Art of the Dreamweaver

A dream is a very powerful thing. Dreams are what create desires, and it is desires guide decisions. A great deal of life is directed by our dreams, known or not. A dream is a dream because for some reason, what ever that reason might be, there is a thing both desired and out of reach at the moment. Some dreams are impossible, they can not be. The paraplegics dream of walking cannot come to reality, shy of medical breakthrough or miracle. Some are dreams of the social: new justice, an end to an oppression, new opportunities, things involving changes to many peoples attitudes. Other dreams require resources, arrangements of events from outer sources: money to start a business, the first critical break for an artist that moves them into the public eye. Then there are the dreams of the interpersonal, dreams involving the self: a spouse, a family, a lover.

A dreamweaver is a person who enhances or gives shape to a dream beyond what those carrying the dream are able to conceptualize, beyond what they can capture to memory from imagination. Martin Luther King was a dreamweaver, the dream he brought to focus was a dream of social justice for a large segment of the American population. Adolph Hitler was a dreamweaver, the dream he brought to focus was the restoration of a national pride destroyed by a defeat in war. Compare the effect of these two men on our world and you will see the power of a dreamweaver. In essence the entirety of the advertising industry is in the realm of the dreamweaver, attempting to craft a dream of possessing some material thing as prerequisite to bringing to reality some other, known to be common, dream of the common culture… much to the monetary profit of those who contract their services. These dreamweavers work in the public dreams as it were, they are known by many names. Equally, those dreamweavers who work in the realms of the personal and interpersonal are also known by many names, many of which are hardly complimentary. Yet it cannot be denied the dreams they craft, adjusted to the scale of the personal as differing from the historical or social are equally powerful, and just as in the case of Dr. King and Herr Hitler the dreams they craft can range the full spectrum of morality.

Humanity is divided into two subsets, masculine and feminine, and so it should be no surprise dreamweavers who work in the dreams of the personal accommodate this primal difference in their work. Equally, it should be no surprise that such dreamweavers accommodate the other differences, accommodate their offerings to match the canvas upon which they paint… after all, a dream is a powerful thing, it needs to fit the individual who will carry it. Hence the dreamweaver finds the entire spectrum of psychology a palette from which components are drawn. The inner balances of the human psyche are a dynamic thing, and so is the art the dreamweaver crafts from that palette, it is not a static thing to be categorized into a simple set of rules any more than one can make a simple set of rules for a counselor or therapist… yes, the commons and the basics can be learned by intellect, by study, but the art is an art of empathy and understanding.

In the highest form the dream crafted becomes self sustaining within the life that was the canvas, it becomes a thing no longer dependent on the input of the artist any more than a client will remain dependent upon a good counselor for their peace of mind. None of this is to speak to the nature of the dream crafted, a good dream or a bad dream, a dream to be carried in total comfort as a luxury retreat from reality or a dream that becomes a demanding nightmare beyond escape. Those parameters are totally dependent on the basic nature of the canvas involved, the nature of the dream that canvas desires, and the basic ability of the individual who is the canvas to be host to the dream it desires.

The final form of the dreamweavers work will also depend upon the ability of the canvas to be satisfied with the dream delivered, for a dream is an intoxicating thing in its youth, many desire the intoxication remain in place and escalate the depth and intensity of the dream desired, often over-running their ability to carry the dream without detriment to the remainder of the life. Some will grow into each successive dream and in wisdom know their limits, know when to leave the last dream in place, others will become the victims of their dreams when the dreams they desire utterly outrun the remainder of their psyche's ability to reconcile the dream as believable to the secret self. None can continue for any great length of time to be an expanding canvas for a dreamweaver, the demands the dreams place upon the remainder of the psyche grow exponentially as the dream becomes more complex, reaching into ever deeper regions to find adequate power to sustain itself.

