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03/02/2006: "On having "visions" (or...they make meth out of cough syrup don't they?)"

Last night I had a dream, well, it was probably closer to a hallucination of the too-much-over-the-counter-medicine variety but it seemed very real. I know reading or listening to other people's dreams is one of the most boring things ever so I normally don't write about mine but last night's was art related so...

I was in my studio sitting on the floor and my paintings in all stages of being finished (one's I'm actually working on, not made up ones) were on the walls all around me. Then one of the women called me over, she asked me if I'd "considered all the possibilities".

I asked what she meant and she began to change, the colors became weaker, than darker, the shadows shifted, became more in focus, then more abstract, her look changed from placid to angry to fearful, within a flash I saw a hundred possible paintings. Choosing one still frame among so many options seemed impossible. Then all the paintings started to shift similarly. Most stayed somewhat close to their original conception but some changed altogether, became still lifes, insects, non-objective color fields.

It was pretty much overwhelming. This went on for what seemed like hours. In some ways I knew that I was at home, in my bed, that my paintings weren't really holding a coup d'etat on me, but it was real in the sense that I was seeing all these variations on a theme, and some of them were much better than what I had done so far, and I was trying desperately to photograph them with my eyes so I could remember some of the better ideas but there were just too many of them.

This morning my paintings on the walls looked dim and unimaginative in comparison, and I only remember a few specifics well enough to actually make any useful alterations.