Social Matters and Dreaming Series

SDM #1

Hosts: Juliet Scott and Bongsu Park

Dreamers: 24

Dreams 7.  Associations 33.

Themes:

Elemental; energy; life choices personal and societal. The choices and uncertainty precede white horses across many cultures and time; unicorns; BlackUnicornsMatter; the feminine; healing and reconnection through the horse. Dualism of black and white horses. Who is being taxed in Covid?  The horse, Lady Godiva to help us to see, save us.

Dream 1:  I am in a beautiful beach on Sicily. I like sun. Suddenly there is a hurricane. I run to escape and find a Catholic church where I feel protected. I enter into a room and on a table there is a large piece of parmesan cheese. I start to cut it into pieces, eat one then and another until none left. I feel guilty the priest enters. Saw the cheese and said nothing about it instead said he had to cut my hair. When he was finished I didn’t like. It felt modern. ‘Times change’ the priest said.

Associations: Meeting of the global climate change conference in the UK and Glasgow.  Adapting to change. A beautiful cheese we have completely consumed/ I am thinking of a Synod.  The Catholic church term for reform. Same association of climate change and adaptation to change immediately arise for me. Of welcoming a very young person to this world.

Dreams 2 and 3: Two dreams. In first I am in a school classroom, an unusual setting for the dreamer. It is light, airy, pale wood, a warm feeling. Saw two of my classmates who were real people. The first a diligent person. The second more musically involve who was shouting at me. I kept telling him to shut up. The second dream in a municipal building, a workplace.  There before work. I needed to get to another site I had plenty of time I forgot the clocks had changed. I thought I had an hour the more time went on the more I needed. A familiar theme for me.

Dream 4: A leadership workshop taking place in a narrow and crowded bar. Two friends are participating, a colleague returns running back through the door as if late. I leave and walk away down a side road under a railway arch. There’s a kind of frontage like a cinema and an unusual contraption advertising events including for older people, it is falling down. Billy Connolly is watching me as I try to reassemble.

Associations: Classrooms, the clock.  Being 15 or 16 going to cold classrooms. Where am I meant to be going.  Billy Connolly under the arches reminds me of the Joker. With Parkinson he is less and less able to do what he is called to do – being a public joker.  Connolly was on a chat show, on a seat, still fully functional.  During lockdown I was part of a Facebook group, meeting people from the past. Now we are like in a school on the Internet from all over the world. Transformation, a decrepit old building with something beautiful coming out of it. Light.

Dream 5: An old dream. Looking out of a classroom. A student is playing the cello, she is really beautiful.  Thought I was in a film.  It is theatre like space. Alchemical.  Later on realised that girl was me.  Reminds me of a song.  ‘As my guitar gently weeps.’  My mum was a viola player when I was 3 years old she tried to teach me the violin and I didn’t want to learn.  Now I am sad as music is important to me. To be able to play something would be a relief and a souvenir of my mother who died 30 years ago. With a dream about a class mate and shouting.  Met a classmate from 30 years ago and found myself at the receiving end of an aggressive push to do something. I find myself now at a similar choice point of 30 years on – path of art and running away from the heart. It took a lot of energy not to run into the aggression.

Dream 5: Standing in a square near a hospital in Amsterdam. Saw a beautiful white horse. It made a beautiful jump to freedom. Looking in awe. In the hospital in the chapel part, a labyrinth like chapel.

The white horse associations: Yesterday was in a London pub and saw a White Horse. In the Autumn colours. Took a photo of the amazing vision.  It was by a hospital. I work in a hospital I’ve worked there for 30 years. Taken back to being 15 and not following the Catholic tradition. Very interested that I have been 30 years in health and the NHS religion. I was in Tavistock Square and there was as white horse with a carriage.  Two Irish men. I want to pat the horse.  It is in a beautiful bridle. They were in London for a horse fair.  When I was young I travelled to a town St. Magdalena famous for white horses and pink flamingos. I heard Tavistock and remember 50 year ago being in the same area, sure I saw the same people and horses.  To be able to learn to ride a horse you ‘BREAK’ a horse. For 3 or 4 months I have been trying to paint a painting of a white horse, a Chimera half man half horse.  I completed the horse but couldn’t paint the man. Two Books ‘Wherever you go’ and ‘The Road less travelled’.  An association of a Black Horse on a beach. Rider is bareback. I can see her hands in its mane. A dream about white unicorns. I was saying to the teacher why are there never any black unicorns.  He said #BlackUnicornsMatter.    Speaking to a friend who is a person of colour.  We were talking about making a black unicorn, black businesses make billions of income. Unicorn-one horn.  Making space for both colours. The shadow, the reflection of things. I was invited to see the white horse in Oxfordshire. I couldn’t go, a colleague went and also to an ancient place called Waylands Smithy.  To this day a place connected with ritual practice and Samhain (Halloween) which some say is next weekend. The Zodiac – every sign is a different colour symbolises something different.  White means fire in Chinese and Korean culture. A strong association with the white horse.  A painting, ‘Frenzy of Exultations’, by Polish artist Władysław Podkowiński. I had in the mind the horse in this picture was white but it was in fact black. It is ridden by a very pale skinned white female. White horse equals White House.

Dream 6: coming to a lunch party organised by my birth family. As I enter set aside by aunt who says you are not welcome here. I am surprised by how unwelcome I am.

Associations: my family are always divided. My parents left wing. Theirs right wing.  Felt unwelcome and not wanted.  A friend of mine is a professor.  She knew one of her students was bitten by their mother. The student asked for her and the professor reported it to the authorities who decided the girl and her mother could not meet for months. The girl was very angry with the professor. Mending the world, fixing the world. What is happening to our planet.

Dream 7: Recurring dream about being faraway.  A county in Asia.  Flew there, Running later for plane, lots of stuff to pack. A feast, a buffet too. I get panicky feeling I won’t be able to feed myself.

Associations: Home is a place we cannot get back to. We are still far away from home. We need water to survive. Was that a question you asked me?  If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far go together. Dorothy had the power to go home. What power do we have to get beyond our own ambivalence. The gorgeous sun and the parmesan, nourishment from afar, energy feeding us, giving us life. A bush painting with a hybrid body, a scary landscape.  In a meadow a week a go, No horses, amazing to be outdoors.

Dream Reflection Dialogue:

The white horse.  A very powerful symbol.  The four horses of the apocalypse in Revelations.  Who is riding the white horse.  Appreciation of my mother. Passage of time. The white horse is an ancient symbol in many cultures. All the conversations about horses relate to something emotional, regrets of why have we waited/wasted so long to get back to something more natural.  Elemental. Water to survive. Horses to do with healing.  Took me a while to get into the flow. Horse whisperer how they enable connectivity.  To stay connected to be in connection. Struggled to stay with the different threads. Many seed pods, a liminal space. There was an association I felt ashamed to share I was a fellow in warfare.  It didn’t think right I also couldn’t think of a dream.  Issue of choice points – art and career. What will we focus on and what path we will choose. In the beginning of the matrix reflective. White horse came in strong and powerful – energy.

Story of Lady Godiva riding out into the town to save people from being taxed. She covers herself with her hair.  It is connected to the story of peeping Tom.  Somehow there is a taxation being imposed during Covid. Curiously to look at the Lady Godiva story. We are being taxed.

The feminine riding the horse. There is a statue of Lady Godiva in Coventry.  A feminine city it is the city of culture this year.

NB If you would like to submit your private dream to a Dream Auction taking place on the 20th of November 2021, please get in touch with Bongsu Park by Thursday 11 November.