Dreams vs. Visions — Inspiring the Muse

On July 3, 2011 By dancingpalmtreesIn Ambien, Black Unicorn, Dreams, Fantasy, Hallucinations, Images, Mind Altering Substances, Mystical Creatures, Night Bird, Sacred, soul, Spirit, Surrealism, Visions, Wisdom1 Comment

Dreams vs. Visions

Inspiring the Muse

Flying Dream Unicorn — Flying Unicorn Dream

I entreat the nine muses to come to me once Hypnos and Morpheus have sprinkled their poppies, my eyes close and I imbibe the potion for nightscapes. Brothers Phantasus and Ikelos open the threshold for the Nine Muses to enter in. Each Muse wears a ring with her attribute inscribed therein by Nyx Goddess of the Night.

Calliope was the muse of epic poetry.
Clio was the muse of history.
Erato was the muse of love poetry.
Euterpe was the muse of music.
Melpomene was the muse of tragedy.
Polyhymnia was the muse of sacred poetry.
Terpsichore was the muse of dance.
Thalia was the muse of comedy.

Nyx leads her daughters into my psyche causing my pen to trip lightly across the page at dawn.

Dreams have been defined as successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations occurring involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Dreams are populated by subconscious thoughts and wishes. Often my dreams are a hodgepodge of things that happened during the course of the day, past childhood and my secret desires. A good night’s sleep can help clear the stress and pressure of the day. For me I often discover the answer to complex problems via dreams or receive reassurance and comfort from my parents. Sleep can bring regeneration, healing and inspiration. Insomnia is the antithesis of a peaceful night. Insomnia is the antithesis of a peaceful night.

The dream space is physical as well as mental. It can be a war or collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious mind. As a child I would sit in class in daydream of where I wanted to be other than in the boring classroom. As an adult my daydreams consist of where I want to go in life and formulating ways to get there. I would call where the mind goes in the waking hours Vision and while asleep Dreams. My Vision is the business, idea and service I’m giving birth to. Dreams are just flights of fancy my mind takes to escape unattractive realities. Vision is the mental outline, framework and building blocks of my pathway towards lifelong goals.

Can those dreams, thoughts and ideas exist after death? Specifically do the dreams of the dead influence the living. Can messages be given across time, space and eternity via one’s dreams? If on my deathbed I had a dream in my heart and a vision in my soul and I kissed that person on the mouth would my soul transfer into that person’s soul?

Are parents or grandparents able to transmit their dreams, thoughts and ideas after death via DNA. Also can children inherit or remember the memories of their parents and grandparents? Is it possible for any person to recall the memories or their ancestors? Supposition: Aunts & Uncles would be let out of the picture because they are offshoots, not a direct lineage. Or like in Kindred the possibility of being pulled back in time to assist that ancestor with some pressing problem becomes alarmingly real.

At night does my spirit travel the astral plane searching for answers, solutions, explanations’ for my physical plane? And what would happen if the silver umbilical attaching me to my body were cut? How would I reconnect to myself? Whether in the body or out of the body I know not, yet still receiving the revelation of God. My quarks and leptons become baryons synthesize into hyper-force exploding into the universe. Fermions and bosons are no longer constrained by the complexities of theories but burst into being. Spun higher and higher faster and faster developing from antimatter into mater. I become the superconductive dreamscape able to transcend all and become all.

In my mind during times of slumber my astral body goes to meet the beloved and is comforted in his arms. Is the dream only a desired illusion? Yet it feels so real, so for now I luxuriate in his touch and together we enter the dream space capsule.

It is an interesting hypothesis that memories could be extracted from another person’s mind, but dreams are not linear because the mind is a labyrinth. The laws of physics do not apply within a dream. Because there are many little rooms residing within each individuals psyche, dreams can be manipulated via brain injury or the use of sedative-hypnotics like Ambien. Portals in the mind normal closed are open causing the user to sleepwalk and sleeptalk. Hallucinations are an alter state of being that I never want to experience. It is interesting to note that Ambien is used as a treatment for persons in a catatonic state. Think “Awakenings” with actor Robin Williams only back in the 1920s the drug of use was dopamine. Many cultures have a history of taking mind altering drugs to stimulate and/or induce visions but if you can’t control the vision you might be getting more than you bargained for. Personally I want to be in control of all my visions.

