The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.
I have just napped for one hour & had the most astonishing dream that I can remember having. The logistics are a bit spectacular (in the scale of something being large, not of something being “cool”), so I’ll try not to get into them so that I have time to tie it into Morris. Trust me, I can.
The basic line of my dream followed my body as I went to see a movie. The film starts, & I am seated in the plush movie theater seats we all know & love, watching a scene of natural airs unfold on the screen. A family on a campground somewhere vast, on a mountain where there are pines & oaks & not much activity besides the chatter coming from their camper. The camera cuts to following a young girl – belonging to the camping family – as she walks slowly & quietly through the woods, investigating the area. She comes across a man who is on his knees in the midst of old, dirty camping gear, weeping over the rag-doll body of a dead child in his arms. He looks up at her (& thus looks up at the camera, as it is from her view), & the camera cuts to the girl’s father, gathering firewood somewhere else on the mountain. His son runs up to him & asks him where Mother is, & (this part I haven’t figured out yet), the camera cuts to a close-up of Father’s face, suddenly with a shocked/worried look on his face. He drops the pieces of wood he’s carrying right where he is & begins to run up the mountain. The camera cuts
quickly to following the mother up the same path that her daughter had taken when she had discovered the man with the dirty camping gear holding a dead child. This time, the mother discovers the same man, only he is walking out of his tent as the camera pans right, following Mother’s gaze. In the dirt behind the tent, the camera can make out 2 or 3 bodies lying still, one of an older woman & 2 little girls. Camera cuts to several quick, gruesome images of the faces of these bodies, dirty & blank, dead, & the final image that is flashed, held for a little longer, is that of Mother’s little daughter for whom she had been looking. The man now advances slowly towards Mother, grinning, as she backs up cautiously but with resolution in her eyes, seemingly unafraid (which I can’t explain). The camera is now faced towards her, from the view of the stranger, & it follows her as she reaches the end of the mountain (a cliff on the edge of the stranger’s camping area), turns around, & jumps off. The camera continues to follow her through the air, as she grows a huge pair of dark brown eagles’ wings & plunges headfirst into a large body of water at the bottom of the lake. When she hits the water, the camera cuts to an underwater view, where we can see that she has transformed entirely into an eagle, & in the same body of water there are several other eagles floating motionless around her; it is a pool of dead eagles, fallen from the cliff. Apparently, this is where the movie ends, & I come to the realization that the audience (including me) is now floating downstream in a large pool, towards the theater’s exit. It doesn’t seem weird to me that our seats have been turned into water until I wake up.
This dream speaks to me on so many levels concerning Morris’ views on both cinematic presence as well as the ties that bind truth, reality, & evolution. Because if this dream is untrue, then is it unreal as well? Can it be possible that just because it is labeled as a dream it is inevitably considered as unreal, a reality schewed perhaps, but unreal all the same? Personally, I don’t see how anything can be shrugged off as a product of a false reality, or why a woman cannot turn into a eagle as a sign of some matriarchal martyrdom, crashing gloriously into a soft bottom of water & rising bubbles. People exist, tents exist, eagles exist, water exists, even the concepts involved exist: a murderer, a truth revealed, worry & resolve. Where does this become something not real? When does truth cease to become a piece of this puzzle? If the imagery is vibrant, the emotions crushing (I’m still not over what happened), & the allegorys muddled, mixed & confusing as all hell, what differentiates it from any other piece of art. Could it be that dreams are pieces of accidental art? The interesting thing, I suppose, is that it was really a dream of me watching a movie, putting to the test the old notion that cinema is like a dream (the uninvolved spectator, etc.). But I swear it felt real, & I swear I was on the verge of tears when my alarm sounded.