Thursday, June 28, 2007

Lucid Nightmare Interview

The Lucid Dream Exchange just published its summer edition, and included is Robert Waggoner's interview of myself.

Included in the interview, of course, are my favorite topics in dream studies: lucid nightmares, healing, the Conquistadors of Consciousness, abstract geometric imagery, flying, ancestor dreams, and lucid dreaming as a scientific methodology.

So for anyone who's interested in what I have been up in the dreamworld for the last three years, this is the Dungan download. (Pdf under Ryan Hurd)

For more of my work, check out my new blog about dreams, lucid dreaming and consciousness research.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great interview, Dreamcrisp. In reading it, I'm moved by your candor, clarity and esp. the piety with which you approach your subject matter. The particular brand of piety with which you regard your dreams is a rare vintage - it's not the stock moral put-on and tap dance most of us know well, but a posture of reverence, submission (in what I think to be the truest Sufic sense) and curiosity. If anything's gonna save the human race, it's these qualities. On behalf of the Collective Unconscious, thank you for pulling your weight. Your breakdown of how the study of archeaology has fit with dream studies in your own life's narrative (i.e. "grounding" you in middle earth in your mid-20's) is prized by this reader. It would make a damn fine chapter of a memoir. Wonderful work. I too love the idea you mentioned of basic geometrical shapes having psychospiritual root significance, like mantric seed syllables whose utterance alone spins unseen prayer wheels and opens spaces of possibility up in the depths of the psyche of those who can hear. I'm pleased to report - syhchronistically - that I've been working on a 20 minute experimental film comprised largely of basic geometrical shapes and primary colors interacting like machine elves in the synaptic Void. Jeremiah Cymerman is gonna improvise music to it and we hope to break through to the 4th dimension once and for all, maybe see what those elves are cookin' up in Santa's Majickal Mystical Majestical Workshop. Maybe you and I can artistically collaborate some day soon, too, if you ever actually manifest in the Southeast...Until then, keep up the good work.

Ryan said...

Thanks for the feedback. Abstract geometrics are fascinating, aren't they? A child development researcher friend of mine recently told me that there is increasing evidence of metaphoric thought in infants happening much earlier than believed - and the metaphors are basically spatial recognition patterns that may be tied to emotionality. So long before language we participate in the multiplicity of our senses, giving rise to metaphor and symbolism.

I'm all about a little artistic collaboration, BTW. As it turns out, I am the world's most gentle yodeller.