If I was able to jump inside your subconscious in what landscape would I find myself? Could I understand the scenery generated by your mind or would I just be a stranger in a bizarre and frightening environment trying to escape? However my vision can resonate with your vision thereby creating a shared vision that empowers us both.

Dissonance as a Creative Art Form

On June 21, 2011June 21, 2011 By dancingpalmtreesIn African American Queen, African Goddess, Black Unicorn, cacophony, Creativity, Delusions, Dissonance, Dreams, Ethiopian Goddess, Explore, Fantasy, Female Divinity, Gifted & Black, Goddess, Hallucinations, Images, Innovation, Inquisitive, Koyaanisqatsi, Mystical Creatures, Night Bird, Spirit, Spirituality, Surrealism, Taijhena Mona Lisa Ormand

Dissonance as a Creative Art Form

Koyaanisqatsi – Life out of Balance, Crazy Life, Life disintegrating.

Ah yes deliberate dissonance, discordant tones and harmonies that somehow weave themselves together to create a beautiful sensory tapestry.

I’ve seen this done in dance with Twyla Tharpe and in a recent performance by the Shen Wei Dance Artists at the Met and also in music with composer Philip Glass who can be a bit extreme.� I think that is also what appeals to me in photo collage, taking things that seem to have no relationship and making one or items that have a logical relationship and changing the way the viewer sees them.

Dissonance strikes its own particular cadence making sense only to the viewers who are tuned it. In fact it strikes out at the viewer engaging him in a seemingly one side fight. I bring together those elements innocuous in and of themselves but joined together create a whole art form. Dissonance is taking the everyday mundane fashion an entire new creation.

It all flows together. It rattles. It shakes. It demands to be heard.

Hit the note on key, then threaded, spread it, flip it and bounce it off the wall a few times. They bob, weave and pirouette.

All together in one tiny room they create a cacophony of what appears to the layman’s ear noise but is actually a symphony of everyday items and the sounds they emit.

Life is woozy with interconnectedness. Word Dance and images assault the five senses fighting for dominion.

It is a cacophony reaching the very core of the brain’s cerebral cortex arriving at a level of distortion where all becomes clear and melts into one. It is the kinetic frenzy of acoustic violinist Lorenzo LaRoc.

How can one in a place of seeming quiet reflection experience the luxurious of a racing mind with images and sound vie for dominance with our core senses? How can we filter the stream and use it to our advantage?

Let the mind wander through the galleries independent from the body and see what happens.

Normal is the mutually created state between self and Goddess whereby you repeatedly step out of one state of being into a personal universe of goals, dreams and fantasies without having a complete psychotic break with the reality at hand. Living inside ones head with the ability to return to the Three dimensional worlds for discourse with earthly flesh and blood. Some forays take you over to the dark side but one must always have a plan or a way of escape or you will be consigned to dwell in the nether regions ruled by the Tormentor and populated murderers, sadistic rapists, and demented of the worst sort. I’m fortunate in that my ancestral angels have not only pulled me back but accompanied me, overshadowing my being with a golden celestial aura.

Anytime I’m dissatisfied with the present reality I retreat to my “Happy Place” π a parallel universe populated by created forces over which I have total control or at least most of the time. Occasionally the inhabitants may get out of hand but my fellows are allowed to stray from their appointed pathway only in the greater scheme of further ends I’ve already predestined for them. π Sometimes the Angels assigned to guide have me morph into alternate beings, with the ability to inhabit the glories of past and future worlds both terrestrial and celestial.

Each chamber of my mind has a doorway that opens to Flights of Fantasy Realms with many alter-egos and avatars each vying to pilot the “Dream Ship Taijhena “!

