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Lately, inspired by the extraordinary dreamscape of Kafka on the Shore, I’ve been thinking a lot about the strange logic that infuses our unconscious fears and desires into the detritus of our everyday life in our dreams each night. So, in celebration of the final days of the presidential campaign, I thought I’d share with you all a couple of my favorite election 2008 websites. Last spring, during the height of the primary campaign, a writer named Sheila Heiti was inspired by a friend’s dream about Hillary Clinton to start a blog soliciting people’s dreams about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain. She received a deluge of emails from people across America. Later, when slate.com invited their readers to submit their dreams about Sarah Palin, they received 500 in one week. Clearly, these figures have insinuated themselves into the deepest reaches of our unconscious and they creep forth in the still of the night in our nightmares and fantasies.

I love reading these dreams. I think it’s fascinating how saturated by emotion they are. Policy issues appear strictly as currency in interpersonal relationships (for example, the woman who dreamed that she would only accept Senator Obama’s marriage proposal if he committed to enacting health care legislation). And, as in Kafka on the Shore, I think some of them have a symbolic resonance that transcends logical explanation. For example, I’m not sure what this dream about John McCain means to the dreamer, but I find the image quite powerful:

“I was sitting with McCain at a rickety table in a camper, and I was advising him about his campaign. I pointed to an oddly shaped orange-and-black spider crawling down a 70s-era curtain behind his head. I handed him a piece of paper with which to kill it. He killed it, then looked at it ponderously. He said, I liked spiders as a boy.”

Sheila Heiti also started a blog where various analysts interpret the dreams. But, I’m not sure to what extent that’s possible. What strikes me about these dreams is how the universal and archetypal is inextricably mixed with the deeply personal. I’ll admit that one of the dreams posted is mine—I’m gonna keep quiet about which one it is—and I wonder if my dream vision of this candidate was formed by my well-researched opinion of his or her policies. Or if my policy opinions shaped themselves to the narrative already lurking in my unconscious.

This entry was posted by Joy Meads on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 10:40 am and is filed under Kafka on the Shore. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.