Sorry, sorry, sorry, I KNOW, but I was on vacation! And I’m sure there are some things I need to recount from that, but I’m about to hit the hay, so I figured I’d recycle a topic I meant to bring up a while back: dreaming! I think thinking about dreams is coming back into fashion again; in fact, I was semi-recently interviewed by a writer who is working on a book about the science of dreams. Does this mean the taboo against telling other people about your dreams will soon end?! Pity, because my dreams have gotten really boring in the past three years or so. Maybe this means I’m content? The horror!
Anyway, I was reminded of the dream thing because I stumbled across an old email exchange with my friend KC, in which we discussed starting a blog or something (?) in which we published people’s dreams. We even had a pitch and our own email address! I don’t remember the passwords, but I believe the address was dreamsdreamersdream@gmail.com. Catchy, no?
Turns out, someone at the New Yorker thought this was ripe for satire. The opening rejection note:
Dear Mr. Smith,
A dream in which you “do something nasty with a family member”—and particularly a “distant cousin,” which, frankly, we hear about all the time—in no way merits inclusion in our magazine, no matter how arousing you may have found it.
Please see the Frequently Recorded Dreams page on our Web site to determine whether your dream is worthy of submission.
Sincerely,
Donald Wembly
Submissions Editor
Dreams Quarterly
American Academy of Dreams
Perhaps even funnier than that, there IS actually an academic publication dedicated to the study of dreams, called Dreaming, published by the International Association for the Study of Dreams. I would consider becoming a research psychologist just to join the IASD!
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