Welcome to Feral in the Barrel, a show every friday from 4-6am where I play you 2 hours of music related to a philosophical topic of my choosing, today, of course, we are talking about descartes and his philosophy on dreams. I unfortunately did not have any dreams to tell you about, last night, however I did hit snooze a few too many times and had to sacrifice my cup of coffee– so I really understand what Descartes was getting at in this quote:

"When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from the dream. How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?"

Certainly, right now, I could be convinced that I am actually dreaming. I often have dreams where I do ordinary things, talk to ordinary people, and then I have trouble remembering if these things truly happened or I mearly filed them away in the 'reality' section of my brain rather than the 'dreamt' section.

It is a bit silly to think of someone, like Descartes, having such intense dreams, to the point at which he says:

"I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake."

perhaps the case could be made that Descartes had a dream journal!

In his Meditations, where Descartes famously stated 'I think, therefore I am', after beginning a philisophical experiment with the goal of stating only what can be deduced with absolute certainty. In this sense, Descartes doubts everything, even his external stimuli, and comes to his understanding of what actually exists (while he later finds a way to insert God's existence into his framework) and finds it initially difficult to distinguish the difference between dreaming and awake states.

Dreams (1990) directed by Akira Kurosawa is an incredible film I watched with some friends over a year ago, which I still think of regularly. This movie is like eight short films combined into one, following the adventures of 'surrogate kurosawa' through his eight different dreams. The visuals from this movie, in true Kurosawa nature, are simply incredible, they look like moving paintings– especially the 'episode' titled "Crows" which ends with a shot like that of Van goughs "Wheat field with crows," which is used as the background for this page.

Despite the numerous songs and works of art that are inspired by dreams, and even despite my agreeance with Descartes that often it is difficult to tell the difference between when one is awake versus asleep– it is absurd to me to beleive that dreams have some sort of hidden deeper metaphorical meaning. If I dream of a spider, the internet tells me I should see this to have a deeper meaning that I feel trapped (in a web). While I think it interesting how our subconcious effects our concious actions, like paul mccartney thinking of yesterday in a dream, or me reaching out to someone I haven't seen in a while simply because they popped back into my mind in a dream!

Last night i had a crazy dream - simon & garfunkel

Sometimes i dream - merle haggard

Dream a little dream of me - the mamas and the papas

Wrap your troubles in dreams - nice

Judy and the dream of horses - belle & sebastian

2:45 - elliot smith

Lullaby - the cure

I'm so tired - the beatles

Where did you sleep last night - nirvana

Dream song - shallow alcove

In dreams - sierra ferrel

Dreams - fleetwood mac

Nightmares - jay reatard

Sleep - slowdive

I am the cosmos - wednesday

Sleeping in a jar - frank zappa

Just can't go to sleep - the kinks

Dreaming - smashing pumpkins

Sleep to dream - fiona apple

Big barn bed - paul mccartney

Dream operator - talking heads

Dream police - cheap trick

Wave goodnight to me - jeff rosenstock

Snake - in ropes (released today)