Dreams Against the Machine
Collapse, Signal, and the Strange Power of the Dream
Author’s Note: On Escalation and Refusal
As this essay was being finalized, the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran — not in isolation, but as a direct escalation of Israel’s war. A declaration made without a vote, without public debate, without any way back. We have now joined a war that was already underway.
These are our bombs. Our devastation to account for.
Escalation disguised as strategy. Mass death, justified through spectacle. Gaza still burns, and the machinery only accelerates.
This piece — shaped by dreams and transmissions — now arrives with sharper edges. It is not a distraction. It is refusal. A whisper against the machinery of violence. And a reminder that even now, something else is possible.
I've been dreaming a lot lately…
So have many people I know. Artists, organizers, old friends I haven’t spoken to in months. The dreams are vivid, precise. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes so luminous it hurts. We wake up with instructions. We wake up changed. Some of us are making art again after long silences. Some of us are creating compulsively. Some are making big shifts (moving, new job, etc.). Others are building projects with no clear reason—only the sense that they must exist before summer ends.
This wave of dreaming doesn’t feel like escape. It feels like signal.
I found myself pulling out my old copy of Lovecraft and returning to Nyarlathotep — a short story I hadn’t thought about in years. I have a long-standing, reluctant love for H.P. Lovecraft — racism at full boil, misogyny barely hiding under the surface, and still somehow lodged in my bones. That’s a whole other essay. But I was experiencing an energetic connection with that story.
In the story, Nyarlathotep isn’t some ancient beast or shadowy god. He’s a figure of performance, of spectacle, of revelation. A kind of prophet in the guise of a scientist (maybe or maybe not based on Nicola Tesla), moving from city to city with bizarre demonstrations that break something loose in the minds of those who see him. After his appearances, people begin to dream. And from the dreaming, the world begins to crack.
The dreaming also reminded me of Prince of Darkness, which — despite never naming him — may come closest to channeling Nyarlathotep on film. A plague of shared dreams, reaching backward through time. A church tuned like an antenna to receive what’s coming.
Not a demon. Not a god. It’s not violence that signals his presence. It’s vision.
It doesn’t scream. It broadcasts. And we listen.
What I’m witnessing now isn’t the same. The dreaming that’s rising doesn’t come from a place of dread, even if it’s consumed by dread. It doesn’t aim to terrify. It aims to clarify.
What I’m witnessing now isn’t the same. The dreaming that’s rising doesn’t come from a place of dread, even if it’s consumed by dread. It doesn’t aim to terrify. It aims to clarify.
When I talk about darkness, I don’t mean gothic, horror, or the occult. I don’t mean instagram shadow work or moody aesthetics. I don’t mean the language we use to flirt with fear.
I mean war. Genocide. Fascism tightening its grip. The ongoing collapse of democratic systems. ICE raids, the National Guard, the United States Marines in major cities, and a government so hollowed out it can no longer name what it’s doing. Rights disappearing faster than headlines can track. I mean economic despair repackaged as grit. I mean algorithms that erase, dehumanize, devour, while four civilian tech-executives are sworn in as Lieutenant Colonels, merely two steps below generals. I mean the Supreme Court gutting access to gender-affirming care. I mean RFK Jr. quietly slashing funding to LGBTQ+ youth suicide hotlines.
This is the darkness pressing in. Not metaphor. Not mood. But lived, grinding, engineered collapse.
This is the darkness pressing in. Not metaphor. Not mood. But lived, grinding, engineered collapse.
And yet the dreams persist. Which means something sacred is still fighting to live.
There's a reason vampires are back in the cultural zeitgiest.
They come in cycles, just like the end of empires. Like the economy collapsing under its own weight. Like the air getting harder to breathe.
Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu came out last Christmas. Sinners has our culture in a chokehold at the moment — and the box office and critics agree. And why are my friends in a tizzy trying to get tickets for Twilight with a live orchestration of the score this fall? I guess I'll go. For research...
Even the gothic — when it reappears, not as nostalgia but as omen — tells us something. Not just about our fears. About the tools we use to survive them.
Because this isn’t just collapse. It’s obfuscation and spectacle. The world is ending, and we’re being asked to applaud its new branding. The dreams, the art, the sudden impulse to write, to build, to ritualize?
Not random. Not retreat. Interruption. Refusal. Signal.
Not random. Not retreat. Interruption. Refusal. Signal.
Here’s what I know: I had a dream a few nights ago about a seaside California town — Lovecraft-themed, Poe-haunted, Disneyfied just enough to keep it charming. The whole place had that particular brand of commercialized gothic that takes the edge off real darkness: candlelit and cobwebbed cafés, dank and delightful boutiques, flickering faux-gas streetlamps, stylishly pale shopkeepers in vaguely Victorian black. Crows, ravens, black cats everywhere. Even the large black rats with their pink tails and glowing red eyes had a charm to them.
There was an ominous mist that blanketed the town. In the distance, you could hear the crashing ocean echoing off an unforgiving rocky shoreline — riddled with caves, caverns, blind cliffs. It felt like magic. It felt like home. Not just delightful — familiar. Like I’d been there before. I even asked my father if we’d ever visited a place like that on one of our long drives up the coast. Perhaps I had only visited in dreams…
It felt like magic. It felt like home. Not just delightful — familiar. Like I’d been there before… Perhaps I had only visited in dreams…
But here’s the part that stayed with me: every storefront was curated for play, for purchase, for performance — but underneath it all, I could feel something humming. A quiet insistence. A presence. Not malevolent. Just waiting. Watching. Like the whole town was a stage built to keep our eyes off the thing just beneath the surface.
