Samuel Taylor Coleridge once mused - 'What is you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? Ay, what then?'

Is there a dream effect or experience you would like to create for your audience that still alludes you but haunts you like Coleridge's flower? Let's not get hung up on methodology for the time being ladies and gents - dream big and share if you feel inclined...

It would look like a jermay effect in reverse, after the Coleridge flower presentation - I'd open a box, unwrap a silk, and pull up a decayed, blackened old rose...

I'd cup my hands around it, maybe produce The Teardrop as I talk about reincarnation and slowly the air will fill with the smell of roses, and re-open my hands...the rose would be in full bloom...

a very poor pun would be to use a carnation in stead of a rose, but not mention it, just for my own amusement...

what else? though I've not had chance to put it all together, I have a bizarre tale (or should that be tail) of a destroyed lighthouse - using a hotrod move, a blackened matchstick is restored, a candle is lit, a tale is told, the key of the old lighthouse moves turns in my hand and the smell of the sea crashes into the air...proof of the spirit of the keeper is here with us...

Reminds me of ol' Chaung Tzu and his butterflies-

[Some will even experience a dream within a dream; and only when they awake do they realize they dreamed of a dream. By and by comes the great awakening, and then we may find out that this life is really an extended dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are dreams—I am but a dream myself. This is a paradox. To-morrow a wise man may come forward to explain it; but that tomorrow will not be until ten thousand generations have gone by.

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier. The transition is called metempsychosis.]

As an effect, something where they suddenly start to feel, subtley, they've entered into a waking dream, for a moment having it proven it is so, then take them out and they know they are mistaken again, as its only now they are in a dream not then... bit of an escalating, nested, operation mindfunk, where they are not quite sure WHAT they've seen until they land on their feet by the end - and with the real kicker they then don't go on to drag your *** to court!

Gonna say this, the genuine synchronicities in what people are thinking (across the board) are freaking me out a little right now (its those meds)...so...time to wake up again or was it sleep.

Beware! Beware!
his flashing eyes! his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
and close your eyes with holy dread!
for he on honey-dew hath fed,
and drunk the milk of Paradise.

So Plasticdestiny, would you be looking to have a 'stately pleasure-dome' decreed as your dream effect?!

Mindtrap - I like the hypnogogic theme - it would seem to be a less aggressive version of a forced amnesia effect ('I am going to steal one of your memories') which I have never felt comfortable with. The dreamy state of half waking and half sleeping is ripe for magical experiences I think.

Thank you both for sharing your ideas

As one who generally dislikes poetry (exception granted for the sainted Leonard Cohen) I have always loved Kubla Khan, but the 'worldly pleasures' main body of the poem never grabbed me as does the Abyssinian maid fragment.

I've never used it in performance, though it's always been an ambition... difficult to do justice to Coleridge's genius. I might just look at this again now I've been reminded.

I have always tried to keep the Beware! Beware! lines in mind - kind of like an ethos for performance.

Destiny

Tuesday Lobsang Rampa recognised the magic and mystery in that time and did very well out of it.

Destiny

Beautiful! Another smooth Zentalism thread...can you feel it?

DT3

Zentalism - that's good

In fact, using mentalist to express Buddhist ideas is quite a good idea

I lead a weekly class in mindfulness meditation. On accasion I have done some curious, impossible thing; generally something mentalism flavored. It's not 'I'm magical and you're not' so much as forcing questions about reality and illusion. The 'illusion of reality' caused by our day-to-day entrancement; a by product of limiting, half-hearted consciousness. (THAT's a mouthful! HA!)
An impossible occurrence can, for a few moments, break through the daily daze and wake us up for a time. Reality suddenly seems more malleable.
The speaking points made immediately after such a strange happening are very well remembered!
The rose presentation of Abraxus is BEAUTIFUL!
brane