dreams of
Playlist by Oki Sogumidreams can be so physical, in the way of slapstick, wet with embarrassment and always falling over and then in the same breath starkly beautiful. what i like about dreams is that both do and don't belong to me, they belong to the realm of dreams, where the heights of anxieties and the mystique of power battle it out. Perhaps the parts I want to share the most is the moments where the conspiracy of friends wins out over both. — Oki Sogumi
November 2012
December 2012
last night i had a dream i was moving into a huge room in san francisco for 200 dollars, which is why even while dreaming i knew i was dreaming. i was planning to build giant bookcases and the previous tenant left because of loud gay sex in the parking lot below. one side of the room had a long narrow closet which i thought i should line with rhinestones and sleep in sometimes when i was sad and wanted to be inside a glittering cave.
• • •
most of my dream last night took place in this really tacky church of a unitarian universalist strain, and when i woke up i was convinced these churches existed (everything covered in carpet, vases of reeds turning into arches, gilt louis XIV chairs, decoupaged tables) it took me a good twenty minutes to realize that they’re just a reoccurring motif in my dreams, not IRL.
• • •
in my dream i was a poet and an amateur fortune teller
who drove a black racecar in a jacket studded
with the pins of failed states and the badges of dead cops
you were an experimental reality tv director
currently filming wild horses in their off time
edited to make them look drunk and anti social
dreamy 8mm footage of a pony sitting down
in a deep stream and pissing
we were falling in love by which i mean we were bitter
rivals, promiscuous, and writing anonymous bad reviews
of each other’s work on the internet
• • •
on trial as a member of Pussy Riot,
but it was a different band / US version
one of us was already in jail
i was being accused
of beating up this punk dude
(it was true, it was for revenge)
of having a history of extreme violence
footage of me breaking things
but i won; the judge was a poet / painter
who i developed a crush on
he gave a lecture afterwards
by making these incredible drawings on a
chalkboard, asked to borrow my pencil
but was disappointed it wasn’t a fancier one
pussy riot and friends snuck into a
buffet for library patrons to celebrate
and ate all this fairy food
paper thin star cookies
honey comb burritos
piled into a car with the band,
family, and poet crush
and my dad was driving and
tried to make a joke about Proust
• • •
breakup w/ a dream boyfriend who
is a total prick and real dumb
and happily console myself
by hooking up with a
series of beautiful and really cool women
in a castle where some kind of
art biennale is going on
i talk shit on some of the art
in a private rant to a lover, but someone
films it and the biennale ppl
decide i am an important art critic
but i roll with it because these
art ppl were a bunch of fascists
who were about to destroy
several of my friends’ works
so i convince them not to
and we scam them out of
a shitload of money instead
July 2014
had a dream we lived under a new feudalism, and i was coming out to my dad about having “NO MORALITY” except i was writing “just the love for comrades” over and over in my notebook and he was so disappointed because he worked for the Prince and he was telling my brother those with no morals abandoned their loved ones in the field, and i kept writing in the notebook, i worked in the kitchen of the castle, baking sweet potatoes, always trying to come up with new sweet potato recipes, supposed to be thankful for not being the scullery maid, being near a fire all day i dreamed of fire, in my spare time i tried not to sleep, do drugs to not sleep, and kept trying to go to this techno club, rather like Berghain, which was a castle and hard to get into, weird unknown hours, i had visions of comrades falling off one of the castles engulfed in flames, unsure if i was supposed to save them, if it was a drugged delusion, or if they were immolating themselves as a statement
December 2014
Dream where I call someone a diva, she overheard and agrees and starts crying, I comfort her and she buys me an overpriced sandwich that is just a piece of bread. (At a hip bakery that also sold pink cheese and gold leaf pepperoni pizza— her whole performance of tears and agony had something to do with white guilt and she kept clenching and distorting her body like it hurt her to be in that bakery)
I go to the library where I have brought special rice that is somehow an archival text. I am washing the rice on the library floor, it is a lot and the archivists are concerned. I reassure them that this is all there is of this particular text, though I have smaller caches of rice, like broadsides and pamphlets. As I am washing, different plums and stonefruit fall off a book cart. I eat some. I realize that the fruit is there for ESL students to do their research, in case they’ve never felt the heft of a plum in the hand, or known how it smells, how it feels against the teeth.
February 2017
Lol i had such a stressful dream about boundary setting with a person i dont talk to now. And it happened in a car to and at an anarchist space which itself was super stressful. At some point i was so frustrated at the person’s behavior of dramatically weeping on my best friend that i started yelling “i behave normally! I dont do this to your friends!”
Then i witnessed this bullshit in the anarchist space where this dude who looked like an alt right nerd came in and “explained” his freakout the day before when he smashed a bunch of glass vases onto the floor in a rage and was writhing in the glass and threatening people while yelling all kinds of slurs. He was taking some kind of “experimental antidepressant” and had taken too much or too little and then he demonstrated the swerve of chemicals in his brain that weren’t quite reaching the place that would make him act like a decent person. Incredulous, i watched all these ppl in the space believe this and agree he was still allowed in the space even though they looked scared.
I turned to the person who had cried on my friend and said fuck you, you are like this person, always given permission to hurt other people but still feel victim to some group conspiracy drawn out of thin air.
I laid out my boundaries of how i did not want to process or talk or continue to be approached. I felt guilty as hell because it felt “mean” even though i knew i needed this. I also felt disgust but tried to not let that enter my voice too much. I didnt want to be poisoned by this.
On my way out i stared at the grotesque ceramics on display in the strangely fancy first floor lobby. The queer anarchist femmes tumbled out the elevator looking beautiful and laughing and we stole some bougie lady’s shoes and left some shoe donations in their place.
I was still prickling with doubts but the sky was lovely and huge and that saved me. We all piled back into the car to go on with our day.
Then i woke up very frustrated i had done all this work but only in a dream!
October 2017
The mind meld of the couple is gross and I love grossness, squishing. This thing happened to me last time I was on shrooms where I was seeing things from my partners pov and then would suddenly return to my abandoned body which, feeling safe I had left behind rolling in pleasure, & the return to the body, to myself, was hilarious. And now I’m stuck with this feeling that it is very hilarious. And love is a delight.
Then there’s the fear that someone who can make you happy is 1) powerful 2) partially you via projection. That in either case the lonely way of returning to the abandoned body rather than the hilarious way will be your way again.
November 2017
I watched a film about loss. I watched pine pollen, thick and yellow, drift and be carried by wind. When I woke up I thought “I made that film” & that pollen and all its gold is with me.