowed to stay. They, they, yeah, they just get all up, but they don't ask permission. The dog listens. These, these, these, these little critters are devil but you love them anyway. I love them. And sometimes you can make them do silly things

like if you scratch their ears. Oh, that's the wrong ear. She's got a nerve on one side that if I hit it, I think it's this side. She'll do the leg. Oh, there it goes. I don't know if they love that or hate it. I can't tell.

I can't tell. That's a crazy creatures. They're like barely domestic. They're just like small lions. Yeah. Fear old dangerous animals that if they were large enough would probably eat you.

click I love I just reminds me I just saw I haven't even watched this movie yet the uh was it the Robert Downey Junior remake of Dr. Doolittle haven't seen it I love Downey well you know Downey Jr. But um stop that I don't know if that's something I asked for though Robert Downey Jr. as Dr. Doolittle. I feel yeah I hear that and I'm like I feel like I could have lived without that one. Well I have a comment on that too but the idea of uh there was one scene where he's talking to a tiger and uh and he calls it by name he says hello tiger whatever the tiger says hello. lunch. I gotta feel like that's how they'd be. It was a great scene. Just even in the preview, but I, you know, I, um, before I saw the Sherlock Holmes remakes, I was like, I don't know if I,

I don't know if we needed that. And I'm like, actually, he was a pretty damn good homes. Really, really a different, not quite the, uh, proper gentleman. They made him a little more, um, you know, a little less stuffy and, uh, and proper. And he'll give him a little more grit. You know, he's kind of more of a bare-nacle brawler type of guy with his, you know, with his addictions and whatnot. Well, I think we think of Holmes as a proper gentleman because of the time the books are written in. True. I think for the time, Holmes was a little bit of a scoundrel. It was a little bit of a, like, anti-hero sort of guy.

Yeah. Like, so like Odysseus. We think Odysseus. We think hero. But like to Homer, Odysseus was like the anti-hero to Achilles' archetype. Yeah. That is a very interesting point. For sure.

Yeah. Well, and then a lot of the decisions. he made were like he put his crew at risk for selfish reasons and that's not to be emulated. You know, so this guy, this is not someone who's, uh, in that way, what am I trying to say? He was a more well developed character than, than some others. Like he, he's a man with flaws, you know, he's going to be, he's going to win. Actually, I think he's the only one, the only person out of his entire crew who makes it home. I think he kills all of them through his stupidity and poor choices and selfishness and

different things like, don't be, don't be this guy. Even if you're rooting for him, there's better. better examples. Well, he was, I think he's also was like the smartest one of the crew, though. Like, true. You know, all the other heroes were like great warriors. Achilles was like, he was the trickster. He was like, I'm going to trick the, the cyclops into saying no one.

No one did it. Yeah. It was no one. Yeah, no, exactly. What a stupid story that, that specific story. What is too. Well, and also that the, uh, I mean, clever in its own way. Well, how do we assess stories?

Like the idea that they escaped from the cave by clinging. onto the bellies of the critters and he felt each one of them from the top to see are you a man or are you a sheep you know and uh that he wouldn't like be a little more thorough uh but i guess we were like when i think of that i think we're looking back having heard that story story now in retrospect going well of course i would have been more thorough and i think sometimes it's that um judging if i had the ring i would find out a way to get it to mount dune no problem exactly fly you fools Giant Eagles. I could carry it.

That's a great story, too. I mean, what was, I saw a beam recently where it was like girls talking about, you know, he didn't even cry at the end

of Titanic. And at the bottom, it's, it's just the, it's a picture of, um, Sam carrying Frodo. I can carry you.

I can carry you. And then the crying man, it's like, we got feelings. You just, you just don't know. You don't know what gets us. I know,

whatever we have like a family reunion thing. It's that specific movie and all the, the guys jump up from their seats at that one scene. And screw you. carry you, Mr. Frodo. There's a, there's a few. Like, that one got me. I get a little, little misty.

And another scene that gets me like that is, uh, I think it was Spider-Man two, the Toby McGuire one, where he stops the train by shooting out all the webs. And he's about to collapse and they catch him. And they're passing him hand over hand through there. And they're like, you know, careful. He's a hero. And they, someone says, I got, I got a kid his age. And they're just like, oh, it gets me every time.

Like these people who are like, really in reverence to this person who, saved them and you know through for no no gain of his own like perfect hero moment uh and and to have it appreciated properly by the by the people oh it gets me i'm getting a little clump right now it gets me every time i love that scene except tommy mcguire was still like almost 30 during spider man too right he like i got a kid his age he's like that's a full grown man when you look at him yeah i mean it was supposed to be like 15 or 16 or something like that even maybe eight time but still yeah uh yeah heroes that's I wonder if a lot of what we've, I mean, this is a huge, maybe dark shift, but the idea of what's, I wonder how much of what's going wrong today is that we've lost an appreciation for what it truly means to be heroic.

We've lost, you know, cultural focus on the right kinds of heroes. Now we've got all these, you know, so there's two different functions like the wrong heroes, but then also a scattered representation of different types of heroics that are not ideal enough. to lift people out of of you know sometimes they say if you what is it if you worship false gods you'll you'll end up um you're walking down wrong paths and into disaster um i don't know if i'm making any sense there if you have any thoughts on that idea or we just drop it i just had a tangent no i think that that's that that's true i think well the book that i'm going to release in 12 years what i was writing about is about uh i was thinking the way i consume media is like i read a book But then I also listen to like 30 hours of podcasts about it.

Yep. So like the modern way to consume books is like so different. I was like, what if you wrote a book for the purpose of the TV show having a different ending? So like, you know, there's all these bad like full metal alchemist catches up to the manga and then like nobody likes the ending or Game of Thrones catches up to the books and nobody likes the endings. What if you came with the idea of we should have two different endings and they're both going to be good? Like when you start writing something.

And I was like, yeah. one of the endings should be like thematically heroic where like people but kind of sad where like people get their comeuppance and you don't like it and the other one should be like the people that you care about survive even if maybe they deserve to die

like even if Jamie like Jamie Lannister deserves to die but we want him to survive because we like Jane. Yeah he had a little bit of a redemption arc you know yeah yeah from just an awful awful person in the first season pushing that kid out the window but then we find out that was kind of necessary. He had to become, you know, brand,

Brian the king at the very end. Interesting. So, yeah, almost like a Judas thing. I was like, did he, was it God's plan that he was going to betray him all along? Did he do what he was supposed to? Anyway, I interrupted you, sorry. No, I think, I think I was done with that. Oh, fair enough. I was just going to give another example. I was going to say, you know,

the brother who abandons his family to join the war, even though his, you know, he left his little siblings to the abusive father. Yeah. Is he a good guy because he joined the war? who had bad guy because he wasn't looking after his younger siblings. Exactly. Yeah, that's from, uh, wasn't that from the boys? That was the art character story arc of the main, main character from, um, what's his name?

I mean, he's played by Carl Urban. Um, can I cannot remember his character's name. Uh, oh, Billy Butcher. Billy Butcher. Yeah, yeah. That's part of his character. Yeah. And that's, unfortunately, we're also in a day and age where a lot of the stories have been

told is so many different ways. it's really hard to come up with something original. There are like seven stories, right? Like, but to be fair, like we're in the time of superhero stories right now. Sure. For the previous century, it was all swashbuckling action movies, right? Like, let me think. Zorro and the Princess Bride and the County Monte Cristo.

They're all in Robin Hood. Yeah. Like, they're slightly different. They're the same movie. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I also, I very often bring this up the idea that, you know, we had the remake in the 80s or 70s. The Magnificent Seven based on the Seven Samurai from, you know, the 1950s.

It was basically just a cowboy Western remake of that idea. And then we remade that into like a slightly more comedic version of the original. Mm-hmm. Yep, yep. And they're all good movies. And then those were actually inspirations for then what was a movie in the 90s, the three amigos with Chevy Chase, Martin Short, and what's the other guy, Steve Martin. which is like a horribly awkward movie.

If you love awkward comedy and slow burn, it's, would you, would you say I, would you say I have a lot of men? Hefe, I would say you have a plethora. What is it,

plethora? I don't know. You just use words you don't know. But it was all, but that was a parody of, of Magnificent 7, which was a parody, which was a remake of,

Anyway, I Okay, I had a thought And then it started a wonderful naming convention for cowboy movies Where it's the the number of something The number of something The ridiculous six and the hateful eight Oh, exactly. Yep.

