The Creation of an Invisible Body

If Our Fathers Built Elephants

Parenting

Monsters

Movie Narrative

This project is an attempt to tell the story of a nightmare I had in March of 2012 in which I am hunted by a monstrous Tyrannosaurs Rex. The nightmare was very vivid and I wrote a detailed narrative the next morning, however the narrative didn’t come close to conveying the feelings of the dream. The language of dreams is not discursive; it is metaphoric and intuitive; feeling-tone and imagery gleaned from every memory past and present. I focused on a few different aspects; the “apartment” where the dream begins with me, my brother, sister and mom at Christmas time. The “apartment” is a common nightmare setting for me lately. It represents neglect, disorder and a lack of sexual boundaries; it exists in the time of my childhood up through my teens. The “staircase” has been common image over the last few years. I might try fleeing down a twisting staircase only to end up trapped in a sort of inescapable darkness for example. The staircase images are dissociative; trying to literally escape from emotional trauma. The last part was a feeling I had in this specific nightmare in March that this was a very old dream. There is a midway point of deja vu in the dream, exhausted and terrified, that I feel as if I’ve been having this same sort of dream over and over again forever.

The Narrative:

Part 1: Falling Asleep and Dreaming

Part one focuses on the dreaming mind or the inner universe. The dreaming mind has access to all experience and uses a language of metaphors, emotions, and qualia to make connections. 

The full moon through curtains represents the last moments of wakefulness. 

The meaning of images:

The Full Moon: the moon is exterior, outside of the mind, in the world in the wakeful place between dreams. It represents the loneliness of the world and space. 

Clock: The movement of time through the night of the dream as well as the duality of past and present which exist simultaneously in dreams. A temporal link. 

Neurons: Are the interior. They are electrically charged cells processing and transmitting information, memory, emotion and the duality of past/present.

Dendrites/Dendritic Trees: Parts of neutrons, they also represent inner space, stars, the inner universe. 

Shattered Glass and Webs: These represent neuron-webs accessing memory and metaphor. The shattered glass also represents memory of damage. The spider’s wed is fragile and potentially dangerous. 

Star-fields: These represent moving or “falling” into REM asleep. This  is a very common for me to feel as if I am accelerating through space right before I have nightmares.

The Open Door: These are portals, entrances and exits from dream scenes. 

Part 2: Where Monsters Come From

Moving toward a nightmare, but first washed in memories of childhood. 

The sequence opens with pictures doors and bedroom windows of the house I grew up in. The doors and windows are portals; entrances into the house that produced the nightmare of my youth; the original nightmares. 

Next to scene moves inside to a bedroom door slightly ajar. Inside is the my first bedroom. The stuffed toys and animals on the bed and the pictures on the wall would become characters in my early nightmares. The marionette is a malevolent dream spirit. He represents childhood nightmares and acts as a guide into this nightmare.

The scene moves to images of my family. It is made to look like an 8-mm home movie and the frames are colored pink to represent early nightmares.

Finally the scene moves to the original nightmares seen in black and white to represent age. 

1st three images: People are not what they appear to be. 

2nd three images: Dreams of intruders and powerlessness. 

Last three images: Bathtub from my first nightmare; an empty room representing abandonment which was a common childhood dream and dead birds which are meant as an acknowledgment of my brother and other family members who committed suicide.

Part 3; I’m in the Apartment

This is next section is from the dream the movie is based on. This part deals with shame. It opens in the “apartment” which is a common setting these days for my dreams. The images are from the apartment I believe the dream imagery comes from and from my childhood home. The timing of the images and the way they are manipulated is meant to be unsettling making it hard to focus on anything.This is common in my dreams. 

In the next scene a Christmas tree is set on fine, the fire spreads to the living room; presents burn, then to the San Bernardino mountains consuming the city where I grew up and then into deep space. This represents anger and rage, The rage moves out into deep inner space, the inner universe, seemingly boundless, creating monsters in the sky. 

The scene returns to the dreamer; the earth from deep space, Mars [the bringer of war], a sewer pipe and red staircase. 

Part 4: There is a Red Staircase

In this scene the dream moves up a red staircase into a long hallway looking for doors to hide behind. The images are deep red which changes from anger and rage, to a feeling of danger. 

The Doors:

1: Shadow images of an arm bring grabbed. 

2: The bathtub from the original nightmare

3: T-Rex and all dream monsters

4: “Why didn’t you care?”This is not a question asked by the me, but rather to me; shame, guilt, self-blaming...

5:This door takes the dreamer inside a bedroom where he is trapped which the nightmare spirit. The Marionette marks the end of the nightmare.

The final door is a connection, my father’s eye morphing into the T-Rex eye. Then a scene where female and male lions attack a water buffalo. Their hunger brings suffering, and dismemberment which leads to part 5.  

Part 5: Interior

This part is the interior of my mind, a place of connections. It starts with the spider’s web which represents neuron-nets, all memory, emotions, and how thoughts and feelings lead one to another. There is a sense that internal world is made up with poisoned DNA; damage is invasive, all encompassing right down to molecular level. 

Dendrites become sperm; a single sperm penetrates an egg, several sperm attack an egg, cancer attack a cell, black widow spiderlings. 

A fertile bird;s egg, bird's eggs fertile and broken, dendrites, x-ray of a bird; the bones in similar patterns, x-ray of a bird reveals a broken wing, close ups of broken bones. 

Dead birds. The death of childhood beauty and potential. The death of bounding and trust, of safety. Death of one’s spirit. Death of the person.  

Part 6: Return to Wakefulness

The final part mirrors the opening scene. The dreamer returns from sleep back to wakefulness. This is a circle to which the dream must return over and over again.