(I’ve cross posted this one on dreaming an creative people because it’s a fascinating topic. It first appeared on Drey”s blogspot, February, 2011)
One of the most visited posts on my KRK blog is Do Creative People have more Vivid Dreams? And from the research I’ve done the answer would have to be yes.
I’ve always had vivid dreams, in full colour complete with back-story. If I’ve been reading graphic novels the dreams will be stylised and, on occasion, they’ve been set to music with people speaking in rhyme. I’ve used the feeling that resonates with me after dreams as the basis for stories and even a book series.
This painting by Maxfield Parrish is called Daybreak. It’s his most famous piece. My grandparents had a print hanging on the wall in their living room. I distinctly remember looking up and seeing it for the first time. I must have been five or six because it was very high on the wall and I couldn’t get close enough to it. I love the dreamlike quality of this painting.
Here is a list of dreams some of which prompted people to create a book or song, others led to scientific break throughs. My son, who is studying computer programming dreams about logic sequences. I dream up solutions to plot problems.
In his article ‘The Dream Canvas’ Tori DeAngelis quotes Stickgold. ‘There may be a good metaphorical reason that artists are so attached to their dreams. In the broadest sense, dreams mimic a critical stage of creativity: brainstorming the range of possibilities, or what psychoanalysts call free association.’ Apparently, when dreaming the ‘ … brain areas responsible for executive control, logical decision-making and focused attention shut down … while sensory and emotional areas come alive. In addition, short-term memory functions are deactivated, so that the emotional content of images remains, but the waking context does not.’
Recent research has shown that there are people who are prone to lucid dreaming. ‘Watson … says that he was surprised by the finding. “I actually thought dream recall was going to be related to stress and anxiety, because the literature indicates that the things that disturb sleep tend to promote dream recall,” … Instead, his data support the idea that there’s a type of person more likely to tune into their dreams than others.’ And that was the creative person.
Do you experience Lucid Dreaming? This is a form of dreaming where you know you are dreaming, and you can exercise control over the dream. This may sound impossible, but it is believed computer game players have control over their dreams.
In their study of creativity and dreaming, Pagel and Kwiatkowski found that ‘dreaming is likely to have a functional role in the creative process’. And now scientific studies have found that if you nap after studying and dream about what you were studying you are likely to retain more. So the tip is to study, then sleep on it before an exam. Maybe you find it hard to sleep before and exam. If you’re like my cat you can sleep anywhere, any time.
For me, dreams are very real. I’ve had conversations with people, only to realise by their blank expression that the discussion I remember occurred in a dream. No wonder they looked confused. (Now I’m starting to sound really weird. LOL).
Do you have vivid dreams? Do you draw from them to inspire your writing, music or art? Do dreams help you sort through problems in your waking life? Do you dream more vividly after starting a new job and learning new skills?
Rowena, I definitely have vivid dreams. I wake up and think – oh, that was a dream. LOL. I remember when I was at uni studying and I used to spend a whole day in the library tracking down books and articles, I would dream about the call numbers! And yes, when starting a new job, I tend to dream about it. It’s all that information overload.
Fascinating topic Rowena.
Same here, Eleni. The dreams are so vivid, they come back to me during the day, if I’m distracted.
Sometimes I do, sometimes my dreams are less vivid but I still retain the entire story arc throughout, sometimes I can only remember pieces, and sometimes I can’t remember a thing. Recently, I haven’t remembered much of anything and it really makes me sad, because I want to use my dreams to help with the creative process. I think I’m just sleeping too light at the moment.
Jaedia, it comes and goes with me, too.
I dream very vividly, and sometimes that’s a very bad thing. :/ I’m a young author who writes fantasy and fiction, and I always try to make my work as original and fresh as I can… I am frequently inspired by my dreams as they are usually bizarre and often make perfect sense until I wake up and realize how weird they actually were… I remember clearly being shot in the head at point-blank range once, I woke as if my heart had been jump started and I was a mess for weeks (thinking I had actually died only to find it was a dream). On the other hand, I’ve gone on some epic adventures with very strange creatures and/or people… I’d agree with you – Vivid dreamers are more creative people – but sometimes it may also be the other way around: Creative people are vivid dreamers. I often mix dreams with memories, and I can sympathize that indeed you find your friends very frustrated and confused around you because of that. LOL 🙂 Live life in a way that you can appreciate both reality and the dream world, and you’ll find you have an even more enriched imagination. That’s the case for me anyways.
Ayla, I’ve never been shot in the head in a dream, thank goodness. It sounds like the plot for a story.
Like you, I’ve learned to live with the weirdness that is me and I use the dreams and insights for story ideas.
When I was young I would have very detailed and vivid dreams of my day. Breakfast, going to school on the bus, talking to my friends, eating lunch. The smells ,tastes, and feelings were real to me.
I’d go through a whole day only to wake up to my mom shaking me, telling me I was going to be late.
The nightmares were pretty intense too.
Most of those were about dying in some horrific way.
Thankfully I don’t ever recall actually dying.
Of course drowning, falling and getting run over by vehicles and not dying wasn’t pleasant either.
Tim, our minds are strange things. Do you still have vivid dreams? Hopefully, not as traumatic.
R
I am almost 60 years old and have been a vivid dreamer for all of my life. Math and Science were always easy for me, so I studied engineering and had a wonderful and varied career. I especially cherish dreams where I (or someone I create) is/am playing a musical instrument like a virtuoso (I am a mediocre musician, but enjoy improvised music composition). I also enjoy my dreams with animals, usually involving my cats or their ‘derivatives’ (e.g., a Puma size version of my Brown Spotted Bengal). The rare and beautiful flight dreams, or bounding head over heal across landscapes are also great entertainment. I feel I may be moderately more creative than average. I wonder if their are ‘dream’ statistics, or particularly common dream themes ?
Hi Jack, sounds like you have a highly creative dream life. Like you I cherish the dreams of flying.
Cheers Rowena
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