These dreams and fantasies become my true normal. Normal is the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt coupling with Flappers of 1920s America producing a race of superhuman beings and biomorphic forms who populate the fourth dimension world of Modern Art. The dissolute household, Isis, Ishtar, Nzingha, Makeda, Storm, the Borg Queen Lilith, Juan de Pareja, phantasms from the paintings of Tanguy and Carrington, the Wizard of OZ, Star Wars, all meet in a Great Celebration!

Visiones de Juan de Pareja

Juan de Pareja plays ethereal music upon a 17^th Century Italian Harpsichord accompanied by musical voices that have taken the form of African drums, old Negro Spirituals, Baptist Hymns, Native American, Gregorian and Buddhist chants.

Juan’s soul once held captive within the painting is now free and he romances a young African American Woman transporting her through the portals of time into his world, making all her dreams of romance and adventure come true. The Lover has come to claim his Beloved undaunted and undeterred by the passage of time across centuries and continents. Taijhena became his model, his muse, his lover. Her reward; his full Moorish lips joined to hers. Her slender fingers reweaving the tangle of his thick, knappy, kinky curly hair.

The Kaleidoscope Turns

Dwellers from the off center worlds of Yves Tanguy and Lenora Carrington dance a ghostly minuet strangely in time with the aforementioned harmonies. Umberto Boccioni mechanical cubist forms shape shift as each civilization raises its songs of praise to their nation’s way of life. Rumi and Hafiz recite poetry in Old Persian. Surreal images of Magritte and villagers from Chagall mix and mingle in a charged atmosphere.

From shattered bits and broken pieces I recreate Eden. A forest populate with animals, plants, perpetual sunshine; all manner of jewels and precious stones. In the middle a clearing there is a slow moving stream, its banks alternately sandy with smooth rocks dotting the coastline. Looking across I see Beloved transitioned family, friends, even pets from long ago childhood. My suffering now over, Our reunion begins.

All happily exchange and converse within the Stream, that unconscious subtle system of verbal and non-verbal communication. Empaths guided by cues, pheromones, and inner thoughts, dreams and visions.

Always remember, “A Unicorn seldom this way comes to a locked Garden.”

Yes! Normal is the reality I create for myself!

Excuse me but my Creator Mistress signals me to re-enter the story from which I was summoned. π

Contrary to popular belief sensory deprivation rather than sensory overload may be the root cause of alienation. Not enough intellectual stimulation to the cerebellum causes the thought processes to wither and die much like a paralytic who no longer has use of his limbs. On the surface chaos is the semblance of order. Chaos is the first order of discipline.

Life as a collection of items, things, pieces of a whole, separate they are in conflict together they

Hallucinate baby Hallucinate because the world you once thought was real has been challenged by the authentic. I am one with the mad woman who lives inside me.

{Experiments’ in Dissonance}

Suddenly We have a new murder here and it’s wasting along the page.
The make dissonant movements damning the reader or the writer to make any sense of the dialogue. As in Jazz the worlds bob and weave along the page, not necessarily making any sense. Suddenly I’m fight with a perfectly black keyboard. tHIS IS A VIOLENT NEIGHBORHOOD. jUST GOT HIT oVER THE hEA[D WITH a cLEF NOTE.

Pitted where it should have been potted. keys at irregular lines and angles.The keys are diving in hollowing out, making messages peck as peck can. Someone follow J and tell me where he goes. You know that J cannot b trusted. And K, well K is all over the streets timing every Hookah House we know and some we don’t know.

Trouble nothing but trouble just like Q. Not enough known about Q. He’s the fakir in the group.
Hell’s Bells Messers ipad, ipod and laptop we still have to take the all in the questioning.
Found M laying out on the courtyard floor. Was it booze or nose candy? S came by in a sexy outfit hoping to distract the other two B & Y can talk business in the rather mode cyberspace combination of bar mixed drinks complete with Merry Go Round. Suddenly B, Y found R who in the interim met up with P. P left the car idling waiting for us to get in, while we all pondered could we even fit in that rebuilt British MG Midgit.

