A Poem of Social Dreaming
Belgrade, August 2023
The below is taken from notes compiled by the hosts of a Social Dreaming matrix held during the GASI Symposium in Belgrade, August 2023. The notes were a record of the telling of dreams and the group’s associations, which were in turn an account of dreams from nights or years before.
The notes are edited only a little: much of it is verbatim; and the numbers connote each session. In being written down the group’s polyphony coalesces into one voice, revealing themes and music in its spontaneous recollections, associations and rhythms. The result is a poem whose content is entirely symbolic, with no narrative except for that which arose organically — yet somehow it tells a story.
1.
I dreamt of my father: for the first time I dreamt of him dying,
water bubbling from his mouth as if drowning from the
inside. In the bathroom, another man had hung himself.
Somehow though, the voices are soothing: it’s the children’s voices
I can’t understand — their music. When I woke I struggled, not knowing
whether I would be touched or eaten, whether
the boat would sink, whether I was a witch for knowing
what I know. I need to say something.
I am nervous, all being understood. I worked as a midwife,
and learned that my umbilical cord had lodged
within me: it was normal, somehow.
The old man choked, dying while still being born,
and yet another man died of shock.
It’s touching to hear you speak.
One heart beats fast and another heats fast.
I was told to keep my dreams a secret. It’s a woman’s role,
to keep things hidden.
When I gambled I won, but it meant that the children lost.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to find.
I came here with my son: not often with child,
an intimate part or not, not sure, part
of the Western world, left behind or not.
2.
I’m walking around a city, Belgrade, a destroyed mixture of cities
I put my foot on a plate and went up like a firework — you see,
the Chinese invented gunpowder for fireworks. Only later, weapons.
The Chinese mother collapsed on the floor as we pushed food down
tubes to reach her. I dream often and can’t remember. I denied
my son’s existence — he was ten, naughty, but not
my responsibility. Standing still, eyes closed, something
fell on me. I woke in a sewer of a dream.
We were all animals and I fell in love
with other animals. You can’t fall in love here. No dreams.
The president makes us hate each other. What’s the difference,
anyway? I just turn to them for protection —
wasps, not ants; the alligator’s missing limb, hippos
in a concrete pen, heads bashing against the
tiled wall.
Do not throw things, because he will not move.
In the concert, I closed my eyes
and saw myself as a little girl. I felt happy, safe, alone.
3.
This is the Third Reich of Dreams. I was in Poland, Krakow.
In the woods I collected soldiers: the main thing was that I was helpful.
There is a closed, mapped experience. I concluded
that life can be predicted, and remembered that in Malawi
all the children vomited after feasting, like they knew
it was going to happen.
People walked towards us and we embraced, stylised, like
ballet — fused into a whirlwind and landed in a conifer
without us, embedded point-first like a rocket in the ground.
I have to save someone, but because I cannot see
I don’t know who it is. I don’t speak with anyone
and am ashamed. I think about war,
but it’s only once there was sad music that I could cry.
The kids played with fireworks made of metal and glass.
One had a plant and another a stick and their mother said,
“What are you looking at, cunt?” When I gave birth
for the second time, I wanted to throw up.
“Great,” she said, “you are making a place.”
Do you remember hitting me because I couldn’t do it the way you wanted?
I am shutting down and have hardly slept, but somehow I still dream.
I remember my uncle dancing, and the unplayed pianos everywhere.
Someone asked for a second time, “What’s going on here?”
The babies were babies, asleep and angry, except they looked after
each other. Who is going to be president, not for here but for the world?
4.
I was drinking coffee when I heard Pink Floyd playing from the floor above,
as if from the sky. There was a scent of lemon flowers.
Let’s walk from my apartment. I saw two cats embracing and left them.
The other one really was a dog and the duckling, a swan.
Why not let go? I wish I didn’t have it. My parents wanted me to marry
this man. I liked this man. We come together. We talk; we nearly talk
but we don’t. If we don’t talk we’ll get cancer, I was
yelling, blood spurting from my nose, spots on my shirt.
The rocks were a graveyard and the headstones a last supper.
The chairs, upended, are headstones: mass graves for the young
in Iran, London Bridge is Falling Down, Caption Kurtz,
Nuremberg, where everything is scaled up
to make us feel small.
We exchanged at the borders. Another time,
another time. I was raised to take responsibility,
to prevent horrible things from happening.
I am afraid of coughing, and can’t be happy.
Someone dreamt she had murdered her father
and woke with blood on her pillow. I dreamt
I killed my mother — all the dead mothers.
I have to say something, but most violent revolutions
leave the old order standing. Behind all the shouting is grief.
We feel bigger and therefore go outside. When I was a child,
I used to dream that I was dead. People think I’m dead
but I’m not so they should bury me with a hammer,
just in case. Lazarus was resurrected, the problem being that
when he does die, he’ll never know if he’s really dead.
“Don’t you know how painful it is to be awake in your own grave?”
— so bury the dead with a bell, to toll
if they wake up. Do you know why vampires exist
They don’t want to be part of the collective.
This is not a joke. Instead we wanted to be free, like witches.
When I was a child I dreamt I was flying through my apartment,
and ended up in my parents’ bed. The effort
to take off, as if a bird once, I would take off
in my body — I remember it.
We will die. I knew I had to learn to fly in dreams.
They think they buried us, but we were seeds.