Catching Dreams

In this unit of our Who Am I? Humanities class, Doubt and Dream, we learned more about the underlying parts of the human consciousness, as described by Freud. For this action project, we were tasked with creating a dreamcatcher, similar to those made by certain Native American tribes. Below is a picture of mine, and a description of what it means to me.

The center of my dreamcatcher was initially empty. I think that I was representing how my heart was not fulfilled, like I was missing something. But now, even if it seems more like an afterthought, there is something or someone filling that hole in my heart. Something has...changed, since I started making the dreamcatcher. I feel like something has changed in my life, so I changed the design of my dreamcatcher.

Some positive elements that I want to reach me are things such as happiness, and love. I symbolized those positive elements through the color green. Green is usually seen as a positive color, a color of life and nature.

Some negative elements that I did not want to reach me are things such as sadness, anger, and loneliness. Those negative feelings can destroy a person if they run deep enough into them, if they get their roots into your conscious, so I would want a dreamcatcher as a tool to help wash away those feelings, to cut up the metaphorical roots before they reach too deep into me. I symbolize those negative elements by using the color blue. Blue is seen as a negative color in some cases, representing sadness, and maybe even fear. There’s also something… deep about the color blue. The color runs deep, similar to the feelings that I would like it to catch.

My dream partner had a dream where he was riding the red line train, and each stop stopped off in what he described as like different universes or different places. He got out to explore each stop’s dimension before returning to the train and moving on to the next one. Eventually, he said that after a while, he returned back to our world’s train stop, and that there were nuclear sirens going off as a rocket soared towards the city. He said that he kind of just stood there, accepting his fate. The dream ended there, before the assumed nuclear bomb hit Chicago. It was definitely a strange dream. I really do wonder what his Ego and Id were trying to tell him through that dream. Maybe he has an underlying fear that we could be easily annihilated?

I used a metal hoop, various kinds of string, and beads to create my dreamcatcher, as well as glue. Most of these materials were provided for me (thanks Brent), but some of them were mine, such as the blue string that I used to create my design in the middle.

In conclusion, this was a very interesting unit and project. I think that learning more about how the human mind works was pretty interesting. Maybe I’d like to go into a career about it, although I’m not 100% sure on it at the current moment. It’s something to consider, at least. I will be using this dreamcatcher, as well, not just discarding it after this project is over.