Y&R&P settled the debate by plying into an old VW bug. We’re leaving here whether you want us to or not and we’re taking the stash with us. B highly upset by this change of plans refused to fix the aerobiplane or the ramshackle ships our only two hope of getting off the island.

Black Unicorn from Rain River — Black Unicorn Spirit Animal

Japan Rain

On June 3, 2011June 3, 2011 By dancingpalmtreesIn Black Unicorn, Fantasy, Japan, Surrealism

Japan Rain

Rain–Once Mother Nature’s friend.

Sends Acid Rain.

Burning our delicate skins.

Layers peeling, revealing eons of hurt and anguish, once suppressed in eruptive tectonic plates shifting. Now Earth’s anger has been released upon the innocents.

It is said that death comes in threes. Thrice damaged, will our sweet Islands nation survive or will she vanish into the sea from whence she was birthed.

Nay, Japan shall arise like the Phoenix from the ashes loudly proclaiming, “She is still the Land of the Rising Sun!”

Rain is God’s Tears

Watering the Earth

Sweet Anointing pouring over His people.

Washing away internal and external poisons.

Let there be rebirth in the realm of the Samurai.

So shall it be saith the Lord!

And as for I, my faith is restored within the heavens.

Within my internal cosmos.

Alice’s Wonderland Deconstructed

On March 19, 2011February 1, 2015 By dancingpalmtreesIn Alice in Wonderland, Black Unicorn, Creativity, Explore, Fantasy, Female Divinity, Feminine Divine, Goddess, Grace Slick, Images, Innovation, Inquisitive, Intellectualism, Knowledge, Manufacturered Reality, Mystical Creatures, Sacred, soul, Spirit, Spirituality, Surrealism, Understanding, Wisdom, Young3 Comments

Life as a Void Consisting of Only Time and Eternity

An exploration of Emptiness, Nothingness, Inner and Outer spheres/realms of being

Do women occupy the inner sphere/sanctum of purity? Is the enclosed female space a sign of sanctity whereas the open hinged male space the spirit of adventure? Are women contained by societal definitions of femininity resulting in us being “Birds in Gilded Cages”. What is the extent of the power we have as women to define ourselves?

Katrin Sigurdardottir’s piece “Boiserie” explores many levels of existence. The enclosed room a replica in white of the Hotel de Cabris located in the Wrightsman galleries of the Met brings to mind a sense of the finite and infinite. As I observed visitors who thought they would be able to see their friends on the other side of the windows, they quickly realized the panes were security glass, meaning one could look in but not out. The mirrors in the room gave the impression of infinity by reflecting endless images. Like the worlds of many French society ladies and nobility they seemed to have everything, yet they had nothing as they were just “birds in a gilded cage” with their pleasure and privilege brought to an end with the French Revolution in 1789. This first walled in room gives a sense of arrested development. Its progression halted within the pure white room encased in what appears to be rather dingy plywood.

Viewing this exhibit is like looking into a surreal kaleidoscope minus the rainbow, where white is not just the absence of color but has the ability to reflect all around and within it.

Because I as voyeur and viewer share the same gender as the artist this exhibit propelled me into rethinking what it means to be a woman in our society. Gender has been defined as a social/cultural construct. Gender can be said to be the attributes and aspects which society says make up the male and the female. Women even women of wealth and privilege who resided in the royal courts of Europe have always been considered inferior beings.

How are we taught to see masculinity and femininity in our society? John Berger in Ways of Seeing, writes that, “A man’s presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. His presence may be fabricated, in the sense that he pretends to be capable of what he is not. But the pretence is always towards a power, which he exercises on others.

By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, and clothes, chosen surroundings, taste – indeed there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence. Presence for a woman is so intrinsic to her person that men tend to think of it as an almost physical emanation, a kind of heat or smell or aura.” (p 45-46)

A woman’s space like that depicted by Sigurdardottir’s white room replica of the Hotel de Cabris, is closed and everything about her is directed inward. Men keep her physically, financially, and emotionally. Women’s gestures, attitudes and social discourse has been developed and defined within very narrow parameters. However not only does she watch herself but she watches herself being observed. She becomes both the subject and object of the male gaze. As Berger says, she is both the surveyor and the surveyed (p. 46). In Berger’s definition, men act, women appear (p. 47).

