Tunnels and under/above ground transport played a large role in my dreams recently, mainly because of the long distances I’ve had to travel on metro lines between where I live now and Shanghai.
Entering a tunnel, I see a round train car covered in runes inside, matching the runes along the walls. I enter the train car, but it becomes even more claustrophobic, closing in on me as I wake up.
The second dream, I am near a construction site, a heavy lift boom is in the process of building. I am able to fly up alongside the exhaust of the machine, intending to cross the river next to the construction, but I go too far – way too far in the wrong direction, away from where I’m trying to go. I keep flying uncontrollably through various tunnels, through apartment bathrooms and shower stalls until I finally come to a rest very far away from my original destination.
Analysis: I live very far from the city now and these dreams appear to reflect anxiety I have about this fact. The claustrophobia of tunnels and metro cars appears to reflect the feelings I get when I go on long rides on these vehicles.
The Dream Journal of Philbert’s Phables is one of the most popular sections of the blog, despite having not been updated for years. Well, here’s an update, and hopefully more to come – if I can remember them.
I am presented with very stylized versions of blue passenger jet planes, complete with what appears to be a ceremony for their first use. The planes have sort of flowery, jagged white frills surrounding them. The rest of the dream is forgotten.
The Tengu appears in another dream, of which all else is also forgotten.
Analysis: I often took airliners between Taiwan and North Carolina while I was growing up, and many of these routes would fly through Haneda or Tokyo Narita. Blue and white are ANA colors, although I usually flew United or what was Northwest back in the day. In the in-flight magazines of the planes would be featured prominently “Tengu dried beef jerky”, which was somewhat oddly out-of-place.
I figured the people marketing this snack must be really proud of their product to place it next to ads for Absolut Vodka and Beefeater Gin, which were also fascinating to me as a child since I could not drink, and now understand it was probably meant to be a drinking snack. There was a chocolate liquor and a sweet “ice wine,” appealing to a child but alas, my parents were not game.
Once in a blue moon, a blog about music and sci-fi and dreams and as many topics as this one finds a way to come full circle – if only for a little bit. Speaking of, you can buy a copy of my science fiction Anthology here, and there’s more to come in a newsletter and a novel.
This WeChat write-up in Chinese covers more than what I could myself, a primary source account of underground disco parties that proliferated in small cities and towns during the mid-to-late 1980s China.
These tapes – in Cantonese, Hollywood Star Trax roughly sounds like Hedong, or Hollywood East in Mandarin – were part of a series still available online here and there of Euro and US disco/electronic dance mixes popular during the 1980s.
As the article above states, the “disco” would consist of a beat-up tape recorder, some reflective lighting, four old couches, and the hall monitors would turn a blind eye to moonwalking and other Western-inspired dance moves.
We hear the precursors to Minions in vaguely Spanish or Italian artists, and all the popular music of the era you can cut up and mix onto cassette, which is to say the tapes are novelty items and nostalgic for an era of relative cultural opening, according to the author of the cited piece. I would look for all editions of the Hedong tapes, but the music is catchy insipid rather than inspired.
You can be the judge of that yourself, as the three tapes I did find are on the Tape History. Of note, the songs are arrayed in “kebab style” (“串烧”) quick tracks one after another for continuity in a dance hall setting – or just generally getting hype.
So what’s the deal? Did China become more socially conservative in the 1990s with the fall of the Soviet Union? Or did globalization require an obedient workforce and consumer base, one that China was all too happy to provide given the economic windfall…only to have it run aground decades later when globalization took its biggest hit yet with COVID-19?
所谓的社会保守是为了与国际经济同化的策略吗？同化而不同步，可能吗？
Bonus: The “Warrior” Mengshi tapes followed Hollywood Star Trax and their album art feature some fantastically unoriginal scenes from with equally mushy and effects-driven 80’s tunes. I’ve uploaded the music from these tapes for completeness. Many more of these await on secondary market, if anyone is interested in starting their own collection…
My dreams have either been too vague or too embarrassing to write recently. But I heard you wanted dreams, so here are some more – uncensored (well, almost)!
