Otis' Dream, parts 1334 - 1337

1334. His arguments were delivered without conviction however, because there were aspects of his dream theory he was not content with, though he kept his reservations to himself. If dreams were assemblages of remembered photograph like images stored in the brain over time, how could he account for the fact of movement and time so artfully utilized in the dream sequences. He had no idea. The best he could imagine was what one would now refer to as a montage.

1335. As for his comparing a dream to a stage play in that in was presented frontally and without the use of camera angles, even this he was not sure about. Freud shared with our Buboni here an interesting but perplexing question. You will recall that Professor Buboni talked about the problem of not knowing what another person experiences when they see the color "red." We can only know our own experience of red, not another’s.

1336. So too with Freud, he was troubled by two questions, the first was this: "Do others experience their dreams as I experience my own dreams?" And another more subtle and frightening question, 'is my memory of my own dream really accurate, or do I distort, exaggerate, and alter the memory of my own dream to either impress or aggrandize my idea of myself?"

1337. He recalled that dream where he was a great composer, and the music he composed moved him to tears as the audience rose to applaud his compositions as if he was another deaf Beethoven. Was all that music really the product of some great composer buried deep in his own unconscious, or just the remembered strains of a Hayden Sonata he heard in a concert hall, or worse yet, just glorified elevator music he was in a swoon over? How was he to answer this question?

Otis' Dream, parts 1330 - 1333

1330. Working on a 24 hour deadline they must complete the assembly of the images, do the editing, dub in the voice over which must be retrieved from the audio recorded tapes department of the brain. Is it any wonder that the dreams we have are so confused and contradictory. The brain has to abandon even the most superficial editing and proof reading because of the relentless deadlines, even worse that the most simple-minded daily sit-com.

1331. Just exactly as when you set out to find that old picture of your mother in her black graduation gown, and spend all morning and never find it, so the dream assemblers pore over countless images all of them stored in the brain's equivalent of Mrs. Festini's hat boxes by the millions.  Such was Freud's brainstorm, as it occurred to him looking at the photography book on May 16, 1888.

1332. The concept was not well received in professional circles, and was treated with skepticism in the medical journals of the day. Carl Jung was quick to point out that if the human eye was intended by nature for the production of dreams, then obviously the zoom function would have developed as a necessary corollary. This led to a violent argument in which Freud shouted, "Please name one dream anyone has ever dreamed in which you have the use of the zoom or the panoramic shot."

1333. "Dreams are the epitome of form and function," he insisted, "using only the simplest of means and design. A good dream is like a fine stage play, something of Shakespeare.  It is always presented frontally, and without camera angle devices."  That analogy could only be stretched so far however. Freud had no idea at the time of that historic argument that 100 years later the concept of the digital zoom would come along to vindicate his theories.

Otis' Dream, parts 1326 - 1329

1326. So also with Freud's theory of dream production, it wasn't until the day he sat down at his desk with his cigar and was turning the pages of the first collection of the photographs of Charles Negre that it suddenly dawned on him. Just as the book was a collection of photographs, so his mind was making a collection of the images he was at that moment looking at.

1327. He conceived of his entire life as one long accumulation of black and white badly printed, scratched and granny images stored in the brain by the millions. These stored images must simply be the raw materials from which his dreams were constructed. Anyone who has a collection of photographs knows for a fact that they all become mixed up and confused, hence the clutter and confusion of the dream sequence.

1328. Freud imagined himself as a microscopic man walking throughout the enormous, cavernous departments of the brain as it hums along executing its millions of functions. At the end of a long dark hallway he finds the rooms of the dream production department. Never mind for now just why the dreams are being assembled. The purpose or importance doesn’t matter. Freud knows for a fact that dreams are being made in there! How is it accomplished?

1229. The dream department of the brain receives directions, recommendations, and scripts from the production script-writing department. The numerous employees set about, as best they can, assembling the necessary images from a lifetime of archives. Huge tables are littered with every imaginable sort of picture; no adequate way to catalogue them will ever be arrived at because there are so many.

Otis' Dream, parts 1322 - 1325

1322. The third category, and the most important are the dreams that map out a future course of action in either your social, or your business affairs.  These dreams include tax papers that are endless and of which several pages are lost, trips to the bank where you safe deposit box has other peoples old cloths in it, visits from out of state in-laws who are very angry but you don't know why, and  positive pregnancy tests combined with high cholesterol readings on impossible to read fax printouts.

1323. But the purpose of dreams simply pales in comparison to what Freud had to say about how dreams are produced in the brain. You simply will not believe the outlandish concepts he came up with on this subject. He begins this topic, as he so often does, with an offhand discussion of the development of the camera. Consider that Freud was born in 1856, and photography was still in its infancy when Sigmund was still in his diapers.