There was even a bookstore — styled as a theatrical occult shop, all velvet curtains and dripping candles, hawking Cthulhu (sounds like delulu) stuffies and tarot decks. The sign above the entrance read Inquire Within. Of course it did. But if you looked closely, the back shelves weren’t props. The books and tomes were real. The sigils weren’t aesthetic. The door in the back marked Restricted Access: Initiates Only didn’t quite close. It was spectacle, yes — but also, clearly, a gateway.
The mist didn’t just blur the edges of the town — it put the town in a perpetual eclipse. The ocean felt impossibly close, like it was listening. Like it knew my name. There were sounds I couldn’t place: not wind, not water, but something vast. Not threatening, but insistent. Calling to me... The town was a veil stretched thin over something ancient. Something waiting.
I wanted to stay. Not just for the dark charm — but for the quiet hum beneath it.
I don’t know what it means. But I woke up knowing I needed to write this.
That’s what this dreaming feels like. Not clarity. But compulsion. Not meaning. But motion.
Not muse. Transmission. Even now, something ancient is reaching for us. Not to console. But to remind.
You are not lost in the darkness. You are dreaming our way out.
Even now, something ancient is reaching for us. Not to console. But to remind.
You are not lost in the darkness. You are dreaming our way out.
Under This Moon
New Moon in Cancer — June 25, 2025
Candle: White or seafoam green (alea Green)
Support Item: A small vessel of salted water (to remind you what you come from can also carry you forward)
Stone to Hold: Moonstone — for trust, initiation, and protection when the path is unclear.
One of the most important New Moons of 2025 doesn’t whisper. It arrives under pressure — conjunct expansive Jupiter in Cancer, squared by relentless Saturn and visionary Neptune in Aries, and sparked by disruptive Uranus in Taurus pulling his dreamy brother, Neptune, into the fray. Dreams don’t drift this time — they strike. Vision lands like signal.
This lunation is not just about growth. It’s about what you grow in defiance of — what you dare to tend while systems burn and spectacle blinds. Cancer doesn’t coddle — it protects. The crab molts to survive. And for a moment, everything is tender. This is that moment.
Care isn’t softness. It’s strategy. Nourishment is action. And community? Essential for our survival.
What would you grow if you trusted the dream enough to become its vessel?
Ritual
This is not a spell for instant harvest. It is a root ritual. A quiet act of devotion. A way to mark that even in collapse, something wants to live.
On a small slip of paper, write a desire or vision you want to grow — not for display, but for endurance. Place the paper under a glass of salted water or bury it beneath a plant you care for. Say aloud:
"I trust this seed. I nourish what matters. I grow what I will one day rest inside."
When you finish, sit in stillness. What softens? What stirs? What rises in the days that follow may not be loud — but it will be real.
A small note: as disciplined Saturn continues to settle in Aries and strategic Mars enters Virgo, the sky is asking us to tend both structure and systems — not the ones that confine us, but the ones we choose. As you move forward, don’t drop the thread of refinement. Strengthen the container. Clarify the form. These are the frameworks that help bridge the self you are with the one you’re becoming.
Worth Your Time
The Cinematic Dream Cosmology: A (Partial) Lineage
Cinema has always been haunted by dreams — sometimes nightmares, sometimes prophecy, sometimes both. If you felt something deeper humming under this essay, you might already be in conversation with these films.
Prince of Darkness (1987) – An ancient evil, a message from the future, and dreams shared like infection. Carpenter’s masterpiece of metaphysical horror reminds us that the dream might not save us. It might be the only warning we get.
Inception (2010) – The obvious one. What happens when the dream becomes more tolerable than the world? What parts of us rot when we refuse to wake?
The Matrix (1999) – Is it sleep or simulation? Doesn’t matter. The real story has always been about waking up. And what do we salvage when we finally do?
Dune: Part One and Dune: Part Two (2021 & 2024) – Paul’s dreams aren’t prophecy — they’re strategy. Memory and future coiling together, shaping what comes next. (Bonus: watching or rewatching these will reward you in the next essay.)
The lineage runs deeper: Paprika, The Cell, Vanilla Sky, Waking Life, Strange Days, Dark City, Mulholland Drive, to name a few…
Each one a different facet of the same truth: Dreams don’t just reflect what is — they show us what’s trying to become, through us.
Watch again — or for the first time — and notice what stirs.
Inquire Within
A few people have asked recently if I offer readings. I suppose the answer is yes.
I’ve never formally offered them — not in the public, polished sense. But if you’ve read this far, you probably understand that nothing I do is entirely clean or linear. But I am attuned. There are things I see. Things I can hold. And sometimes, I’m able to help people name what’s arriving or unraveling in their lives before they fully understand it themselves.
I’m still shaping what this part of my work wants to become — whether it’s readings, cosmic sessions, or something more spiritually infused within coaching. But if you feel a pull, you can reach out here and we’ll see what emerges.
Further Reflection
What if your dreams aren’t just escapes — but instructions? What would change if you treated them like intelligence from the edge of collapse?