Two dreams. The first is probably the first well-formed dream I can remember since moving to China but ends in a sort of silly nightmare. I am at some sort of hotel and get into a car downstairs at the entrance. We drive towards a train station through cloudy/misty/polluted cityscapes and enter a parking lot where I climb a spiral staircase to a semi-hidden room where top brass from what appears to be the US air force and army are gathered for a meeting in a sort of WeWork/hotel lobby with cushioned chairs/cushions for chairs.
One of the meeting participants is a “Rand person” i.e. from one of the think tanks and I recognize her as someone I saw on a Tinder app once but is kind of crazy. She is very driven and comes up to me to say hello. Her name is Laura Anderson [no connection to anyone I know in real life] and she has crazy person glasses even though she is quite attractive; anyway people know to avoid her in terms of romantic connections. Then suddenly a pillow is shouting and talking to me, which I take to be real life because I’m in bed and “woke up,” which is quite scary indeed. Then I finally wake up from all this nonsense.
Analysis: This is very heavily influenced by what I am seeing in real life, being in China. The meeting scene is influenced from being in DC for so long and attending various events where US military or thinktank personnel are presenting, but it also gives the allure of a secret meeting on/in China at the top levels of the US military that I get to participate in. Perhaps I always wanted to work in the military or a thinktank. The Laura Anderson part is somewhat self-explanatory, at least I know people like that in the DC space, having lived there for so long.
Second dream, begins at a temple in Taiwan where the rain is falling and I see a tall, slim mixed young woman and end up having a “passionate encounter” with her in the woods. She turns out to be a prostitute. My character is actually a cop from the FBI or some American agency sent to Taiwan for a cybersecurity/smuggling etc. investigation, so he asks if the payment of ten thousand is in Taiwan dollars or USD, to which the prostitute scoffs.
Ok, not quite Taiwan, but yes woods
The next scene is him comparing slides with the Taiwanese cops as he is sent to investigate gangsters involved. They brainstorm criminal involvement, discuss informants, etc. But the character continues to see the prostitute, sometimes at her own apartment, where she covers (turns down) a picture of her from college with some of her friends, and we find out from the shot that she went to Georgetown as she’s wearing a college hoodie in the picture. Then the agent is in an aquarium by himself, with creatures all around and even some Merfolk-inspired creatures about him; it’s a dream-like scene. The prostitute is actually an informant for the gangsters, but she has feelings for the agent too so the gangsters eventually kill her.
He is alone in the aquarium
The agent sees her as his guardian angel and at times even wonders if he was/is imagining her or not. There is somehow a banquet that both law enforcement and the gangsters attend, and of course a fight breaks out. Eventually there is an “awards ceremony” (this is all in a fantastical sense) where the agent is outed as having been with this prostitute with all the pictures of them together, but he doesn’t deny it as he says he was in love with her.
Analysis: Ummm…use your imagination. I will say this though, there was an attractive young woman at Georgetown, mixed as well, whose claim to fame is that she had previously starred in a pornographic film of an abusive nature. She ended up being kicked out of Georgetown for dealing marijuana. Anyway maybe this prostitute character is vaguely based off of her.
I’ve been busy with the big move to Shanghai (more on that later), but here are a few more dreams I’ve been having sleeping on air mattresses and trying to get rid of a chest cold. Not working is stressful in of itself.
8/26/2019:
A race of Godlike beings dressed as wizards (quidditch gear, red robes) ride broomsticks into space and defend earth against dark clouds, like the dust creatures in Totoro but much more malevolent. They dissipate the clouds with their hands but some still get through to earth. It turns into a demon man who attacks a girl, police try to intervene and shoot him with a shotgun but it’s too late. The Old and New Gods decide to band together to work more closely now to defend humans against this threat.
