World Dream Bank
home -
add a dream -
newest -
art gallery -
sampler -
dreams by
title,
subject,
author,
date,
place,
names
Six Dreams
Dreamed by Jim Shaw, c.1994.
1: I was looking for a place to masturbate at my folks' house but the bathroom was a large bathtub with several inches of water.
2. I was in my hometown looking for "silver star" medals (given to wounded soldiers) in a thrift store but it was closing. I snuck in & in the back room, Chris Wilder was looking for surfboards & Meg was playing a wide piano-swimming pool with built-in rhythm track.
3. Marnie & a friend & I were in this odd gated rail station in NYC & had no hotel to stay in. We walked around & went to a semi-posh restaurant & were seated in the budget section. Our friend whispered to the waiter about our lack of funds & made a deal for free food. She stripped off her clothes & struck various venus-esque poses. I couldn't figure out the menu which was to me an incomprehensible bunch of colors & symbols so I ordered a chicken sandwich.
4. I ordered a pizza but I was brought a gutted & pressed golden retriever, just like my dog. Its liver was a meat patty & it was still alive, so a chef came out to kill it.
5. In the San Joaquin Valley, Marnie & my folks find a hotel-thrift store run by a former L.A. collage artist. I find a peculiar hair wrap for Marnie & then a set of dolls designed to teach girls to be prostitutes.
6. A strange animated interspecies sex/political cartoon of a rhino rubbing butts with a bear-elephant.
SOURCE: Jim Shaw's Dreams, Jan. 1995, Smart Art Press. Dreamed 1987-95, probably 1994.
EDITOR'S NOTE
Six dreams in one night! Shaw drew them all as one laconic, crowded page. Yet don't they break rather neatly into three pairs?
- 1,2: Smooth shiny flooded things--the bathroom-tub, then the glass piano. Paired vertical things too--his erection, then surfboards leaning on the wall.
- 3,4: Naked, vulnerable creatures in a restaurant--his broke friend stripping for food, then that gutted, suffering dog just like his own. We've gone from frustration to empathy over others' pain.
- 5,6: Satirical caricatures (first dolls, then animation) on sex & politics, both with titles added--"Tammy Tart & Pals", then "E.T. too, Brute?" The first seems obvious: Barbie's role-modeling. But the second's more mysterious: is that the Republican elephant? Who's the rhino, then? Rich old ugly thick-skinned horny guys, as in his dream The Rich Wreck the Well? Whoever it is, we've gone from pain to political anger. And high time, too, if you ask me.
--Chris Wayan
LISTS AND LINKS:
epic dreams -
water -
musical instruments -
nudity & exhibitionism -
food -
violence -
dogs -
gender -
dolls (mostly living!) -
sexploitation -
flirtation -
interspecies sex -
elephants -
bears -
not many rhinoceri in the Dreambank, but here's a rhino writer:
The Guy Who Scripts My Dreams -
surrealism -
pencil dream art -
more Jim Shaw
World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites
