Zombie blockbuster disaster movie dream

I’ve wanted one of these dreams all my life – a combination of low budget, edgy zombie film and Hollywood blockbuster disaster movie. I got one the other night, then wished I hadn’t. I’ve mentioned before how when my life is busy and exciting, my dreams are mundane in the extreme. And when my life is dull, my dreams can be pretty exciting. Well, this one was a roller coaster and a half.

Mankind was living with the post-zombie apocalypse, zombies were everywhere and that was fine, they were a nuisance but pretty harmless and under control. Apart form the biting, they blended pretty well into society. Ken, an old colleague I haven’t seen for years, was around. Pacey and Dawson from Dawson’s Creek were around (looking like they were still in the 1990s); I think they were soldiers living in the barracks.

Without warning there was a blinding light, an explosion and a flood of Biblical proportions. Mass confusion and hysteria ensued. I was standing in the street with my daughter's mother at the time; I don’t know where our daughter was – safe, I sensed. Water was rising fast. We started running up a hill; the water was already up to our waists. I eventually reached the top of the hill, just safe from the water below. I looked around, thinking my ex was right behind me. She wasn’t. I looked down below, and there she was, on a raft, just about to go into an abyss. We looked at each other for a split second – in that second, in her eyes, I knew she’d made peace, and everything would be okay, I would look after my daughter. Then she was gone.

I was upset. Back at the barracks, I hugged Ken. Then I had to tell my parents, my ex's parents and my auntie and uncle (aren’t dreams amazing? In real life, my uncle had recently died, but here he was alive as day). My daughter already knew. My dad mumbled that he’d had a ‘very disturbing’ voice message on his phone from my ex, just before she went over the edge.

I woke up sweating, almost in tears. It was a classic! Production values were high; special effects pretty realistic, acting very good. It packed an emotional punch. Script top notch, if slightly confusing in places.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Dreams

Two dreams

1.
I was at a sort of jumble sale in a 1970s-style council building. I saw a bunch of records that a woman had just bought. She was half-way between a landlady I had in Sydney and an old school friend who lives in Cornwall; she was a hippy, with a kind of satisfied look about her, though she was looking flustered at first. I noticed I owned some of the records she'd bought; in particular I saw a boxed set of The Cream of Eric Clapton (which I don't own, and which actually doesn't exist as a vinyl box set) and asked her about it. I told her I had it at home, along with some of the others, and asked if my parents had taken my records and bought them to the jumble sale. She said no. I asked if I could look through the pile. She let me, and I noticed some Procol Harum and Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs by Derek and the Dominos (ie Eric Clapton).

Then it seemed like I was getting a lift with her and some of her children. I gathered she was a kind of teacher. We arrived at her house in the countryside, which looked like a ramshackle boarding school. Children were everywhere, and a brother and sister took a shine to me and showed me round. It was then I noticed the children turning into various animals and birds. Foxes, badgers, birds, insects. They made a hand movement when they changed, there was a sparkle in the air, then they were an animal. I had to make a phone call, from an old red phone box in the huge garden. I couldn't get through. One of the children told me I could change if I wanted, into a bee. How? I asked. He showed me the hand movements, Like this, he said. I was about to do it, my cat jumped up on the bed and meowed in my face, and yes, of course, I woke up.

What can I say? Production values weren't high; it looked like it was shot on 16mm then transferred to VHS, but that was part of its charm. There was a magical yet eerie lyricism about the dream. It felt like those great 1970s BBC kid's programmes – The Owl Service, The Changes, Children of the Stones. Acting was good, natural. Special effects, not bad for the time – kids turning into animals.

I had a late breakfast; scrambled eggs and caviar on toast, a pot of proper coffee. Life wasn't bad. The cat meowed, wanted feeding.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Children of the 1970s

2.
The 13-year-old boy had expensive camera gadgets plus a drone. I hid them from him under a rug. He asked me where they were. Stolen I said. Oh no he cried. He told his parents and they called the police. The police couldn’t find them until I tried to move them. They caught me and I went to jail. The boy filmed me in jail with his phone and put the video on YouTube. The video got millions of hits and made him a YouTube superstar. I got out of jail and filmed myself watching his video of me in jail on YouTube, then filmed myself smashing up my phone, then uploading the video. It got like 2 or 3 hits.

