From: s_titz@ira.uka.de (Olaf Titz)
Newsgroups: alt.dreams
Subject: Re: Dream music
Date: 26 Jan 1993 19:59:11 GMT
Organization: Fachschaft math/inf, Uni Karlsruhe, FRG
NNTP-Posting-Host: irau30.ira.uka.de

In article <1993Jan25.003452.21715@tcsi.com> miket@hermes.tcs.com (Michael Turner nmscore Assoc.) writes:
> In article <cygVXB4w165w@anarky.tch.org> nightsng@anarky.tch.org (Nightsong) writes:

> >doing certain things for dreaming.  I have actually found music quite 
> >satisfactory.  Usually, my dreams look, sound, and feel better (*AND* it 
> >is easier to realize I am dreaming and take advantage of it) if I am 
> >listening to Enya's music.
> 
> I find her stuff very dreamlike -- the kinds of melodies that seem to
> occur to me in dreams, in the few times that has happened.  I wonder

Since I love music, music plays a great role in my dreams too.

The melodies I hear in dreams are mostly pieces I know well and
are very accurate reproductions, although sometimes the pieces are
somewhat obviously corrupted. (I remember a live performace of some
band who sang Freddie Mercury's "Barcelona" but actually with a
different town name...)

Melodies which I invent in my dreams or I don't know already well
occur more rarely. By now I haven't found any preference for some
special kind of music.

> just what this "dreaminess" is, anyway?  Some studies have measured the

Could it be that the association of Enya's music as "dreamy" is so
common that you inevitably run across it?

> "dreaminess" of story-lines -- people who are awakened from REM supposedly
> make up "dreamier" stories than people who are woken at other times.

Which should be obvious, since the dreams they had when they got
awaken are still in their minds, and they are not yet completely
shifted from dream thinking to Real World thinking.

> For images and narrative, it's not hard to think of means of comparison,
> but music is another thing again.  Is it something in the sound itself?

I doubt. The music I dream of is pretty much the same I listen to when
awake. 

> In the images the music conjures up?  Some combination?

I think it is a combination of music AND images AND thoughts AND
surroundings AND many other things that all have to be taken into
account, s.b.

> Maybe "dreaminess" is at the heart of the *appeal* of Enya's music, and

Appeal, yes. To many people, yes. But surely not a universal property
of this special music.

> others.  I've often that that much of culture wells up out of people's
> conscious and unconscious resonance with dreams.  Some critics have
> pointed out MTV as an example of virtual dream animation.

I think that for *some* good MTV spots, this is a good description. I
remember making short stories out of dreams (heavily edited, but the
outlines remain) and always being able to distinguish their spirit
from other stories. But I'm not sure if other people would think the
same.

Olaf
-- 
| Olaf Titz - comp.sc.student  |   o     | uknf@dkauni2.bitnet | old address |
| univ. of karlsruhe - germany |  _>\ _  | s_titz@ira.uka.de   | is still    |
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  "My heart is human - my blood is boiling - my brain IBM" - Mr. Roboto
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