Now there are men and women in goth(ic) dress, wooden swords and scaffolding and bridge that they let me pass through, though first challenging me. Next, one of the men who challenged me on the bridge earlier runs to me for protection as he’s being hunted down by an assassin; I throw a knife at the attacker but miss. I pull out another knife to attack him but the assassin holds onto me and starts slicing my wrist.
8/28/2019:
The Jay Chou song 雙刀 is playing as I see a mountain from afar at dusk with some lights already lit up, one of the mountains by the sea in Taiwan’s north coast. There are people practicing kung fu at the top of the mountain as the “camera” circles them and the mountain itself like drone/plane footage.
Then I am in an office at the side of the mountain at night with ships in the waters in the distance. My friend from grad school Peter Satre is there too. Again I have to close a window shade with the metal chain, I have to walk carefully along metal girders and reach over a precipice to close it, whereas Peter’s “dad” (who is actually actor Chris Cooper) closes it easily. Then I am fully in an office complex and getting into an office that is not my own, seeing colleagues that are not my own with my mom. One of the executive types there asks if I know the board of directors (which would explain why I am a stranger there). My mom thanks me for bringing in good business for her.
It’s window shades that look like this that I had growing up in Taiwan too. These are in FTI’s DC office
Commentary: I think those dust sprites from My Neighbor Totoro are a little more chilling than they let on in the cartoon, or at least they left a strong impression with me. The Old Gods and New is a reference to the TV show American Gods. Hard to explain the gothic folks.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Jay Chou lately to prepare myself for the big move. I used to go to the North Coast of Taiwan a lot with my father, we would drive up and sometimes go to the beach. The natural beauty of it all was always wondrous to behold, along with the starkness of the mountains against the sea. The window shades may be returning to my dreams as the ones I had growing up were placed directly over open windows that you (or a pet) could fall through if you really tried. So these were precarious things to open and close, and it was always so hot/cold in that apartment too. New colleagues, new office…sounds familiar.
Two dreams. The first one is simple, I am in an apartment and there is water everywhere, pooling all around. I try to soak it up with towels and buckets. I’m not sure where it’s coming from, maybe a broken pipe, but it’s everywhere.
It wasn’t this bad and the apartment wasn’t this tacky, but oh well.
Second dream is much more involved. In a WWI-style trench warfare environment, a war hero’s M60 machine gun is recovered after his death in combat. A blacksmith is brought to the battlefield to retrieve the weapon and ordered by the Papacy to restore it as a way to commemorate the war hero and other war dead. Everyone is vaguely Italian. The blacksmith is a pacifist, though, so he empties the gun of all its ammunition before taking it back to his pacifist community on a mule. The Papacy orders a greasy/unsavory inspector type to make sure that the weapon is functioning again or at least restored. The blacksmith and his daughter bring the inspector up a flight of stone stairs to a small stone hill. All around them in the shallow water young men and boys are playing and practicing gymnastics. The daughter retrieves the restored weapon from a platform in the water and presents it to the inspector with a smile. The inspector lays the weapon down and begins to load it with ammunition to test fire it, firing directly into the crowds of young men and boys, whose bodies burst open with blood and everyone is screaming and crying out. The inspector is exacting payback upon the pacifist community for them not participating in the war. The dream ends with the blacksmith taking his tool and striking the inspector down in shock and rage, breaking his pacifist vows.
An M60 machine gun
Commentary: Water is a component of many of my dreams. The Pacifist story sounds interesting, hopefully I can turn it into a short film.
Mulan-style Chinese soldiers wearing armor march in a column carrying blunderbusses/muskets and banners. A rag tag group without armor face off with and charge towards the enemy (probably the Huns) and throw javelins before engaging in hand-to-hand combat, I see this from the Hun perspective. Then I am playing capture-the-flag and am hit with a beanbag from a player from the opposing ream who is actually a former classmate of mine from Jinhua junior high school in Taiwan who I don’t think liked me, maybe because I am half white. I punched that guy in the face (in real life), that shut him up. Anyway, tagged by the beanbag, I am “out” and receive scores of my efforts on an electronic blackboard connected to a drink fridge, high marks for earnestness but low marks for athleticism. I ride an elevator above the fray where I see Chinese soldiers standing in a winding, line around the grounds, lining up to their execution at the hands of the Hun.
