What you might not know about the American author
Mary Shelley is said to have written 'Frankenstein' (1816) based on a nightmare she'd had.
Famed director Christopher Nolan was inspired to create his psychological thriller 'Inception' (2010) after having his own experiences with lucid dreaming. He told the Los Angeles Times that lucid dreams allowed him to see “dream life as another state of reality.”
The masterpiece that is 'Avatar' (2009) came from a dream James Cameron had when he was 19, which included a glowing, bioluminescent forest. He said he woke up and immediately tried to sketch it, and if that's not enough to convince you to keep a dream journal, we don't know what is!
Surrealist painter Salvador Dali famously called many of his works "hand-painted dream photographs," and 1931's 'Persistence of Memory,' one of his most famous works, was inspired by an actual dream.
The ability to manipulate a conscious dream formed the basis of the incredibly creative plot line wherein characters can enter dream worlds of others and manipulate them. “The only outlandish idea that the film presents, really, is the existence of a technology that allows you to enter and share the same dream as someone else," Nolan said.
It's said that Paul McCartney composed the melody for the hit single 'Yesterday' in a dream one night in 1964. Describing his process, he said he woke up with the tune in his head and went to the piano to figure out the chords for it. He then went around showing it off to his friends and asking if they knew it, convinced that he couldn't have written it because he'd dreamt of it.
The American novelist, famed for leading the Beat Generation, wrote an entire experimental novel called 'Book of Dreams' (1960) in which he tries to continue the plots of his dreams, which he recorded in a journal from 1952-1960.
In the 19th century, dreams held a spiritual connotation. Poe wrote in his 1839 essay 'An Opinion on Dreams' that they were “supernatural instruction” and “divine communication.”
Edgar Allan Poe reportedly suffered from nightmares throughout his life, many of which made it into his poems and short stories. He also wrote various poems about dreaming itself, like 'Dream-Land' (1844) and 'A Dream Within a Dream' (1849).
He also had a system to help capture and exploit these dream images: you sit on an armchair and place a key between your fingers with a plate on the ground below it, then fall asleep. When you enter that liminal state, the key will make a clattering sound as it falls, and you can record what you were just seeing.
Those dreams formed the basis of his 2001 novel 'Dreamcatcher.' And that wasn't the only work of King's to be inspired by a dream–he has said that he uses dreams regularly to help him sharpen his symbolism in his novels.
Director Richard Linklater used dreams as inspiration for many of his films, most notably the animated film 'Waking Life' (2001), which is a philosophical exploration of the experience of dreaming.
Linklater told IGN that he has always been able to lucid dream, naturally, and only when making the film did he confirm his experience through research.
The imagery of melting clocks conveys the way our concept of time is warped and arbitrary in a dream. This fascination with dreamscapes was fundamental to surrealism in the early 1930s and defined Dalí's legacy.
Stephen King was hit by a minivan in 1999 and suffered a collapsed lung and shattered leg. While he was recovering, he started having vivid dreams. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that the first strong idea that came to him was about four guys in a cabin in the woods, who meet another guy who isn't feeling well, along with a hitchhiker. “I dreamed a lot about that cabin and those guys in it," he said.
The artist's most famous work, 'Flag' (1954), which is a recreation of the US flag, was born from a dream he had at age 24. It was two years after being discharged from the US Army, and he had a dream he painted the flag, so he woke up and did it. It was the first of many that were inspired by his dream.
The famed psychoanalyst was always fascinated with the power of the unconscious mind and dream archetypes. He's even responsible for a book, 'The Red Book' (published in 2009, long after his death), which is a collection of years of his dreams, fantasies, surrealist dialogues, and psychedelic drawings.
Well known for being a dreamer, John Lennon wrote '#9 Dream,' one of his most iconic solo works, based on a dream he had. The chorus of the song repeats a nonsensical phrase from the dream, "Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé," and the lyrics explore the feeling of a dream being real.
If you've seen David Lynch's films, like 'Eraserhead' (1977) or 'Mulholland Drive' (2002), this comes as no surprise.
In the preface for his poem 'Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment' (1816), Coleridge claims he wrote it after experiencing a substance-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu. He woke up and wrote the poetry straight out of his dream.
The famed American horror writer was well-known for his use of dreams in his work—more specifically the nightmares he had in early childhood, which later appeared in works like his poem 'Night Gaunts' (1939) and novella 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath' (1943).
'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1886) is one of modern literature's most famous works, and it reportedly came from a fever dream during Stevenson's bout of tuberculosis. He was furious when his wife woke him, but scribbled down what he could remember and built from there.
The quintessential vampire horror 'Dracula' (1897) was inspired by a nightmare Bram Stoker had about “a vampire king rising from the tomb,” according to biographer Harry Ludlam.
The Swiss Romantic painter caused a stir when he exhibited 'The Nightmare' (1781), which depicts a figure of a sleeping woman visited by a terrifying crouching figure and a horse. Art historian Edward Burns says the painting may have been inspired by Fuseli's fixation on a young woman named Anna Landolt who he felt unable to confess his love to, but who appeared in his erotic dreams wherein he possessed her while she slept.
The famed French composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries composed the piano solo 'Réverie' (1890) as he was inspired by his dreams.
Several films of Andrei Tarkovsky are inspired by dreams and the absence of any logical sense of time in them, but his film 'Mirror' (1975) was born out of a recurring dream he had about his grandfather's house in which he is a child.
The 'Devil's Trill Sonata'(1799) is the composer's best-known composition, and it reportedly came out of a dream Tartini had about the devil asking to teach him the violin. Tartini handed the devil the instrument, and what the devil played is where this technically difficult and intense composition came from.
Sources: (HuffPost) (Atlas Obscura) (Los Angeles Times) (MoMA) (San Francisco Chronicle) (IGN)
See also: The strange methods of history's most eccentric artists
The legendary Italian filmmaker's collection of dream notes and drawings over 30 years were published in a collection called 'Fellini's Book of Dreams,' and if you've seen his work it's clear how his dreams shaped his film landscapes, such as in 'I vitelloni' (1953) or '8 ½' (1963).
The most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries created 'The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters' (1799) as part of his 'Los Caprichos' series, which were born out of his less famous 'Sueño' ('Dream') series. In it, he plays with the idea of fantasy and rationality.
Dreaming is a chance for the brain to invent without the mind’s control, and that inventiveness is the unconscious version of our waking creativity—except one happens a lot easier than the other.
Those images and sensations that appear to us as we sleep have long been a source of inspiration for some of the world’s greatest works of art, even as dreams came to represent different things over time, i.e. divine encounters, erotic subtext, fictional stories, and so forth.
Some of the greatest works of fiction, music, visual art, or film have been inspired by dreams. Click through to see which artists achieved greatness in their sleep.
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CELEBRITY Trivia
Dreaming is a chance for the brain to invent without the mind’s control, and that inventiveness is the unconscious version of our waking creativity—except one happens a lot easier than the other.
Those images and sensations that appear to us as we sleep have long been a source of inspiration for some of the world’s greatest works of art, even as dreams came to represent different things over time, i.e. divine encounters, erotic subtext, fictional stories, and so forth.
Some of the greatest works of fiction, music, visual art, or film have been inspired by dreams. Click through to see which artists achieved greatness in their sleep.