Here in these essays I will speak to the application of the dreamweavers art as I saw it practiced by one particular person. She was dreamweaver by inclination, and erotic model by occupation. In the place I knew her, by her own choice, she would not craft a dream she did not judge to be wholesome within her own understanding of what constitutes a proper form of the erotic serving as an expression of the love that lives between two hearts. As a consequence of preparing her canvases to receive a dream to satisfy two conditions all to often estranged from each other (the condition of her employer that the dream be of an erotic nature, and the condition of her own conscience that it be a wholesome dream to support life rather than consume it) she passed beyond the realms of the dreamweaver into an even more elite form of art: the art of the Muse. This document is the result of a request put to me by a young lady who hosts the dream of understanding the art of the Muse, the art of giving inspiration, and strength to match the demand that inspiration entails in translating the dream crafted into a work of art for the world to see. I will do my best, but I can make no promise, for I am not myself a Dreamweaver, much less a Muse.

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Sexy. The entire world seems saturated with that word, drowning in that word. Sexy, a state of great value, the state of being universally desirable, a Darwinian pass go and collect $200 card: sexy. But I challenge you, find me any random group of ten people where two of them can put any realistic or rational definition to that word, who can describe the component parts or the relationships between those parts that creates the status of sexy. For a large chunk of the worlds population "Sexy" has become nothing more than a common tag to hang on anything and everything considered desirable, and even though poorly defined as it might be it is still hooked into one of the three primal instincts, procreation, and therefore carries a great deal of power.

For any dreamweaver working in the realms of the personal/interpersonal "sexy" must be as generic a request as a glass of water is to a waitress… let me dream myself sexy, let me dream myself with someone who is sexy, let me dream myself risen beyond this demand that beats on me from all sides, can I have a refill please? Of course. But a true dreamweaver knows how little is actually understood about this most common of requests, knows that for a dream to work it must be compatible with the underlying personality that will support it. The dreamweaver will also know that if "sexy" is a dream for the person who proposes to be their canvas then at least one, if not more, of the critical components that actually create such a state within a life must be missing, or "sexy" would be a part of that life, in some degree or another, it would not be very likely to be the foundation of a dream request. And so the dreamweaver must, as any artist must when starting work on a raw canvas, prepare the surface to receive the colors to come, must lay down the base coats and sealers, make sure the pigments will not be distorted by the surface beneath. Because of this fact it is likely the true dreamweavers of the world who do work in the erotic… the Eva's and the Selene's, the Alex's and the Leia's… it is likely these women know more about the actual structure and nature of "sexy" than any other on the planet.

The dreamweaver working the interpersonal will most usually be using their own appearance and demeanor within a controlled environment to invoke a desired response within their canvas. They will be using music and lighting, the socially predefined cues presented by dress and posture, or in the case of working "sexy" a total lack of dress, nude (or any of the ten dozen and one forms of bizarre fetish wear), presenting a demeanor to use a personal appearance outside the work-a-day world to open a path for the effect to be applied. But first and foremost a dreamweaver uses their own responses, as the relationship artist to canvas is developed, to craft by subtle clue and innuendo, by delicate touches on this or another part of the canvas' psyche or soul the desired thought, the needed frame of reference or perspective.

When a dreamweaver is working everything about them, including and especially the most seemingly innocuous and spontaneous of comments and reactions  is actually compliant to an over-arching strategy of how the canvas is to be handled. To say a dreamweaver working the realms of the personal or interpersonal is a consummate manipulator of people is an absolutely true statement, they are among the best. Their competition in degree of skill is found among the charismatic religious leaders, the millionaire salesmen, the powerhouse CEO's, the most veteran and skilled of psychological counselors. Yet if they are true dreamweaver, if they honor their art, their skills are only applied to the specific task of producing a section of substrate within the personality of their canvas adequate to support the dream desired. To the degree the dream desired is a thing of the wholesome and the healthy their work will fall in exact parallel with the work of any counselor attempting to improve a personality so that the life will be improved in equal measure; if on the other hand they have agreed to craft a dream unwholesome, a dream of reduction and servitude then their skills will be used to destroy the appropriate portions of their canvas' psyche such that a dream of diminishment will not be contested and rejected by whatever might remain of a living soul. The net effect of a dreamweaver on any given life is exactly proportionate to the dream they agree to craft within their canvas.