Nightmare. I am at a window facing the city lit up at night (looks like New York, since there is a tall, skinny building known as 432 Park Avenue visible out the window.) There is a white plastic windowshade flapping in the wind and a metal chain at the side of the window (outside the window) that is flapping with it. I try to hang on to the chain to close the window and windowshade but it keeps eluding my grasp. Now a thunderstorm begins outside the window with thunder and the sounds and feelings of rain, it is afternoon and the clouds and rain are making the view dark, but there is still grey-ish green light. The rain makes it more urgent to close the window, and now the white curtain turns into a white dummy/mannequin with rubber covering her flat chest (there is only a chest and head), I am holding on to the mannequin with white fake hair and I stroke her hair without seeing her face, as she is facing a bit down even though her chest is facing up (it’s obviously mixed up, I see a bit of her face but not much). The mannequin seems to be on a swivel crosswise so I turn her up a bit, and then she fully turns around and upward at her own volition and her face and eyes are contorted in a grotesque, skull-like manner, and she emits a hissing sound. I cry out softly and awaken.
Commentary: The Mulan dream is influenced by my viewing the trailer to the new live-action Mulan movie. The mannequin dream, all I can say is that I was attracted to the mannequin at first, which made her transformation all the more frightful. Also the feeling of not being able to do a simple task (close the window). I think this nightmare is a good candidate for a short film, though. I would love to create the mannequin prop myself and it might be decently easy to animate her face, the city at night, and the storm outside.
I still dream about my grandparents; my grandma passed away in 2015 and my grandfather just passed away this March. But sometimes my dreams of them are distorted, not exactly the same face that I knew, but some variation that I still recognize. This happens a lot in my dreams, the “recognizing” of people’s faces that aren’t their true images.
Anyway, I haven’t been remembering my dreams very well recently, so this dream is a little fuzzy to me, even though I recorded it right after I woke up around 3 or 4 am.
I have friends who do bad things a la the movie Trainspotting, or A Clockwork Orange, though not as extreme as the latter. They are picking on someone and I vomit (or some substance) on my shoe. Then I am picking up a prescription at a pharmacy (Walgreens?) when they ask for my credit limit and I tell them. My mother, who is there, says don’t tell anyone who isn’t us. I fly away and see a a building and gardens and fountains down the side of a sloping hill similar to gardens I saw in Florence. I feel sad and am crying because the gardens are beautiful, but small and aging, but the groundskeepers have tried to keep it in good condition, but it still looks a little run-down.
There was a building at the top of the hill, a fountain and hedges beneath it arranged in a line
I continue flying down the hill until I see a level area with many Balinese-inspired stone figures, statues, monuments, fountains, and an empty stage made of stone with red/pinkish curtains. There is a monument or statue that circulates ashes (probably human ashes) throughout the stone edifice. I am flying to a hallway where I am faced with yearbook-like photos of young women (like my high school) whose faces transform into or are superimposed with cat and dog faces. Then I am by the sea, by a salesman I used to know, trying to make sales myself. There is a Japanese restaurant with a job board and employee in front of it. I ask if there is an opening and how to apply, she tells me I have to be a shareholder(?) or part of some Japanese scheme that I am not in and it would be difficult to enter.
Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
Analysis: I interpret flying dreams to be good. The stage beckons me even in my dreams. The ashes are probably those of my grandparents, who we buried in Westfield New Jersey (where they lived for a long time) last week. The transforming faces sound a lot like Deep Dream, but probably also influenced by one of me co-workers talking about her puppy at work. I keep thinking if I should switch over to a more BD client-facing role, and maybe the last bit represents how hard it is to find a job overseas (and the Japanese in general).