Oh, and that's yeah, yeah, yeah, that's exactly. I'm sure Quentin Tarantino knew exactly what he was doing. We have the Magnificent seven. We got the hateful eight. He's upped by one number and made him fight each other. Yeah, we have heroic characters doing heroic things. Now we have villainous characters. Even the hero of that movie is villainous.

Exactly. Yeah. And that's, it's kind of fun sometimes to say, okay, if, if everyone's, hmm, not a good person, I won't say bad, you know, not a good person. Who do you root for? And in that case, do you just root for them all to suffer or do you root for at least something interesting to happen, something you've never seen before? That's what I liked about a lot of the Tarantino movies is you never knew what was going

to happen. It didn't have to make sense. It didn't follow a lot of the conventions. You never knew what was going to happen in the next scene. It was like, what is going on here? That's just that... I think you wrote for the most heroic guy in the scene, who you kind of root for.

Like, Jules is not a good guy in Pulp Fiction, but he's the most good guy in the shot right now. For sure. Yeah, in the scene, exactly. And, you know, we could nominally say maybe Bruce Willis's character, but even, you know, even he was a bit of a schemer and he's trying to get one over on this crime boss, which we might say, hey, that's a good thing.

but yeah and we we hate this crime boss but then you know in the next scene we're like yep yeah this is a bit much well now we want him to grab that samurai sword and you know and and put away the gimp so to speak yeah yeah um i was gonna say during when you were describing you write in a book and you're talking about endings i just thought wouldn't it be amazing if someone wrote a book and released two different versions both with different endings but in this in the same cover. Nothing is different but the endings. And you just release it to the wild, half the books and half the books.

And you see what people say about those different endings and be like, well, they're like, well, which one's the real book? You're like, I don't know. You decide. What do you, what do you prefer? Which ending do you like? That's your, that's your book. Well, just an idea.

The difficult thing I found is that finding the point where they converge is the difficult part. Sure. Like, it has to be one character. making one action that splits them. So is it the character that you want to thematically make the action? Like, is it the eldest brother who has to make the action that changes everything? What if it, there's no great point for him to make a drastic decision like that? Yeah.

Is it sort of like the gritty anti-hero who has to make the, or the villain who slips up at one point? And the heroes get to take advantage of that. And that's where it converges. Yeah. It's difficult. It could be a choice. It could be a roll of the dice. And it could be everything is identical up to that last chapter.

and then what happens at the end is just different. I mean, just something goes wrong or right. And, you know, maybe some, that's, that's an interesting. I mean, I just thought of this idea, like, how to practically apply it. Fuck if I know, I'm the idea guy. I don't really, I don't, oh, I'm sorry. I thumped on the counter and her tail was under my hand. The idea I was going for was that, uh, book one, if it was a, a trilogy of books that

translates to a show, book one, season one, almost exactly the same. the split happens somewhere in book season two. And then so that season is similar but different. And then by the time it gets the third season, it's just a different story altogether. Now, that would be interesting too. I was thinking one book in just the final chapter. The ending is different.

Like it would be rewriting the end of Game of Thrones where maybe, you know, maybe, spoiler. Danny doesn't go crazy and try to kill everyone. And actually, they get married and everyone's happy. And they build a brand new empire that is. you know, full of good people. I've heard people saying like the Danny John marriage is too like, like

too much of a nice ending. But I was like hold on. So you're saying that the nice ending of this show is like, woman invades country with her army of slaves and dragons and barbarians and marries her nephew, who might be a zombie. You're like, that's too nice of an ending for you. What kind of crazy effed up book do you want? Yeah. And then does it become too predictable where it's like

everything goes wrong for everyone so you can predict. Of course this is going to go wrong for those two. No, the twist is, this is the one thing that doesn't go wrong. They kind of pull it. The twist is somebody finds happy. Somebody finds happiness and things aren't all fucked everywhere forever. There is.

Everyone likes the, uh, the Thin wedding in the last book where like, it's, it's, it's Alex Carr-Stark gets, John marries her to the, the new magnaar of Thin, who's, who is the wildling establishing a new health house in the north. Okay. But, like, isn't it nice to have that one nice scene and like this horrible awful book where everyone's starving to death? Yeah. Yeah.

Everyone loves that. That is true. That's good. Yeah. And it's, it's so, it's got so much possibility there. Sometimes what are we doing now? In the modern world, I mean, you can always introduce new. That's, that's why I think young adult fiction has a lot more room for repeating themes.

Because anytime you grab a new audience that's never heard of different things before, you can show them a well-established pattern over 2,500 years of storytelling. And it's new to them. If it's new, if I haven't seen it, it's new to me. So there's a more possibility for me. You get into a more, say, mature, ready for more mature audiences or at least audiences with, um,

experience with the genre. They've heard a lot of these tropes before and they don't want to like, they say this is just boring or derivative. I've seen it all before. It's just like other things I've seen. So it's kind of hard to surprise a more jaded, experienced audience. Um,

you know, but I think almost in contrast to that, sometimes like you'll reject the new stuff because you've seen it before, even if the new stuff is doing it better. Like one, one book that I hate, I just finished crime and punishment. I don't think it's a good book at all. I don't like it.

But that's because like every single trope that happens in that book, like, okay, so the Sherlock and Moriarty theme, I'm like, well, I've seen this done better in tons of newer media. Yeah. Or the idea that there are all these subplots with all these like herciary characters that are going on around Ros Konakoff. It's like, yeah, that's not like, but they aren't, they aren't interesting. Like, in order to have like this variety of secondary characters with their own things, all of them need to be interesting.

I'm reading this book and I'm like, I'm sure to like a Russian reading Dofsky-Evsky's work at the time, they were like, oh, this is a great book. But to me, I'm like, yeah, this is like a worst version of stuff I've seen a thousand time. Yeah, I had that same experience trying to read Don Quixote, like a five, six hundred page book. I just, I made it about three quarters the way through. I'm like, I can't finish this. I just can't. I'm forcing myself to pay attention.

You know what's crazy is that Don Quixote is the book I was thinking of that did it better than crime and punishment. Oh. Because, you know, Don Quixote can't, like, he's finding himself inside of all this intrigue with all these, like, people's lives. And he can't appreciate it because he's, like, too stuck in his own world. Crime and punishment is sort of like that, but worse. Like, because none of the people, Russ Konakoff finds himself in the, like,

midst of are interesting. They're all boring. Like, nobody, like, who cares? It's like the opposite in some ways. Yeah. At least in Don Quixote, he finds, like, a plus. where a best friend's like stabs his friend in the back and marries the woman he loved even though he was already married like at least he finds all those cool intrigue for sure i think i said this

i don't know if it was in just a throwaway comment on twitter or in a discord but uh it's better to tilt at windmills than never to tilt at all uh like find some adventure in your life even if it's kind of delusional in some ways you know at least you're you know uh he wanted a grand adventure and by god he found one he made it up Like, I'm just going to do that. There was some meta themes with that. Well, that's where I was going with the, with the idea in the first place of like all this repetition is that it's a lot easier

to be earnest with, and, and true to the trope in young adult, say fiction, because they haven't seen it before and they're not jaded and they're not like this is, I've seen something a hundred times before. You get into more, and I'm finding this with anime too. I'm all over the place, but I'm going to find it right here. Um, so in, in books, let's say adult fiction, you've got to be a little more subversive or playing with tropes. It's like you got to be able to acknowledge from the reader's perspective, okay,

they've seen this before. How can I do it differently? Or how can I subvert expectations or how can I, how can I take different combinations of tropes and maybe permutation type of thing or, um, but it's the same thing with anime. It's like there's, there's, there's earlier anime that was, uh, you know, It's just Dragon Ball Z. It's Sailor Moon.

It's very earnest. It's for kids. And there's still stuff that's made like that today. But you get into other stuff and there's a little more playing with your expectations because you know the trope. Okay. And that's where you get into like. So if you first you need to have to know what Sailor Moon is, even if you've never watched it, you have to appreciate the magical girl genre. Then you can watch Madoka Magica.

And because it references the genre. itself in the storytelling and then becomes its own version of that story on a on a different level um one more ramble and then i'll like throw it back to you because i'm saying a lot of stuff but yeah i think there's i should be taking notes because i've stopped to say it about yeah fantastic just last thing just on your comment on um uh crime and punishment i think this is where you know we look at that book and as you were saying other stuff now has done it better or different or more interestingly and i think that you're just that you're not you think that's what happened to studying a lot of the classics from even 2000 years ago. So the story

of Odysseus. I mean, how many people read the Iliad? Not many. We've seen remakes. We've seen, oh, brother, where art thou? We've seen, you know, attempted, you know, telenovela versions of it, you know, but we, I think something happened with the explosion of literature when the printing press and then fantasy and fiction novels started or being produced. that we've almost got a glut of too many things that do it better, that we're not going to the originals, which they did it better in their own way. I don't know.

