I’d like to think that I’ve matured, but it’s probably more likely that I was swayed by social trends alongside getting older. I remember being a kid and dreaming about having a house someday with a library that would rival Neil Gaiman’s – that’s the motivation behind keeping all that stuff, but now, as an adult thinking about buying a house in the next few years, I dream about a Spartan dwelling wired with media access devices, but no physical media.

And I don’t think it’s just me. People are embracing e-books, digital downloads, streaming, and other non-physical methods of media access. These things get more prevalent every day.

I think people are coming to realize that physical media, under all that pretty, colorful packaging, is just a portal to an experience. If you own a DVD, you own something physical: a plastic disc in a pretty cardboard and plastic holder. If you watch a movie – you have an experience. While plastic disc peddlers have done a damn fine job of creating the link in our minds between the experience of a movie and the movie’s physical media, the more digital becomes the norm, the more that link is shattered.
And rightly so.

Maybe I just make a bigger deal of things because I like to believe the world is a complex and interesting place. Maybe it’s not – it could really be that digital is just cheaper and more convenient and that explains most, if not all, of digital’s popularity. But I don’t think it’s that simple. I think there is a paradigm shift in our perception of what media is – and now, with digital getting more and more popular, the notion that media is an experience (an event, i f you prefer) is much easier to divide from the idea that media is a plastic disc or a paper book. Maybe books are a slightly different case because the act of reading is an important part of the experience, whereas opening a DVD and loading in a disc is more negligible.

But no matter what, you can never repeat an experience. Of course, you can try by owning the media that gives you a portal to a quantifiable portion of the experience.

But that time you watched Garden State with a girl and then kissed her for the first time on her couch? Or sped down a dirt road in the pounding rain with the windows down, soaked the to the skin, quivering with young lust and listening to Coldplay’s Yellow? Or that sunny cicada summer you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in your car, eating hot french fries, after class and before you had to go to work, in those glorious stolen hours?

You’re never gonna get those back even if you buy the physical media.

I’d like to think people are seeing that idea – but maybe it’s easier to Netflix something from the couch than to waddle down to the local Wal-mart to buy a copy.

Hard to tell.

Plus, rich people, like kings with big egos, would appoint artists to hang around and create art – there would be the King’s Juggler and the King’s Toilet Painter and the King’s Underground Dance Troupe.

Nowadays kings are mostly gone and ye times are a’changin’ instead of olde. But could the idea of sponsored artists still work? To an extent, it’s kinda still around, morphed into advertising sponsorships, like athletes that make more from Nike than playing basketball. But while that’s common with ball-slingers, it’s not really common with artists, especially in traditional mediums.

I mean, if corporations are the modern equivalents of independent states (if anything, governments are more like the old Catholic church, trying to rule from afar but always being a few steps behind) then where is the Starbucks Juggler? Where is the Best Buy Dance Troupe? Where is the Pepsi Writer?

I dunno.

Rather than harp on the “corporations are evil and should give back by sponsoring art” noise, instead, I wanna focus on the bottom line, because that’s what the Kings care about. So here’s this:

Would you buy more Pepsi if Neil Gaiman was the Pepsi Writer?

Would you buy more Tide if Kevin Smith was the Tide Filmmaker?

Would you buy more Cisco routers if Cory Doctorow was the Cisco Internet Ethicist?

Be honest.

Coz I wanna know.

So, here’s the situation: you’re sleeping and you dream about someone you know. You and an acquaintance you kinda know, but not enough that you feel like you can safely tell them you saw them in a dream without feeling weird, are doing something in the dream. Let’s say: you’re bowling. Big Bird is probably there, too, since he cameos in a lot of dreams (or some I’m told).

So you’re bowling with your acquaintance. You only score a 236, which is unacceptable for a dream, since polar opposites are all that should ever happen (which means 300 or all gutter balls), but would be pretty damn good if you weren’t dreaming. Too bad.

