Your Antidote dream dictionary

A young up-and-comer named Sigmund Freud once said: “The dream is the fulfillment of a wish”. What's the wish? Attending Antidote talks and workshops tailor-made for your psychoanalytic profile.

The year's lockdowns have induced a tendency for us to dream more vividly, and sometimes nonsensically. We're here to help. Welcome to this scientifically verified (no.), foolproof, pillow-based prescription for solving all your subconscious predicaments using the talks and workshops of Antidote 2020. Read on for a list of dreams that you’ve probably had already this week, and how we recommend you address them... 

The dream: You stand at the edge of a precipice and find yourself either taking flight, or falling to your presumed death (never both).

Prescription: Make a Mini Garden, and/or Grow an Edible Balcony

The proverbial elephant in the room of your life is gravity, and all your subconscious issues stem from the wigged Isaac Newton. Until you fix this fraught relationship between your two feet and the ground, you will never prosper as a terrestrial dweller.  

Strongly suggested that you learn to see the benefits of remaining earth-side with one of our plant workshops. After all, much can be achieved from remaining rooted in the dirt. Have you ever seen a plant either flying or falling? I didn’t think so.

The dream: You’re back in school with an exam paper in front of you. Time ticks down on the clock on the wall, and slick sweat slips down one cheek.  

Prescription: Reasons to be Cheerful

Oh for crying out loud. A lesser dream-analyser than I might labour under the misapprehension that you find test-based scenarios stressful, but we both know that you secretly love them. 

Deep down, you pine for the structure of an examination, the simple math of an aggregated score. Perhaps you’re finding your KPIs at work unintelligible or vague, maybe your manager spends their time performing duties unrelated to fluffing your ego. 

Either way, I’m willing to bet that if you like to spend your sleep time doing exams, you also enjoy dentists, papercuts, and cleaning that incongruous grime that gathers on the lip of skirting boards. 

Please do us all a favour, pull yourself out of misery and learn a little bit about just being happy. 

The dream: Someone is chasing you. You go to cry out or shout, and realise that you can’t speak.

Prescription: Learn Your Local Language

Let’s be honest with each other here - is it that you can’t speak, or that you don’t know what to say?

Regardless, I think we can tactfully ignore the existential implications of this dream, because addressing the symptoms is thankfully easy. Everyone knows that, should you find yourself unable to speak, there is only one obvious solution: pull the plug out at the wall and reboot from scratch, i.e, learn to speak in a different language — better yet, your local language.

The dream: You’re minding your own business until you glance down at your stomach. Wait, how many burritos did you eat at lunch? Hang on... somehow, you've gotten pregnant.  

Prescription: From Rags to Rugs

It’s possible that you are preoccupied with creation of all kinds. You should funnel that energy into creating with crafts, in order to save your bank account, sleep schedule and general sanity. This workshop has the added benefit of making soft rugs, which I know I’d find useful in breaking my fall after waking in a fright on the floor, having tumbled out of bed at the true horror of this dream. 

The dream: You’re snacking away, and everything’s right in the world until all your teeth start falling out.

Prescription: The End of America?

Unlike those who dream about exams (let's not get started on those people again), you hate dentists. Your lackadaisical approach to oral care reflects in all other areas of your life, including your lacklustre knowledge of recycling, incapacity in the face of a flat bike tyre, and blissful ignorance of politics. Sadly, it is likely that in your early childhood you fell afoul of a magpie, emu, swan, or other bold-hearted Australian bird, and thereafter there was no hope for you. 

You desperately need a wake-up call and to make the effort, for once, to take something seriously. And if there’s one issue that demands to be taken seriously of late, it is the possible fall of one of the world’s biggest democracies.

The dream: You’re probably doing a presentation, or in some work-related scenario, when it dawns on you that you’re stark naked.

Prescription: Such a Fun Age: Race, Class and Privilege

You, my friend, are feeling a bit vulnerable. You are having a mild case of imposter syndrome – a lingering suspicion like you might not know anything at all, about anything.

This is probably true. 

This year has shown, above anything else, that a lot of us don’t know nearly as much as we should about a whole range of issues, and we could all be exposed (like what I did there?) for our ignorance at any moment. 

Posthaste, go and educate yourself to the best of your ability by listening to some very smart authors. This will hopefully reduce the likelihood of you finding yourself stripped down in public, literally and figuratively. 

The dream: You’ve been cast in a production, and it’s the opening night. The who’s who of the arts scene are waiting to see you perform, but you suddenly realise on stage that you don’t know your lines.

Don't miss Antidote, a festival of ideas, action and change this weekend Sunday 29 November, 2020.