Hello Everyone! I seem to be posting on this blog again, perhaps the hiatus is over for a bit. I’ve been a bit unwell of late so I’m currently on a break from my PhD and therefore have a little more time up my sleeve. I won’t be participating in the upcoming Richard Armitage FanstRAvaganza this year but I will be cheering from the sidelines. Anyways, I found this post sitting in draft mode today, it was originally dated August 12, 2010! I probably didn’t post it because I mentioned some vague details about my research or because it is filled with more self indulgent twaddle. Either way, if you’ve been following my dreams about Spooks characters and RA, you might find it somewhat interesting. I had another dream about Freud recently, here’s the one that started it:
Tag Archive: Dreams
Lucas North Dreaming
For the final day of the Fanstravaganza the Spooks Fan Blog presents some fan dreams about Lucas North! I’ve sure had a few in my time. None lately though, sadly. The last one was in November of last year. It seems that Lucas’ mission (symbolism) is done as far as Ms. Skully is concerned. Oddly enough, Julian Assange seems to have taken his place for the next phase of my bipolar related dreams. And the Australian ABC TV reporter Stephen McDonell has entered the fray as well. So with Lucas now absent from my nocturnal travels I am quite envious of our dreamers today who are kindly sharing their dreams with us. Thank you ladies! If you’ve had a Lucas dream too, please share it in the comments below. You can remain anon if you wish.
Do You Dream of Lucas?
Yes? If so then you might light to consider contributing to a zine I’m currently putting together. For the uninitiated, a zine (derived from the word fanzine), is basically a self-published, cut ‘n’ paste, photocopied publication. Before my mental health decline I was quite involved in the zine world, doing interviews and speaking on panels etc. Since achieving some semblance of health I’ve been reconnecting with what used to be a big part of my life. It’s been nice to discover that zines still offer a constructive and creative outlet even after all this time.
Anyway, I’m writing up in zine format my series of dreams about Lucas North and what he symbolised in relation to my bipolar related hypomania. I thought it might be cool to also include some of YOUR dreams in the zine as well. I’m running on an extremely tight time frame here as I’d like the zine to be ready for an event next weekend. If you’d like to include your dream in the zine, please send it to me via the contact page (do not comment below, send me a private message!). Please also include the name under which you’d like your piece published (you can be ‘anon’ if you like). If I publish your dream in the zine you’ll receive a free copy. Don’t delay! I’ll need your dream by mid this week at the very latest!!!!
Lucas North Kissed Me!
… in your dreams, Skully, I hear you say. And you’d be right! In the epic dream I had this morning, Mr. Lucas planted ein erstaunlicher kiss on me (yep, still learning German!). For those of you who are new to this blog, I have a very active, vivid (and bizarre) dream life. I always dream about people, and since starting SFB back in February of this year I’ve been reporting my Spooks related dreams in the nightwatch category on this blog. These posts might be more befitting of my personal blog but I started the venture here and so it continues.
When Lucas North appears in my dreams it usually means that my brain is trying to tell me something about my cyclothymia (a mild form of bipolar disorder). In the past Lucas has tried to “kill” my hypomania, the take home message being to take care of myself and reduce the risk of more mood fluctuations. Jo Portman has also played an important role in these dreams, representing the sensible part of myself who is acting recklessly and out of character. She has been mad at Lucas for “killing” my hypomania. And in other dreams Jo has been drunk.
This morning’s dream was very long so I’ll just summarise the important bits. The main part of the dream involved one of the volunteers from the BBC program How Mad Are You? (which aired recently in Australia, you can watch it here) who had bipolar disorder (he is pictured front-left above). In the dream he was involved in a dangerous, life threatening, “risk taking” behaviour. When I found out what he was doing I was horrified and scared for him, I starting crying. At some point I find myself at his support team HQ. Everyone was right behind him, it was only me who had doubts (in real life the support team of someone with bipolar disorder tries to help the person avoid dangerous behaviour, not encourage it!). Interestingly, the dangerous act he was attempting to perform required that others also expose themselves to danger in order for him to fulfill his goal. It’s too complicated to explain, but lets just say that the risk involved drowning in the open ocean far from land.