I was going somewhere with that, but that thought occurred to me. I'll stop there. Go ahead. Well, you know what? There's too much stuff out. People write too much. It's true.

Like Brandon Sanderson, he's got like two new books every year. Who's going to read all that? Okay. I'm going to look backwards here. I think the Odyssey people read more than the Iliad nowadays because I feel like the Iliad, it was maybe the Iliad was the more popular story at the time and then people remade it more to now that the Odyssey seems more original.

And I almost think that. Yeah. It was almost like a historical fiction versus fantasy in a way. Like the Iliad was more, here's what happened during the war. This was, this is more historical fiction or. Yeah. Poetically is historical. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. I don't mean fiction as much as I mean, fictionalized version of real events. And the Odyssey was like way more magical and fantastic. There's also like 50 other books in the Trojan Iliatic cycle that like were written around that time. And nobody reads any of them. Not one was popular, yeah. Yeah, like Homer was the big guy. Working backwards.

Okay. The funny thing is Sailor Moon and Dragon Belt Z were like also responses to stuff that happened before them. Or like I was thinking neon genesis was a response to a whole genre of like child fights monster manga. and then neon genesis was like yeah but this would be crazy of like traumatizing to an actual kid who had to fight a monster and that's where that came from well then and that's that was based on kind of the 1980s robotic mccross saga stuff which was kind of a response to the like astral boy fighting and you know mechanical boy fighting robots and we forget like we almost forget the influences of our influences for sure and then one before that I was going to say I'm I actually don't like when people get to uh self-concure about their influences. Yeah. Like, someone said that they thought Lord of the Rings was a more original story than Harry Potter.

And I love Lord of the Rings, but like, to act like Tolkien didn't also have influences that he worked off of is insane. Like, Dondor is literally the Byzantine Empire. Like, that's what that is. It's the eastern part of the fallen empire that is still there and still dealing with the Arabian Ottomans that are coming up and fighting them.

like, and it's like a retelling of the, the, the, the Jesus story, the New Testament story. He's got all these biblical influences, and he's got influences from, like, Celtic lore and, and, and, like, Greek lore. So he's got all these influences, and people are like, we forget all of that because his was written older. So we forget his influences. We just go, he's the influence for Harry Potter. For sure. So that book that I'm never going to release, I will release about at the same time, George

Martin releases Wins of Winter, that book, which is never, was the idea was like, I'm not going to hide any of my influence. Like, yeah, you know, you know that this part is from Lord of the Rings. You know that this character is Robin Hood. You know that, you know that this character is based on Superman. He's the superhero with the American flag cape that flies around. Like, why do I care? Why do I care if people are like, this guy seems like a, this guy seems like a mix of the,

this ninja and that, samurai or whatever. Like, yeah, sure is. Oh, yeah. Well, that's exactly what they did with the boys. And that was kind of the tropey subversive thing. It's like, what if all the superheroes were real, but they were all assholes and under the control of corporate overlords in terms of marketing. And, you know, their public image was manufactured. It wasn't who they really were.

I love that. You know, about that. We forget that Superman is the subversion of real life, which is that life. which is that life is hard and nobody's perfect. And here comes Superman, who's like, I'm going to strive to be perfect in every way. Superman is a subversion of stories. Like, okay, pre-Superman was, what, World War I and World War II?

As if everyone thought everything was perfect back then? No, Superman was a response to an imperfect world. And now we're acting like Superman's dumb and campy, and here's a homelander, an Omni-Man, who are cooler versions of Superman because they kill people. Yeah. It's like, shut up. Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, it's, I feel like the, the entire Genesis for the boys was someone said, what if Superman was real, but he was a dick.

Or, you know, a malicious sociopath that just really only cared about himself and his, his image, a narcissist, basically, his image for the sake of how many people can he trick into loving him? Because, you know, and also, you know, it's the idea that our heroes are also only human in a way. It made me think of that of like Superman being an alien is like in order to not in order to be so perfect someone has to be literally not human they have to be from another planet that was as far or another dimension is something fundamentally nonhuman the humans are just too flawed you know if we're going to have some something that's so perfect that has to be alien completely alien to planet earth that's very interesting take on that character too in my mind most of the other heroes I'm also a big sucker for the anti- anti-hero stuff in terms of like I this is an open question you know is Batman an anti-hero we know we would say Punisher Punisher is and but I don't even think Punisher is I think really like like Punisher but think about the original Punisher story yeah it's a revenge story it is like he's not going out and doing heroic thing like with nasty means there are there are heroes who like Red Hood in the newer comics might be an anti-hero because he does

kill people but he kills bad people the Punisher kills people for selfish reasons So he's, he's like, he's a regular villain, but he's also not killing good people. So he's, he's like kind of a villain that we could live with. Gotcha. Yeah, I guess it comes down to, a straight up hero. Batman's nothing but heroic. I guess so. It comforts crying children.

No, that's true. That's true. I mean, he doesn't want to hurt anyone innocent. That's, I mean, okay, this is where I was going. This is a, it, I guess it all depends on how we define hero and then anti-hero. And I get that. there's fuzzy lines in my head. I'm struggling with the concept sometimes

because it's like, you know, does an anti-hero have to be someone who kind of accidentally does good in the pursuit of their own selfish gains? I mean, I thought it interesting. Yeah, secret, secret Sith Lord. I love that theory. He trips over himself and saves the galaxy,

George Irvings. Exactly. That's, that's what I would love, I would love Lucas to come out and just embrace that theory and be like, that's what I was doing all along. I swear. Yeah, that would have been the only good ending for Rise of Skywalker, George,

I'm sitting on the throne. Going, Mesa Master now of the universe. I was going somewhere else too. Heroes, anti-heroes. Damn, I think I might have lost it.

It was an interesting idea. It's hard to define hero, and thus it's hard to find anti-hero. It's like... It's true. Superman, Batman, Punisher. Odysseus might be an anti-hero,

because he is, he's like the trickster. Trickster. True. Yeah. It was like it's motivations. Oh, the thought I had was a, okay, there's a Simpsons episode where Homer has to get a new job. And he meets this guy who's like just a positive, upbeat, encouraging, really heartfelt good guy. He sees the potential in Homer. He's like, I just want you to, I want to bring in to do this job at my workplace. And, and we're going to, I'm going to encourage you. He's got lots of really good advice for him. And he makes his relationship with his family better by telling him things. He actually improves Homer's job performance. And come to find out, he's an evil genius bent on world conquest.

And Homer's working at the, you know, Dr. Evil's facility on it, on a, on a volcanic island under, well, it's under attack. And it's like, actually at that point, I was kind of rooting for that guy. Maybe he should conquer the world. He's a good dude. He's just. So my thought was to do an entire story or book or whatever movie, where, you know, the, you know, the, you know, evil genius is the hero. and his plot to take over the world gets foiled, and it's actually a tragedy,

because this guy would have been... The good king. The good king. Yeah. He would have been the wise king. The good anarchist. Right. I'm going to be the king,

but only in name, so you guys can basically do whatever you want. Yeah. I'm just going to stop active violence. I've actually thought about that as like, okay, I would accept libertarian monarchy so long as I am the king, and I think I would be a good king.

As much as I, it's specifically because I don't want to be king. I agree except I'm the king. Exactly. You know, and that's because I actually don't want that power and I don't want to control anyone's life. I would just, I would do it because it had to be done.

Oh, that's for me and you disagree. I very much, I want the ability to control people's lives, but I promise I'll, I'll constrain it. I just, I suppose,

and this is the motivation of a lot of people who maybe do bad in the name of good. It's like, I believe I understand how to most effectively deal with really significantly bad problems and you use and it's going to take the use of force. And I, you know, I've actually put myself out there on Twitter with my, you know, what, 1,200, 1,200 followers, whatever, saying that I should be elected as the first and last wizard king of Oregon for life. And this, this came about to my mind during the COVID days where it was just, oh, we can

say that now, I guess the, the pandemic, which was not a pandemic and shall not be named. Back in the day. Back in the day. Well, just watching the different state governments go, you know, emergency. We're doing whatever the fuck we want and people just let them. I'm like, you know, I could just become governor of Oregon, change my title to Wizard King for Life, disband the Senate and rule with an iron fist because it's an emergency and I can do the fuck I want. Did they actually do that in Oregon though? Like I heard that online a lot of there, but like over here, nobody cared.

