Dream Artifact 1989: Cthulhu Sleeps Dreaming

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The Dream — 1989, Eugene, Oregon

Felony Flats, Monroe Street

In 1989, I was living in Eugene, Oregon, in a neighborhood known as Felony Flats, on Monroe Street, with the best roommate I ever had, Mr. Dave Smith.

I slept on a mat on the living room floor. My days were spent cutting illustrations out of old dictionaries and arranging them into collages on postcard-sized pieces of cardboard. I used methylcellulose glue, which gave me practically unlimited time to move the images around before they dried.

I sat on my mat, which was also my bed, working all day. Gradually, a growing border of little artworks spread outward across the floor from my sleeping space.

One night, I had a dream.

In the dream, I saw a strange, dancing, one-eyed Cthulhu with four arms. What struck me most wasn’t the creature itself but its colouring. The colours were pointillistic, resembling one of those Ishihara colour-blindness tests, composed of tiny dots. It was rendered in my favourite colours of the 1980s: turquoise, orange, chartreuse, with a little vermilion thrown in.

When I woke up, I immediately recreated the creature in watercolour. The image I’ve provided is that very painting, exactly as I saw it in the dream and subsequently executed it.

Somehow, after I had finished painting it, the picture migrated across the living room and ended up lying face down on the floor in a particular spot.

Then something extraordinary happened.

Dave Smith had a dream.

In his dream, a one-eyed alien had landed in our living room. What made it remarkable was that he described the alien as having landed in one very specific spot on the floor.

When Dave woke up, he told me about his dream.

I walked over to the exact place he had described. There, lying upside down on the floor, was my watercolour of the one-eyed Cthulhu.

I bent down, picked it up, and turned it over.

And there it was.

The very creature I had dreamed, painted, and somehow left in the precise spot where Dave had dreamed an alien had landed.