To craft a dream of "sexy" as a wholesome thing requires that at least a portion of the canvas personality have the minimum foundations to actually support "sexy" as a state of life, at least while in the presence of the artist. In this the woman who taught me the majority of these things was among the elite, hers was an incredible skill at transplanting the requisite components as a smoothly functioning unit so rapidly that her work could easily be assigned into the realms of magic, of enchantment and spell. When by introspection on recollection I understood how she did it I laughed, and thought "Beautiful woman, if you can do that for us what a King you might raise up if you got the chance to use such skills from the beginning and not have to undo the mistakes of others first," for what she did was to re-parent each of her canvas', to compress into a few hours the net effect of say twelve years of superb parenting tied to her image: so long as she was in sight her parenting would over-write any earlier mistakes and her canvas could live, vicariously but live, what it would be like to have had such parenting in reality… which of course includes not only any degree of wholesome "sexy" desired but all other things such parenting enables into a life.

I will detail each of the component pieces as best I can, as best I have them understood, both in their function and how they were transplanted, overlaid, onto a canvas' psyche… for not only was the woman a most incredible weaver of dreams her skill and tactics taken into the world of real life are beyond question some of the most powerful and effective tools I've ever seen to improve the lives of those encountered, and thereby improve the world as a whole.

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C'mon, sing it with me: "All you need is love… all you need is love, love is all you need, love is all you need…" And how very right the lads from Liverpool were. But what the boys didn't mention, at least in that song, is what you must have within yourself so love does not arrive perceived a stranger, alien and a bit dangerous. To know love is not a free thing given like a new pair of shoes, it carries a bit of a demand and responsibility, it is not such an easy thing to actually bring stable within a life… particularly if it is to happen outside the traditional forms evolved to give structure, support and an example.

Since a dream is a simulation of reality it follows to experience even a dream of a thing there must be a place inside the self for that thing to reside, an unchallenged belief that such a thing really could exist. Have you ever had the delightful experience of flying in a dream, looping and soaring among the clouds only to have some part of yourself butt in and say "idiot, this can't be real, you can't fly," and known that moment of sheer panic as you begin to fall before awakening? That mechanism, that intrusion of reality, is a limitation any dreamweaver must address when working the realms of the interpersonal. The greater a degree of intimacy desired in the dream the greater the chances of such an intrusion breaking in to ruin the dream. If the dream contains little of the intimate, nothing of love, if it contains only blank sex or some reflected glory by association then of course there is little to worry about. Only a dream of something deeper, something that in reality would be meaningful is enough to bring emotional risk into the picture, and with such risk a concern for intrusions by the intellect. It is then the dreamweaver shows the full depth of their art.

It comes down to saying that to craft a dream of love, a dream of something meaningful and positive in the realms of the intimate interpersonal the artist must first be assured the pieces are in place to support such a simulation. What might those parts and pieces be, how might someone go about testing for their presence? Especially when they might well be undefined, under defined, or erroneously assigned within the individual in question? The obvious answer is there really is no way, certainly not quickly and in public, and so a minimum set must be established independently: the foundation values of self acceptance, of self confidence and self discipline. The three listed were the elements my mentor established first. Her success as a dreamweaver working the deep interpersonal gives good evidence those three must be truly critical.

A great deal of a dreamweavers' work is accomplished by the tactic of example, to simply show how a thing might be done. For a dreamweaver example is a more powerful method than for most, after all they have the advantage of being firmly in focus to their audience. Equally, being firmly in focus allows them to exaggerate, in subtle ways, the expressions and gestures that commonly serve in the realms of non-verbal communication to convey rather elaborate thoughts without a single word. It is said any picture is worth a thousand words, in the case of a dreamweaver at work that value is more likely in the range of ten thousand words, to be truthful.

