Is this Dream Worth Tweeting?

Recently I went to a party at an art gallery that was allegedly “haunted as fuck,” and I suppose all that talk of ghosts, and maybe the absinthe, made my dreams really strange that night.

I had a dream that I was a ghost. I was standing in a field of wheat when I started floating into the air. I could paddle my arms and legs and go faster or slower – it felt exactly like swimming underwater, but free from that suffocating feeling. I was sucked up into what ended up being some ghost superhighway, where dozens and of other ghosts were walking together in clusters (apparently some of these ghosts were lucky enough to die with friends, because they all had ghost buddies). The ghost superhighway took us to the ocean, where we all started walking over the ocean on top of the water. It was very grey. It felt exactly like walking in the sand, only with waves splashing up onto our ankles. This was a very tactile dream. All the other ghosts were fantastically dressed – I remember a girl who looked very Tim Burton-esque, wearing a white top hat and a bllindingly white Victorian dress.

At that point, something happened – I thought, this dream would make a really good story – I should write it down when I wake up. In fact, it would make a really good movie! It’s so cinematic. At that point, I started dreaming up what the rest of the movie would be about, and the dream became even more epic and Technicolor. I replayed the floating up onto the superhighway part, and the second time around, I thought, “This part, with the field, the sky, and the creepiness, kind of reminds me of The Lovely Bones.” I woke up the next morning and remembered everything vividly.

It never occurred to me before, but after listening to Radiolab’s fascinating Wake Up and Dream episode on lucid dreaming, I might be more than halfway there. Author of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, Stephen LeBerge, says that lucid dreaming is something you can learn to do, ironically by practicing in your waking life. Several times throughout the day, do a reality check. Ask yourself if you’re awake or dreaming. If you teach yourself to check in, it will become second nature so that you’ll start to do it even in your dreams. Once you’re aware that you’re dreaming, according to LeBerge, you’re more than halfway there to controlling what happens next.

This is why writers and creative types might have an advantage when it comes to lucid dreaming: we’re constantly filtering everything in our heads to see if it’s an experience worth sharing with the world and specifically, which part of the world we’re sharing it with. It sounds absurd, but these thoughts enter my dreams often: would this dream be good for Huffington Post, or my own blog?

In fact, now that we have Twitter and Facebook, perhaps everyone has that filter, as we’re constantly checking in often to see what’s Tweetworthy. Is this dream good enough for an entire blog, or just a status update? Will Facebook and Twitter lead to more lucid dreaming? That’s an idea so strange, I should probably at least write it down somewhere.