AKIRA

Veronica’s dream

Searching in a village for something, my dead grandmother I think. The village is a hybrid, a cross between Europe & Asia. Maybe Venice & Kyoto – I go to Sarah Crowest’s house & she tells me to look in Akira’s house which is under hers. I go there and it’s a labyrinth cut out of rock but nicely decorated, lots of rooms. I’m also looking for a bathroom that Sarah told me would be behind a curtain. I can’t find this but I do pass through a room that leads out of Akira’s apartment and into a café/ gift shop but the room is full of clothes & underpants – it looks very messy but on closer inspection it is neatly folded and stacked. I go out through the shop/ café & get in a boat with a girlfriend and travel down the road (no water) back to the other village. We see a building on a small hill & climb it. She goes to one door but I call her around to another door that leads to a café serving Japanese Yum Cha – she says its ok because she can speak Japanese. End of dream.

OBSERVATION

This reminds me of something Lizzy once said. A student was explaining a dream they had to the class by describing a figure/ creature coming out of the shadows who was either her uncle or an owl. Lizzy said something along the lines of “It’s not one thing or the other, but both!”

There are lots of connections with Veronica’s dream and what I left under her pillow. The following is a transcript of the conversation we had over breakfast after revealing what Veronica slept on. 

V – Oh, I got a Melbourne, Barcelona map with some plumbing underneath it, and maybe a bridge cracking through the top, and that’s actually quite a lot like the final place I went because it has a hybrid between Venice and Kyoto in Japan – like underneath it was Akira’s house down in the cellar – underneath Sarah’s house. I think that’s very similar and this is a lot like the place the ambassador lived in on top of the hill and my friend tried to go through this door but I went through this one and found the whole café

S – Yes that looks like a cross-section you see in cartoons or something when it shows them going underground and you see all the dinosaur bones, secret tunnels and all that stuff

V – …or Akira, all his piles of underwear 

S – Yes that’s quite close

V – Yes that feels very similar in the way I saw it in the dream 

S – Now, of course there is some stuff on the back as well, but the intention was the picture on the other side which was found but with a bit altered. I just crossed out Jordan and Israel and wrote Barcelona and Melbourne instead

V – Ahh, interesting so it’s more layers of places 

S- Yes, it is 

V – …and it was so clear that it was both one place and another in my dream, it was both Venice and somewhere in Japan

S- That’s a good one 

ANIMALS

Veronica’s dream

 I’m at boring quiet party/ event/ kindergarten hosted by David from “Linberg Gallery”. There are some kids + parents there – it’s very grey –but nice sandwiches are on offer. David complains that this event cost more than others, particularly I asked what he had done differently to cause this and he said the cost was really in the food for the birds & pets at the back. Then everyone left & I said goodbye to a kid called “Hunter”. Then I needed to help a man home, his girlfriend was also helping, but he asked if I would mind if only she helped him in the shower. I was very happy with this arrangement, but he did ask that I put on a record that I could find in his room called “TOP VS CAT”. I tried to get to his room but his room was full of beds & boxes of junk. I also had trouble finding how to get there. I had to consult a timetable that covered all of Europe. It seemed the 9 ferry/ train from Helsinki would get me there but David said that one went backwards and transported singers “takes the singers the other way” but in a coloured transport line map like Venice & London & Madrid.

BED

Veronica’s dream

We were visiting a city. My dad was also there at times. I killed someone (can’t remember who) but, sort of got away with it for days. So I kept exploring the city and spending lots of time travelling and looking for things. Then I was at a swimming pool and the police caught up with me. There were heaps of them in bright blue uniforms. They had a giant foam cannon that they were trying to shoot me with (but they had to stop as they might hurt the children in the pool). I escaped and had to make my way by train to SANTS to buy a ticket home. I found you also waiting at the station. Youhad booked the overnight train, I had booked the fast train. You had a hotel room to wait in until the
train came. The mattress had bits of material sewn onto it like the canvases at the Prado. It was a bit average and rundown, there were some nice pot plants though. But the bathroom was full of furniture and there was a brown dog in there. You were in bed and you said “this reminds me of home. Take a picture!” So I got out my camera and took some shots of you asleep but you said “no!” and started pulling silly faces and said you wanted the photos of you like this instead. Then the dog came running out of the bathroom on its hind legs and I knew that it needed to go to the toilet so I let it out. Then we both lay down and went to sleep.

