Other people’s dreams are normally dull. They are private, and they are so internalised they rarely carry anything for anyone except the dreamer. There have been exceptions. A few years ago, Paul McCartney shared with The Big Issue a dream he’d had many years previously. He said as a boy he’d had a recurring dream of digging in his garden and finding an old tin can. It always came up empty. And then he met John Lennon.
A little time after, McCartney had the dream again, but this time turned up a gold coin. As he dug further, more and more coins appeared.
When he told Lennon, he said he’d had the same dream. It was something that they talked about afterwards. “So the message of that dream,” said Paul McCartney, “was: keep digging.”
I have no idea how true that is. I choose to believe it and every time I read that interview, that Letter To My Younger Self (it’s here, have a look), I feel the same jolt and the same rush of emotion. It’s a glorious and remarkable story.
Dream stories are beginning to show up with increasing regularity on social media the longer lockdown goes on. They’re vivid, fevered and no longer to be dismissed as self-indulgent nonsense.
They’re coming, say dream experts, because stressful times breed stressful dreams. And boy, is this some stressful time.