Creating a song in a lucid dream
It happened in Berlin, years and years ago. 2017, I think. It was one of my most thrilling lucid dreams ever. Because of its final minutes in which i heard a brand new Brian Eno song, sung by Brian himself. Vintage Eno. This is no sci-fi story. If you do your little exercises, you can learn to realize during a dream that you are dreaming. You have to be highly motivated, too, then it will happen, sooner or later. It is a creative tool with a broad field of possibilities. It is NOT dangerous. It is NOT a drug-related experience. It is a gift of the creative mind, the unconscious. I learned all this in 1982 when reading a book by Prof. Paul Tholey. He was the pionieer of lucid dreaming in Germany. I met this handsome guy some years later when I led a lucid dream group.
This is for Brian Eno‘s webinar on songs. Or just for the back of his mind. I never told him about this before. But he will very well remember we once sat in park near his London house quite early in the 90‘s („The Shutov Assembly“ was slowly growing), and I told him about the scientific research on lucid dreaming. The basics. His old friend Jon Hassell once opened a gate to this territory on his fantastic album „Dream Theory in Malaya“. Jon wrote some lines about special dream rituals of the Senoi, an old tribe. Lucid dreaming goes back, too, to ancient yoga traditions in which you can learn to go directly into the lucid dream state in the minutes you start sleeping. The scientific research began, no wonder, in Palo Alto, California, in the „wild 60‘s.“ Times of endless curiosity, that pervaded and inspired science, music, everything.
What happened on the day before this dream? I was at a concert of The Flaming Lips. I was in a second hand record store, too, and found an old copy from the German music magazine SOUNDS. With Brian Eno on the cover. I knew it from my days in Würzburg studying psychology and bought it with a nice rush of nostalgia. I remembered vividly on that day what he had told Lester Bangs. That, before the release of his song album „Bedore And After Science“, he had fragmented ideas for many, many songs. 80? 100? Keep that in mind, dear reader! And, by the way, I am not a musician at all and playing no instrument.
The minutes before, I still felt my body in bed, then I was in the dream world. Conscious mind, sleeping brain. I was floating from the physical to the mental world. Old yoga style. I opened a door, closed my eyes and gave myself the impulse to float through the large glass window. The room looked like my living room. But I knew it was a simulation. I kept my eyes closed and wished I was flying into a warm summer’s day. I stretched my arms wide and rose into the air at a leisurely pace. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised because it felt like 22 degrees, but it was deep night on the edge of a forest.
I only flew for a short while, then I saw a suburban housing estate, which in retrospect reminded me of Weissdornweg in Dortmund, where I lived between the ages of five and ten. In my dream, I saw two or three lions (!) making their way towards me. I said to them: ‘Relax, lads. I’m on a peaceful mission.’ The lions slowed down and crouched down. (This part of the lucid dream, with the lions, is directly connected with the Senoi dream practice Jon Hassell once spoke about).
I entered a large house where a lot of young people were obviously gathered for a party. My dream self must have been around 18 and I thought it was time for an erotic adventure. So I called out to the crowd: ‘Where’s my old school sweetheart?’ Suddenly everyone present shouted in chorus: ‘Where’s my old school sweetheart? Where’s my old school sweetheart?’ The black-haired girl next to a music system was probably looking in my direction (I could only guess at her eyes because her fringes covered most of it), I went up to her and asked if I could kiss her. I could finally see her eyes, although they seemed a little asymmetrical. We hugged and kissed and I felt the beautiful beginning of a beautiful sensation.
I was absolutely delighted to realise that I was in a dream, held the girl’s hand and called out to the crowd: ‘There’s no music playing, I’d like to hear a new song by Brian Eno.’ I repeated the request inwardly to emphasise it, and suddenly Brian’s voice came out of the sound system, not particularly loud, but easy to hear. It was a melodic song with a gentle polyrhythm, stylistically from the Before and After Science period. An absolute feeling of happiness rushed through me, and I concentrated so much on the song that I forgot about my ‘old school sweetheart’, who didn’t look anything like my old school sweetheart, and concentrated fully on the music.
In the lucid dream, the critical consciousness is in full swing, and so I, the music journalist, was able to realise that the song is fantastic, that it is not a cover version of any other song, but ‘vintage Eno’ – except that Brian never recorded or composed this song. Maybe the song lasted three, four minutes. I was absolutely stunned. One of my favourite singers singing a new song in my lucid dream state! Afterwards, I had the feeling of being pulled back into my sleeping body. I really wanted to stay in the dream, but then, slowly, I woke up, the adventure was over. What a joy! And what a great song! It actually sounded, in regards to instrumental textures and the young voice, like a song from the era of „Before and After Science“! Imagine, we could record our dreams: how would royalties and copyrights have to be shared in this case?