Paul Pulls The Trigger
Dreamed 1969/12/16 by Paul Sharits
The context(s) of this dream segment are forgotten; what remains is this image:
'I' shoot myself with a hand pistol but then, thinking 'One shot in the head is undramatic', 'I' start over again, this time pulling the trigger a half dozen times in rapid succession--as if 'I' were watching a film of 'myself' but also feeling as if 'I' were there, in 'myself'. Observing and experiencing, as two levels of 'dream-self' . Another level of 'self' was simultaneously involved--feeling as if I, 'me', the real but sleeping 'Paul' were directing, directly, the dream development.
Perhaps I have experienced this no-perspective, no-self before and now I am realizing it only because of the suicidal imagery which preceded that 'state of mind'...
SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.2, no.1, fall 1981, p.51)
EDITOR'S COMMENT
I think Sharits is right to distinguish at least three kinds of self in dreaming: actor, watcher and director. And maybe he had to shoot one facet of himself to clear the way so he could see others (if that's what he's saying in his last sentence above; not too clear). But... Sharits goes on for another full page, all abstract, like his "can 'pure subjectivity' also transcend itself?... ignore itself?" Whatever that means. (But then spacy speculation like this was routine in the 1960s & 70s. All that acid...)
If I dreamed this, I'd be worried. Not just suicide, but violent suicide repeated, more thoroughly & emphatically. And the motive? Not dying to escape physical pain, emotional loss, or a moral dilemma, but purely to wow an audience! The very definition of a drama queen.
I'd feel warned I might be acting, in my real life, as if it were a movie--maximizing drama. With my body, and quite possibly my friends, paying the price.
--Chris Wayan
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