Like, if they went to the downtown area, there was like, if it went to the downtown area, there was like, of outside eating, but that was it. Yeah. Well, they do it through a lot of little... They wore masks in school, except nobody cared. They do it through a lot of little sneaky methods. Like, this was just being discussed on another podcast I was listening to where it's like the state government never forced a business to have vaccine or mask mandates.

They just said, it would be a shame if we let someone sue you and you had to pay a bunch of money because someone got hurt because you didn't do this thing that we're not telling you you have to do. We're just not going to protect you if you don't. And it's one of the way. It's like that's a little bit of a soft power thing. We didn't send thugs in to beat them over the head. We just said, you know, it'd be a shame if something happened to you, a mafia style.

And, you know, the same with the outdoor eating and the six feet distancing and the mask mandates and all the different stuff that, you know, oh, it's in the name of public health. And wouldn't you know it? We have this regulatory agency. And I can just make an emergency order that tells them to write regulations that, it just makes you do what I want. But I didn't do it. It's public health. It's just safety. So I'm like, I can abuse the, look out of that system and do whatever I want.

Everything's an emergency. We have a public health crisis. Fill in the blank. It's all public health. It's all a crisis. And I can, you know, emergency orders up the yin-yang. First thing you do, disband the Oregon Senate so no one can remove me. Done.

And now, uh, elections are canceled. I am king for life. Oh, and by the way, I'm ruling as king. And here's how we're going to be doing things. Uh, it's like, if they can do it, why wouldn't I? I'm like, yeah, sure. Elect me. It'll be the last election ever in the state of Oregon.

Done. I will be King and dictator for life. Never going to happen. I, you know, I'm not that serious. And I don't have a voting base. I think I only want the pageantry of King now they think of. I don't actually want the lawmaking powers. I want like the,

I want the crown and the throne. And I want to like wave swords in people's faces. Got you. And I want to say, bring me some grapes and someone holds them up here. And I like snagging them. You know, in true wizard style, we could partner up. I would rather be the power behind the throne. I would rather be like,

you can be the public. face you can have all the fancy clothes and the best linen sheets and the grape feeding girls and the palm fronds and yeah all the public glory and i'll just tell you what to say and what to do what what policies to announce i'm happy with that i'll be i'll be the the grand vizier behind the scene you'd rather be hannah the king in in a sense um like you know i think like like like you know play merlin to someone's arthur like arthur arthur arthur arthur gets his support his wisdom his his his his his is he's got someone to consult for policymaking. That's kind of more, I make a, as I say, in full knowledge, it is a double entendre.

I make a good number two. Well, okay, I don't want to keep talking about this book that's never going to be written. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a self-insert character that is myself, but as like the Grimmar, worm tongue guy behind my nephew, who's the king. And like, the kingdom of New England is trying to rebel against America. And I'm like, by the way, maybe you should. maybe you should assassinate this guy. That's my guy.

Failed writer turned evil politician. Hand of the king, Calvin Pappert. It is the character. Speaking of books, you don't feel too bad. I've had an idea for no less than 20-some-odd years. At least. No, no, maybe 30. How old was I?

A long time. Which kind of dips back into the Arthurian mythos a little bit, but much different. Anyway, long story short on that. I don't need it. I can tell you the entire plot. We don't have that kind of time. That being said, the Merlin character would be in there.

And I would have to decide how much of myself to put into him. And maybe he would kind of be my self-insert in a way because I'd like to, you know, at least I aspire to be that. Not that I think I already am. You know, I got a, I got like 800 more of these interviews to go before I'm a real wizard. So, you know, self-inserts are cool if they're like, only minor characters who are only the worst qualities of the authors. Yeah.

Like, like, here's everything I don't like about myself. No, this character. No Mary Sues. Yeah. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, you're not a Mary Sue. You're like a bad guy who's going to be jailed. But maybe, maybe the king was wrong for jailing me because he gets assassinated right after. I'm not saying I should have been there, but I should have been there.

Exactly. And then do you kill off your character just for fun? Yeah, yeah, but my character is, is actually nowhere in the book. But in my head, I know that he exists.

Like, Like the name is never mentioned, but in my head, I know that this is what's happening in the world. Well, speaking of storytelling and wizards and whatnot, maybe, we're about, you know, almost 40 minutes in. We should probably get around to doing your dream before we both run out of time. You about ready for that? Yeah, let me go 38 minutes in, ish. Okay, as per my usual process, I'm just going to shut up and listen. We're going to hear the story, and then we're going to see what we can figure out.

So I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you hearse the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his Dreamscape's program features real dreamers gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dreamscapes episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audiobooks exploring the psychological principles which inform our digital. dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find

the Wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature available on Amazon, documenting the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube, and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard. Dreamwizard.com. Okay, yeah. Well, I wrote this to you, and I was, it was like three in the morning, and I actually wrote it like a short story, because I was writing the, but. And then as I do, I don't read them.

I just go, that's a dream. And I skip right to the bottom, and I go, you want to make an episode? Don't tell me until it's time. But it's good to write it down. And that's what the, that's what the channel is for on the disc. So I, uh, what I noticed first is it's an all white room. It's not like a blank void. It's a room.

It's a very fancy room, but everything's white. People are dressed in white. The tablecloths are white or like a shade of white, and there are silver chandeliers with white candles. There's all that. And I am not wearing white. I'm wearing black with like a yellow blazer. And it's like a fancy event.

And I'm, as I always am, unshaven and with shaggy hair. And I'm feeling very self-conscious. And this wasn't weird to me in the dream, but I was like compared to the other people, the size of like a child, like up to their waist. And my dog is with me. And she's very small compared to me. And she's like a medium sized dog normally, but she's the size of a puppy like down at my abs and my ankle. And I'm very nervous and I'm very freaked out because none of the other people in the room are looking at me. They're all looking away.

And they're all bald. They're all bald. They're all looking away from me. So I'm just seeing the back of all these bald heads. So, and I'm feeling very self-conscious. I make my way. It's like a party sort of thing, like a fancy event. And I make one way to the table, which is like this long table running through the center of the room under the chandeliers.

And it's all sort of, uh, it's a lot of a, see, food, like crustaceans, which show up a lot in my dreams. And then specifically also, uh, escargo or like, at least they're like, they're like raw snails, but in my mind, I'm like, ew, this is what escargo is. And the candles from the chandeliers above are dripping wax on everything. And, uh, the tables also have a great deal of alcohol on them. This is like a party. And I'm walking down this like, uh, I find it very disgusting, this everything on this table.

and it's like up to my it's pretty tall because I'm very small and at the end of the line there's an empty table with a tablecloth and I pull off the cloth and it's like a black grand piano

so I'm at the end of the hall where the tables are and I like I lift up the lid and I start trying to play and the piano keys burn my hands and then when I look up, my dog is on the bench next to me and she's like freaking out, she's like barking.

And everyone is suddenly looking at me. And I think I describe them as having no eyelids or lips. But I think really they have like bulging eyes and they were like chattering teeth. but it's it's sort of like no eyelids no lip sort of thing so I go back to playing the piano and the piano keeps burning my hand and people are like looking at me and moving closer and the dog is freaking out

and I keep playing and I play until all the flesh is like melted off of my fingers so I have like these bony fingers and I keep playing and I realize that the piano isn't making any sound and I look over my dog is like making the mouth movements of barking but she isn't making any sounds either

and none of the people are making any sounds and I can't smell any of the disgusting food and I realize as I'm trying to play this piano that I'm dreaming I was like lucid and I woke up I realized that I was dreaming while I was dreaming but I suddenly woke up and it was 3 a.m. So it was like an hour and a half before my alarm went up

or would have gone up. I think I might have lost you between that and you were playing the piano, it wasn't making any sound, and then what happened? There was a little bit more I missed. I woke up. I realized that nothing. The dog wasn't making any sound. The people weren't making any sound.

The food wasn't giving off any sort of smell. And I realized I was dreaming. Okay. And I kind of, and I kind of, you know, brought myself to awake. a waking state. Okay. So I wasn't lucid for like a very long time in the dream, but I was lucid for like a quick second before I woke up.

Yeah, we'll realize I'm in a dream. What? Yeah. And that's one full, one full page of notes. Lots of good stuff. I was making notes as we go along as, as well. The idea of it being, Okay, we've got a bunch of different things.

Let me do it this way. I'm always looking for, how do I do this better? How do I do it differently? So sometimes I want to go through, certainly if I'm really confused and everything's very vague, I don't know what to make of it. I think this might have been since I wrote it down as soon as I woke up. Yeah. I like, I came from bed to my computer. This might be like the most vivid dream I've ever had.

