Dream Thoughts

I had amazingly real dreams yesterday morning - well I only remember the last one before waking - but I know there were more.  I attribute this having had a dish with lots of (store bought) mushrooms the previous night.

I can see everything vividly still, though the images are fading.  The colors were rich and I could see every detail.  But when I was telling my wife about the dream I realized that while there were conversations in the dream, I couldn't recollect voices the way I could the visuals.  As I think back to other dreams, I know I generally do see in color (and I've heard that not everyone does), but I don't remember hearing sounds they way I see things.  I know they were there, I know that people spoke or that there was music, but it's more like telepathy in my memory that actual hearing of sounds.

I have to pay attention in future dreams.  Do I actually hear sounds but they fade faster than the visuals?  What about smells?  (And I realize as I write this that I can say, "I can't hear sounds" but I can't find the equivalent word for this sentence, "I can see ______."  'Sights' doesn't fit as well as 'sounds' does in the first sentence. Nor 'images.'   Is there an English word that fits there that I'm just blanking on?

As I think about this, there is one exception to the absence of sounds.  There have been times when the clock radio has gone off while I'm still sleeping/dreaming and the voices on the radio mingle with my dreaming and actually redirect my dreams until I wake up and realize the sounds were from the radio.  But those are actual, external sounds I'm hearing in my dreams, not dream sounds in the way that I see the dreams.



OK, now that I've said what's on my mind, let me see what the internet can add to this.

My first search term was:  "Hearing sounds in dreams like seeing things"  resulted in titles related to simply hearing voices, in real life, not in dreams.

Then, 'Dream Sounds' had music for dreaming, but also this from dreamwell which matches my experience:

"Sounds are one of the most invasive things into our dreams.  But rather than wake us up, sounds often become incorporated into our dream, the external sound woven into the fabric of the dream as though it really belonged there."

This person writes, not as though these are her first person experiences, but as though this is a general rule, but she offers no references or evidence of this.  But it does match my experience.  And does 'Dreamwell' refer, as I first thought, to a well from which you get dreams?  Or is it meant more like the term "Sleep Well"?



Next:  "Do People Hear In Dreams?"  At Experience Project people answer the question, "In your dreams (night), do you see/hear/smell/feel/taste?  [This site has those disgusting ads with pictures and tabloid questions, so beware.]  Some commenters say yes, they see, hear, feel, smell.  Not much on taste.  One person wrote:

"There were scents, colors, people talking, and I could remember what they said quite often. The only thing I don't remember is taste. "

I know there was talking and other sounds in my dream, but I don't remember 'hearing' the sounds in the way I saw things.  I just know they were there.  But I still have visual memories of the dream, but not aural ones  By that I mean, I can remember what was said, but I can't hear it, while the images I can both still remember and see. 

Related to all this is a book I've just finished reading A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki in which dreams play a major role.  While there were provocative ideas in the book, overall I found myself impatient for it to end.  If it weren't for my book club, I might not have finished it.  I'll try to put more up about it because there were lots of interesting ideas.  It was an ambitious project, but I don't think she quite pulled it off.  Just mentioning it now because of the importance of dreams in it.  In one case she seems to use a dream to change what is happening in another part of the world.  It didn't work for me.