Naomi Epel’s Writer’s Dreaming, a collection of interviews with writers about how their dreams influence their creative process, was recently given to me by a friend. I was thrilled to have this book, to be involved in several book projects, and to have had more than my share of complex and intricate (well, crazy) dreams.

When I got to the chapter on Clive Barker, of Hellraiser fame, I was tempted to skip it. I confess I haven’t read his works and haven’t seen any of the Hellraiser movies, so I’m not entitled to any opinion on the man. But really, his name did not catch my attention as a great author of our time, as Maya Angelou or Isabelle Allende say.

Imagine my surprise when I found myself underlining line after line saying, “Yes, I get this!” “I myself have thought this myself!”, etc., etc. One of the things I have seen in my dealings with others, as well as in my own conscious evolution, is the struggle between different “realities”. The truth changes with our perspective, and this is quite complicated without taking into account the life of our dreams.

Consider these paragraphs from my new friend, Clive, on page 40 of Epel’s book, on the interplay between waking and dream life, and the process of allowing unconscious/subconscious life to be recognized and validated as an expression of some aspect of life. oneself and one’s own experience

Now, the idea of ​​putting those things [here he means dream images] in art is an important and interesting subject. But just talking about them as things that have meaning, that are intimate confessions of oneself, is, it seems to me, the main act. The secondary act is to turn it into art. And it may be something that people don’t feel inclined to do. [He adds later that people have lots of opinions about what constitutes art, so this might inhibit their desire to pursue artistic expression] But just to say that I’m whispering to myself through the lattice of my consciousness, I’m whispering to myself, I’m saying to myself, What is that thing? What are those many things? And saying, I don’t care what I hear. I don’t care. I don’t forbid anything. I see my subconscious, and therefore my consciousness nothing, it is the beginning, I think, of great health.

That’s pretty strong stuff. I mean, how many of us distance ourselves from our dreams (both night and day dreams) and closely censor ourselves so that only “realistic,” “rational,” and otherwise acceptable thoughts command our attention.

His comments on existential loneliness and the need to learn to fully accept oneself are equally compelling. He is referring to the writing process here:

This is an almost meditative activity, it seems to me. It’s a matter of sitting quietly with yourself and saying, the only company I have in the whole world is the person I am. And everything else can go from me, everything else can go from me. It is within the limits of possibility that all the people I love most in the world will be gone tomorrow. I have to be at peace with this myself. And one third of this “myself” is a sleeping self. An important third, perhaps the most important third. So let me be quiet with myself and sit with myself and like myself and what my subconscious is telling me.

Once again, a very, very difficult task for most of us. Even acknowledging that fundamental fact, that in the end we are all we have, is too real for most people to come close to acknowledging.

Clive Barker. Once again life has left me speechless.