Okay. Which is why I, yeah. Or the most complex dream. Well, one thing that stood out is, you know, you just spontaneously offered the impression of colors. A lot of people don't mention colors at all. Sites or sounds, even if they, I mean, sites or sounds are most common, but sometimes even if they say a person spoke to them, if I ask, did you hear a voice? They're like, not exactly. Like, I knew they were speaking and I understood what they were saying, but I couldn't say I heard words.

Go ahead. You know what? I was also the only one with a show. shadow, which I found very off-putting. Ah. I was the only thing in the room with the shadow. And I remember, because I was in the dream, I was looking at my shadow and my dog next to me, and none of the other humans that were there had shadows.

Okay. I was embarrassed about my shadow as what it was. It was almost like I walked in and I didn't have any pants on. Yeah. It was like, ooh, my shadow's here. This is so gross. There's a lot of ways in which you were different. from people or things in the room.

Everything's white. You're wearing black. They're tall. You're short. They're, um, you know, they're all bald. You've got hair. Uh, uh, so there's, there's a lot of comparison of yourself to others or the, the environment.

Um, so that's what I was saying is sometimes especially when I'm, when I don't know what to make of it, I go through line by line and we explain. explore it first. And then some of these notes that I've already made start coming to me. But I made some of these notes in there. And one of them is the idea of this, you know, you say it's a fancy event. So the word that came to my mind was like class distinction. And there's a lot of ways to go with that. But I don't know if that resonates with you in some way. The idea of people in a higher class or, you know, the idea of being judged as being out of your, something being out of your league.

Is that? Well, you know, I think I was at, I was dressed to the right, like, level of formality. I had a, I was wearing a tie in a jacket. I was wearing of, like, a bow tie. Mm-hmm. I very specifically remember that. And, uh, and it was a black tie. So, but it was like, I was, like, wrong and I was, like, embarrassed about it.

So, you know, it might be one of those things where you should. show up and I had the right idea of formality. I just, I didn't quite get it. So. Yeah. The idea of trying to fit in somewhere you don't belong in a way or or feeling yourself a pretender in,

in some manner. Um, you know, if I really belonged here, I would also be, I would, I would look more like the people. Um,

but it's also, uh, just noticing difference. And sometimes difference isn't a judgment, but it, but this does seem in my mind to be leaning more in that direction of comparing yourself. to others in in terms of a self-assessment compared to some perhaps higher standard.

I don't know if that. Yeah, I was definitely feeling, uh, I was definitely embarrassed about it. Like in the dream, at least, I was, I was self-conscious about, uh, the ways in which I wasn't fitting it. Yeah. And that's because you gave me so much great, great detail about your internal experience, your emotional experience of, I think a lot of these things popped into my head. And I'm like, oh, so that's how we reference this.

observations like here's how I saw here's what I saw and here's how I felt about it. And then the yeah, that's what I'm saying a lot of those, a lot of those references of like the difference and you specifically being smaller like half the size, the size of a child. And it's thinking of ourselves as a child compared to adults, full size people. It's like, well, there's I am as yet undeveloped or I have not yet risen to the standard. you know, I have not achieved my full potential or something like that. And there's other things that make me think that's somewhere that this is going is towards the end of the piano playing as well.

What do you think of that idea of the compared to the size comparison? I don't do anything. I mean, I think you're probably right. You're probably right on the money with that, I think. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, this idea that it's like it did feel a lot like being a kid. and you know you're you were brought to a party with like all adults or something like that yeah got that's exactly yeah and then interesting too of like there's no other kids my age here you get that sort

yeah yeah yeah and no one else your height i mean no one else is in a way the height is like on your level no one of they're all but they're all above you in a way like we give us some of these very physical literal representations of of something um and you gave yourself another comparison to that as well which was the idea of the dog, then being also puppy size. But full grown looking, just as you were full grown looking, but still puppy size. I was child size, but I did have like my scrappy facial hair. And she was adult size, but she did, like she looked, she was puppy size, but she looked like an adult dog. Yeah.

It seems like your brain went one extra level and say, you know, we say is A as to B is B is to C kind of a thing. So the difference between A and B is now reflected also in the difference between B and C. And there's this kind of like, okay, so that's where I am. That's showing yourself, here's another representation of the same dynamic going on between A and B. And there is also the difference between B and C. I want to stop there. Does that make sense? Those three levels of comparison.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Wolf is to coyote as to hyena as as hawk is to raven as to vulture. Yeah, yeah. I'm, I am as compared to these people as if I were a child. just like my dog compared to me is as if a puppy in size. Like the difference in our, and I don't know what it is,

whether it's social standing, ability, confidence, what is being compared? I'm not entirely sure yet, but there's, the broader concept of social comparison and self-assessment. And yeah,

so that's what I'm writing down to. I've got self-assessment. I want to go off my note, margin notes. Self-assessment. comparison to higher standards social comparison i think we're going somewhere along those lines um you don't stop me if you're like no that's not it but then there's also the idea of the um the shadow you you stood out to you that you're the only thing cast a shadow and i would say

that to me speaks like a another way you're conspicuously different yeah the idea that you're embarrassed by this you know you're the way you dress compared to them the way you i cast a shadow and they don't. It's like, and that's interesting the idea that you would phrase this. So that probably means something specific. There's probably a hint in there, that idea of casting a shadow when others don't. I don't know where to go with that. Like if shadow means something to you specifically or how you conceptualize what a shadow means. I think it felt very, it felt very similar to my hair. Like they had like these like these clean, shiny heads. And I was scruffy. They didn't even cast a shadow and I had it. It, it sort of felt to me on that level. Like,

It wasn't strange. Like, it wasn't supernatural feeling to me that they didn't have a shadow. Yeah. It was almost like, you know, shaving. You know,

you shave your beard hair, you get rid of your shadow or you go to a fancy event. And I didn't do that. Sure. How would we characterize that feeling or that, that concept? Like, what's the,

what's the right word for it? Um, because we've got kind of the concepts of social comparison. But if you're like, if someone is better, they have a better exterior presentation. Or, you know,

do you see where I'm going? with that i mean i'm my words are failing me right now there's something versus unpolished i mean that that would literally go to the shiny bald head polished the shiny bald head yeah polished diamond in the rough let's write that down just uh just cause just cause i'm gonna forget i said it if i don't write it down um another thing that popped up in my mind is you're you're looking at you're looking at the people at a fancy event, at something higher class in a way, um,

then you deem yourself. You feel like you're out of place in this environment. Like maybe you're not worthy or you haven't risen to that level. I've been ascended to that height. But you're also looking at, oh, um, okay. So, and then there's the chandeliers and oh, and everything's white all over like the environment, the tables. Um, white versus say you're,

your dark clothes and, and, you know, perhaps brown dog. and um um um um um um dark hair compared to theirs um light and dark there's a in in this context it feels to me like there's some kind of pure like the word purity applies like it's the it's the purity meaning of white does that make sense or would you choose a different word well well i almost think it's like uh the i'd say it's oh oh i don't like it's oh i don't say this. It felt like the opposite, like a hospital is white because it's supposed to look clean, but a hospital is kind of a dirty place. Like in the, in the same way, like, you know,

escargo is like supposedly a fancy food and they had it there, but it's gross. Yeah. Like, it's almost, you know, a place that's too clean. It's, it was off-putting. Okay. Sterile? Yeah, sterile. Oh yeah, it, like, feels like something is clean. but you can still smell the bleach on it, like that sort of scale. Okay. That's good, too. So there's,

what am I trying to say? There's a feeling I'm getting, as you're describing it, is that, and I was going to this direction with it, and I might as well go to it now, is what's on the tables is supposed to be, so a lot of things are supposed to be representative of common understandings of what,

something high class, means. But you look at it more closely and you're like, as you said, the escargo, everything on this table, what what these people supposedly above me enjoy, I find disgusting. So there's, there's a, there's a bit of a you looking at yourself examining the idea of social comparison, looking at people who are supposed, something you're supposed to want to aspire to looking at it going, this is not really appealing to me personally. What the food on the table is disgusting, the, environment is so sterile that it's uninteresting. There's no, there's no colors and textures. It's just this bland. Sometimes white can be purity. You can also just be bland. Like this is,

where's, where's the color? Where's the textures? You know, where's, where's something interesting to look at? And you look at these people and you're like, sure, they're tall. They've ascended to this height, whatever it is. But they're all bald and bug-eyed and weird looking. It's like, do I, do I want to be that? I mean, what am I, what standard am I holding myself to? If I just stop there and you think about that concept in general of like what you're supposed to want versus what you actually want. Does anything come to mind? I mean, I do know that, you know, in New England, a lobster bake is common if like the crustaceans of the food. And it's supposed to be like this, you know, once or twice a year or you can get this treat.