When I'm happy and busy, I never remember my dreams. When I'm listless and despondent, I have really vivid dreams, such as these.

Previous dreams here.

Three animal dreams

1. Two Moomins riding a large white hare through the dark snowy streets of Helsinki.

2. Again in a dark street, we spot a 30-foot high squirrel. I get my iPhone out and get some photos of it – then it's on the move. We give chase, being careful not to get too close. It enters a building, maybe a museum, and we follow it cautiously, taking more photos along the way. We find it in the corner of a huge dark room, its eyes are massive.

3. I've bought a huge fish tank, takes up about half the living room. To start with, I just add a few tropical fish and some plants. Day-to-day the contents seem to expand, and it gradually turns into a swampland with dinosaur-era foliage. Insects fly around it, vicious-looking fish and other small dinosaur-like creatures emerge. It gets beyond my control. My parents come round to take a look; my mum puts her hand in the tank and gets bit.

I was working closely with a colleague when I had this dream, and told him about it one day. He looked stunned: he's had a very similar dream once a week for thirteen years. But he did used to work in a pet shop, and a bit of an expert on aquariums.

Previously on Barnflakes:
Heron Tower Fish Tank

Previous dreams here

Bob Dylan Dream

'I was puzzled by a dream
It stayed with me all day in 1995'
Belle and Sebastian, The State I Am In

Bob Dylan's Dream is a 1963 song from Dylan's album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. I hardly ever remember dreams but my dream last night was vivid and started with meeting Bob Dylan and ended with filing claims against Eric B. Go figure.

It started with Dylan visiting my home, which wasn't my home but a Gothic, ramshackle, gloomy kind of place with low lighting. I was nervous meeting Dylan, not sure what to say to him. He was very short. He was just hanging out, my family offering him tea and biscuits, which he declined. I wanted desperately to take a photo of him but I couldn't work out how to use my iPhone camera. I wanted a pen and paper to get his autograph but couldn't find any. Dylan was getting impatient. I was nervous. He made some attempts at conversation, but his voice was so mumbled I couldn't understand him so I just laughed nervously and nodded. Eventually, he said he had to go, picked up his guitar and left.

Next I was in a seedy kind of harbour, sort of King's Cross by the sea. Everything was dark, rainy, red and ramshackle. Things felt unsteady, in transition. I was there to meet an ex-girlfriend, it had been ages since we'd met. I didn't know she'd turn up, but there she was, by the sea, wearing a red coat. It was windy. When she turned around she looked different. In fact, she was literally a completely different person. It wasn't her, but it was. She assured me it was her. She said she looked different as she'd been to see three different psychologists that day. She was looking more like an ex-work colleague actually.

(My dreams are always like films and this scene was appropriated from two films I'd seen this week, and a song. In the final scene of Submarine, a 2010 British film, the lead character runs towards his ex-girlfriend on a beach to try and make amends for treating her badly. Previously in the film, he'd dreamt the same scene but when the girl turned around it wasn't her. In the final scene, it is her, and they go paddling together and make up. The film was okay, quirky in a self-conscious way, but great to see Noah Taylor again (the best thing in the film, playing a depressed marine biologist), not seen him since Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and just adored him in his debut film, The Year My Voice Broke (1987) and its follow up, Flirting (1997). I'm not sure of the connections between Nick Cave and Noah Taylor, aside from both being Aussies and having similar hair, but they've both ended up living in Brighton.

The other film was the awful but enjoyable R.I.P.D. (2013), where dead cops come back to life to work in the Rest In Peace Department to fight monsters. The film focuses around recently killed cop Nick Walker (played by Ryan Reynolds) and Roy Pulsipher (Jeff Bridges in Wild West mode). Though they return to earth as humans, they look nothing like their former selves, so Walker returns as an old Chinese man, and Bridges as a beautiful blonde. Derivative to say the least, it was nevertheless an entertaining Men in Black meets Ghostbusters meets Monsters Inc.

