I've written my first essay for the lastest issue of Wasafiri, themed Futurisms. Here's a very short extract from my essay, Against the Death of Dream:
One of the most dangerous things, Pash warned, is the clock that moves on your wrist but not in your eyes. For years I wondered at this image of a stopped clock in the reader’s eye, and the way the poet juxtaposes frozen time against water frozen inside eyes. (Sabse khatarnaak vo aankh hoti hai/jo sab dekhti hui bhi jami barf hoti hai). If to dream is to have a vision for the future, then the death of dream is to accept that the present moment is all of time, and that we must lose all hope for a safer, more loving, more leisurely time. Read in this light, I would argue that the danger is not restricted only to the loss of hopeful dreams; it is just as dangerous to lose our nightmares.
In Radical Hope, philosopher-psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear writes that anxiety can be a realistic response to the world, which suggests that anxiety-induced dreams serve to alert us to individual and collective threats. If we know how to ‘read’ our nightmares, we may find that they serve as timely warnings. In my own experience, I find nightmares to be a useful aid in reconnecting with my instinctive ‘self’. Last year, I had woken up from a miserable dream...
Please read the rest of the essay in the lastest issue of Wasafiri (119, 40th anniversary issue, Autumn 2024).
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