Wiretap - Wake Up, Call Me, Tell Me Your Dream

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

What does it mean when you dream that your teeth are falling out? What about when 10,000 people dream their teeth are falling out? A dream-trend analyst with her finger on the pulse of slumbering societies shares her findings.

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I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and you're listening to Wiretap on CBC Radio 1. Today's episode, wake up, call me, tell me your dream. SDRC, this is Robin. Hello, my name is Jonathan, and I think I found one of your business cards on the subway? It just said, wake up, call me, tell me your dream. I found it very curious, and I was just calling you up. Do you have a dream to share? I do, yeah. Should I just go ahead and just go ahead and share that? Well, I mean, it's a dream that I have from time to time. I was being chased by this old high school gym teacher of mine.

A man or woman? A man. Okay. Mr. Solivinsky. Okay. And he's chasing me through what seems to be some kind of corn maze. Mm-hmm. And he is gaining on me, and I keep tripping on my shoelaces.

What color are your shoes? White. And what kind of corn was it? Do you know if it was sweet corn, silver queen, Seneca, Blue Hopi? I didn't eat any of it. Okay, but you did not detect the color, the scent, the size, where it was in the harvest. Boy, I have to say, for dream analysis, this is getting a lot more precise than anything I've ever experienced in therapy. Oh, well, this isn't for therapy.

We're doing a sociological study. And your particular dream doesn't fit into our current study. But thank you so much for giving a call, and I hope you sleep well. Before you go, can I just ask what study? Well, I work for the Social Trends Research Center, the STRC, in the Dream Division, and we study how trends in dreams reflect fluctuating trends in greater society. I'm sorry, what does that mean exactly? Well, unlike individual dream analysis, like, let's say what it means when you have a dream that all your teeth have fallen out or that kind of thing, we're really looking at the larger scale of what it means when, say, 10,000 people dream the same thing in the same week. How do you find out what 10,000 people are dreaming in a given week?

Well, the STRC has dozens of data collection centers across North America, even international bureaus. And in an effort to kind of get more random sampling, we scatter business cards like the one you found across subways, sometimes in parks, library books. And you'd actually be surprised at how many calls we get. People love talking about their dreams. We get about 7 to 10,000 calls like yours a day. If you don't mind my asking, what trends in dreams have you been noticing over the years? Well, for instance, when Michael Jackson died, a lot of people are having dreams about Michael Jackson. Or when the Olympics are going on, people have dreams about winning, losing, you know, being on the podium, et cetera.

But what I'm personally interested in is trending nightmares. Nightmares that are being dreamt by a lot of people? Yes, exactly. Ben Laden, for example, once September 11th happened, a lot of people are having dreams of him. Some are literal like that. Others are more symbolic, like mugging nightmares, actually, during the economic downturn and the global financial crisis, mugging nightmares have gone up about, let me see, 17%. You actually have this charted. We do.

Yeah, we have an incredible database. And why are you especially interested in nightmares, per se? well there is a slightly more controversial aspect to my work um how do you mean controversial well we're beginning to see that these dream trends are not just indicators of what is happening but they actually might be predictors of what's going to happen I don't know if I'm understanding you mean you're you talking about like dreams but in the weeks leading up to the 2004 tsunami, there was a 20% increase in drowning nightmares worldwide. That is not an isolated example.

We have tons of examples of this. Like the week before the Oklahoma City bombing, there was a preponderance of dreams in and around Oklahoma City that included exploding windows. And I don't think that's a coincidence. You don't think that's a coincidence. No. So my goal is to try and get good enough at deciphering these trends, to try to predict disaster situations, you know, much like a seismologist study seismic waves to try to predict earthquakes,

we're doing the same with the collective unconscious. That, okay, that sounds a little loopy. I mean, dreams don't predict a future. They're just dreams. I know it's hard for most people to understand. I don't know if you've heard or read much about string theory. A little. I mean, I'm not an expert or anything, but...

