Bird Dreams

May 18, 2012

I’m in the middle of production for the audio meditation to accompany my (forthcoming) book Invoking Animal Magic. I’ve been collecting bird sounds to use in the background, and I’ve started to become absorbed by the voices in the woods, ponds and fields. Not categorizing them, exactly, but listening to what they have to say, trying to understand the message in a visceral way. After listening to one loud, lengthy, interactive conversation shortly after dawn, I started to wonder if these little birds were talking about their dreams. What would a bird dream about? It takes a lot of observation to get inside their heads and understand the logic of their mundane lives. In the dream state, where possibilities expand, what would be the expanded horizon of a creature that can already fly? It seems like the dreams of birds would be so far beyond definition that they could not be described in words. Maybe in music….



University of Chicago Medical Center thinks they have solved the question of what birds dream about, but to me it sounds like they’re only describing the problem.