1324. It goes without saying therefore that there is a connection between the development of photography, and the evolution of the Freud's theories concerning dreams. Freud was often heard to say, "In the middle of the night with my eyes closed I can see views of mountains, ships in flames sinking in a sea of ink, my  father dancing in drag and talking ashtrays. Where, I ask you, where are these images coming from." 

1325. Just as it took the invention of the steam locomotive before Einstein could dream up his theory of relativity, so it took the invention of photography for Freud to dream up his theory of dream production. Einstein boarded the train bound for Detroit, and found himself arriving in Cincinnati because the train was traveling in the opposite direction he thought it was going in. Hence the theory of relativity was born.

Otis' Dream, parts 1318 - 1321

1318. The treatise on dreams was full of the most fascinating ideas and information. It was an argument in the usual Freudian manner. As you know he would often establish a theory, support it with numerous arguments and observations, and then demolish it altogether. His usual approach was to set up several arguments in a series, defend them, and then destroy them one at a time ending up with his quintessential theory which he would let stand.

1319. As for dreams, he thought they were very important, more important than anyone realizes. What do you suppose are the purpose of dreams?  He felt it was obvious, they are blueprints of analysis of human behavior. What do the analyze? Three things. First they attempt to figure out why the things that have happened to a person in the past, happened.

 1320. The  analysis in our dreams about  the past often has certain reliable recurring props like  the second-grade school  desk your knees do not fit under, the naked rides on the bus. The college where one cannot find a classroom in which an important exam is taking place. You return home to your wife, who is an old girlfriend who rejected you years ago. Now everything is fine, and you get along perfectly, but you can't figure out where all the extra rooms in your apartment came from.

1321. The dreams analysing the past are not as important as the second category: dreams that try to figure out why things going on in your present life are happening, despite your relentless efforts to keep them from happening. These dreams involve flooded basements, new clothes with stains and tears showing up at embarrassing moments, landlords who live upstairs now, instead of out of state, and cars made of cardboard that go ninety miles an hour but have no brakes.

Otis' Dream, parts 1314 - 1317

1314. The carpenter's drink of water may not be commemorated in any poem or described in any treatise. You can not find it somehow fossilized in stone in the layers of the earth. No painter ever included it as a detail in a painting as Bruegel so often did. But a record of it and what it signified will always exist, where it is stored I can't say, but stored it surely is, along with every other real thing that has happened that we think is long ago forgotten.

1315. I don't suppose you have ever read Freud's work the title of which is "The Logical inevitability of the Content of Dreams." "No," said Buboni, "because he never wrote any work with that title." To prove his point he got out his iPad, and called up Freud's biography.

1316. Freud's biography did not have that title. All Buboni could find was 'The Interpretation of Dreams.' "You are not going to find it on your iPad, because it was never published. It languishes in Vienna where it is jammed behind the third drawer of an old Biedermeier Secretary that Freud used to house his collection of 19th Century comic books.  Before it was lost I managed to have a look at it.  The premise it quite simple," explained the Duck.

 1317. Freud speculated that if you know enough of the circumstances of a person's life combined with salient details of the day proceeding the dream, you can construct with almost mathematical certainty the content of a dream, its arc, and its contradictions. In describing Otis' dream, I am just using the principals established by Freud, in his works on the subject.

Otis' Dream, parts 1310 - 1313

1310. You could avoid these sorts of problems in the stories you tell if you would just employ some useful qualifiers. For example, you could say, "Otis had a dream something like this", or you could begin with "Perhaps he dreamed a dream..."  If you would be indistinct in that way you could avoid trouble making literary critics like myself pouncing on you and finding fault with your narrative.

1311. "Perhaps is a word I despise," said the Duck with almost angry conviction. "And you will never hear  me use the words 'something like', when in the process of narrating a factual history. I will not soil my scientific narrative with weak-kneed qualifiers of use only to political commentators looking to hedge their hedged bets in advance just so as to avoid angry letters to the editor.

1312. One does not say 'perhaps two times two is four', one does not say the earth is round 'as far as I can tell.' That is all the talk of cowards. Your mistake Buboni, is persisting in thinking Otis is some piece of fiction, when he is not. Let me tell you this. Somewhere in China right this very instant, there is a carpenter who is drinking a cup of cold water, and thinking about a birdcage he saw once as a child.

1313. You will never see the carpenter who is drinking the water, you will never know anything about his birdcage, but a thousand years from now that drink of cold water will still have happened, and in a sense still exists. Nothing can ever turn it into fiction or a figment of someones imagination. It happened, so therefore it will always have happened. Unfortunately, it is only death that ever makes us fully cognizant of this simple fact. Death, which makes us finally appreciate every tiny  thing.