But it's like kind of this disgusting thing that we do. We like we take fish bugs and we boil them alive and we crack them open with the fam. Yeah. Yeah, and the idea of, well, that specifically you said, look, this stuff is so unappealing. You've even got these snails on there, which are supposed to be the height of refined palate, a rare exquisite delicacy. And you're like, I'm seeing, I'm eating bugs. It's nasty. I don't want that at all.

Yeah. So I think a lot of times in our life we do that. It's the broader concept of we're told what we should want by people we respect. And then we look at what it actually is when we get closer to it and we're like, I don't actually want that. That isn't as appealing as I was told I should feel it to be. You know, does that make sense? Yeah. I think we're going somewhere, somewhere along those lines with that.

Also, you, you, that something happens where you are, so you've had this experience of examining the environment. Oh, and we never really talked about the chandeliers either. It means for, in a white room, they're like silver, though, which is also kind of like silver fancy, like silver shantlemen. silver shan, or gold chandelier. You know, it could have been made up, it could have been made a brass. It could have been, could have been made a wood.

It could have been a wagon wheel with just candles on or something, you know. But it was specifically like this, this, it fit with the theme of, of things that are supposed to be high quality and signs of wealth and success and nobility and all these,

all these higher class distinctions. But the wax is, even dripping down onto the table and onto the food, I would assume. It's like just making it even more disgusting. It's like here's the here's the trappings of all this high quality stuff. Yeah, yeah. The candles are burning right above the food and the wax is falling down. And the ash and the wax are all falling down. Yeah. Yeah. One of those things is like it's just the closer you look at each new detail,

the more, the less appealing all of this really looks. And so at some point, you decide you need to move towards the front. Did that happen in a specific way? It's like the end It's like a It's a long narrow Like hall Like you might think of like a

Like a throne room Where the throne's at the end of it But instead of at the end of it It just kind of it It ends with the wall And I'm moving towards the The wall Okay

So you kind of Place yourself at the You know Just beyond the entrance And then you move towards the other end Yeah Well I think I like spot In the dream I like

Oh hi My dog's I like spawned in, like, the middle of the event. Oh, okay. Gotcha. Like, I was just suddenly in it. Gotcha. Gotcha.

And you realized that there was another end of the room, more to explore. And that's what I was wondering. Like, was there any sense of motivation for changing your specific location? Um, I think it was just sort of like a, the natural sort of. I'm going to find a corner to hang out, like sort of thing. Okay. If you don't like this party, you find a corner and you like, you, you know, hook you, uh, I don't, you, you, you, you, you, you, uh, you, you, you, you, like, you're, like, you're, like, this came on the heels of feeling conspicuously out of place and embarrassed. Okay. Seeking an edge or wall to flower upon, as they say, um, yeah, moving. And there's a, there's a thing of, like, say, if you're in the middle of the room, that is perhaps the center of attention. Like, I would rather be on the periphery of attention. I'm not, I'm not looking to be seen in this environment. Not, not at the moment. Uh, uh, not, not at the moment. Uh, uh, not how I'm feeling.

And what you find when you get there is what you initially thought was a table covered in a white cloth, like other tables. Yeah. It just started thundering outside. Okay. Good signs. Yeah. Thematically appropriate.

Indeed, Thor has visited you to punctuate your storytelling. like, the center of attention. There's something also about the middle, the mainstream, and the margins. And if you're in the middle, you're the center of attention, but you're also at the median. You're also at the center of, say, a conceptual framework. And there's something about moving to the edge that allows you to discover what looks like any other table, but it's actually a device. It's actually a tool.

And you have, but first you have to uncover it to reveal the tool. Yeah. And the piano was, it was a black piano too. So, so it was like, I took it off and I was like,

oh, there's, it's sort of a, why would they cover up a grand piano? Like they're, even if you don't want anybody to play, it's like a set piece still. It is. Yeah. And it is very interesting that that's why I say you have to uncover it. It was hidden in this environment. You actually had to, you had to move to a specific place relative to the, to the full milieu, I guess, to get a Frenchie. And it was only at the margin at the edge out of the center where you found hidden a tool. And it wasn't and you uncovered it. And it wasn't why it could have very well been a white piano. It could have been like, oh, here's a thing that. was never covered. It's a white piano. It belongs in this environment and I'm going to try to play it. No, you find something that is as out of place as you are. The words that are coming to mind are like, it's unique. It's different. It's a tool more suited to you, but that also doesn't belong in the environment as much as you don't by comparison. And you don't have the sense that it was twice as big as it should be because you were half as small as you should be. It was, it was just. It was just.

just the right size for you? Yeah, I do think it was just the right size for me, where everything else was too big. Although I don't play grand pianos a lot, so I don't really know how big exactly they should be. But it did feel like I could reach either end while just sitting down. And most people in their home would have a baby grand. I think that's what most of us think about.

Like a true grand piano is like 10 feet long. It's huge. Yeah. Like a baby grand is maybe six to six feet long. But it's still, but it's still Billy. But that's what most people think of as a grand piano. piano. Not to, not to, you know, split hairs and parse. Do you need a moment?

No, just a big lightning strike. Hold on. It was my other dog coming down to join me. Oh, yeah. That's okay. They got to, uh, they got to feel comfy when it's scary outside. It's the smaller one so you can join me up here. Okay. Here's your puppy. Oh, hello. Love the eminels. Yes. There you go. Well, that wasn't very long. I might leave that in. We'll see. So if I remember it. I wrote down a timestamp was like 30 seconds. It's not a big deal. So, yeah.

I could have been talking through it, but I was just like, I wonder what's going on. I wonder if his house got hit. Jesus. Yeah, they're just, just hiding from the lightning. So, so what you did then was you began to play. And immediately you noticed it was burning you. It was like touching a hot stove. Yeah, very, like, I trust the key.

I were tracking my hand. By the way, I don't play piano. I don't know how to play piano. but it was like an instinct like whenever you see you see something with keys you press the key I was like yeah so

did you eventually make music or you're just plinking around the whole time I think I was confident that I could just do it like there was I sat down it was like this confidence that like I could handle it

but I don't know that there was like there was no audio So there's no music. Yeah. I think there's something interesting there, too, that you've got, you're showing yourself confidently demonstrating a skill you don't have in real life. But the process is touching hot keys. And immediately what came to my mind is going to the gym to sweat and strain and come home with sore muscles so that you get bigger.

It's like the effort, the painful effort you put into learning a new skill to eventually be able to demonstrate. that skill. Something along those lines. Does I feel right? Maybe. I don't know if it was the, it didn't feel like I was learning. It almost just felt like I had this instinct to play.

Sure, sure. So it's not about process as much as there's some kind of, but what we have is a very, very direct, visceral representation of pain during the demonstration of a skill. But maybe we don't know why. Why is this pain? happening? Why is the piano causing pain? I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Like, what, what, why would this need to be a painful process? Why, why wouldn't, why wouldn't you just touch the keys and they, they feel like cool ivory, you know? Well, I don't know, I don't know if I, like, thematically in the story of the dream, I don't know. I, like, if you want, like, a literal, why does it burn? I think I just have a very, uh, high neuroticism score on, like, my ocean. it's like something's going to go bad.

And in this case, the bad thing was the piano keys are very high. Okay. There could be an element there. I mean, if that's what came to your mind, the idea that nothing's, nothing's perfect. Even,

even this beautiful thing is still like, there's still a fatal flaw, perhaps. Yeah. The keys burn my fingers. Oh, great. Well, fine. I'm still going to play. And the reason,

the reason I went with the effort is painful explanation is because you literally work your fingers. to the bone. Did that, did that come to your mind? I never thought about that. I mean, we've been, yeah,

I didn't think of working my fingers to the bone. It's very funny. You're right. I did literally work my fingers to the bone. Yeah. And it was, and it was not to acquire the skill. It was to demonstrate the skill.

So, so there is a difference there. I think you're right on that. I was, it's like, it's not like going to the gym to get stronger. It's like, okay,

you're already stronger. And now you're lifting heavy things. It's still painful in a way. Yeah. I don't know, I don't know where to go with that. exactly. That's funny.

If I saw that in the movie, I would say that's a very heavy-handed metaphor, but I wouldn't think about it. Yeah. That's why sometimes you need a mirror. You need someone to just listen from the outside and go, what am I, what am I seeing here? What is it? What can I reflect back? I'm going to write that down too.