Jumping forward to the end of the dream… I don’t know whether he fulfilled his goal or not, but in the final scene of the dream a whole bunch of people were gathered together in what appeared to be a social gathering for all those involved in this insane adventure our associate had embarked upon. Lurking at the rear of the venue, away from the crowd, was Lucas North. He seemed to be dressed in his usual attire. I weaved my way through to the edge of the crowd so we both had a clear line of sight of each other. When he sees me he jogs towards me and we greet one another warmly and affectionately like long lost friends. Although there is no sign of John Bateman in this dream, I place my hand high on Lucas’ chest to confirm that he is real and alive (he had, after all, recently plummeted to his death!). As I look down at his chest I notice that he is wearing a jumper that has a skull and crossbones pattern, similar to one on an Emily the Strange dress I saw at a charity shop the other day. As I look back up at Lucas I realise I am slightly inebriated. Lucas notices this and gives me a playfully disapproving look. As he leans down to nuzzle my neck line I immediately think ‘you shouldn’t do this, I’m drunk!’ (drunk = intoxicated, euphoric, like a hypomanic episode?), and then we kissed.
Ok, now, I know what you’re thinking. Kissing some handsome bloke in a dream must have some romantic, lustful, sexual meaning. If so, you need to keep in mind that dreams are comprised of symbolic meaning, and those symbols, such as a kiss, don’t necessarily benefit from simple literal interpretation. To attempt to understand the significance of this kiss, one must appreciate it in the context of this dream and the dreams that preceded it which I mentioned earlier. A kiss could mean all manner of things – such as the kiss of betrayal, the kiss of death, or the kiss of life.
I’ve mentioned that my dreams can be quite vivid, I have to say that this kiss was beyond vivid. When it happened the whole world disintegrated around me into a bright white light, even my own bodily form, and all that existed was the overwhelming sensation of the kiss. It evoked intensely positive emotions. When I awoke I could still taste it. Hours later, I still can. The best thing I can compare it to is like kissing someone you’re madly in love with for the first time. But I wasn’t in love with Lucas, it was a loving kiss but it was not a lovers kiss. The sense was that the meaning of the kiss was bigger than the person who delivered it – so if you think this is just some fangirl fantasy dream you’d be dead wrong.
So, what did it all mean? Despite the wee buzz from having been kissed so gloriously by the delectable Lucas North (keep in mind that my dream world is different to the Spooks world, Lucas is Lucas in this world, not John Bateman), I woke up a tad mad and confused by this dream. I’m no expert in dream analysis and I get frustrated when I can’t decipher them. In the dream I was not happy about the dangerous behaviour of the guy with bipolar disorder – this is good, it shows that maybe I’ve turned a corner in regards to grieving for my hypomania. In past dreams Lucas has tried to kill my hypomania, but in this dream he embraced me when I was a little “drunk” – this puzzled me. In other dreams it was Jo Portman who was drunk, but she was not in this dream. Was this significant?
Although I’m not sure what the intoxication meant, I’d like to think that this was a positive dream, and not a warning like the others. The positive interpretation would be that the skulls on Lucas’ clothing, like a classical oil painting, represented life and mortality. And the kiss may represent a resolution to this inner conflict I’ve been feeling about my hypomania. Lucas North has been a shepherd in these dreams, attempting to direct me away from behaviour that might destablise my mood and trigger a relapse. A recent elevation in mood made me release that hypomania is not always the euphoric experience that I idealise it to be, sometimes it’s more mixed. Now that I fully appreciate this, I suspect Lucas North is concluding this journey with the “kiss of life”. I’ve evolved to the point where cyclothymia is something that is part of my life (perhaps Lucas embraced me because it’s OK to still get a little “drunk” from time to time), but it’s not the dominate force it once was. So it’s time to get back out there, to reclaim the years that were lost to this illness, to be mindful of my mortality, and live life with all that I’ve got.