Okay, well, there are a lot of very smart people who believe that there are parallel universes, you know, different timelines that may or may not be overlaught. You know, some might be slightly out of sync. Maybe they're happening in a five-second lag, or maybe they're a bit ahead of ours. And one of the theories behind it is that our dreams may be windows into timelines that have already taken place, things that have already happened. And these are just theories. But empirically, we are amassing an impressive collection of data, pointing to the fact that dreams are not just nighttime distractions and that there is knowledge to be had in looking at them in aggregate on a mass scale. That's a really fascinating theory. So what about my dream? You don't think maybe my dream might be a glimpse into something that's about to take place? I suppose it's possible, but not all dreams have sociological relevance. Some dreams are just personal.

But maybe my dream means something bigger, you know, like maybe the way that I... Look, not everyone has to dream big. It doesn't mean your dreams aren't important. I mean, your dreams are your connection to your unconscious, and that's a very incredible thing. It's a private thing. Right. I mean, if you think about it, why would you want the meaning of your dreams to be bogged down in the real world? Where's the magic in that?

I mean, wouldn't you rather your dreams be a chance for your soul to free itself from the confines of reality and explore fantastic imagined realms? My name is Mark Vandekier. I'm the author of the ultimate lucid dreamer's manual. And lucid dreams or conscious dreams are dreams in which you actually realize you're dreaming within the dream itself. And as long as you can hold on to your lucidity,

you can then control the dream and fly around or basically do almost anything your heart desires. And how often do you have lucid dreams during a given week? I probably have about three or four per week, I would say, on average. They really run the scale back and forth from deeply profound spiritual dreams to dreams that kind of change your actual views on reality. You're able to experience wild things like a 360-degree site where you can see all the way around you at the same time.

So just like mind-boggling things like that that you could never think would be possible, you really can experience it in a dream. And how long can a lucid dream last? I'd say a typical lucid dream for most people can last about five, ten minutes. It really depends, though. The lucidity can come and go. You may realize you're dreaming for a while, but then the next thing you know you get suckered into the dream

or forget that it's a dream. So a lot of it is just learning the tips and techniques to actually maintain your lucidity. but it's definitely something that comes with practice and time. So could you give us a kind of simple primer on how one would go about lucid dreaming? Certainly. The first step I always recommend is that you need to remember your dreams. And most people just say, oh, I love the idea, but I don't dream.

So I just always explain to people that you do dream, you just need to learn to remember them. And there's lots of techniques, keep in a dream journal's excellent way, By keeping your dream journal, you start noticing patterns in what you dream, and then you kind of learn the language of your dream signs, and then you can connect your waking with your dreaming awareness by doing reality check. So as soon as I started doing that is when I really noticed my results just took off exponentially. Sorry, what is a reality check exactly? A reality check is pretty much the basic tool as a lucid dreamer that you will do while you're awake. and the purpose is for you to clue in your awareness to the fact as to whether you may be dreaming or not. So you're to do these things when you're awake?

Yes, while you're awake, say, you just look around and you'd say, am I dreaming? You could do a couple tests like try flicking a light switch on and off. If you do that a few times and it goes out of sync, or if the lights go out and don't come back on, then you'd know that you'd be in a dream. And the whole idea behind the reality check is that normally you would never, question whether you're dreaming. You just always assume that you're awake. So when you're in a dream, you might be in a living room and an elephant strolls in on a skateboard. You just accept, whatever it is, you don't have that critical awareness. So it's almost like the reality checks are

kind of an exercise for building your critical awareness. Another thing I can do is put my hands through matter. So I'll just take my hand and slowly push on a wall, and in my dream, I can do that. And if not, you might look silly doing that, but it's worth it when you have lucid dreams. Because often the moment of realizing I'm dreaming will be what jolts me awake. How can you hold on to that sense of lucidity without waking up? Yeah, you know, that is the number one common experience for people is, I'd say, the first lucid dream may literally last a few seconds. just because when it happens, you're just flooded with pure euphoria. But if you jump up and down and, yay, I'm lucid, I finally did it,

the odds are you're going to overwhelm yourself. Next thing you know, you're waking up going, oh, man, it's over. So you can celebrate and be happy, but instead of jumping up and down and allowing it to wash over you and kick you back into waking reality, just stop for a minute. Stay calm. and one tip is to find one object in the dream. I find looking at the floor wherever I'm at.

