DJ Dreams: Creativity
Time for another round-up of DJ(-adjacent) dreams, this time moving beyond the classic and often quite banal realm of anxiety into more creative territory. DJing isn’t just about worrying whether the tune is going to run out or if your records are actually comics instead of records; it’s also an artform that enables self-expression and -actuation, so it’s hardly surprising that our unconscious spends a lot of time exploring its creative potential to the full and beyond. This selection also brings into the equation production and party organising - two stressful but rewarding activities that will happily furnish your sleep with bizarre happenings and not a few delusions of grandeur.
Check out DJ Dreams Part 1: Anxiety if you missed it.
We begin with two dreams that I had about Gwenan at different times, demonstrating how fickle we can be when it comes to DJs taking creative risks in their sets:
1) You were closing a night in a kind of library and got on the mic to make a big deal about your final record, which you’d got from Binh. It was on Strictly Rhythm and was so bad I had to leave.
2) I dreamt you were playing at an extremely exclusive loft afterparty in the house of some glamorous people in Farringdon. You unexpectedly dropped Jet ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ and it was the best thing I’d ever heard.
Just for clarity: I love Strictly Rhythm, and I think ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ is objectively one of the worst songs ever written. But then I also think Gwenan could convince me of anything on the dancefloor.
Next is an example showing how even if anxiety is present in a DJ dream, fabulously inventive party vibes can win the day, if only you’ll let them:
I dreamt we had problems connecting the washing machine on the dancefloor. Nightmare! But the Portuguese DJ who was playing exclusively Minako Yoshida records off youtube had brought a plastic lobster as a dancing prop. Partway through a song she put the lobster down and I suddenly realised it was ALIVE and trying to escape. Then Ethan McNamara got excited about it and went and had a little dance with it.
Props to Ethan for his cameo in this excellent dream.
The washing machine and lobster belong to a category of ‘novelty’ party accessories and facilities, which also includes this excellent dream a friend had about the fabric re-opening:
Zip was there (as a clubber not a DJ), you could get free ‘beer ice chips’ at the bar, and they built this amazing new smoking area accessed from between rooms 1 and 2, which turned out to be a massive balcony overlooking the Thames. With a Pret, for some reason.
I always say that clubs should have more food options, so where’s my fabric-Pret collab?
We move on to producer/promoter dreams, where the limits on what you can achieve in terms of creative genius and/or music industry influence basically do not exist. In dreams, the world is your oyster:
I dreamt you and me had organised a roller disco as the first party back after Covid. Everyone from Dust Off was there and loads of young hip queer people. We had scheduled a drag show and a quiz. I was compering and DJing the start of the party and opened with my own incredible remix of ‘Blind’ by Hercules And Love Affair.
Unfortunately, when I woke up from this dream, what little I remembered of my ‘Blind’ remix was completely middle-of-the-road.
Often, you don’t remember anything at all:
Dreamt not only of an entirely fictional but amazing Hung Up-era Madonna tune called ‘Remember Love’, but also of waking up and singing it down whatsapp to you guys so I would remember it in the morning. Sad times when I actually woke up.
A modern tragedy.
This one from Bleimann features tragedy of a much realer kind, paired with that peskily poor memory that plagues our waking selves:
Taylor Swift moved to Madrid and became my best friend. I introduced her to Vocalcity and she loved it and was on the verge of releasing her pop-folk-microhouse fusion record when she was brutally murdered. It came out and became a posthumous classic. Sadly can’t remember what it actually sounded like.
Taylor loving Vocalcity seems not out of the question?
I love dreams that involve famous musicians finding new creative pathways, but what about this one featuring James T Cotton aka Tadd Mullinix going all Herbert on us?
I carried on to an afterparty to a house up north in England somewhere, at which Leo was playing just before James T Cotton did a liveset constructed entirely from the sounds he very intently sampled from the process of making a fruit smoothie. I had a heated argument with a woman who told me I would never be portuguese.
After this dream I resolved to finally get a copy of Saturn V’s ‘Come Into My Life’, which I’d been vacillating over for years. And this winter I’ll get my portuguese citizenship so fuck you dream lady!
I’ll finish with a bonus anxiety dream that I dug out of my inbox while preparing this post. To be honest this one sounds entirely plausible, and is a reminder to all DJs everywhere: know your equipment!
Andy Blake was driving us through impenetrable fog to get to this illegal rave on a tropical island, and when we got there I only had about 10 records and there weren't any decks, just this weird mixer/controller with two tonearms attached to it in random places, and although I managed somehow to put my first record on and get it to play, the track ran out before i could work out where there was room for the second record.
Typical.