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I've had two dreams in the last two nights that I've woken up from, but that have then continued from where I left them when I fall asleep again.
I don't know what that means.
In the first one I was appearing on SNL US and in rehearsals, but everyone was very insistent that I was not allowed the script. I had, apparently seen it once and everyone was telling me that I couldn't have a look, however much I told them that I needed to see the script if I was going to be in the sketch. I was glad to wake up from it as it was getting irritating to have this argument over and over again. But then I fell asleep and Chloe Fineman was refusing to give me the fucking script again. That's no way to run a weekly comedy show.
I was so angry about it.
I can't really remember the dream from this morning - I think it might have been a bit of a sexy one - but I woke up before anything happened and so it was pretty good to get back into it. But by then the sex was off the table (so to speak) but the scenario continued.
Come on subconscious. Sort yourself out.
Anyway I am a little spooked by the dreams carrying on - perhaps I just dreamt that I woke up, but even if I was dreaming within a dream, it would be strange to return to the dream in a dream once I've dreamed I've woken up.
I suppose it's one step away from lucid dreaming - I made a decision somewhere to return to both these dreams. I've only lucid dreamt once properly and it led me into a proper nightmare where I lost the lucidity and kept waking up from each dream, only to discover that I was still in a dream. I'd wake up and be in my bedroom and sometimes go about my day, but then things would go awry - I properly died in one version in a really horrible way - and then I'd wake up again. On the sixth time I looked around my bedroom to check I was really awake and was sure I was, but then saw a joss stick burning on my bedside table. I could not have lit that in my sleep (mainly because I had no joss sticks) and bang I was awake again.
I am still not sure that I have ever woken up from that dream. What if they rest of my life has just been a really long version of that Groundhog Day and at any moment I could wake up back in the year 2000.
In some ways that would be pretty good.
I did start dating Julia Sawalha the week I had that experience, which did feel like the kind of thing that would happen in a dream.
Would you be pleased to find that the last quarter of a century never happened? Sure you'd be young again, but everything you'd done and any relationships or children you had had would be imaginary.
There was a woman who experienced that when she went into a coma and lived a whole life including having kids (I think I talked about it on the podcast quite recently). Can you imagine how you'd feel knowing the children you loved never existed and would never exist? Luckily I can't.
Worse for me is if 2000 was my cut off point then I would have dreamt writing almost 9000 blogs and none of them would actually exist. What a waste of my writing time.
I feel like I did once have the ability to produce mental images too (but I might be imagining it, though just not very well). Is it possible that I am only unable to create mental images because I am still in that dream?
Weirdly I've been working up a stand up routine about an imagined life and what you'd lose if you were thrown back 25 or 40 years. It'd be so good to be young again, but not at the cost of what I would lose.
Anyway that might be why unusual dream activity makes me feel a bit weird. If all this fell away I'd be devastated. And also quite cross with myself for not dreaming myself a better career. Sure I've done well with the family bit, but if none of this was real it'd have been nice to be a fucking movie star. Or at least play some bigger theatres. Or the same sized theatres, just full.
If you've always wanted to hear a failed comedian, a 134 year old ventriloquist dummy and a naked baby with a disembodied arm discuss capital punishment then you're in luck. Unless none of this is real. I mean come on that sounds like a dream.
Anyway today's Newsround almost achieves that