And just by focusing on one thing and keeping in the back of your mind that you're dreaming, it washes away any overload of emotion. Are there any dangers to lucid dreaming? Like, is it possible to get stuck in a lucid dream and forget to wake up? You know what? You can have false awakenings,

which are very, very common. And that's when you have a lucid dream and then you woke up from the dream in your bed, go to the bathroom and do your morning routine, and the next thing you know, you're still in a dream and you had just dreamt that you had woken up, and you really hadn't, and you can have multiples in a row.

I think one time I had like five in a row, so I don't think there's any fear of ever not waking up, but I think it can be confusing at times for your consciousness when you do wake up, and you don't realize that you're still dreaming. Do you look forward to your sleep time? Yes, you know, And it's funny because I almost look at my life is that I have my waking world

where I do all my daily concerns and I look at every night I'm going to bed is like a chance to have my nighttime world. So it almost seems like I have two lives that I can lead. I don't know. I really do feel that there is such like an unlimited potential towards experience through non-physical reality. Thank you so much for talking to me, Mark. Oh, no problems.

My pleasure. Have a great day and a lucid night. Thank you. If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach, and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop behind the books you love. Like, why Emma Donoghue is so fascinated by trains, or how Taylor Jenkins' read feels about being, being a celebrity author. You can check out bookends with Mateo Roach

wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. John? Howard. John. Yes. This is the mind, Jonathan. The mind is such an incredible, fragile and complex.

Howard, what are you going on about? This is crazy. I picked up the phone. I felt it in my hands. this is an incredible incredible thing you call me every day there's nothing that incredible

no you don't get it John you don't even exist right now do you even understand that I don't exist you don't exist Howard did you eat those rotten corncobs again John

this is a lucid dream and you are in my dream and you are acting almost exactly as you would in real life and that is just blowing my mind okay Howard can I blow your mind some more, you need professional help. Jonathan, I am dreaming, and you are a product of my imagination, and I am thrilled.

Can I ask you something? Sure. Why do you think you're dreaming? Because, well, first of all, I heard this incredible radio show the other day that had a whole segment on lucid dreaming. That was my radio show. I spoke to an expert on lucid dreaming. Man, you're obnoxious even in my dreams.

Why is that? I'm just... I command you to silence as I speak in my dream. Okay. Now, I was napping in the park, and I started, you know, just dreaming the regular old dream I have. I'm bowling with Desmond and Bruce, and you're the pins, and we keep knocking you down. One by one, bam, bam, bam. That's nice.

Anyway, you know, I got up in the park, I went home, and I thought that I had woken up from the dream, but then I realized there was a light switch, and I flick the light switch on, and I remember the technique that they were talking about that the lights wouldn't go on and off. It didn't work. So I realized that I hadn't woken up yet. I was still dreaming. I'm still dreaming. That's all...

Silence. Everything feels real, everything tastes real. Dream life is a good life, baby. What are you eating? I'm eating raw bacon by the handful. Howard, really? I'm not like a fat to dream. Mmm.

Man, it's so cute. In real life, I'm probably just like nibbling on my pillow or something. Yeah, that's in real life. Let me ask you something, Howard. If you're in a dream, how can you be talking to someone who's awake? Jonathan. I'm in a dream. I know that I'm real, but I'm dreaming, and whatever you are, you're just a figment of my imagination.

You're just synapses and neurons firing and all that stuff going on in my brain. So I should doubt my own reality based on your say-so. Doubt whatever you want. When I wake up, you're dead. You're dead when I'm up. Why do you say that so gleefully? A man could dream, John. A man could dream.

I'm going to put my fist right through this wall. Okay, Howard. They were talking about it on the show. They were talking about reality and matters. I'm going to put my fist right. to this wall? Howard, I don't advise you to do that. He doesn't advise me anything. This is my dream. I'm the boss. I'm in church. I'm your God. I'm the dream or you're the dream.

You understand? I got to punch on these walls. Okay, Howard, I really... Brick or drywall? No, Howard, you are not... Oh, yes. I... Please, Howard, trust me. Okay. There seems to be a little dream blood on my knuckles and on the wall. Enough to the apartment stuff. This is all the test. Now time for the real deal. Howard. Hello, beautiful world.

