dreams

Ikigai

Quote | | Paul Greer

James Gunn:

Our dreams are, generally, us imagining ourselves from the outside, not the inside. This can never be experienced and, because of that, “following one’s dreams” is usually a necessarily fruitless activity. Even in the best of circumstances, it is not a source of well-being or comfort.

And although we’re often told, “You can do anything you set your mind to!”, it’s just not true. People CAN’T do anything they set their minds to. The physicality of my vocal chords make it so that I will never sing like Adele. My height precludes me from being a basketball star. My age and ethnicity prevent me from ever being a member of South Korean boy band BTS, no matter how much I set my mind to it.

If you discover what you’re truly good at, and what you enjoy doing, and it’s something you can potentially make a living at – well, that, to me, is a much richer life than following your dreams, which are not only unfullfilling, but they shift and change throughout your life anyway. Because to achieve a dream is one thing, but to live inside a dream that you discover moment by moment along your path, where you grow stronger and wiser, and enhance the lives of those around you – well, that’s a much deeper, more fulfilling life.

“Rider Rida Rode Over Rainbow City” 🌈

| Paul Greer

rainbowcity2K

Old painting done as part of a series of dream painting called The Postcards From The Other Side of Sleep.

Now available as a signed print (below) and as products available on Society6.

Throw Pillownotebookipadskiniphone caseart print

 

Watercolour on Paper, 15cm x 22cm.

Part of the Postcards from the Other Side of Sleep series.

 

Rider Rida Rode Over Rainbow City – Signed Digital Print

Printed on A4 (210 × 297 mm) 160gsm paper. Free Postage and Packing for destinations within the UK.

£10.00

More products available on Society6:

Abstractions

Quote | | Paul Greer

“In Hollywood, more often than not, they’re making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what’s so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can’t, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say ‘Did you understand that?’ but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that’s magical and that’s the power that film has.”

— David Lynch

“He was a magician by profession.”

Quote | | Paul Greer

“When film is not a document, it is a dream. That is why Tarkovsky is the greatest of them all. He moves with such naturalness in the room of dreams. He doesn’t explain. What should he explain anyhow? He is a spectator, capable of staging his visions in the most unwieldy but, in a way, the most willing of media. All my life I have hammered on the doors of the rooms in which he moves so naturally. Only a few times have I managed to creep inside.”

— Ingmar Bergman

“I….Sleeping (being a dream journal and parenthetical explication)”

Quote | | Paul Greer

“I am running down a street.

I am wearing a silvered business suit.

It is not I.

The figure is stopped mid-stride, one arm flung out.

The street vanishes.

——-

The word ‘title’ is flung at me off five white gloved fingers backed by a vague clown face.

——-

Something of dead leaves… a rustling.

——-

a waiting – expectancy.
a sea-scape.
large people with smashed faces bending over.

——-

A paw print – one toe bent in cashew curl… So that it reminds me of a flower petal.

——-

A quarter-turn clockwise of multicolored basket shapes merry-go-rounding – reds, blues, yellows, and more distant blurs of other shades. Dusty-yellowed browns for ground, and a pale blue clouded sky. A very few still silhouettes of people shape.”

——-

Some of Stan Brakhage’s 1975 dreams as remembered upon waking, from “I….Sleeping (being a dream journal and parenthetical explication)”, published 1988 by Island Cinema Resources (via Airform Archives)(via elettra)