Letter From The Founder
This was always guaranteed to be a good one. The theme is the kind of evocative thing that our creators can really sink their teeth into and use as a showcase for their skills.
In dreams all things are possible, in dreams there are no limits or boundaries. Dreams can be beautiful yet they can be horrifying. They can be refuges from the day to day but they can also be venues where the day to day plays out in amplified and seemingly infinite repetition. Dreams can be loaded with meaning but they don’t have to mean anything at all. They just are.
So given this you can see the possibilities for producing great creative works around this theme and the STSC crew do not disappoint.
This month we bring you essays, poetry, short films, and fiction- a dozen submissions that span genre and form and collectively encapsulate the places that we go when we close our eyes each night. And we give you all of this for free.
In the beginning some might have said it would be impossible for us to keep up this kind of quality month after month but I always knew it was not only possible but inevitable. I guess I’m a dreamer. I guess we all are.
Enjoy.
Essays
The Trumpet Shall Sound by Ann
This is the ideal piece to start us off with this Symposium. As you work you way through the various submissions (and as always every last one is deserving of your time) you will see that music and imagery and poetry are aspects that crop up again and again. When we try to discuss or capture dreams in words these are the tools our writers and creators reached for. And Ann’s work shows someone who is in command of all of this and more. This is a highly impressive work here.
Goth music for happy kids: a dreampop primer by William
Great title, great selection of tracks and artists.
Funnily enough- and by complete coincidence- I have been revisiting a lot of shoegaze/dreampop CDs from my youth recently so this piece was perfectly timed. I miss when record labels were an absolute seal of quality and you could (virtually) by any album from the imprint blind and discover something new and great. The official home of dreampop 4AD was definitely one of those places.
I can’t recommend William’s impeccable selection and write up here enough
Dream writing by Terry
On the practice of writing down dreams and the riskier step of publishing them with reference to the great (and I suspect nowadays under-read) George Perec. This is a vintage Terry article- concise, considered, fun and you leave having learned something without feeling like you have been beaten over the head with the writers learning. All essayists should aspire to this.
Fiction
Dream by Vanya
Though it is not the be-all, end-all, I maintain that every great story has a great opening sentence, one that is memorable, aesthetically pleasing and provides a doorway to effortlessly pull you into the story.
‘Every time in my dream, I shoot, but he refuses to die, the bastard.’
… is a prime example of this. Annoying talented bastard, is our Vanya.
Sunburst by Minna
It’s easy enough to write about dreams, about fantastical things. But to capture the actual feelings of dreams as they are, the offness of them, the mixture of the mundane and the weird and the horrifying and the beautiful is much much harder. But of course Minna pulls it off and makes it look easy.
Dreaming of Infinite Quantum Lilies by Clint
The question mark for a subheading says it all, in the best possible way. As a writer you can come up with something and have no idea what it is or whether it has any merit. Whether it means something either to you or to anyone else. Most writers abandon such things and stick with publishing what is understandable (that is if they publish anything at all). The more courageous go with these impulses and instincts and end up discovering gold where others fear to tread.
I don’t need to tell you what kind of writer Clint is.
A Weaving Of Split Infinities by Edward
Heavyville, Texas - On the Edge of the 22nd Century. A Waking Memory At The Edge Of The Ancient Aegean. New York City 1840s, and Berlin and Paris 1940s
Like a dream Edward’s fiction jumps from setting to setting, from era to era, from state to state in all of the different definitions of that word. It is over in a matter of minutes but seems to contain hints of infinity and interconnectedness and there are depths and clues that you could explore forever. Breathtaking.
reconciliation dreams by Yuelian
This is the fictional equivalent and perfect accompaniment to all of the dreampop that William featured in his piece above. This is as beautiful, aching, memorable and powerful as all of those reverb drenched melodies with their edge of distortion. Yuelian continues to consistently provide us with excellent fiction told with a unique voice.
All Our False Faces by Victor
Man, I absolutely love Victor’s prose and this topic of Dreams really lets the poetry of his voice shine through I think. This is a writer in complete control with every word, every image exactly as it should be. Perfect.
Art and Poetry
Dram Dream by Adam Kozak
An ode to the hard stuff filled with rhythm, beauty and life. Although the opening line might be hard to recite if you’ve had a few measures from the top shelf. But of course that is intentional.
Video
The impossible conveyance of dreams, a 2 minute and 30 second film by Trilety
Poetry, fiction, essays, visual art and now film too. Is there any end to Trilety’s talents? I’m genuinely asking. Because there doesn’t seem to be. Frankly at this point if she released a cookbook and then adapted it into an operetta and staged it in an opera house that she herself had designed I wouldn’t be surprised. Some people just have ‘it’ I guess.
They That Spoke to Me That Night by D.B.
As well as a truly excellent short film (well, that goes without saying if you are a follower of D.B.s work ), this offering also comes with a fun and surprisingly useful mini-essay on the Rules For Telling People Your Dreams. There are some real gems in it.
But of course the short film, the aptly called Cinepoem is the thing. And what a thing it is.
So that was the STSC symposium on Dreams. We hope you enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
Thank you for your support with these projects we share, thank you for reading them and thanks for all of your comments, feedback and notes. Thank you for taking the time to share them and pass on the word.
And of course above all thanks to all of the contributors and those who help keep the STSC going via their kind support, especially those who keep a low profile, I hope we will be able to coax more of you into taking the plunge and participating in future issues.
Cheers.
Great job on this theme. Some of the best work I’ve read/watched/listened to from STCC so far
Such beautiful work.
This might be a silly question, but I’ve looked all over the soaring twenties Substack page , does anyone know how to submit writing?