Howard, where are you right now? I'm on the street. It looks pretty much the same. Hmm, nothing made of gum drops. I'm going to steal an ice cream. No, no, Howard, Howard, Howard, please. Hi, sir. Oh, God.

How are you? Is this your finest ice cream? See you later. I'm still a waxing, dog. See, late, sucker. Would you just try something? something, try, try levitating, okay? If it's a dream, then you should be able to fly, right? Yeah, I can fly. Go ahead.

When I, you know, I can't fly because of all this negativity. I think what I have to do is I have to force myself to fly. I put myself a position where I don't have a choice. I'm going to climb the tree. No, Howard, that's not a good idea. Not a good. My biggest fancy was flying carpet dreams. And so, So I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to use this tank. I'm going to make it into a magic carpet. Not a good idea. And I'm going to jump from the top of this tree. Howard, seriously.

No, no, Howard, Howard, please. Howard, Howard, listen to me. Hi. Hi, Ms. Gomburg. I'm dreaming. I'm dreaming. I'm always at the top. Whoa, whoa, that was close.

Howard, that does, that is. Up up and away. Howard, stop. What? This is all riding on you flicking a light switch. your house and it's not working. It's a test you can do when you lose your dreaming. If you turn the light switches on and off,

you know... Do you remember when you came by my office last month and you told me that you needed money to pay your electricity bill? Yes. And you remember I gave you money because you told me they were going to turn your power off? I can make my head hurt yes.

Did you use that money to pay your electricity bill? No, I did not. You have no power in your house. I don't believe you. Did the toaster turn on? No, it didn't. Did your TV? turn on?

No. Is all the food in your refrigerator warm? Yeah. Not so. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I should just say. Okay, there might be a slim chance that it is not a dream, actually. Not come to mention it.

I'm in a tree. Yes, Howard, I know that. You don't understand. I'm really high up. And I, everyone's looking at me. Some of the mean kids out on the street are all chanting jump in unison. Okay, Howard, listen, just stay put, okay? I'm going to come to me because I'm really high here. Howard, Howard, I'm going to call the fire department, okay?

Hey, John, when you come, can you press by my place and get some pants? I probably should have put some pants in underwear on. Okay, all right, okay, Howard, you're going to be fine. You're going to help me down, right? Yes, yes, just stay, just breathe. Just, you're going to be fine. You're being so nice. A second.

Maybe this is a dream. Yes. No, no, no, no, this is not a dream. John, you got to get here now. Stay calm. Hello, so I'm on the airplane from Dayton, Ohio, to Philadelphia. I'm on this plane because I've just come. come back from a playwriting festival.

And I had to go to Philly to catch my connection to Montreal. Now, I'm on the plane, and the only empty seat on the plane is the one next to me. And I'm thinking that thing that all travelers think when they find an empty seat next to them. Thank you, travel gods. I'm going to have all the leg room I can wish for. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

At the very last minute, the last passenger gets on the plane. And she's this very tall, very thin, frail woman, I thought was in her 90s, but in fact, as I later found out, was only 77. She was adorned with liver spots and wrinkles and had these big, bug-eyed orange glasses and one of those massive purses that probably had everything from the Lindberg baby to the missing minutes of the Nixon tapes in them. And she comes up to me and she says in this beautiful Parisian accent, which I am not going

to try to impersonate, she says, would you prefer the aisle or the window seat? I'm sitting in the aisle, but I was like, ma'am, if you would prefer the aisle, I will move over. And she said, well, you know, I am old and I would probably have to go to the bathroom a lot, so I would prefer the aisle. And I move over, but what's funny about that comment is in the hour and 15-minute flight that followed, she never once went to the bathroom. But she did proceed to talk, and she talked almost incessantly for the entire time in what

proved to be almost a complete rambling, but surprisingly coherent and moving monologue about her life. She started off, I should say, talking about the Queen of England. She was a huge fan of the Queen, and she regaled me with lots of facts about the Queen that I am not going to repeat now, mostly because a lot of them are things that nobody really needs to know. But she ended that part of the conversation by telling me that she had just had a dream in which the Queen of England had called her and asked her over for tea.

