Art and Article by William Compton

An essay in poems, fragments and dreams

In others articulating what I can’t manage to say

Writing down dreams is a frustrating practice, bagging something in ripping seams

But dreams tell truths that can’t exist in the day

And so I’ll write them

Teal pen and a burning coffee sip

Hoping: maybe I’ll find something hiding from pen and lip

A dream is a wish your heart makes

When you’re fast asleep

In dreams, you will lose your heartache

Whatever you wish for, you keep

Have faith in your dreams, and someday

Your rainbow will come smiling through

No matter how your heart is grieving

If you keep on believing

The dream that you wish will come true

“A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes,” Mack David, Al Hoffman, Jerry Livingston, Cinderella

January 16th: I found an ancient tome filled with a forgotten language. As I tried to decipher it, I was damaging it, as fragile as it was. I found it up in the mountains. I’m starting to realize that there’s an over and underworld to my dreams. I remember finding the entrance to the underworld, the gate in the lake beside the ski town. The underworld has forces and they try to keep me from the magic hiding in the overworld (the lake, the book in this dream, etc.) I only had moments with the tome before they were after me. I ended up hiding at my aunt’s house before having to run again. I kept having to skydive, mission-impossible style. I never deciphered the tome. The dream ended with me in a plane above Florence. I had to jump to escape, but I was too scared and felt too close to the buildings for my parachute. I don’t think I even had the tome anymore. And I never jumped.

What are the consequences of silence? If I wanted to give a real answer, I’d mark nothing on the page: answer unknown, no personal touch, not writing to read. To be silent is to leave yourself inside, claiming mundanity. The silent presence is unprepared for their exception, unwilling to assume room in the cosmos, more room than their skin and what’s between. In choosing silence, you begin fading. And you may stay there, forever faded.

Just come out already.

Just come out with it, baby.

We had good childhoods, but we hated being children.

January 10th: I remembered my dream over dinner. I dreamed that I was a little kid. It was first person, but I wasn’t myself. Unusual. I had an unexplainable, perfect recollection of my past life. The memories accessible as if they had been my own. Which made sense: the memories were my own, from my current life. From William Compton’s life. My future self remembering my present self and I wondered if it was real. Will I be that little kid? And will I remember myself?

In my next life, I look like myself, and my childhood home looks like itself.

Lifetimes away, will our country look like itself still?

Nothin’ really ends

For things to stay the same, they have to change again

Hello, my old friend

You change your name, but not the ways you play pretend

American Requiem

“American Requiem,” Beyoncé

I was hanging out with the river, becoming amazed by the many miles she’ll carry the leaves that fell into her. And with a plop, a leaf lands in front of me. And it gets caught in a looping eddy. And I watch it circle in place for twenty minutes.

January 20: It was the night we were performing Stars. Unlike an average performance dream, nothing seemed to be going horribly wrong. Behind the performance, we were hiding animals, trying to keep them safe from the forces of the underworld. There was a giraffe I had a special connection to. After the performance, we smuggled the animals back to our house, where we continued to hide them. Me and Kennedy worked together to keep them safe. Mostly, we cuddled with them on the couch.

Otters don’t know they’re hydrodynamic, they feel the push of their kicks, the pull of their paws. The otter still swims in enclosure. They learn how to use the slide. They chase the fish in the glass-walled pool. Gramma makes sure we see the otters. And we frown when they’re inside.

January 6th: I was back in the fluorescently lit facility, once again rehearsing for a play. In this dream, the play didn’t really exist. There was way more I can’t seem to remember. An important mission. Before I fell asleep, I wondered if I was going back to the facility. I don’t like it there, but I want to go back and remember my mission.

It’s not a dream without a dull, aching fear

Goblins, monsters hiding behind unlocked doors.

It’s not a dream without magic.

The goblins want the magic back.

When I learn the secrets of the lake, it disappears again.

January 8th: I was on a huge lawn at something like a BBQ. A lot of friends and kids. I would sneak off to smoke. The event seemed to go on for days. But lurking somewhere not too far was a fortress of villains, like videogame goblins. I think I was back at the dream world’s version of Colorado College. I wonder if it’s connected to the facility somehow. Maybe the looming threat of goblin attack came from there.

When I started writing my dreams, I didn’t know that the nightly danger I faced was one threat, an underworld of monsters. I didn’t know that the magic I found—the meaning of water, the books of spells—was one unexplainable blessing, the only threat to the underworld.

January 27: I was staring into a glass of water, and it was at once all the water in the world. I realized something in that moment that might not exist outside of dreams.

If I lose my heartache in dreams, I find it in the morning.

The goblins unmask, ICE agents and our evil president.

And the magic to best them, the meaning of water, and the language of creation turn into swirling colors.

January 26: I was at Gramma and Grampa’s house, and everyone was together and Gramma was alive. She was smoking on the patio. And I could fly, which wasn’t strange at all in the dream. I remember the feeling of weightlessness and gliding in the wind. People would ask me how I did it and I would tell them it was faith, surrendering to the wind. The one time I tried to teach someone, I fell flat on my face.

I wonder if the dream magic exists in our modern day

I wonder if I’ll find it

I wonder if I’ll fall asleep and siege the evil underworld

I wonder if I’ll wake up and remember how to fly

If you surrender to the air, you can ride it.