UPDATE: I have a more succinct meaning of the dream now, especially the last bit, it just “clicked” a moment ago – I think it’s also telling me to stop using my illness as an excuse to avoid love/relationships, which I have in recent times. I’ve turned down advances because I didn’t think I was well enough or that it was fair to burden somebody with me and my madness. The dream is saying you’re in a better place now, the those skulls and crossbones were saying life is too short, and that playfully disapproving look from Lucas North was saying so what? if you get a little “drunk” (hypomanic) sometimes, it’s not a barrier to love and acceptance. Thanks for the nudge, Lucas!
Another Bloody RA Dream and the Perplexing Question of His Symbolism
When I woke up this morning and realised that Richard Armitage had invaded my dreams once more, I rolled my eyes in annoyance “bloody hell, not again!”. I know that most RA fans out there would probably welcome a nocturnal visit from such desirable “spy candy” but I’m starting to get a little irritated by these unexplained appearances, mostly because I don’t understand what the man in question symbolises in my dreams. There’s simply been too many of them for it not to be something of substance. This “known unknown” is starting to rankle. As I’ve already recounted, Lucas North is a completely different story. After a series of dreams in which Lucas and Jo Portman appeared with clear reoccurring themes, I was able to make a plausible interpretation for that parts of myself that they represented (which is supposedly what people in dreams represent) – but I’m no dream analyst and I’m at a loss to explain what RA could possibly represent.
They say that the things which appear in our dreams often reflect what we’ve seen in the preceding day – so from that point of view the fact that RA sometimes appears in my dreams would not be surprising, given that I write about Spooks and interact with the RA blogosphere. But even so, there needs to be more to it than that. The time I dreamt about Meera Syal (with Lucas and Jo), for example, I’d seen an ad for her new TV show earlier that day, yet she still represented something critical in the dream (my bipolar related hypomania, which still makes me giggle. Perhaps I should rename my mania, Meera!). Before I enter speculation on what the hell RA could possibly represent, I’ll provide a quick run down on today’s dream.
So! I was watching a TV drama that RA had a role in. It’s not clear whether I was watching it on TV or in the studio where it was being filmed. A most puzzling thing was that although the man in the dream was RA, it didn’t quite look like him. There was something unidentifiable that made me wonder whether it was really Richard Armitage. As I’m a highly visually orientated person who can distinguish and identify faces in an instant, that fact that his face didn’t seem quite right was troubling to me. Here’s a pic which most closely resembles what RA looked like in the dream:
He was younger, paler, had fewer lines around the eyes (which in the dream I was lamenting – I like a fella with lines on his face!), with a haircut similar to that above (I’ve not seen the show from which this cap was taken btw). I didn’t have too much time to dwell on why things didn’t seem “right”. I went from watching the drama to being in a real life situation in what was formally the TV drama (still with me?). More startling though, the floor had suddenly closed over with RA trapped underneath it. I crouched down to the floor to find that it was covered in about two inches of water. Comics and newspapers where also neatly spread out across the wooden floor boards (directly on the boards, not floating in the water at all). RA was underneath all these papers and I thought he had drowned (he was occupying a space deeper than two inches, apparently). Myself and another anonymous person tried to save him, we dug away at the papers until finally a floating body, face down in the water was revealed. There was a moment of disappointment as it appeared that RA was dead, as we had feared he would be. To our great relief and against all odds, he regained consciousness, was perfectly fine, and the dream ended.
The interesting thing in this dream is the uncertainty of identity and whether I was inhabiting a fictionalised, dramatised world, or real life. Even with RA, apart from the question of whether it was indeed him, in the later part of the dream I was uncertain whether he was in the dream as “himself” or in the role he was playing earlier when I was watching the TV drama. Either way, he wasn’t the absolute embodiment of a character, as has occurred in my previous dreams that involved Lucas North – in those dreams it was 100% Lucas North, RA didn’t rate a mention or a thought (consequently I don’t consider those dreams to be about or involving RA). The area of my brain called “filed under useless information” informs me that RA has a fear of water and drowning (is this true?), I don’t know whether that has any significance in the context of my dream, but it would be a little odd to dream about a life real fear that RA had.