The dialogue in my dream scene was reminiscent of the final stanza of Dylan's 1976 song, Isis:

She said “Where ya been?” I said “No place special.”
She said “You look different” I said “Well I guess.”
She said “You been gone” I said “That's only natural.”
She said “You gonna stay?” I said “If you want me to, Yes!”

Talking of appropriation and derivativeness, I don't really have a problem with either. When Dylan's autobiography Chronicles came out, there was cries of plagiarism that he'd nicked passages from Proust. I've written previously how ideas float in the air, ready to be plucked. I think the same of pre-existing art and literature. I don't think Dylan self-consciously pinched the passages from Proust, rather he'd read them years ago, and they'd stayed in his subconscious.

Appropriation isn't new. Joyce and Dostoevsky did it. William Morris did it. Peter Saville did it. Dylan does it. I'm in good company I reckon. I mentioned Dylan's new Bootleg Series 10 a while ago, Another Self Portrait. Okay, I moaned about it. But I love it. It's been playing non-stop on my CD player and iPod since it came out. Dylan's voice sounds so rich and warm, I just lose myself in it.)

Anyway in the dream, me and the ex walked around town. It was a gusty but muggy and intense evening. It felt like we were in Havana. She told me she knew Eric B, the rapper from Eric B and Rakim. Recently he'd been sending her sexually suggestive messages, and she was upset. So we went into a rickety building, climbing up cranky flights of stairs, to file a complaint in an office. The dream sort of ended there, or I can't remember the rest.

My dreams are like my life, I have no control over either. I guess this makes them both exciting and mysterious. I read Francois Truffaut's book of interviews with Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock/Truffaut years ago, and always remember Truffaut asking Hitchcock, “Do you ever use material from your dreams in your films?” And Hitchcock said, “No. Never.” And Truffaut said, “Why not?” And Hitchcock said he used to keep a pen and paper behind his bed so that if he had a dream and woke up, he could write down the idea and go back to sleep. It happened one night: he had this incredible dream, he woke up, he wrote it down, and he went back to sleep. And when he woke up the next morning, he looked at the piece of paper, and it just said, “Boy meets girl.” He said that was the last time he ever considered using an idea from his dream in a film. I love the 'Boy meets girl' concept, and always thought it was the basis of all cinema and literature.

I've never had dreams like falling or drowning or anything like that (and never sexual for that matter). They've always had a strong narrative, and I often view them as a film. The lighting is always impressive. Performances, so-so.

Previous dreams here

Hansel and Gretel dream

I was in a small cinema with metal frame chairs watching an art house film version of Hansel and Gretel, being distributed by Artificial Eye. Filmed in Eastern Europe somewhere, it was startling, dark and scary. Suddenly I found myself in the film. I was a prisoner in the basement of the witch's house. Hansel and Gretel had decided to stay in the witch's house after murdering her. They were now middle-aged, fat and rich, living on the witch's precious jewels and continually having to renovate the house after eating it. The basement was patrolled by an evil old man. One day, whilst he was frying some eggs and had the small basement window open, I saw my chance. I ran towards the old miser and threw the frying pan in his face. He screamed; Hansel was alerted but was too fat to run. I quickly climbed through the small window. And started running through the forest. I saw a stunned-looking Gretel who merely dropped the logs she was carrying and stared at me. Whilst running I noticed, in a clearing, a large block of flats being constructed out of cakes, gingerbread and sweets.

If my thought dreams could be seen

…they'd be a very boring sight indeed.

Iain Sinclair Dream

We were staying at my parents house. I was in bed, unable to sleep, thinking about the great nap I'd had earlier on. I'd been woken by a thunderstorm. Later I slept and dreamt. I didn't remember the dream until a copy of Iain Sinclair's London Orbital prompted me.

We'd been walking through fields near Bristol where a controversial new way of ploughing was being introduced: black organic monster machines. I was chatting with Peter Ackroyd about not liking this new method. I told him Mel had read London Orbital (I think I thought he was Ian Sinclair, though Ackroyd didn't pick up on this, thankfully). Ackroyd said he knew Iain Sinclair anyway.

Then I was in Fat Face trying on flip-flops but they didn't have my size and it was the end of season anyway. I somehow change out of my trousers and pants, and, finding myself outside, put them back on. Then I'm on a council estate and two men with sticks are having a fight over the way.

