Dear Dreamers,
At the session on Tuesday, the four of us present – Iman, Sarah B, David H and myself - agreed to include our e-mails openly at the top of this update. Everyone else is blind copied here.
The key information to share is that the session taking place this Tuesday 15th October will take place at the usual time of 6 for 6.30pm til 8pm but in the new location of The House, Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA.
This session precedes our first public dream matrix at KARST, 22 George Place, Stonehouse, PL1 3NY from 9.30am to 11am on Saturday 19th October. It’s possible for anyone receiving this e-mail to join for either or both of these sessions, whether or not you have been to an earlier session. It’s possible for anyone at all to join us on Saturday morning. All will be explained during the course of the sessions themselves.
We started last Tuesday’s session by running in from the torrential rain outside for bread and soup and we rolled out a new rug, recently acquired from Trago Mills, and moved the chairs out of the way. We removed our shoes and sat down on the rug to check in. We each reflected on our own experience of the week that had passed and particularly on the conversation that had been had during the previous session about whether or not the matrix should be open or closed, public or private.
All present felt excited about the decision we had arrived at to develop dream ecologies as an open, public space and we also spoke about experiences that members of the group had articulated where dream-like images had been observed during the waking hours of the day, and we speculated that perhaps as we embraced a process that acknowledges the dreaming-function as always present as opposed to confined to our deepest sleep that dream-images and what they have to say might also come to meet us where we are.
In counterpoint, I also shared the news that two members of the groups had written to me amicably during the week to announce their respective decisions to step back from the group and that this was really related to the decision to maintain the group as something other than a closed group and a therapeutic space. As such, the four of us, sat on a rug together while the rain beat down on the skylight above us, reflected on how a decision that had excited us individually and collectively had also deterred others from participating. I don’t think this moment of reflection took us as far as regret, but through it we came to understand the decision we had made and the nature of what is emerging a little better.
As we moved into the substance of the session, Sarah B took the lead, guiding us through a series of movement exercises that helped us to relate ourselves to the physical dimensions of the room we were in. Then we came together on the rug again and unrolled a long roll of plastic that you could write on with whiteboard markers.
We were invited to write there some reflection on dreaming and then we talked together about what we had written. Someone had written about the actual window above our heads, while someone else had written about a metaphorical window connecting one reality to another and we reflected on the way that meaning is created in the space that connects disparate elements and intentions together.
We got to our feet again and now followed Sarah B’s lead into another physical exercise through which we connected more deeply with the sensations of own bodies. Some people felt dream-images rising up to a level of prominence that from here they might talk about or write about onto the scroll on the floor while others spoke of the need to sit down on a chair and be still to give the dream image a chance to consolidate.
We began to glimpse the possibility of our own approach to the matrix, where the session would unfold through these activities of listening, walking, writing, sitting, speaking – carefully facilitated and rising to a crescendo. We also spoke about the desire to document the session through some combination of transcription and sound recording. The idea of dreams as data was reiterated. We spoke of the need to establish consent forms that participants might read and sign before coming into the room and that would therefore establish the room as a space of consent.
Sarah B agreed to give the format some thought ahead of the next session and to come to the next session prepared to lead a “dry-run” ahead of our first public outing next Saturday.
When Sarah B realised that she might not be able to make next Tuesday’s session because of a work commitment in Plymouth til 5pm we realised that there was no other option than to move the session to Plymouth.
I’ve received one apology for it already but hope to see others among you there. If anyone wants a lift from Dartington and back, Iman and I will be leaving around 5pm. Let me know! For those that would like to meet at The House in Plymouth, we’ll be there from 6pm with bread and soup as before and with a scroll of paper in place of the plastic because objections to plastic were expressed and acknowledged.
Best Wishes,
Ashish.