OBSERVATION

I take way too many photos and love pot plants (even bought some during our residency even though we would only be there a few months) so its no surprise such ‘recent and indifferent’ material turns up here. I had seen the Toulouse Lautrec painting of the two girls sleeping during a recent trip to Paris and it felt perfect for the part of the dream where Sean and I sleep in the same bed together. This is about as sexy as our relationship gets, even in dreams it seems. Though I’m sure an analyst would suggest we unpack ‘the giant foam firing cannon’ further… But more importantly, my dad was dying of cancer while I was in Barcelona and it was unclear if he would still be alive on my return (he was and I got see him one last time). His dying had been a long process, years of treatment, he had given me his blessing to go on the residency. He was a great traveller and enjoyed hearing about this adventure via email). But it must have been playing on my mind – perhaps it was him that I had killed? Also the image Sean had put under my pillow that night showed an older man sinking into a dark vortex

BOOBS

Sean’s dream

I was at the front gates of the VCA. I had a studio upstairs in the drawing department so I headed up. I sort of worked my way through a maze of studios before arriving at mine. Along the way I had a chat with Janine Eaton. When I finally got to my studio I started work – it was a collaboration work with Charlie Sheen, an essay I think. He was a terrible partner – all I wanted to do was sit down and finish the work because he didn’t help me do any of it. He kept being extremely annoying the whole time and I couldn’t concentrate well. After some time he said we needed to go to the child rearing competition focused on breast feeding. I thought I was in for a good chance of the prize because I suddenly had enormously huge round breasts. 

EYES

Sean’s dream

I was at my old house in Glen Waverley, and I was trying to sleep. My guess is I had been in bed for 20 min or so. Suddenly I could hear my dad next door in the study. You couldn’t get into my room unless via the study. My dad was on the phone talking to my poppy. They talked for about 20 minutes but I couldn’t remember what they talked about. My poppy is sick at the moment in real life. At the end of the conversations I could hear my dad crying – I have only heard hi cry once and that was because of strange medicine they gave him at the dentist. After I thought my dad had left the study I got up and went to the lounge room. There was lots of people there – both mine and your family. You were sitting at the table and your eyes looked all black – You had been crying. There were papers on the table in front of you. I went to the kitchen which is next to the lounge room. My mum was making chicken but she was doing it all wrong. When it came out of the oven it was a greeny yellow colour inside. I knew this would worry you as you know how to cook chicken and used to be a chef. Scott was in the kitchen and said “Yum, can’t wait”. But I think he may have been joking. This was the end of the dream.

OBSERVATION

Every morning in Barcelona we made audio recordings of our morning dream analysis. As part of this we compare our dreams with what we sleep on and try and tease out connections. The following is a transcript of the moment sean opens the envelope to reveal what he slept on:

S – A giant eye

V- Well you did have black eyes in the thing

S – That’s true! Eyes were certainly an important part 

V – I wonder if that’s a tear drop? It’s a shame it wasn’t crying

S – Yeah. It doesn’t look too sad at the moment, does it?

V – The eye?

S – Yeah

V – No. I don’t know

S – The dream was quite a bit about looking, and wishing to look 

V – Really?

S – Like hearing things and wishing to sort of go there and see what was happening and then you worrying about looking at the chicken and discovering that it wasn’t up to scratch and me looking at you and not realising until I got closer that you were crying. Yeah…to me it’s something about that looking, discovering or finding out

V – Well yeah also crying because me and your dad are both crying so that’s definitely to do with eyes

S – mmm, that’s true, there is that connection there 

MEREDITH

Sean’s Dream

I had the same dream over and over again, but with differences in them each time. This cycle of dreams was broken by something odd. Although each dream had the same structure, each one started as its own distinct dream. I would dream-imagine myself waking up and writing it down only to shortly realise later that I was still dreaming – this happened several times until one time I wrote down my dream and got out of bed so as to do dream telepathy with you – still dreaming of course. But just as we sat down the doorbell rang. It was Ross and Meredith. Meredith looked a little bit different. She gave me a hug and it was the best hug ever. It felt like I was dissolving and any anxieties or sadness I felt disappeared forever. I felt enlightened. 

OPRAH

Sean’s Dream

End of year garage sale at a giant warehouse. It was clear that both of you and I had worked at this warehouse during the year along with hundreds of other people – Alana also worked here. You came across a folded up bedsheet under a pile of junk that had an imprint of two human bodies on it – the imprint was a bit like the shroud of Turin. You knew that this was actually an imprint of Alana having sex with…Oprah Winfrey. Oprah was on top. Oprah soon walked past and was really distressed that you had this and she didn’t want it getting out that she was a lesbian. All the all-knowing story telling part of me in the dream knew the importance of the bedsheets but my dream self had no idea. I ended up putting them in a bin chute somehow. 

SCHOOL

Veronica’s dream

I was back at high school and heading off to Art class. It was my first day at this high school. I didn’t tell them that I was also doing my PhD in Art. I kept forgetting I was meant to be a teenager & I was smoking in class whenever I felt like it. The art room was in an abandoned building upon a hill away from school. Everyone was making these huge sculptures of themselves. My favourite was made of brown resin, sort of shaped like this.

SCREAM

Sean’s dream

I have arrived back in Australia and I am walking back to my house in Glen Waverley – my house as a kid. I am walking down my street to my house from the non-Springvale road end which doesn’t make much sense. I’m screaming while I walk I am so happy. Stephanie who I am with tells me to be quiet because there are cyclists behind us. Before we make it home we see some ferrets and geese – maybe 10 of each. The geese are all in one big cage with the ferrets surrounding them. The geese keep grabbing and squashing the ferrets heads to pull them through the cage bars but it doesn’t work. At home I try to go to sleep but I can’t. I put on the Silverchair song “Freak” that I liked when it first came out. My mum walks in and realises I’m asleep. She says something important here.