Are we more awake when dreaming?

I had a dream last night, thankfully a fun one. Often after waking up from such a dream I question the difference between reality and dreams. If I can smell and touch and run and feel, how different is it to being there in real life? I guess the only difference is we wake up and say ‘yeah, that wasn’t real’. But what if the day comes in which we wake from this one? It really isn’t much crazier to think.

In this dream I was at a festival called Lolapalooza, which is a real festival. So far my dream has fact checked with reality, a great start. It was set on a beach, the crowd pinned between the stage barriers and the crashing waves in warm temperatures. In the sea, a very long wooden float consisting of multiple floats to reach far out into the depths. On the horizon to the right (turning your head to 2 o’clock) a skyline of huge skyscrapers. To help with the scene, whilst I have my morning coffee I have created an incredibly realistic and in depth artists impression.

Paint can make anyone look like da Vinci.

So there I was, watching the Foo Fighters (a band I have always wanted to see) at a place I cannot even remember buying tickets for. Or flying to. Or how the hell I afforded it. Not that I care when Dave Grohl was in front of me, I was in awe. Suddenly, he ran through the crowds and straight onto the float (a logistical nightmare come to think of it) and right to the very end of it being the rock star that he is.

There are a few reasons as to why I believe I had this dream. One, I watched the Foo Fighters on YouTube last night performing, rather bizarrely, ‘Never gonna give you up’ with Rick Astley on vocals. Once again, how can I be expected to believe this life is real with these kind of mash ups happening?

Secondly, whilst looking through photos yesterday to add to my blog, I found a picture from a Cage the Elephant gig I attended a couple years back. The photo isn’t great so I won’t upload it. However I also watched them perform live on YouTube earlier this month, the gig was at Lollapalooza Chicago. Maybe that was the skyline I was looking at, as Chicago does have a great one. This is the shot that I am thinking about. I remember trying really hard to get Dave in the shot whilst he was walking out over the sea with the skyscrapers in the background, a little similar to this one.

Maybe I have a desire to see the Foo Fighters in Chicago, I certainly wouldn’t turn that offer down.

I find it incredibly fascinating that our dreams are mysterious and always alternating. They are begging for a little detective work to be done when we first open our eyes and realise we weren’t actually there at the time. It is crazy that I don’t know my own dreams, and that I have to figure out what was meant in the dream used by the same brain used to type this post. Am I sharing this headspace? It seems so considering how little I know myself at times.

The thing with dreams is, unless it is a lucid dream (a whole other world) it is only after waking that we know we were asleep. When we are awake we can look back and analyse. We can stop in our tracks and consider reality and question everything around us… If we really want to in this limited time we have to do so.

Too many people don’t. I know that there are things I don’t question because I don’t know they are there to question. I know there are things that I don’t know that I don’t know. When I look around, there are plenty of people that seem to not question life at all. That are born, go to school, then university, then get a career, then marry and have kids, pay bills and worship every Sunday until one Sunday doesn’t come. Of course there is beauty in such a life, as long as that life wasn’t carried out because it was seen as a life we are expected to live, a huge checklist that we have to tick off to be considered ‘normal’ and accepted. Sometimes I start getting deep into a topic and get strange looks. As if the universe and the infinite capabilities with it are odd things to think about. Do you ever get the strange look or eye rolling when you bring up something you are passionate about, such as the afterlife or the nature of dreams, as if reality TV is the only thing you could mention that would pass as acceptable conversation? I have, and when I receive strange looks I imagine that I am talking about the real world to a North Korean. Receiving a confused look doesn’t mean your question was a bad one, but that you are expecting an answer from someone that didn’t realise there was even such a question in the first place.

If you do feel weird for having a passion for something outside of supposed ‘normality’ keep feeling weird, for nature is weird and the moment we stop thinking nature is weird, we have stopped looking.

Featured image by Sabri Tuzcu on Unsplash