Does anyone else dream in musicals?

October 22, 2005 3:25 AM

Does anyone else dream in musicals?

I don't mean dream that you are in pre existing musicals. I mean that you start dreaming, and then suddenly people break into song. This has happened to me before, but not on as grand a scale as last night. There were proper rhyming lyrics, motifs, and a proper story. None of it was something that I had picked up from somewhere else, as far as I could tell. So, am I just crazy?

posted by Orange Goblin to grab bag (23 comments total)

Strangely, this happened to me a month or so ago. All I can recall was, there was a song by a hairdresser who sang into the mirror while doing her clients' hair about how nobody saw the real her, only the reflection. Slightly derivative of a song from Mulan, but original all the same.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 4:18 AM on October 22, 2005

Orange Goblin, that happens to me as well, occasionally, particularly when I sleep alone. I call them my "Busby Berkley Specials." Two nights ago I dreamt up an entire song about getting rid of sexually inappropriate material in our warehouse at work -- it was a rap with lots of call and response. "No boobs! No butts! No f*ucking in the trucks!"

Brains. So weird.
posted by pomegranate at 4:28 AM on October 22, 2005

I've had similar experiences, with dreams that featured thoroughly fleshed out scenes from non-existent movies... soundtrack, dialog, etc. I'd pay a fortune for a BrainVCR to record the stuff for later playback.

They beat the hell out of my dreams where I'm on the phone in my office, or doing some other similarly mundane task, for hours on end.
posted by I Love Tacos at 4:42 AM on October 22, 2005

I have lots of weird dreams, never musicals with folks singing, but frequently my dreams have musical accompanyment. Not stuff that I remember listening to; seems more or less original.

And I'm by no means a musician. I attribute my unusual dreams to the melatonin and wine I have every night before I sleep. I've also gotten really off the wall strange dreams from anti-malarials (Malarone) when I've been on biz in Africa.

Do you take anything in the evening?
posted by Mutant at 4:56 AM on October 22, 2005

Only once! You guys are lucky!
posted by mimi at 5:47 AM on October 22, 2005

I do, usually when rehearsals have been running for a while (I'm a dependable man-with-spear in a civic operetta company.) The lyrics are usually incomprehensible, which is why my musical dreams always include a narrator.
posted by klarck at 6:39 AM on October 22, 2005

not 15 minutes ago i woke up, having fallen asleep last night with the film 42nd Street in my dvd player, on repeat all night (not intentional, just the player default), and songs found their way into my dreams, though no interesting dance numbers came along...

...more often in dreams i have groundbreakingly intelligent conversations that i can never remember in the morning...
posted by troybob at 8:13 AM on October 22, 2005

I have maybe twice. When I awoke I went over the words I could remember. They did scan and rhyme, but they didn't mean anything, even though they'd felt so apropos at the time.

I've also dreamed in (black and white) Doonesbury cartoons. Panel, panel, panel, punchline. Again, upon awaking the punchlines turn out to not actually be funny.
posted by Aknaton at 8:18 AM on October 22, 2005

I dreamt once that I was in, I think, an airport... and suddenly there was a stage over against one wall. the curtain opened and out came one of my former co-workers in a shimmery evening gown. She launched into a Barbara Streisand/Natalie Cole-ish sort of song. When I woke up, I could remember a few of the lines.
posted by Clay201 at 8:25 AM on October 22, 2005

this happened to me once, and i woke up desperate to remember it. the tunes were so catchy! the lyrics, so smart! i'm not generally musically inclined, but it made me think that somewhere deep inside my psyche i'm a songwriter.
posted by mandlebrotz at 8:56 AM on October 22, 2005

Never. Wow. I'm jealous.
posted by small_ruminant at 10:45 AM on October 22, 2005

Never happened to me, but a friend in high school, who hated musicals and yet had a major role in our school's musical that year, said that he had a dream in which he was walking through a park, asked someone what time it was, and suddenly the entire park broke out into a full musical number with Fred Astaire-ish choreography.
posted by occhiblu at 10:58 AM on October 22, 2005

I've never had a musical dream, but along the lines of rewiring-brains-for-non-standard-narratives, I used to have dreams wherein everything I thought or said was typed out. This was when I was doing 60 hours a week on Web development, so I'm guessing that's why.
posted by Slothrop at 11:31 AM on October 22, 2005

I occasionally read questions from the green aloud to my wife. When I got to this one, she said "Omigod! That happens to me all the time!" But, then, she's a full time costume designer.
posted by Orb2069 at 12:00 PM on October 22, 2005

I have a musical dream (that I remember) about every two weeks.
posted by mischief at 12:46 PM on October 22, 2005

I've never drempt of musicals, but I find I can think up original music when I'm lying in bed tired. My guess is your rhyming lyrics didn't actually make sense, but they just felt like they did because you were dreaming. On the other hand, I think being sleepy (or sleeping) can make one more creative.
posted by Citizen Premier at 2:06 PM on October 22, 2005

I have had dreams that featured what I might call music. However, I am relatively sure that I was not composing patterns of notes that were then interpreted through the auditory portions of my brain.

Rather, I'm fairly sure that I was just running the "you're listening to good music that's similar to this and this and this, but totally original" neural patterns at full blast. There's content to the patterns, but it seems to just be random noise filtered appropriately.
posted by Netzapper at 3:18 PM on October 22, 2005

I've heard incredible music in my dreams. All kinds. It usually happens when I'm in the middle of some experience that's making me stretch or grow some. It always makes me happy. I wish, I wish, I could write it down. I don't know anything about music though.
posted by atchafalaya at 7:32 PM on October 22, 2005

You know, this actually happens to me every once in a while. The songs are always original, and wish I, I WISH could remember the words after I wake up.

(on preview, what atchafalaya said. hehe, same phrasing and everything!)
posted by afroblanca at 9:11 PM on October 22, 2005

Never a Musical here. Most of the few dreams that I recall are Action Adventures. Very James Bondish. There's always a fabulous party in an amazing house and a variety of world spanning chase/race scenes.

The chase/race scenes are great fun! They usually involve fantastical vehicles and can be on land, sea, or air. There's alot of visceral sensation in these scenes...like pulling Gs.

I must really enjoy them because I rarely remember any other sort of dream. Or maybe I don't have an other type of dream. That'd be wierd.
posted by HK10036 at 7:50 AM on October 23, 2005

Music, yes. Musicals, no, but that'd be awesome.

HK10036: my husband has AA dreams as well, only they're fantasy oriented - fighting orc and goblins and stuff like that. I envy those dreams too.
posted by deborah at 12:18 PM on October 23, 2005

I've had a few of these. None recently, I'm sorry to say, though I regularly get "proper story" dreams with interesting, fairly coherent plots.
posted by tangerine at 12:54 PM on October 23, 2005

I actually wrote an arrangement of "Rock of Ages" in a dream. In my dream, the Gatlin brothers were sitting in a convertible car traveling in a parade, all the while sing my version of "Rock of Ages" and it actually turned out to be a pretty good arrangement.

The Evansville Philharmonic with local gospel churches eventually performed my "Gatlin brothers" version (with some helpful re-instrumentation by my brother).
posted by tamills at 6:48 AM on October 25, 2005