Illustration by Grace Gravely via I dream of Covid.
Ten days after coronavirus was confirmed a pandemic, native of California’s Bay Area Erin Gravely had a dream about social distancing. It was a regular dream, except that the people in her dream were standing at least six feet apart from each other. No hands were shaken, no cheeks kissed, no arms nonchalantly slung around a friend’s shoulder. Gravely was surprised. Although social distancing measures had been imposed no longer than a week or so, already the new way of life had somehow found its way into her dreams.
For thousands of years dreams have been a source of endless intrigue for the human race. In ancient Egypt and Greece, dreaming was understood as a form of divine communication—its messages were analysed by those believed to have spiritual powers; at the end of the 19th century, the interpretation of dreams would receive widespread attention with the publication of Sigmund’s Freud’s book of that name. But very recently—in the last month or two—dreams seem to be the subject of more interest than ever. The unwelcome arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic has not only ushered in a whole new social order but also a surreal wave of consistently strange and disturbing dreams—much like the one that Gravely had.
Inspired by her own dream, Gravely was curious whether anyone else had been having weird dreams compelled by the crisis, too, and if they did, what did they involve? Initially, Gravely put out a request on Instagram for friends to send her their dreams, if they would like to, and as requests flowed in, she realised this might be a thing: “Covid dreams”. Teaming up with her sister Grace to illustrate the submissions, Gravely launched the online project I dream of Covid in April. Collating dreams in terms of key themes and phrases such as ‘hygiene’, ‘death’, ‘government’, ‘love’ and many more, readers are invited to submit descriptions of their pandemic dreams via an online form. So far, the project is bringing us a little closer to understanding just what a ‘Covid dream’ might be: frequently depicting anxious scenarios, or taking place in some kind of speculative future, these surreal snapshots elucidate something of our shared trauma in this unprecedented moment.
We caught up with the sisters to find out a little more about their timely and intriguing project below:
Were you always interested in dreams or did the pandemic and/or your personal experience of having vivid dreams compel you?
I had always been interested in dreams, sort of anecdotally, but then last year I read this book called The Third Reich of Dreams by Charlotte Beradt. Beradt was a writer who during Hitler’s reign in Germany began collecting the dreams of its citizens. (The book is hard to get ahold of but there’s a great article about it here.) The book is a collection of those dreams, organised roughly by subject. Reading it, I noticed—as Beradt had—that some people started to dream similarly to each other. It made me aware that in times of great upheaval or stress, the people experiencing upheaval may see reflections of that in their dreams. In other words, our sleeping lives could reflect our waking lives.
We live in the Bay Area of California, which had one of the earliest shelter-in-place orders in the United States. About ten days into shelter-in-place, I had a dream involving social distancing. It made me think of The Third Reich of Dreams and I was curious if other people were having Covid-19 dreams too, and what they looked like. Initially I put out a request on Instagram for my friends to send me their dreams if they were comfortable. People started responding and I realised this might actually be a thing: covid dreams. So, I thought I would make a website and formalise the project.
Why do you think the crisis is compelling people to have strange dreams?
We can’t speak to this with any sort of authority; we are not psychologists nor sleep scientists. We can offer some pet theories, however. We feel that dreams may be a space to work out complicated emotions. Some research suggests that dreaming may have a role to play in scrubbing traumatic emotions from our memories; even, perhaps, that PTSD might be related to a failure of this process. So, maybe this is why when in times of great stress, our dreaming “organ” goes into overdrive.
There is a really excellent essay by American author Cormac McCarthy where he posits that the specific form of dreams—image-based, symbolic—invites the conscious mind to connect with the unconscious. By asking the waking mind to play interpreter, in other words, the unconscious compels us to share in its preoccupations. So, the strange dreams, the ones that we wake up stewing over, thinking ‘what on earth was that about?’, trying to solve: those are the ones to pay attention to.
"It made me aware that in times of great upheaval or stress, the people experiencing upheaval may see reflections of that in their dreams. In other words, our sleeping lives could reflect our waking lives."
Do you think any strange coincidences, patterns or insights have emerged by gathering people’s dreams like this? Have you seen evidence of ‘collective trauma’ emerging?
What we’ve learned from this project has been twofold. First, what we expected to learn: the patterns we are finding among the dreams. We did not know what those patterns might be, but we had suspicions that there might be some, based on The Third Reich of Dreams.
The vast majority of the dreams are anxiety dreams. Sometimes the symbology of that anxiety is very plain: lots of grocery shopping dreams, lots of dreams about people following—or not following—social distancing measures, and fears of either getting sick or getting in trouble; a fair few medicine dreams, involving surgeries or treatments. Sometimes the symbology is more surprising. The example we keep coming back to is the number of dreams involving elevators. We haven’t studied dreams or dream psychology, so we don’t know, but we would imagine that elevators are a longstanding dream archetype. However, it also occurs to us that elevators are confined, crowded places, and during a pandemic, that could be very dangerous! These patterns in the dream may point to a ‘collective trauma’. What’s true is that they seem to indicate certain societal stress points—things we are all anxious about, no matter our citizenship or locale.
The other part of what we learned was not at all expected, and that’s how very intimate it feels to read the dreams of thousands of strangers. There is something about the form, the anonymity, and the volume that makes us feel like we are in a confessional booth. It quickly became something more than just reading dreams.
Do you think you are coming closer to defining what a pandemic dream may be? A lot of the dreams you have chronicled so far seem to have common threads of violence, panic and paranoia, for example.
Again, we have not had time to closely parse the data, so we can give only impressions. That said, the pandemic dream so far seems to fall into two categories: anxiety dreams and speculative dreams. Sometimes they are both. The anxieties are most often around food, houses (sanctity of shelter, we might say), crowds, safety of oneself and loved ones, rule-following, hygiene, and touch. We also see dreams where the dreamer speculates about the near-future, and how it might be changed by the pandemic. Both are interesting. We feel that food, hugging-as-menace, masks, and medicine might be pandemic-specific dream archetypes.
Are there any submissions that particularly stand out for you?
Erin All of the dreams that we post on the website are striking to me in some way. Some are striking for their imagery or language—like “Ice cream” or “Red flowers.” Some are striking because of their strangeness—like “Chicken paperwork” —or their humour, like “Coughing and sneezing.” And then finally some are simply haunting, like “Metro” or “Tubes.”
Grace I tend to feel the most drawn to the dreams with vivid imagery; perhaps this is because I am creating images for the dreams and so I read them from the lens of having to make them into a visual medium. One of my particular favorites is called “In here it is also sad” because it left a strong picture in my head, and because it is beautiful in a sort of melancholic way. I also find “Chair” to be funny and familiar even though the dreamer is on the other side of the planet from me. It is dreams like this that remind me that we are all experiencing this time in familiar and sometimes funny ways.
What has been the reaction to the project?
The reaction to the project has been so overwhelming, surprising, and satisfying. We never expected this many responses and certainly not an international presence. However, such volume and variety of dreams really contributes to the project and makes it substantive.
We have also had people tell us in messages that they find real comfort in the website, and in reading others’ dreams. This is not anything we ever could have predicted, but that is a significant response to the website for which we are also grateful.