I've got it on another page, but if I have to keep looking back to other pages, I forget what I'm even looking for. So, and, and this, this is also the, the, the behavior of your, you know, your own action in the dream that draws attention. they oh it no it was actually um what am i trying to say uh your dog sits on the bench with you now was did you only become aware of the dog sitting on the bench i think i put her there i think i lifted her up and sat her next to you before you started playing that kind of thing yeah okay and it wasn't as much the or was it uh maybe i'm misremembering it wasn't so much the piano playing

itself, but the dog barking that drew their attention? I think I think the dog was barking in response. The dog's barking drew my attention to their attention being on me. But the piano playing did draw their attention towards me. Okay. Gotcha. So

piano equals let's say people attention to you and then dog equal barking, barking. equals you attention to the people. That's interesting too.

You did not notice them on your own. It's not like, oh, and I looked up and they noticed they were all looking at me. Or one of them coughed and I noticed. They didn't draw attention to themselves. You didn't spontaneously see them. You had to be directed to become aware by some kind of intermediary. So why is the dog there? Now, we talked a little bit more about, or in the beginning, about the dog being there as a comparison.

But that may not be the, okay, that may be true or may not be true. And it may be true and the intermediary at the same time, or it may have always been the intermediary. And we were just mischaracterizing it. I don't know if you have any thoughts just based on touching the edges of the concept. why is the dog here? I don't know yeah I can't think of anything I would say

the dog is almost like an extension of my character in the dream like in the same way the clothes are yeah like I'm here with the clothes with the jacket the dog is almost not really a separate

entity yeah yeah I think so too I think it's a piece of you in a way that maybe now there's there's theories which say everything in the dream is a part of you technically yes but that's not very useful like what parts of you and what does it represent everything in a dream just so you know is happening in your head it is literally happening so those people are technically correct but it's not a useful distinction um but the idea that okay well which part of you and so the the the people in the room it's like what thought what concept do they represent that's where we start breaking it down

So I think you're right to say the dog is a piece of you. It's the piece of you that directs your attention to people that are looking at you. Now, now you've got their focus, their attention. It's what brings your attention to the fact that other people are giving you their attention. I wish I could use other words. You know, it barks out a warning, barks out a, hey, look here. I mean, there's something to do with a bark. I mean, why do dogs bark?

bark to, you know, to threaten, but also to, how do they, how do they do that? They, you know, they bark to get attention. So, yeah, I don't know if I'm putting too much thought into it or it should. It did feel like, you know, when she barks, when the, the FedEx guy is pulling on, it, it felt like that kind of barking. It didn't feel like a, a plate dog took my sock and left. She didn't feel like a playful bark. It felt like there's someone here I don't like it bark.

Gotcha. Something that demands your attention. Something that needs to be addressed or observed. Hey, hey look here. Not, yeah, not I'm comfortable. Let's play. It could be as simple as that and probably is. I might be trying

to overthink it. I don't know. I don't know. Just something's teasing me. I was like, why? I guess in some ways there needed to be a mechanism for you for your attention to be drawn to their bus. Why did you need the dog there? Why did it? Maybe it's saying something to yourself about like, you know, you're not always aware of what other people think.

And so sometimes you need a cue to direct your assessment to observing what's going on around you, what other people, how they're responding to you. I don't know if that makes sense. Are you that? I'm that kind of way. Sometimes I don't know what people are thinking or saying because they haven't told me and I'm not picking up the cues and I would need a third party or some other kind of thing to say, hey, by the way, here's what you don't notice is happening right in front of you. Yeah, I feel like people say that to me a lot, but I feel like they're wrong.

Fair enough. I feel like I do notice and I feel like I was right the whole time. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. So that would be a significant difference in our experience. I mean, sometimes I do. Sometimes I do pick up what you're putting down, you know?

And sometimes I'm completely oblivious and they're like, I mean, so many examples throughout my life. Like, did you know that person was trying to be insulting? I'm like, no, we were just having a conversation. They were saying some interesting things. I'm like, no, they were making funny. I'm like, didn't get that at all at all. Like, like, you know, the thing you said, you know, maybe that was not appropriate. I was like, it was appropriate actually.

It's more like, yeah, it's more likely that I would say something inappropriate. And I'm like, well, see, here's the thing. is I can't what did I get? Actually, everything I say is the right appropriate thing to say in the moment. That's what I'm saying. You're the one being inappropriate. Yeah, yeah. What I miss is that they took it to be inappropriate.

You know, not that I thought I actually was, but that they were offended by that. They were offended by that. I was offended by it. No, you weren't. Yep, exactly. You said something offensive. Actually, I did not. They chose to take offense and I didn't notice.

That's more like what it is. And I wasn't wrong. And I apologize for nothing good day, sir. actually what happened is you offended me and I was gracious enough to take your apology. Absolutely. So maybe that's it. It's just you're showing yourself a representation of that kind of thing of like here. Hey, here's something you weren't aware of until it was brought to your attention by some external cue.

But what it ends up being is now these things are looking where before they were ignoring you, now they're looking at you. And what you see is. that they've got these kind of goofy bug eyes. Yeah, I'm thinking, now I'm thinking the shadow over Insmouth, if you ever read that it's a Lovecraft problem. They were fish-like. Their eyes were fish-like, they were big, they were bulging, they looked like you didn't have eyelids,

and then their teeth were like, if you ever seen Hellraiser, the chattering centibite? Oh, yeah, yeah. Fish eyes. It was that. No lids, chattering teeth. I wrote that down before. So not only,

um, not only do you feel out of place, you feel what, what you are, let's see, you feel the thing you are not like is actually, turns out to be kind of this kind of horrifying, weird,

gross, you know, disgusting thing. Yeah, inhuman. Yeah. Yeah. It's,

it's almost like a, almost like a confirmation that, uh, every step of the way along this thing. you're like, here's something I should or I've been told I should want. But the closer and closer and closer I look at it, the less appealing it is. And the more, the less human it feels in a way. And in a lot of ways, even our ideals about what humans should be are sometimes unappealing and gross.

So there may be something going on in that genre, in that genre, in that direction of thought. I think I figured it out. What's up? This whole thing represented the presidential press turn. What? And I'm in a room with politician and journals. That's what this whole thing was.

I'm just, I'm not sure, if you're kidding, but I wrote it down anyway. I'm joking about it. Okay. Well, it could be. It could very well could relate to politicians and journalists.

Like, that may have been, if that popped into your mind, that may have been a genre, you're looking at like, Sean, I keep using that word. like an area of focus, a slice, a layer of analysis of a particular type of situation.

You know, I don't think I would feel, okay, number one, I'm not very comfortable in social gatherings to begin with. I certainly would not want to be in attendance at social gatherings with really high standards for very specific behavior that is appropriate and certain tastes that are demanded of you and demonstrate. of of social appropriateness and and signals of value of virtue signaling but like with with with with dress and mannerisms that's very much not my comfort zone that's not a place I would enjoy being I would not want to be there at all I would actually probably never show up I'm not going to an award show I'm not getting up on stage this is not happening uh you know that kind of a thing you know I think I like kind of the idea of like uh like a black I like the idea of the idea of the I like the idea of getting ready for a black tie event. But I don't think I'd actually like

like it in the moment. Hey, my D100 is not a ball. Don't touch it. Whatever you do, don't eat it or chew on it. Yeah, I think we're very... I don't know if I like beating it. Yeah, exactly. That's kind of where I was going with this thing.

It's not like... Sometimes we look at, I don't know, if you can still hear me. Yep. Okay, that's fine. I mean, you can get them walk around if you need to. I don't mind. As long as you can, you know,

well, you get the earbuds in. I forgot that. Yep. There are many things in our life where we look at that. That's why I keep coming back to that idea. Things we're told we're supposed to want. And then we start looking at it going, well, I really don't. None of this is appealing.

And so if there's a, if there's a core idea, that's why I was, was visualizing it as like, you know, a circle with the center and then the margin being, by contrast to the to the center is that you know the closer we get to the ideal the center of an ideal or the further away on the edges i think there's something going on in this dream where it's like well did we get to the end before i before i say that um you play in the piano work your fingers to the bone realize that there's no sound there's no smell wait i'm dreaming um i don't know if that's

I would kind of be tempted and I think it feels right to say there was a shifted, you know, physiological shift, that this was not a psychological phenomenon of you dreaming that you were becoming lucid and not hearing any sound. There was more like you drifted closer to consciousness into that lucid realm and became aware of how dream like everything was. And then you start picking up the details. Wait, why can't I hear anything? Why can't I smell anything?

this isn't real. And then you moved the rest of the way through. So it was just a brief little window of passing through that lucid range. Does that feel right rather than it being a psychological phenomenon of the dream to have that quote-unquote lucid experience? Yeah, I think so. Okay. I do think that like maybe I was waking up anywhere and I was like, this was just a moment. But it is weird.

