the dream maker
Composed for Edfringe 2008
Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. --Edgar Allan Poe
Carried by the flow of music, words, silence, you may enter creative visionary states of mind or states of no-mind. Thinking about these states is no longer to experience them directly but to experience thoughts, which is the way we are taught to experience reality.
But there are other ways of experiencing reality.
Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. --Ray Bradbury
Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. --Einstein
The Dream-Maker is you - if you take up the challenge to dream beyond a 'one world one dream' culture. Shamans, the wisdom keepers of indigenous societies, maintain that we can lucidly dream our reality into being. They believe that our first world culture is sleepwalking towards the precipice of self-destruction and they are calling on us to wake up and create a new dream.
To be nobody-but-yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
--e e cummings
The brain has a vast spectrum of brainwaves that are underused in our culture which thrives on problem solving Beta waves. Alpha, Delta and Theta waves connect the mind with rest, creativity, intuition and self-healing. These deeper brainwaves are often only accessed in deep sleep but are actively practiced by shamans to open the mind to higher levels of perception.
'The Dream-Maker' explores the possibility of accessing heightened states of perception, especially through the power of sound and vibration. It aims to bring together aspects of contemporary brain research with the distant origins of theatre in shamanic ritual and magic.