The Sandman

I’ve got this earworm as I write, and it’s all because Michael emailed me a link yesterday to “Find the #1 Song on the Day You Were Born”.

It turns out the number one song on 22 December 1954 was Mr Sandman by The Chordettes, with its opening line, “Mr Sandman, Bring me a dream …”, and while I don’t call on the Sandman each night as I go to bed, I do relish what the night will bring, and feel quite disappointed on those rare mornings when I wake up with little dream recall.

Before reading on, I invite you to sample my earworm and embrace my birth theme according to the charts. This is a 1958 version:

I sat down today to do a little research on the Sandman and was quite surprised to discover that Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story in 1841 about the Sandman, going by the Danish name of Ole Lukøje. I was surprised because, in my dream last night, I was in a magical, mystical, fairy tale city in Scandinavia.

In my dream, the plane I was travelling in landed in a snowy field in Scandinavia, an unexpected destination since we had been heading for warmer climes. The air felt magical, exciting, and the moment we descended from the plane I saw the city, a multitude of glittering spires reaching into the morning skies. This unexpected destination suddenly felt exactly where I wanted to be, and, apparently, I had a couple of days to soak it all up.

As I lay in bed this morning, partly still in that Scandinavian city, partly connecting to the meaning of my dream, it all made sense. I had just received an unexpected opportunity, and the details of the dream shed welcome light on it. The dream spires were indeed inspiring, as is the opportunity.

Had I also once known about the Hans Christian Andersen story, and had it slipped into my unconscious mind and partly influenced my Sandman-gifted dream?

In his story, the Danish Sandman, Ole Lukøje, blew sand or magic dust into children’s eyes so they wouldn’t see him, then he’d blow more sand or dust onto the backs of their necks so they’d droop and get sleepy. Once safely tucked up in bed asleep, he would sit on their beds and decide which of his two umbrellas to open over them. For children who had been good, he opened the umbrella with dream pictures inside. Naughty children got the umbrella with no pictures, and fell into a heavy dreamless sleep.

Earlier Sandman folklore includes the darker side (the Sandman who feeds children’s eyeballs to his children) and the lighter, sleep-encouraging side (the magical sand-sprinkling Sandman who brings good dreams and traces of sand in your eyes upon waking).

Maybe the Sandman traces back to Morpheus, the Greek God of Dreams, son of Hypnos, the God of Sleep, and Pasithea, the Goddess of Relaxation and Rest. Morpheus could appear in any form in anyone’s dream, but tended to focus on influencing heroes and kings through their dreams. Together with his brothers – collectively the Oneiroi – they created a range of dreams. Phobetor created scary dreams and nightmares, Ikelos (sometimes a version of Phobetor) induced realistic dreams, and Phantasus delivered fake or illusionary dreams.

Although we now have science to explain how we fall asleep and dream, the stories of Greek Gods and Goddesses and fairy tale Sandmen of both dark and light variety enticingly fit with dream experiences. The language feels similar.

The magical, mystical nature of a stunning dream sits comfortably alongside the magical, mystical nature of a great fairy tale.

We call on fairy tales to teach our children, not about the Sandman, but about tussling with ethics and morals and about engaging with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

In my work, and in understanding my own dreams, I like to retain the sensuality of a dream, to dive into it, to enhance it, while at the same time analysing it to find the gold of self-understanding.

In a recent dream, I noticed some of my long hair, brown in my dream, was dead wood. I cut it out. Then I noticed more, and cut it out, and more, and cut it out. Each snip of the secateurs was deeply satisfying, leaving me with beautiful, fresh, vibrant hair. I hold back from putting the immense satisfaction I felt in the dream into words because it would devalue the dream experience. It probably sounds like a rather boring, mundane, easy to interpret dream to you, but to me it was deeply meaningful at a touch-me-to-the-core emotional level. Yes, it was about cutting dead wood from my headspace, from my life, but with each snip in my dream I knew I was alchemically and irreversibly doing it in my life.

Since my birth, Mr Sandman must have brought me about 100,000 dreams, based on a rough calculation of the 4-5 dreams we each dream during an 8 hour sleep.

Busy man.

PS

Talking of birthdays, May is the anniversary of both my website and The Dream Show. They share the same birthday, 1 May (Beltane). The website was launched, in its first incarnation, 19 years ago, and The Dream Show is 9 years old this month and 190 episodes strong.

And talking of videos, here’s one of me talking about work dreams last month on national television’s Today Extra, Nine:

 

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