Meanwhile, your acquaintance is dancing with Big Bird and wearing a funny hat. Plus, she’s reciting all the things she said the last time you saw her in a play, so mostly she’s saying lines from “Death of a Salesman.” And Big Bird is going along with it, except he doesn’t look like Big Bird, even though you know he is Big Bird, because, hey, well, it’s a dream and you know certain things.

And then you wake up. As the sleep fades from you and you walk to the bathroom to take care of business, you think about your dream. Your acquaintance, let’s call her Pam, is a woman you know from the local coffee shop. She makes your triple-shot latte every morning (and afternoon) and since all the caffeine she provides might very well be the inspiration behind all your strange dreams, you decide you’d like to tell her about your dream the next time you see her.

It’s like seeing someone at the supermarket and waving, but they don’t see you. Next time you see them, you mention it, don’t you? You say, “Hey, Pam, I saw you at the supermarket but you didn’t see me and I waved but I guess you didn’t catch it isn’t that funny ha ha ha let’s chuckle about it together then go on about our days because it’s not a big deal and you didn’t really care but I wanted to tell you so I am telling you ha ha ha,” or something like that, anyway.

Shouldn’t it be the same with dreams? So you saw Pam, dancing with Big Bird, who didn’t really look like Big Bird, but was, and reciting “Death of a Salesman” while you bowled a 236 – even if it wasn’t real, you’d still like to mention it, right? Right. Because even if she didn’t get a kick out of it, you did, and you like to share your kicks. You’re that kind of person.

BUT…it’s weird. Because dreams are supposed to be private things. The first rule about DREAM CLUB is we don’t talk about DREAM CLUB, right? But why? It’s not like you have any control over what you dream. It’s not like you were thinking to yourself, before you went to bed, “You know, that Pam from the coffee shop, by gum, I’d like to get her into a dream, if you know what I mean.”

No, before you went to bed you were thinking, “Man, I’m tired. When I was younger, I used to be able to stay up later. But not anymore. Now I go to bed on time. Jesus. It’s still so early. Oh well, who cares. I’m tired,” or some other mundane thing. And then you dreamt about Pam, woke up wanting to tell her, and are put into this awkward situation.

If you tell Pam, well, you look like a loser, a psycho, or at the very least one of her “weird” friends. Until you’ve built up enough “friend acceptance” points with Pam, there are certain things you can’t broach, and dream sightings are one of them.

But if you don’t tell her, it bugs you. Not tons, you’re sane and reasonable *people*, after all, but it bugs you about the same as if you see someone at the supermarket from afar and can’t decide whether to say hello or not.

If you flag them down to chat, you’ll have to talk to them, and you don’t really want them looking at the simply overzealous amount of vodka and cheetos in your cart (even if you explain they were just for cooking…YEAH RIGHT), but if you don’t wave and call them over, well, it’s going to get to you in the parking lot: “Man, I should have been friendly to so-and-so, maybe then I would have more social skills and wouldn’t stay home all the time eating cheetos and drinking vodka.” Or something like that.

So what do you do? I don’t know. But I think it should be okay to tell people you saw them in dreams and have it not be weird. I think it should be the same and seeing someone in real life and then telling them later.

So here goes. I’m gonna start. I dreamt about three people last night and they all have one thing in common: they all on my twitter timeline. I guess I was reading my twitter feed before bed.

So Neil Gaiman, Maureen Johnson, and Maggie – it was fun to see you in my dream last night. I hope you had fun at my Dad’s house playing lazer tag.

Neil, I’m sorry Amanda Palmer didn’t want to stay because I got arrested for shoplifting and so the macaroni and cheese burned and she hates burned macaroni and cheese.

Maureen, I know that it was you in the corner, even if you looked like Big Bird. I saw what you were doing to Bert, but I’ll keep quiet (FOR NOW!).

And Maggie, well, thanks for winning the lazertag game after I got hauled off by the cops. You scored one for the underdogs. When the Mighty Ducks carted you off on their shoulders in victory, I wished it was me, but you were the better sportsperson. I swear, I don’t even know how I could have been shoplifting in my Dad’s house, considering I was playing goalie the whole time.

But, hey, dream logic. What gives?

-m.