Dear Dreamers,
Our meeting on 26th November had a slightly different feeling about it in that many of the people who have been so integral to this process until now – Tilly, Sarah, Natasha, David and Kate – all had to send their apologies while those present included relative newcomers – Sara and Mark – as well as Radical Ecology’s current artist-in residence, Kedisha, and also Iman and myself.
It felt generative to have, effectively, a new group in situ and gave us a reason for summarising our journey since September and for establishing a space for everyone present to share insights into the relationship with dreamingand dreams that they each have from first principles. The experience reminded me of words from the book “Zen Mind, Beginners’ Mind” by Sunryu Suzuki which says, “In the beginners’ mind, there are many possibilities, but in the experts’ there are few”, and also that “In the beginner’s mind, there are no thoughts of ‘I have attained something’”.
We sat in a circle in the carpeted part of the office which, with heaters now in place, we were able to get warm and a consensus quickly emerged that we should start the session by each sharing a dream, though as we got into that process a lot of space was given to the experience of not-dreaming and not remembering dreams and to liminal experiences of being awake but where life became “like a dream”, either during the hours of the night when we might expect to be asleep, or in one case while literally in flight (on an aeroplane), while another dreamwas shared that sounded so much like “daily business” that it felt in some way not like a dream at all.
We questioned whether it made sense for this group to stick with the agenda, which had been to listen back to the recording from 19th October at KARST, given that only two of the 5 people present were in attendance at that first public session, but finally we resolved to listen to a part of the session together. One listener expressed frustration at not being able to hear everything that was being said – the poor quality of the recording – and we explained the format, and the process of obtaining consent that we had developed together and the placement of the microphone, which meant that you could choose to be heard and recorded and also speak into the space whilst not giving your dream to the recording. We wondered whether the process of listening to the recording would encourage members of the collective to engage the microphone more directly in the future, understanding that when speaking from the far side of the room, their dreams would not be heard in this future listening space that we, during this meeting, were inhabiting.
We gave some thought to this evening’s public session, which will take place at the RE studio in Webbers Yard and in which I had already agreed to play the role of lead facilitator. Sara agreed to join me as this evening’s co-facilitator, but not necessarily to lead a future session in the new year.
We talked about the body, observing how when dreams were shared, the body seemed to perform the dream, to physicalise it. We considered how we might pay more attention to this process that, like the dream itself, might also always be happening, and how we might exaggerate the movement that the dream suggested within ourselves, and how a dance might begin to unfold.
I look forward to seeing you, those of you who can make it, at 6pm this evening: 6 for 6.30pm til 8pm at the RE studio in Webbers Yard. My daughters, big dreamers themselves, will join us and will, I expect, help Sara and I with facilitation. There will be soup and bread and we will work across the carpeted part of the studio rather than the open space (where Kedisha is currently at work on her residency). We haven’t yet proposed a Dream Ecologies schedule for the new year, but this old year feels to be drawing rapidly to a close right now and perhaps it’s best that we leave the new year until the new year and let these weeks around the solstice be what they are.
Thank you so much for all the love and commitment that you have each poured into this experimental space in recent months. It’s felt like a privileged zone of truth and emergence to me.
Best Wishes,
Ashish.