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Where in the Hell Did That Come From?
The weird connection between writing, creating, and dreams
I awakened at 4 a.m.
There was no alarm, only the one in my head, and it told me to rise and write it down. Write it down now before it floats away into some murky ether never to be found again.
It came in a dream. Two lines for a poem. Ones that had never com to me in the waking state.
I wrote them down on the Memo app on my phone. Tried to return to sleep but couldn’t. I was unable to shake the question: Where in the hell did that come from?
A recent study at MIT shows a clear link between creativity and sleep. It found that a period of sleep can boost creativity compared to staying awake for the same period of time.
In a 2023 article in Scientific American it was revealed where this so-called “boost” might rest. Author Ingrid Wickelgren wrote, “For decades sleep scientists have mulled over the link between dreaming and creative inspiration. They have long thought these insights came from the rapid eye movement stage of sleep, which is rich with dreams and begins an hour or more into the sleep cycle. But new evidence puts the spotlight on a much earlier sleep phase — the twilight zone that separates sleep and wakefulness — as fertile ground for a creative burst.”
Noted in the article, and in many other sources, is a practice once employed by the surrealist painter, Salvador Dali. When considering a new work, he would nap while he held a set of keys above a metal plate. As he slowly fell asleep, his hand muscles would relax, the keys would drop, hit the metal plate, and awaken him. He believed that inside those little naps were nuggets of yet uncovered creative ideas. A recent study of creativity by Paris researchers seems to have confirmed the validity of this process. In a summation of a scientific project, those who had napped had a higher composite creativity score as compiled by the researchers than did those who did not nap. More research is needed, but the results suggest that dreaming during periods of non-REM sleep is an active ingredient for creativity.
There’s nothing new here in regard to the tons of anecdotal evidence linking dreams and creativity. The belief that creativity can be found in our dreams has been around for centuries. Mental health professional Caroline Presno writes on the site Rogue Habits how none of this should surprise us, and yet somehow it does. “Our dreams are a set of clues that lead us back to ourselves,” Presno writes. “Thoughts, feelings and beliefs that we ignore during our waking hours, tug at us while we sleep. The more we get in touch with this buried content, the more control we have over our narrative and the more we can give to the creative process.”
If this is true, then what does a creative do with it?
First: Don’t ignore your dreams. Trust that something inside your head is trying to tell you something.
Second: Be ready to record it. Keep a notebook by your bed. Record your thoughts on your phone. And don’t wait to do this. Make a immediate record of the dream anyway you can even if at first it makes no sense.
Third: Study what you discover. Take the time to spend time with that dream in the awakened stage. What your brain is trying to tell you will eventually make itself known.
Book of Dreams is a novel by Jack Kerouac based on the dream journal he kept between 1952 and 1960. The prose is spontaneous, the approach experimental, yet perfectly fitting for finding meaning and creativity inside our dreams.
“The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.” — Jack Kerouac
Author and literary critic, Hassan Meleny suggests that Kerouac’s dream book is more than simply the recording of the unconscious mind. Meleny, writes in his book Kerouac: Language, Poetics, and Territory that Kerouac “affirms the status of dreams as reality but also extends their vision function to everyday waking perception, in part through the close study that results from recording them. Thus, he suggests that broad awareness and actualization of this function are central to the social interconnectedness of humanity . . .”
Dreams are not “the other” of us. They are us. Just as much as any waking moment. But unlike the awakened mind, dreams carry deeper metaphors that should be paid attention to, must be paid attention to, and addressed as a creative force.
Let’s see what you and I can dream up tonight.
David W. Berner is the author of several award-winning books of memoir and fiction. He has been teaching writing for more than twenty-five years.
