{"id":200,"date":"2021-04-28T13:52:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T12:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/artistry\/?p=200"},"modified":"2021-04-28T15:11:23","modified_gmt":"2021-04-28T14:11:23","slug":"the-surrealist-portfolio-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/artistry\/2021\/04\/28\/the-surrealist-portfolio-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Surrealist Portfolio – Account of a dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Account of a dream<\/strong><\/h4>\n

by Kit Bula-Edge<\/h4>\n

\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

The Dream<\/p>\n

A high stress environment. There are girls in neon bikinis and boys in swimming trunks; in my jaw aches I can feel the crystalline aqua stream levitating. I swim round a corner, my ex-teacher is 102 years old, we chat: \u201cthis whole thing is new, are you going?\u201d I feel angry, all I hear are the words \u201ctheme park\u201d. In front of the lockers I see middle-aged women drying themselves; they look creased \u2026 \/\/ Round a bend, the water is a dirty old concrete plinth and a sheer drop into slippery rocks (the tide is out). There\u2019s a little boy in yellow swim shorts and a red life jacket, he\u2019s holding his dad\u2019s hand and looking around. I imagine he\u2019s me.<\/p>\n

We queue in front of a large muddy pool.<\/p>\n

After the muddy pool is a huge symmetrical building, it\u2019s built from the red brick (popular in British 1960\u2019s academic architecture). The building resembles a person lying face down on a table, their arms outstretched, hands as fists: big towers. Broad concrete steps lead up to their head. There\u2019s a throb of people around the entrance.<\/p>\n

Young men in yellow outfits watch the queue (they\u2019re in charge). They laugh. If this were real life they wouldn\u2019t be much older than me. Regardless I feel intimidated, excluded, jealous (of their power?); I want to be nasty to them. They design a contest, the winner gets a cylindrical cake. I\u2019m up against a bunch of Basics;1<\/a> through nastiness I win. I never win. I feel the arrogant joy, tinged with the shame of cheating, that I haven\u2019t felt since I was a child. I am the best: I have the cake. \/\/ I offer it to someone (nastily), or they try to take it, somehow this becomes a fracas.<\/p>\n

Inside the building. Later. A dirty-blonde-ish, prim, intelligent looking (but ultimately basic) woman (nearing middle-age) asks me not to tell anyone about the fracas. I laugh at her, she\u2019s a bitch. I don\u2019t look at her, instead I watch the attractive boys and girls (semi-nude, in swimming attire) coming out of the doors behind us. They\u2019re soaking wet and joyous. I find the girls pretty, but only because I\u2019m bored. I hope they find me pretty; I doubt they find me pretty. \/\/ I do a half-smile to The Bitch. \/\/ I\u2019m too short and not very athletic, I look younger than I am, the length of my hair can make my face look fat. The girls that are actually pretty have strangely organised features … I anxiously await entering the doors behind me, entering \u201cthe game\u201d. As I wake up I realise there are hordes of white twitching clammy bodies breathing in the dark. In the soup of the morning I think \u201cthis is an example of [compressed reality]”.2<\/a><\/p>\n

Analysis<\/p>\n

Retrospectively the dream<\/em> is more akin to a nightmare because of my intense aggression towards almost every dream-character, aside the little boy.<\/p>\n

Aggression is most often directed towards entities we wish to evade but have no other methods for evasion. I have recurring insecurities regarding my musical-literary abilities (I write less than I would like to and what I do write is frequently non-standard in relation to mainstream music and literature), overcoming these insecurities is a case of uncomfortably waiting until a sufficient change in my creative output occurs.<\/p>\n

These insecurities are something I wish to evade but have few methods for evading, hence I turn to aggression. These creative-insecurities explain the characters\u2019 presence in the dream.<\/em><\/p>\n

The teacher (who is 102) was the first person (beside my parents) to encourage me to write; writing led me into creative activity on the whole. In the dream<\/em> my aggression towards the teacher represents a shifting of blame: without her encouragement I would not create and would not be insecure. In tandem with this, the little boy (whom I imagine is me) represents a longing to return to life before I became creatively active. Consciously, I never want to cease creating.<\/p>\n

The attractive boys and girls represent my peers, engaged in mainstream creativity. Their attractive-ness represents the so-called \u201cbeauty\u201d of mainstream creativity. I am not as attractive as, and overlooked by the boys and girls because I don\u2019t engage in mainstream creativity. Consciously, my creative-individuality makes me proud, nonetheless the boys and girls represent a subconscious fear that I am simply not as talented as my peers.<\/p>\n

Recurring throughout the dream<\/em> is the middle-aged woman character type. I.e. many middle-aged women appear in the changing rooms; the middle-aged business woman (AKA \u2018The Bitch\u2019) confronts me.<\/p>\n

Consciously I have nothing against middle-aged women, but in the dream<\/em> I am repulsed by, and dismissive toward, all of the characters of this type. I believe this is because the middle-aged women represent the brusque conformist professional (which may be male or female) frequently exemplified (in my life) by middle-aged women. I hope my dream-aggression towards middle-aged women is a result of this dislike and not the result of residual sexism towards professional women.<\/p>\n

These professional people<\/em> will never enjoy the products of my creativity (because of their inflexible mainstream-minds), thus perpetuating my subconscious fear that I am untalented in relation to the mainstream, as that is what I must strive toward to impress them.<\/p>\n

\n

1<\/a>Typically boring people that conform to a status quo. \/\/ Incidentally, \u201cbeing basic\u201d is the contemporary equivalent of the bourgeois; the Basics are Sartre\u2019s actor\u2019s in bad faith; Rand\u2019s looters; Breton\u2019s imbeciles; Nietzsche\u2019s slaves.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

2<\/a> For some months before this dream I was fascinated by an inexplicable idea that I found (unintentionally) exemplified by Ayn Rand\u2019s Atlas Shrugged and online gaming videos. (Hesitatingly I call it \u201ccompressed reality\u201d, but when I think the idea it remains unnamed.) I also see glimmers of the idea in Deleuze\u2019s metaphysical monism. I hoped to find the idea in Bataille\u2019s base materialism, he comes close: on reading The Pineal Eye the idea seemed clearer. Perhaps the link is Spinoza.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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