Dreams
Periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, characteristic of land mammals and birds, associate with lucid dreaming in humans. Such dreams play with our attention; they may enact our unrationalised desires and fears, and when remembered they can inspire creative insights1.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
So says Shakespeare’s Prospero (in The Tempest 1623), the Duke of Milan, banished and troubled by foul plots against his life, to reassure the King’s son Ferdinand who will shortly marry Prospero’s daughter Miranda. Our actors were all spirits, they have melted into thin air; the baseless fabric of this vision, the gorgeous palaces and solemn temples, shall dissolve …
Who are these spirits of which Prospero speaks? Here is Ariell, the dainty sprite and servant of Prospero, set to be freed after they have reconciled with their foes, singing as she helps to attire him a final time:
Where the bee sucks, there suck I,
In a cowslip’s bell, I lie,
There I couch when owls do cry,
On the bat’s back I do fly
after summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now,
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.