I had a dream once in which I was looking at a gorgeous painting, admiring the colors and the composition. In the dream, I thought, “I wish I could paint like that.” I woke up with a deep longing to create the artwork in my dream, but couldn’t for the life of me remember what it looked like. And I knew that even if I did remember it, I didn’t have the skill to create it because I was just beginning to learn to paint. Then I thought, “Wait, who made that painting in my dream?” Wasn’t it I me? If so, then maybe with some practice and effort, I could recreate it in waking life.
Where do creative people get their ideas? If you look at a painting by Salvador Dalí you have to wonder if he dreamed these images. It sure seems so when you see his famous painting of melting clocks draped over tree limbs and other objects (The Persistence of Memory, 1931):
or the one in which a rifle and tigers are coming out of a fish, which is emerging out of a pomegranate, all poised over a naked woman lying on a cliff, and an elephant with elongated legs in the background (Dream Caused by the Flight of Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Waking, 1944):
Indeed, in his book, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship (1948), Dalí strongly encourages “long and peaceful sleep” as the precondition for problem solving and artistic pursuit. And among the many possible kinds of sleep, he elaborately details the most important: “slumber with a key.” Dalí advises taking an afternoon nap in a very specific way: sit upright in a chair with a key held between the forefinger and thumb of one hand. Then let that arm dangle over a plate placed on the floor. Close your eyes and relax. Just as you are about to fall asleep, the muscles in your hand will slacken, and the key will drop onto the plate, making a noise that will startle you into alertness. While Dalí doesn’t specifically say that this is where his own images originate, he does say that by this process, you will be “revived by just the necessary amount of repose.”
The short period of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep that Dalí alludes to is called hypnogogia. It is the earliest and lightest phase of sleep, also called N1 in the sleep cycle, and it is often accompanied by auditory, olfactory, sensory, and visual hallucinations. For many of us, this state is rich with snippets of dream-like imagery, but we don’t tend to remember them because we slip from hypnogogia directly into sleep. It’s hard enough to remember your dreams — good luck remembering your images from hypnogogia!
Dalí was able to make good use of this state of consciousness for his creative endeavors because he devised a clever technology to rouse himself up before he lapsed fully into sleep. Apparently, others have used variations of this technique as well; Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and Albert Einstein reportedly all had some way of harvesting original insights from this creatively fertile territory.
I decided to give this key/plate process a try for myself. One afternoon, I sat on my chair with my arms dangling by my side, key poised between forefinger and thumb as directed. I rested my head against the back of the chair and closed my eyes. I waited. I tried to relax and allow myself to take a short nap. Nothing. After forty minutes of this, the day pressed on my mind, and I gave up. Later, I tried again a few more times, but my dog’s barking, my neighbor’s sudden leaf blowing, and other distractions kept me from being able to fully slip into hypnogogia.
Of course, I also didn’t apply the Dalí technique exactly as instructed — he suggests seating yourself in “a bony armchair, preferably of Spanish style…” and that you lubricate your wrists with oil of aspic that will create a numbing sensation just at the moment of dropping off. I’ll have to try again. Dalí does have another “secret” for us if the “slumber with key" doesn’t work: “Eat three dozen sea urchins, gathered on one of the last two days that precede the full moon, choosing only those whose star is coral red and discarding the yellow ones.” He suggests that May is a good month for this.
Needless to say, there are other ways to tap into hypnogogia. Sensory deprivation tanks (also known as float tanks, or isolation tanks) are one such approach. With this method, you float on your back in heavily salted water, warmed to body temperature, in a room or “tank” that is completely dark and sound proof. There is enough space around you as you float that you don’t touch the edges of the pool. “Floats” usually last 90 minutes — enough time to relax, but not so long that you fall deeply asleep. Floating is promoted as a way to reduce anxiety and stress, improve circulation, and ease pain. But it is also endorsed as a way to expand creativity, perhaps because of increased access to the imagery and ideas in hypnogogia. At one float tank facility I have been to, they have available a book of artwork produced by floaters after their 90-minute sessions. Flipping through this book and seeing images that look vaguely psychedelic, it is clear that these works of art were hypnogogia-inspired.
My own forays into the potential of hypnogogia have to date been limited and unfruitful. I still want to paint that painting of my dreams, and it still eludes me. Maybe I should skip hypnogogia and turn instead to hypnopompia, that transitional state of consciousness between sleep and wakefulness, usually experienced in the morning just as you wake up, and also sometimes rich with imagery and insight. It does require sleeping a little longer than the alarm clock would allow and lingering in bed a little more than is absolutely necessary, but you’ll get no argument from me about that. As Dalí himself said, “When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another.”
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Dalí, Salvador. 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, translated by Harken M. Chevalier, kindle edition. Dover edition, first published in 1992. Originally published: New York: Dial Press, 1948.
Terrific insights and beautifully written!