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ArtistA surreal cinematic dreamscape blending industrial ruins, ancient Rome, and biological metamorphosis. An abandoned sign company yard overflows with enormous comic-book displays, discarded exhibition props, and oversized trousers. A sweeping magenta canopy stretches across the building beneath an elevated railway. Beyond it, a grassy field of weathered tree stumps surrounds elegantly dressed women studying mushrooms. One carefully extracts a perfect mushroom from beneath the grass. The landscape dissolves into Rome at sunset. Giordano Bruno stands hooded in Dominican robes in Campo de’ Fiori. The Tiber winds toward Trastevere beneath ancient bridges. A solitary dreamer transforms midflight into an enormous iridescent housefly, descending toward a mysterious underground sanctuary beneath ancient alleyway stones. Within this hidden chamber, pale larvae, sleeping flies, tangled roots, and luminous fungi gather in an extraordinary cycle of transformation and renewal. Impossible spatial transitions, intricate organic textures, haunting beauty, recursive dream logic. No text, no borders.
The Dream Artifact
Date: November 10, 2026
Time of recording: Approximately 6:30 a.m. U Pacific Time
Location: British Columbia, Canada (exact location not confirmed)
The sign company I work for has been bought out, or basically taken over, by a subcontractor that specializes in designing and setting up designer displays.
This is interesting because the actual sign company I work for was connected to a previous sign company that broke up about twenty years ago. One of the companies that emerged from that breakup and it specialized in designer displays.
In the dream, I’m at this company, and there is a large, open yard where all sorts of things from previous jobs have been left behind. There are old displays, pieces of exhibitions, and enormous comic books, perhaps ten feet high, that were made for shows. All these things are lying around, remnants of work that has already been completed.
While looking through these things, I find a pair of pants. They’re about twice my size, but they’re made from exactly the kind of cloth I like. I think perhaps they might fit me, despite being so large. Then I begin to wonder whether someone might assume they’re women’s pants.
I walk a little farther down from the area where all the old jobs are stored and come into a grass-covered field. There are stumps where trees have been cut down, or perhaps the trees have fallen, rotted away, or been hauled off.
There are some wealthy women in the field. One of them is an expert in mushrooms.
She’s such an expert that she can identify a mushroom hidden beneath the grass and dig it out of the ground without getting any dirt on the top of its cap.
I’m impressed by her knowledge, but I’m also thinking about how much money she must have to be able to spend so much of her time learning to identify all these different mushrooms.
I think about how I’ve had to slog away for a living and haven’t had the time to develop the kind of knowledge about mushrooms that I would have liked to have.
Eventually, I leave the area.
I’m walking out through the front of the building. Across the front of the shop is a long, sweeping, magenta-coloured header.
Outside, I notice some kind of elevated transit system running above the ground.
I’m in a city. I think I’m in Rome.
Suddenly, I’m flying.
I rise up into the air, and as I’m flying, I look off to my right. I can see the Campo de’ Fiori, the Square of Flowers, where Giordano Bruno was burned.
There’s that beautiful statue of Bruno standing in the square. He looks so Gothic in his Dominican robes.
I’m flying above the Tiber River, heading toward Trastevere.
Then I realize something.
I’m not simply flying.
I’m a fly.
I’m returning to a body that’s buried somewhere in a back alley, or perhaps lying dead beneath some rocks.
That’s where all the other flies are. There are maggots there too.
We’re all returning to the same place, joining together for our nightly sleep with the body beneath the ground.
And that’s where the dream ends.
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A Note on the Dream Artifact
“Once upon a time we could fly.”
It’s strange how the dream understands the word fly, and how a language model understands it.
The less evolved language models sometimes interpret fly not as a verb, but as an object or an insect.
In the dream, I begin by flying, but by the end I discover that I am actually a fly, returning to the place where the maggots are.
The word has changed from an action into a creature.
And somewhere between those two meanings is the dream itself.