Self acceptance was listed first of the three, and with reason. To accept to yourself the self you are is an absolute necessity for any form of intimacy, dreamed or real. If there is no self acceptance then any degree of acceptance by another is in direct contradiction to primal self image, and a contradiction of self image is ever more uncomfortable as the degree of difference enlarges. Distilled from the million and one euphemisms possible a common response to such conflict might read "If I don't accept myself how can I believe you do? What price, what conditions are placed on this thing I would like to believe is true, but really don't? You, who are putting me in this conflicted state, what are you willing to risk, what will you offer as collateral on my risk?"

My mentor had an answer for this problem, a means to defeat the question at least where she was concerned. She would remove, simply remove, her clothing. Not a striptease, no hint of invoking any childish titillation from violating the taboo of being seen unclad, she would simply undress and continue on as if it made absolutely no difference what so ever. It made no difference if she started from full street winter wear, or favorite kick-around-the-house casuals or one of her slinky sheer little boudoir gowns, they simply went away without fanfare and she would continue on as if she really didn't notice. You might call this a strange tactic, a strange rationale, but it worked. Consider the symbolism she presented, the example. Translated it would become "Hi! This is me. Regardless of where we met, regardless of where we live or the customs of where we live, how we grew up, we are all human, and this is me, Alexa, a woman, a human. Who are you?"

There is good wisdom in such an approach, it speaks from several levels into several dynamics of human interaction. The impediments to self acceptance are rooted in the acceptance of society. It is beyond this scope to speak to such a thought, but again, a challenge: find me any motive to reject the self, to deny self acceptance, that is not ultimately derived from outside of that self. Find a motive for any individual to deny themselves acceptance of themselves that did not come from family, society, or the culture of their birth. Of all the markers of societies' power the convention of wearing clothing, when the environment is benign for bare skin, is undoubtedly the most omnipresent and among the most deeply ingrained. Where there is clothing society has power.

Far more often than not problems in the interpersonal are derived directly from the social, after all, the social is the macroscopic form of the interpersonal. This fact was well known, and my mentor both exploited and defeated it by the simple tactic of mature, civil nudity. The dreamweaver does not engage in the immature behavior of the stripper, attempting to induce a new round of juvenile glee at each bit of flesh revealed. The dreamweaver is simply undressed, and from this very simple, and yet very powerful gesture makes it quite clear that in this place, in this group, between us, we judge our civility and our acceptability by different standards than elsewhere. In so doing she granted a great many permission (by example) to take the same attitude within themselves: here, with her, I do not need to be bound to the conventions that so limit me elsewhere, here with her there is no reason or need to reject myself as being unworthy to enjoy a dream of intimate companionship, here the rules are different. The shallow, the immature and the vulgar would say, if compelled to speak at all, that seeing her nude was the entire point of them being there, and yet it was not, it was only a preamble. How little they knew, and how easily she moved and molded them to her will.

They pull together, and since they pull together like a pair of fine horses they might as well be described together. I'm talking of course about the other two foundation attributes, the paired traits common to all success, all achievement: the traits of self-confidence and self-discipline. These two perhaps more than any others are the indicators of what a life is capable of producing for itself, for others. To forge any relationship of enduring value is a thing of accomplishment just as much as forging a Fortune 500 company from a scribbled sketch on a coffee shop napkin. This fact is not often commented on in some circles, notably those who would be more likely to be pursuing an achievement in the material, and yet it is still a fact. Bringing it to clear focus is yet another of the dreamweavers' preliminary tasks, and a most delicate one it is.

The former, confidence, is a thing of accumulated success while the latter, discipline, is a thing compiled from self-will acting on behalf of belief, faith. For all that they draw from quite different areas of life they need to be synchronized within close ratio, for each feeds from the other: the successes that enable confidence are produced by the work of internal discipline that must have the confidence to maintain belief and faith in the ultimate value of the effort. They play just as vital a role in matters interpersonal as they do in any other area of life, perhaps impacting in more subtle manners to a degree, but still vital components for success in any endeavor, including the partnership to create a dream of depth and complexity. It is when a dreamweaver of skill addresses these to assure her work a solid platform that she quite often may be found wearing several hats at once: mother, mistress, and ultimately Muse.

