When I dream about a stranger in my dream, is that someone who I’ve yet to meet or is that a part of myself I’ve yet to shake hands with? Dreams about new people and unfamiliar places and experiences raises the question for me if that safer place of going ‘inside’ for creative material also includes new adventures concocted by the unconscious mind.

I notice that people who make music get less inclined towards acceptance of experimental sounds and odd discoveries the longer they go on making work. From what I understand about Jung’s idea of man’s development is that the first 40 years or so are spent looking ‘outward’ to the world. For most, this means career, family, etc., but for an artist this might mean looking at material, sound, images as something ‘out there’, a place to visit (many of us yearn for new and unusual places and experience and create that through art, music, literature).

The next part of life after 40, according to Jung, is spent ‘inside’ (perhaps going back to hunter/gatherering societies where the older hunters begin to spend more time in village past a certain age, sitting on haunches or caring for children). By going ‘inside’, the artist uses the repertoire of experiences already collected. It is process-driven, rather than purely experiential .

The only way out of stodgy rehash of old musical ideas for me is to pay attention to the strange, otherwordly, timeless content that emerges from dreams.

‘Hello, stranger you mean so much to me. I’m wide awake, gonna follow you home. You’re a shape changer, might have some other kind of life to live, so take a bit and swallow me whole. Open wide and swallow this all.’