Islands Leader Could Use Your Help With Brutal Night Terrors

While CLRVYNT sees the future, we also see your dreams, hallucinations, nightmares, astral projections and fantasies. All of them. (Conveniently, we can also sense your guilt, discomfort and shame.) Today, we pull images from the sleeping minds of artists brave enough to volunteer access into their unconscious noggins and share their most memorable, surreal, terrifying and bewildering dreams. In the immortal words of Steven Tyler, dream on.

Nick Thorburn of Islands

“I suffer from night terrors. It sounds silly, but it's true. I've had them since I was a young kid, and I would come running into my parents’ room after trying to snap out of a very vivid nightmare about being stuck on a record player spinning around and around and around. Throughout the years, it's mutated into something much more sinister, and [has] been increasing in intensity the last couple of months. This past week, I've had a night terror every night. Is it my diet? Too much caffeine? Stress? The turmeric pills?

“Either way, it's usually the same: I wake up, panicked, heart racing and absolutely certain that someone or something has been or is still in my room, in my bed, under my bed, or just down the hallway, watching me, observing me, or making an exit before I can fully come to. Usually they split by the time I wake — it's as though I'm sleeping lightly and, in a half-waking state, realize that someone is staring at me. When I come to, the being has evaporated. I am fully awake, but the fear is real and it lingers. If I turn on the light, it'll usually calm me down and snap me out of it.

“A few days ago, it was different: I woke up and, as per usual, strongly felt the presence of someone in the room. I looked over at my closet, door ajar. I could see someone hiding behind my clothes. He was leaning back against the closet wall, hidden behind a scarf and long jacket, but I could see the man's disgusting toes poking out behind the wall. As you can imagine, I was paralyzed with fear and frightened beyond words. Thankfully, as is always the case, I could turn the light on and see that my overactive imagination had turned a long hanging scarf into a man; and a shirt that had fallen onto the floor, a man's feet. The panic was still there, but would subside.

“Last night, however, it was different. I took jackets off of doorknobs, and made sure the closet was closed tightly. But when I woke, it wasn't a person that I saw, or a human presence that I felt. No amount of light in the room could diminish the very real fear I felt. This wasn't clothes piled up on a chair that looked like an old man in the darkness. When I woke up, I felt a very sinister presence of someone lying beside me in bed and mocking me. Watching me, and then moving throughout the room. Turning on the lights did nothing. I was fully lucid and cognizant, but still completely terrified. In the moment, I was absolutely convinced there was something there, and just before waking up, could swear that I'd been brushed by someone or something passing over me. It was as though whatever it was in the room knew well enough to get out of the way before I came out of sleep, but slipped up, and was a few seconds late crossing back over to some parallel world.

“I don't have any insight into this pattern, but it seems to only get worse as time goes on. If anyone reading this has any suggestions, I'd be curious. Email me at islandsareforever@gmail.com. Email me any time, because I'll be awake. I think it goes without saying that I hate going to sleep.”

Delay sleep a little longer and listen to Should I Remain Here at Sea? and Taste here.

Mike Mare, a.k.a. Mike Manteca of Dälek

“A recent dream I've had has involved my landlord’s grandmother breaking into my apartment and harassing me. Actually, my landlord’s grandmother has been a recurring character in my dreams of late — bear in mind, I have never met this woman.

“From what I can remember of the first dream she appeared in, I was standing in my kitchen and I heard a noise coming from the apartment below me that sounded like a door breaking. I was curious, so I started making my way to my front door only to find the grandmother peeking her head into my apartment. I freaked out on her, screaming that she couldn't just come into my apartment like this, blah, blah, blah, only to have her start screaming back at me in some bizarre language while trying to get into my apartment as I held the door closed.

“As she continued kicking and punching the door, I tried to shove it closed, only to have her fingers get smashed in the doorway. They were a crooked mess and not human; her hand was reminiscent of a dead tree branch, with all these gnarly little twigs hanging onto the end of it. As she pulled her hand away, all went quiet, and for some reason I carried on with my day like nothing had ever happened, making my way to the shower.

“As I'm in the shower, I start hearing the banging noise again, so I pull the shower curtain back to grab my towel, and she is standing there wrapped in my towel drooling everywhere, like a big slobbery dog. Then I woke up, but she has returned in a couple of dreams since then — usually just standing, staring at me.