And she said, but that's not the strangest dream I've had. Would you like to know the dream I have more than any other in the world? And I said, yes, absolutely I would. And she said, the dream I have more than any other is that I'm standing in my apartment and the telephone rings and it's my husband who I haven't talked to in 40 years. And he says, Yvonne, because that's her name, he says Yvonne, would you like to meet for a cup of coffee at that place around the corner in five minutes? And she says yes, and she hangs up the phone and she runs downstairs and runs to the cafe

and just as she gets to the door, she wakes up. Yvonne says to me that she has this dream all the time, and every single time she has this dream, she wakes up right before she gets to the cafe. And I asked her if her husband was still alive, and she said, oh, yes, he's married, he remarried after we divorced, we divorced 40 years ago. And I said, oh, well, did you remarry? And she said, no, in 40 years, I never found anybody who could quite match him for me in my heart.

And I said, wow, to hold a torch for a guy, like for 40 years, that's that's. saying something, he must have been a really incredible guy. And she said, actually, no, he was the biggest I ever met. And she said, when we divorced, I told him that it was because he was neglectful. He was more concerned with work than he was with me. He did not make me feel loved, and he made me feel as if I had no worth. And when she said these words, I sat bolt right up in my chair, and it was like a lightning bolt had gone through me. Because the thing you need to know is that while I am sitting on an airplane from Dayton, Ohio, to Philadelphia, here in Montreal, my girlfriend of three and a half years was moving out of our apartment.

And when she had broken up with me, she had told me it was because I was neglectful, because I was more concerned with work than I was with her, because I didn't make her feel loved, and because she felt she had no worth. And to hear those words repeated back to me via a marriage that was 40 years old was incredibly moving, as you can imagine. And when Yvonne asked me if I wanted to hear the story of her marriage, I said, oh God, yes, tell me. And this is what she told me. So Yvonne and her husband, and I should say that Yvonne's husband was never referred to by name,

nor was he ever referred to as my ex-husband. Yvonne always called him my husband. Yvonne and her husband met in Paris in 1962. They were both working at a factory together. And she said to me that her husband liked her right away, and he flirted with her, and then he asked her for lunch. So on the day of the date, her husband shows up, and he's there in a suit, and he has this bouquet of flowers for her, for her and he gives her the flowers and he takes one look at her and he says, Mundo, you are

so beautiful and Yvonne just melts. They married six months later. They had a son, a year after that. And then right after that, they had the opportunity to go to the States for her husband could start running a factory in Ohio. And that was when the neglect started. And because he was very busy with work and of course Yvonne was stuck in a foreign country. She didn't know the language. She was raising a child entirely on her own. And finally it came to the point where she divorced him. And he remarried right away. and she started the 40 years of living entirely on her own. And she said to me, do you know what my son told me the other day?

And I said, no, what? She said, my son told me that his father tells him all the time how sorry he is for how he treated me, how much regret he has, and just how much he wishes the marriage had turned out differently. And apparently that Yvonne's husband tells her son this all the time, but he never tells Yvonne. And Yvonne is convinced that this phone call

that she dreams about is never going to happen. So we get off the plane and I say goodbye to Yvonne and I'm walking through the airport trying to get to the gate to catch my connection and I'm thinking two things. The first thing I'm thinking about is my now ex-girlfriend 40 years from now and I don't want her to ever be sitting on a plane and telling anybody that I was the biggest she ever met. And then the other thing I'm thinking is about myself 40 years from now and how I don't want to be sitting there telling somebody else how sorry I am, how much regret I have,

and how much I wish the marriage had turned out differently. And when I get to the gates, an announcement comes over, the PA system that tells me my flight has been delayed. And I take that as a sign, and so I take myself into a very quiet corner of the airport. I take out my phone and I make a call. Thank you. Thank you. To kick off your own lucid dreaming adventure, visit Consciousdreaming.com.

You also heard a story by Joel Fishbane, recorded at Confabulation, the Montreal Storytelling series. Special thanks to Matt Goldberg and Paul Alflallow. For details on upcoming events, visit ConfabulationMontreal.com. Wyrtap is produced by Mirabirdwin Tonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein. For more CBC podcasts, go to CBC.com. slash podcasts.