It is kind of weird to wake up at the before that early before the alarm. And it's not typical. Do you have lucid dreams? Nope. I never. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah.

I wish I knew what that was like as well. I mean, I've had, I've had the experience of, what is it? Suddenly. I didn't do any of the fun lucid dreams thing. Exactly.

I'm dreaming. Get out of this party. Yeah. What, the experience, the closest experience I've had is where I would say, um, I am,

I suddenly become aware that I was dreaming a moment ago. but I'm no longer in the dream. Like I don't think I've ever had an experience where I'm like, I am still in the dream and I'm aware of it. It's like only an after the fact little post hoc awareness of like, oh, I was just dreaming. That's what that was. But now I'm not. It's the first moment of realization that I'm awake, that kind of a thing. But I most often don't remember those.

I know that's a real phenomenon I've had before. So yeah, I mean, so broad strokes, what do we get going on here? it does seem like there's a lot of or the whole thing seems to be looking at like maybe maybe choosing a path forward in life and considering options like what do I want what have I been told I should want how does that really make me feel when I've attempted these things before I feel awkward not a place so whatever this ideal is that's not where I feel at home it's not where I feel comfortable but if I move to the edge of this experience if I'm more on the margin if I do think differently my own way. If I find the tool that suits me because, you know, it's not part of the white, sterile background, it's a black, like I'm in black. And so we're equally, you know, this is a tool that fits me. I can demonstrate skill, even though it's maybe painful to do so, because nothing's ever easy. And the people who are in that environment, I was told I was supposed to want, when they turn their attention to me,

they realize I don't belong there either. And I look at like, I don't really want to be here. I don't want to be a part of you either. If I phrase it that way as a kind of a narrative arc across the story, anything come to mind or does it feel right? I mean, it feels right as a description.

It almost feels like I'm moving to the edge of the party. It feels like I have this theory. about uh which is you should you should conform but like only 75% like you know you shouldn't be one of these freaks that just does whatever no matter what like you know you still have to wear a tie to a wedding but maybe you can wear a red sneaker you know the red sneakers sure or you can wear a you can wear a suit but you can wear like black jeans be kind of cool yeah yeah i mean and that that assessment of the dream i think kind of fits with your personality.

What little, little I've managed to glean of it from talking to you is that, you know, there's only, no, you've got the whole personality down. Well, there's only so, yeah,

there's only so much conformity that, you know, I think you or I feel comfortable with. You know, I, what is it? Let's see. There are people who feel strongly,

if you don't shower once every single day, that's gross. And I look at myself like, yeah, but I didn't do anything yesterday. I didn't even break a sweat. I'm freshly clean and I'm still clean. I'm going to skip a day.

And what I do is, you know, I don't shower just because someone told me they think I should. But also I just don't tell anyone because I don't want anyone to think I'm gross, even if I skip a day. You shouldn't shower because it's normal. You should shower because you really need it. Yeah. And then some people say, well, you're filthy every day. I'm like, that's not my standard. So I'm just going to go ahead and not do that.

Even if you look at me funny with bug eyes and chattering teeth, whatever. You know, it's different in the winter and the summer too. You know, if it's a hot summer, you should shower every day. Oh, yeah. Or at least rinse off with a hose. outside, that's fine. Just wipe the sweat off, the grime, you know, otherwise it gets sticky and things get, you start to smell. And that's the other thing, too, is I wouldn't, but, but I conform to social norms in terms of if I'm going to go out in public, maybe I, you know, hit the

pits with the, with the, with the, with the, with the, uh, deodorant, you know, just, just cause. It's, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to gross anyone out, but there's a limit to my conformity. And I am, uh, very significantly abnormal, fringe, different. I mean, I'm a crazy person who calls himself a wizard. I'm a little, I'm a little strange. And I think that's, that's, there are people more, greater and lesser degrees of comfort with being socially different. And everyone has their limit on how weird they are willing to be in terms of how much it ostracizes themselves from the social norm and other people. So the question then becomes, when this dream happened, was there anything in your life that was going on where that became a relevant question?

You were interviewing for a job. You were considering going to a wedding, a party. You were, you know, thinking about your future in terms of what do I want to be, uh, job opportunities. I mean, anything going on when this dream happened. Well, I don't, I don't think so. Like, I feel like it's been pretty okay. The storm is picking up.

My dog's really freaking out. Oh. I think that, uh, I think it's been pretty normal. That's why I was so weirded out by it. I was like, this is kind of a, a really story. screen that just happened out of nowhere. Gotcha. Okay.

Well, we can't always relate it directly to things. And sometimes those things are so subconscious that, you know, we have the thought. We have the perception. But it's not linked to anything. We don't know where, we don't know why. We don't know what inspired that. It could be as, as as as a passing throwaway thought that happened for a fraction of a second in the middle of a busy day.

And it's, we just couldn't let it go though. So we didn't go back to it later. even though it, it, it, it wasn't a, a topic of long pondering in the middle of a, you know, a still moment. But yeah, I think hopefully if you meditate on it, you know, let it percolate in the background, now that we've talked about it, something might come up and you go, you know what, I think that was related to this one experience I had on this day that just couldn't come to mind during the interview. You know, I, I think it's a, it's a, maybe a relatively constant theme. Oh, okay.

There's that too. I actually had almost the opposite experience. I went to, they threw a birthday party for my mother and I was like, you know what? I'm wearing a tuxedo. And it was like a sports bar. It was like a sports bar and I was like, I'm doing tuxedo. Yeah. You can overdress for an occasion.

I mean, how close was that event relative to the dream? It was like, it was six months. Oh, not even, not not close at all. Yeah, fair enough. No. That's okay. Yeah. No, it was maybe it is a constant theme.

And probably this. If you pay attention, maybe other dreams of this type will come back and you're like, okay, well, you know, it's asking the same question. You're trying to dial in what you think is reasonable or or what feels the best for you in terms of where do I fit in? How much do I want to fit in? How much do I have to fit in? Because it's necessary to just go along to get along. Yeah. I did wear a suit last time.

We did this together. Oh, yeah. I was wearing this. That's right. That's right. Well, there's a, there's a phenomenon that happens sometimes where, Someone contacts me and they say, hey, I got a dream for you. And then we make an appointment.

And well, because of their busy schedule and mine, we can't meet for like a month. The night before they talk to me, they have another dream. They're like, we got to do this one. And something about their brain knowing they're going to talk to me tomorrow says, don't waste this opportunity. Here's something even better. And their brain gives them a new dream experience to talk about that's even more important to them.

But this actually happened differently with you. It's like, you had this dream and then reached out to me and said, hey, I already had the dream. And then we are talking about that dream. I think your camera just froze. Can you hear me? Yeah, completely frozen. I wonder, am I getting a message here?

Let's look. Did something just happen? Maybe. Oh! It might have killed the connection entirely because you're having stormy weather. If you don't come back in a moment, I'm going to wrap up the show. Because I think we got, I was about to do that anyway, and I think we got as far as we could go. I'm going to say, I'm going to say,

I was hoping he was going to come back in just that moment. I think we're done. I think that's the end of the show. That is plenty long enough. We talked this thing to death. I cannot say goodbye to our guest who is still frozen on the screen here. It is what it is. Probably the stormy weather situation, got the better of them.

And that's okay. We'll talk in chat later. Oh, there he goes. Okay. Well, I'm going to say to all of you out there. Would you kindly like share or subscribe, tell your friends. always need more volunteer dreamers with a stable internet connection, not in the middle of a lightning storm. But hey, things are what they are.

Don't worry about it. There's always technical difficulties. It doesn't bother me a bit. You can see, I got a pretty positive attitude and, you know, I'm not very judgmental. So, uh, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. It's okay. Um, I have 17 currently available works of historical dream literature available.

The most recent dreams and they're, uh, I'm sorry, the fabric of dreams. Wow. By Catherine Taylor Craig. I'm all kinds of thrown off my game. of course you can get all this and more at benjamin the dream wizard.com including mp3 downloads of this very podcast. Also, if you would head on over to Benjamin the dreamwizard.locals.com

join the community there. It is attached to my Rumble account completely free to join. You can give me money or not. You can reach out. We'll talk about your dreams. That is about it. I will say, you know, of course, to our friend, Calvin, thanks for being here.

Sorry, we got disconnected at the very end, but you know what? I think we were done anyway, and I appreciate your time. So the last thing to say is to everyone out there in the audience. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.