“I'm sure whatever mental state I'm in that is creating these dreams will have an effect on the music we are currently working on for the next album, but the only noticeable thing I have started doing is avoiding eye contact with any member of my landlord’s family.”

Break into Asphalt for Eden at Profound Lore here.

Bridge Laviazar of inAeona

“Since I was a kid, I’ve had dreams of the apocalypse. Usually, I know it’s coming, and most times I’m racing against impending doom to save somebody I love. I don’t always succeed, but I never give up.

“I always see the bomb. I always see the impact, or the flash, or feel the wave of energy being released. I’m always faced towards it, then there is destruction all around.

“Everything I know is laid waste; there’s nothing left. The sky is often a green/orange hue, strangely warm. People are destroyed, not only on the outside, but their eyes are vacant, or pained, or lost, or just so sad. Infrastructure is ravaged, but sometimes things oddly work, like an escalator still going up into a blown-out building. And for some reason the trains are intact, if not worse for wear. They are often mislabeled, and bring me to the wrong place.

“My best guess is it’s a big metaphor for problem solving? I don’t know, because I often can’t fix anything because everything is destroyed and people are shattered into thousands of tiny pieces. But I still try, and I don’t know why.

“No one is saving me, but I feel great love for the others, and that’s what drives me. That and a complete refusal to accept the situation as hopeless. I take it on myself to try to fix whatever I can to get to a safer place, but I never do get there. The road is usually too long, and I end up waking up. It’s profoundly lonely.”

Listen to the power of the apocalypse on Force Rise the Sun here.

J.R. Robinson of Wrekmeister Harmonies

“The other night I dreamed that a Sikh man was completely bummed out that I didn’t know the proper way to kiss him hello. We bumped cheeks a couple times and then had an awkward mouth kiss that left neither one of us satisfied.”

Pucker up and kiss the Light Falls pre-order page from Thrill Jockey here.

Justin Storms of Wailin Storms

“This dream happened when I was in the hospital for a month and shit was looking grim. I had a really bad stomach condition [ulcerative colitis] that made me lose a lot of blood and weight in a short period of time. The doctors were naive about the disease at the time, and it wasn't looking great. After being pumped full of iron intravenously, [as well as] meds, liquid diet and heavy opiates, the doctors were giving up on remedies and wanted to resort to surgery. Around that time, the doctor I had been working with came in and said, “Well, I can't wait to cut you open,” and was laughing. I guess that’s doctor humor? I was like, “Holy shit, this guy's a fucking nut.” Anyway, the night before I was supposed to have the surgery, I had some surreal dreams.

“One was of the doctor who said, 'Can't wait to cut you open.' In my dream, he was the devil, and tore open my belly and started eating my intestines. I was on a morphine drip, so that probably fueled it. But I remember levitating off the bed slowly while being surrounded by a river of flames. I couldn't fully ascend, though, since my guts were keeping me anchored to the bed while the doctor kept pulling at my stomach and feeding on me like some crazed hyena.

“[In the] other dream, my bedsheets were water, and had me glued down to the bed from the weight of the water. Crows or ravens opened up my stomach with their beaks and were tearing at the stomach again. I woke up in sweat-soaked sheets, shivering like a rattlesnake tail.

“I ended up refusing to have surgery. This priest came in to offer my last rites — I told him he could save his prayers for someone who needed them. The doctors decided to give me a few blood transfusions as a last resort, and luckily, that worked.

“After leaving that place, I painted two pieces based on the dreams [see below - eds]. The song lyrics below for 'Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board' on the newest record [One Foot in the Flesh Grave] were based on an old poem I wrote while in the hospital.”

a mind wide open
heart patient
needle fed
love injected
lead based paint splattered hypnotist
possessing kaleidoscope eyes of sky

arms of snake
feet of crow
levitate over great unknown
eyes of sky
feet of crow
levitate over great unknown

blue pin cushion veins burst open once again
with the waking needle of 6am
loosely draped skin
stretched so thin over ashtray bone
levitate, over great unknown, unknown

arms of snake
feet of crow
levitate over great unknown
eyes of sky
feet of crow
levitate over great unknown
– Justin Storms, “Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board”

Cure the absence of southern doom rock in your life and listen to One Foot in the Flesh Grave here.