(London, 2008)

The Dark Room

Black white, a dark night. Exterior of an interior. A man sweats because he’s tightrope walking from one block of flats to another. Harder than it seems. Harder at night. Harder when monsters of the night want your soul, books and wardrobe. But it’s okay, it’s just one of those nightmares I keep having. Hot and cold, put on night robe. White paper falls from black sky, so high. I pull a white naked woman into my room; do I dream? She’s cold (I’m told); put her to bed. Knock knock on my white door – bailiffs or burglars? – no time to snore. They silently steal my white objects. My, I’m cold. They go out and my wardrobe is but coat hangers and cactus. Ha. I can’t sleep in my dark room. It’s too soon. A film on my wall, so tall. Painted light, so bright, so bright. Leading where…? I stare.

2am Martin Sheen Dream

I woke from the vivid dream and walked down the stairs for a leak. To the left, Barry’s room, where a girl is on his sofa and he’s on the floor, rolling a joint. I hear the end of a sentence. The girl had been talking about shoes.

‘Oh, so you work in the shoe shine business,’ said Barry, absently.
‘No! I work in a health club.’
‘Oh,’ said Barry, bemused.

Portishead was playing the same song over and over somewhere, maybe from Anna’s room, who greeted me in the kitchen with an Australian ‘Hello’.

Later, I couldn’t get to sleep due to the sound of traffic outside. Traffic never sleeps. I just want to be somewhere where I don’t have to hear traffic all the time.

My dream had been vivid and one of the only ones in recent memory that I have remembered. I was buying cigarettes from two Eastern European criminals. I said I wanted Chesterfields and they handed me a packet of Lights. I said I didn’t want them and saw right in front of me a carton of regular Chesterfields. The packs were smaller than the Lights, for some reason, and when I enquired about the price, one of the criminals was stumped for a price to offer me, but eventually settled on £5. I checked my pockets and had no money, of course, so they come back with me to my loft apartment. I went looking for some money but have none at home either, so they suggest I give them my telephone number, which I don’t know off by heart, so I check in my wallet for the number, which I’m sure I’d written down somewhere. Just then Martin Sheen pops in, and I remember we’re late for an engagement. He tells me to hurry up and eventually I find my phone number and give it to the criminals who then leave.

Me and Marty arrive at what seems like a premiere for a film, but isn’t. In the corner an old friend, Duncan, is having a birthday party, which I didn’t know about, but he seems to think I’d turned up for. People notice Martin Sheen and Duncan exclaims, excited and loud enough for the whole room to hear, ‘Martin Sheen!’ and some people look around, and there’s a small ripple of clapping and Marty shyly stands up, looks around smiling for a bit, and sits back down again. Then Duncan says, as if to justify me turning up with a famous actor, ‘Barnaby’s always doing something with home videos and films’, in a slightly bitter voice, almost under his breath.

I didn’t sleep well and the next day at work five people – Richard, Neil, Marian, Sabrina and Kevin – were made redundant, and Nick was fired, for arguing with Bryan the boss, then calling him a ‘fat cunt’ under his breath. Bryan left envelopes on the five people’s desks, with their fate sealed inside it, just before he left to go on holiday for two weeks.

I felt so tired and bored that day, annoyed at every noise and person, bored with people and work, I just wanted to do something different.

(Brixton, 2001)

Film Dreams

I wish I was Al Pacino in Serpico, sitting outside in my overgrown garden on a summer’s day, with a freshly made pot of expresso coffee, long hair and beard, wooing the blonde next door.

I wish I was Gene Hackman in The French Connection II, alone in my hotel room on my first night in Marseilles, eating chocolate and loading my gun.

I wish I was hanging out with Barbara Hershey, reading her a bit of E E Cummings in my huge studio in Chelsea, New York, as in Hannah and Her Sisters.

Or I wish I was Jean Gabin as Pepe Le Moko, running through the black and white Delacroix Algiers Casbah in my spotless suit and spats.

...I met Isabelle Huppert in a dream, she was only nineteen and we ate strawberry ice cream.