Returning to the question of what could Richard Armitage possibly represent, it’s important to remember that the meaning of objects in our dreams does not reside in the object itself – it/he/she has no innate, universal meaning. Dream symbolism is variable and dependent on the meaning the object has for the individual person. For example, I have an irrational fear of spiders, yet my friend says that spiders are her “power animal” (what ever that means), so obviously when each of us dreams of spiders they would represent completely different things. This is why people who are interested in interpreting their own dreams are advised to write their own dream dictionary that records the unique symbolism that emerges in their own dreams. It’s also important to keep in mind that symbols in dreams usually can’t be interpreted literally. When you kiss someone in a dream, for example, it may not have anything to do with romance. It may represent a betrayal and suggest that the person kissing you is two-faced.
Taking all this into consideration, what Richard Armitage represents in my dreams will have to correspond to my own knowledge and perception of him (that could be different from yours) which I then must translate into something that represents a part of myself. Nice theory but I’m still a tad clueless. I “know” Lucas North (well, I thought I did until season 9!) but I don’t “know” Richard Armitage, so the meaning and the message here is a bit more elusive. Stretching the boundaries of speculation, I wonder if he might represent success? Hypothetically speaking, he could be the figure through which my anxieties about success and achievement are played out? In today’s dream I feared that he was dead, had drowned under all those papers, but was in fact fine after all. Perhaps the dream was an abstract message of encouragement for my PhD? Maybe perseverance is part of this as well – I’m not awfully familiar with RA’s bio but I think it was not 10 years before he achieved the success he sought? Is my dream saying – hang in there kid? (My quest to obtain a PhD was been prolonged and complicated by the emergence of bipolar/cyclothymia which was only diagnosed about a year ago). One of my favourite scholars, William James, I admire not just for his philosophy, but for his perseverance. He didn’t really “get his shit together” until he was in his 40s. I mention this because perseverance is a quality I admire, and perhaps subconsciously I have noted this in relation to RA. Also important here is that his talent has proven to be worthy of that perseverance. I also tend to admire those who are dedicated and skilled at what they do.
What about the uncertainty about identity? Dramatic roles vs real life? This has popped up a few times in my dreams. Is this a note on my own identity being called into question by my diagnosis? Having had this wonderful crazy energy that I possess and adore (hypomania), my creative side, being labelled as a sign of mental illness – it can leave one doubting and second guessing the integrity of one’s sense of self. On a side note, the theme of death and dying is also emerging as a dreaming preoccupation of mine. I rarely seem to have a dream in which it does not feature (incidentally I don’t record all my dreams here, only the ones relevant to the subject of this blog).
Sometimes when I work through a question by writing my thoughts out, insights will emerge from the page (or the screen in this case). This has not occurred on this occasion, so the question of RA’s symbolic meaning in my dreams remains.
If RA appeared in your dreams, what do you think he would represent? And if he were to represent a part of yourself in a dream – what would it be?
Screencap from Richard Armitage Net.
Friday Photo + Ros Myers Dream
*** Possible Spooks 9 Ros Myers Spoilers ahead! ***
Spooks 9 is powering ahead in such fine form that, like Adam before her, you almost forget that Ros Myers is gone. But whenever I catch a glimpse of my favourite Spook online or while I’m scouring my hard drive looking for images for Spooks Fan Blog posts, I remember; Oh God I miss Ros! And the dream I had the other night might (embarrassingly) reinforce this point.
One morning over a week ago I woke up a little upset, with sad eyes and tears welled up in them. In the dream I’d been crying. Do you ever wake up in a semi-conscious state where the line between reality and your dream world is blurred? In the dream my sister had died, and when I woke in this half dream/half real life state, I was thinking “oh my god my sister has died, my sister!”. As I began to realise full consciousness I suddenly thought “hold on, I don’t have a sister! What the hell was I dreaming about, who was my sister?” Well, my “sister” was Ros Myers. I’d dreamt that Ros Myers, my sister, had died, and I was completely distraught. Upon piecing this picture together, I sat up in my bed with a sense of relief (that my sister had in fact not died because I don’t have one!) and so bemused by my dream grief for Ros that I shook my head and laughed.
So I’ve had a series of dreams recently about funerals, grief and death – what does it all mean? Today I realised that it’s the anniversary of a friend’s passing this month, and I had a phone call to make… to “a sister”. Whether intended or not, thanks for the reminder, Ros.