This brings up the issue of stratification of different types of social classes of women. Women young and old often seek to emulate or embody the concept of glamour. The behaviors of movie starlets, models, entertainers, and socialites no matter how vulgar, demeaning or degrading have become the order of the day. However the glamour of media stars is without substance. Many women failing to reach these unreachable aspirations die ignoble emotional, mental and physical deaths grasping for the brass ring but coming up empty.

Even female garments are designed to create restriction. Foundation garments such as girdles, corsets or spanx, garters, shoes too tight to be comfortable or heels too high to walk in, suggest a type of captivity. All are attire that suggest bondage and domination. A woman is encouraged to be a walking work of art in our society. Fashion magazines tell her how to dress diet and style her hair.

And what of the women disenfranchised by physical, emotional abuse, domestic violence and sexual harassment. What of their space. Can it be recreated or refashioned to include them in the dialogue or are they forever locked out via twin fiends named shame and guilt. I speak for those women whose space is closed, confined, where the doors are locked and the keys are in the possession of the oppressor. Once I was a captive of my abuser who physically left me Thanksgiving Day 2007 but the damage he did to my mind, emotions, spirit and psyche has never left me. He left his imprint on my soul. The brutes of shame and guilt entrap me by refusing to grant me the ability to trust or love completely. My only hope at this late stage of my life is that once I transition from this realm into whatever lies beyond I’ll be granted the gift of forgiveness.

I know my absolution will never come from the church or the so-called “body of Christ” as the “church” as a religious entity sanctions male dominance thus the abuse and violent behavior that stems from a patriarchal system.

At present I longingly look through the bars of my prison at those women given pardon and liberty all the while awaiting my next evolution into that great beyond where I will be exonerated, set free and love will once again make an appearance in my life. But in deference to my ex-boyfriend I dedicate this song to him.

Alice in Wonderland—Bigger, Larger, Smaller, Tinier

Grace Slick & Jefferson Airplane

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0

The extended accordion like rendition of the Hotel de Crillon room also located in the Wrightsman galleries gives a sense of expansion yet all the while the free hinges connecting the smaller and larger doorways gives the viewer the perceived ability to fold up and pack away in a suitcase this wonderful display of abstraction.

The larger doorway is a portal to the imagination, the rooms or cubes within our own minds. Have I like Alice in the story eaten the cake labeled “Eat Me” and grown too large, then drank the potion labeled “Drink Me” and shrunk too small. Or like the Alice in the Grace Slick song taken the pills that trick my mind into thinking I’m continually expanding and contracting. But I like the many visitors to the exhibit calmly walk through happily appreciating the aesthetic qualities of the piece.

These two exhibits are located on the Mezzanine of the Modern Art section of the Met museum. And just what is the definition of Mezzanine: “A partial story between two main stories of a building. An intermediate floor between main floors of a building.”

The interpretation of the two Wrightsman rooms is an intermediate, betwixt and between what is real and what is contrived. Similar to the Alice’s trip into Wonderland where reality changes from moment to moment and fantasy is the order of the day.

Can reality be perceived only through the five senses or is reality much like sexuality and/or gender roles only a social construct which time, space and cultures eternally deconstruct and evolve to fit each generations needs.

But I have journeyed from 16^th century France, where kings and queens once ruled by divine right only to be deposed through revolution into the 21^st century where we read in the papers, on the web and see on television current megalomaniacs and dictators forced to cede their power and authority to the once frightened and enslaved masses who have reclaimed empowerment. Perhaps since both pieces are constructions of wood paneling or plywood that in itself signifies the falsity of temporal riches.

These two rooms pose questions on gender, race, class and social inequalities than possible answers or solutions to aforesaid dilemmas. Or perhaps queries that come to mind have within them never-ending possibilities and infinite resolutions.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

www.metmuseum.org

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