I had a dream last night, well, actually it was this morning, but the dream itself isn't important. What is important, relatively speaking, is that it made me realize that it is my waking life that is my "studio".
I have on occasion dreamed I was jamming with the Stones or playing a gig with The Tooners but I don't recall ever dreaming of listening to my music on CDs or looking at my films or paintings. In my dreams, that I remember and other than the sexual ones (my favs), I'm always moving. I'm often driving in a car or visiting a neighborhood or a guest in someones house or in a mall or at an amusement park or making my way through a claustrophobic animation studio where the passageways always lead higher and higher and get tighter and tighter. Although I'm sometimes working in my dreams, which is a drag when I wake up after feeling like I've worked all night but can't bill for it, I don't seem to enjoy the fruits of my labor. It is when I wake up and look at one of my paintings on the wall or put on my earphones and listen to one of my songs or watch one of my videos on my iPod that I can enjoy the efforts that many times seem to start in my dreams. It really does seem to me that my waking life is where I can actually make the things I literally dream about but I can't just "dream it" and have it appear fully formed there, wherever "there" is.
Sometimes it seems that my "real" life is the dreaming life. In one of the books I read there is an exercise where you're instructed to remember a moment in your past where you made a decision that changed your life, such as moving to another town. Then you're suppose to vividly imagine what your life would have been like had you made a different decision (such as not made the move). The startling realization I gained from doing this exercise is that it is THIS LIFE that is the unlikely, if not unbelievable, one. The alternative life I imagined I probably would have lived had I not made certain decisions in my past actually seems much more probable and realistic.
It is in this life that my paintings exist, and the books I've written (and this blog), and the animated award winning music videos for my band, and my band and all our songs and the live shows out on the road and the talented guys I know and the beautiful women I've known and my family and home are. In my dream world I'm a tourist just out seeing the sights.
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