Reaching into these areas I most strongly suspect my mentor was actually working one on one with her canvases more often than not, when it might have seemed to her judgment (or intuition) they were open to such an effort, although it was not obvious at surface levels. In honesty neither can I actually prove such a claim, even though there was supporting evidence of the circumstantial and chronological variety. If solid proof exists I would not have seen it, it would have been found in the custom private shows contracted rather than the public shows I sat in on. In private she was working one on one or at most a with a very small and compatible group. Still, from the glimmerings and hints seen in public I feel comfortable in speculating a bit based on those hints extrapolated out against the observed results.

Sweet Alex… so warm, so comfortable and so comforting, so easy to be with. And I say that with all deliberation, because I have no doubt when she engaged to the intent of setting self-confidence and self-discipline into acceptable balance she reached deep into the maternal portions of her heart, for both functions are a product of nurture, and in truth it is the nurture from the mother sets those first critical ratios that often run a lifetime unchallenged. Not to say she would become anyone's "sugar momma", but rather to say I saw her on more than one occasion wearing the demeanor of a mother (amazingly, she could pull it off nude, and still make it ring true), the postures and expressions of a good and veteran mother dealing with her children: the same demand of excellence, the same impenetrable wall of rejection for a thing found foul and unwholesome, that same instant outreach of comfort and reassurance when a thing was found beyond one of her "children's" abilities, something they needed to grow up just a bit more before facing again, and only occasionally a true frown of displeasure to burn worse than any strap. At an earlier point I said she would "re-parent" her canvases in order to assure herself the component pieces were in place to support the type of mature dreams she delighted in crafting, and so she was. It was a thing of beauty from many perspectives to watch her at her work.

During those times she "mothered" her little brood the entire tone of her performance changed, it was easy to see. Understanding she was, in fact, giving the gift of maternal nurture made such times a treasure of examples concerning how to give such nurture: how a small smile that flickered with pride for something said she hadn't expected but approved of, no more than that, just a moments worth of a unique little smile for them, you could watch the things that person said later and see just how much confidence her little smile had enabled to them; equally you could watch someone melt to rethink their position when she would put a hand on a hip, or fold her arms across her chest with that little under-the-eyebrows look so many mothers will use as a first if not final warning. Warm and loving, sweet sensual beyond and before any form of sexual, yes, she could be all of those things indeed, and… you did not want her mad at you, because when mom's mad at you you're gonna regret it. Parenting, second edition, limited.

To my thought is says so very much that such tactics were not only accepted but seemed to be craved (by an audience of men often twice her age, lesbian women of all ages) gives solid evidence of how much need there is for each of us to parent each other with such subtle little offerings that are never ever spoken of in words to anyone, little offerings that in truth are offerings of love in its' most full and mature form.

You have to be a grown up, or well on your way to being emotionally grown up (calendar age no matter) to appreciate what a dreamweaver such as Alexa will craft when her focus is turned to the truly erotic, that sizzling interface when the sensual, the sexual, serves the needs of a sentiment of the heart. If you are not fully mature, if you approach such visions with selfish lust they will be at best confusing, at worst destructive and painful.  I think I'll give this subject a rest for a bit now, give what I've said a chance to settle in and find a home. If there seems to be interest in continuing I'd be happy to return to these realms, there are still many more things to be drawn from the same well and spoken of, but for now perhaps it would be wise to let the ideas already presented have a chance to find equilibrium: that no one can dream in full what they could not live in reality, it is a dangerous error to think otherwise; that the act of dreaming is a simulation of a reality desired and may be used as an indicator of how ready one is to enter such a reality; that in all truth the act of helping each other experience true and accurate dreams of a reality yet to be is one of the best ways to help each other find success should reality bring a dream within reach.