I have recurring dreams where I am in a building in an earthquake, and the building is collapsing or falling apart, but I go to safety. Tonight my grandparents are in my dream, just as they were in another dream I had before where I had to move over difficult terrain on the side of a mountain. They were always reassuring to me during times of strife. The building is shifting, moving from floor to floor. I go outside and there is an olympic swimming/synchronized swimming event in dark water (but bright swimcaps and contestants), somehow related to Japan. Then I have to swim a long distance to find my way back to shore, and somehow there are people eating cup noodles/ramen and it’s college all over again.
This one might turn out to be good film material: A group (maybe including me, it’s not clear) of people in a gold Toyota Avalon (my grandpa’s old car) are transported back to the Mongolian steppes around the time of Genghis Khan and have to figure out how to survive and return to the present day. They are treated as Gods by nomads due to their car (coming out through the moonroof deity style) and smooth, pale appearance and trade some modern-day items with the nomads for food and furs. Maybe they meet Chinese and can converse, but it’s unlikely as the languages would have been very different back then.
Since it is the most high-profile example of purported machine dreaming and inspired the name of this blog arc in the first place, I will use the example of Google’s Deep Dream to discuss whether or not a machine can dream.
Deep Dream is a computer program developed by Google in 2014 and released in 2015. At the time Google was experimenting with image recognition in its search engine and one of the machine learning techniques it adopted was using neural networks, convolutional neural networks (CNN) in particular. You can create your own Deep Dream-influenced images here. Mine of the Statue of Liberty is below.
If you look up Deep Dream images, they are all slightly creepy like this, filled with eyes, animals and psychedelic patterns
Basically, a neural network imitates physical neural networks in humans and other animals by attributing one or more specific functions to individual neurons, or nodes, in a network. In the case of image recognition, some nodes would focus on recognizing specific edges, other specific shapes, others colors, and so on. Ultimate, higher level recognition of “dog” or “motorcycle” would occur with all those nodes in concert, as they fed off each other’s activity and output and “learned” from researchers what were correct and incorrect responses.
But beyond recognizing images and sorting them into categories (helpful for a search engine with massive amounts of data, or to conduct facial recognition such as what Facebook does), the researchers discovered that they could run the program in “reverse,” or inside-out: The program could create a representation of what it thought (using the term loosely) or at least predicted, the thing they were recognizing would look like. In other words, after showing Deep Dream millions of pictures of cats, dogs and other things, researchers asked the program to look at an image and tell them what they saw, and of course, they saw, and created images of, a bunch of animals in the image.
…or what passes for animals in bizzaro land
These pictures have been likened to dreams, although they’re really more akin to nightmares or psychedelic experiences. But if you look at the way Deep Dream works from both the ground-up, shape recognition and the top-down, high-level recognition, it’s actually surprisingly similar to at least my conception of how dreams are formed (see my dream journal for more details). When you are in a dream, clearly your lower-level shape and form perception has to operate in order for you to make any sense of the images you are seeing, and those neural networks, if you will, have been trained on the years of exposure to the outside world.
Then at a higher level, there are, at least in my dreams, certain references to daily activities or plots or cultural references (mostly anime and computer games, go figure) that I have to interpret as such upon seeing them, and they in turn conform to my preconceived cultural or emotional knowledge. It’s a two-way street, much in the way Deep Dream is interpreting and creating images based on its “incepted” knowledge.
Not to mention the dreams I have about rooms or cityscapes filled with objects or buildings that conform to some sort of emotional or physical memory of such experiences, but do not exactly mimic the experiences that created them in the first place. So this is similar to the repetitive, “variations on a theme” nature of the Deep Dream program when it comes to recognition of objects within images. There is an internal alchemy that is producing these images, a specific set of conditions within the neural network including memories that is giving rise to them.
One of my recurring dreams is seeing cityscapes, especially seeing the roofs and tops of buildings from above
But similarities or mimicry of human/animal experiences and functions does not necessarily equate to actual experience and functioning. In the next post, I will explain the conditions which should be met for a machine to dream.
