Covid dreams, part II: Delirium factories
Mar 24, 2021, 08:35 AM
Heathrow Terminal 5 reimagined by Craig Garrett.
"Lockdown has me sleepwalking though a restless world of fatigue, insomnia and dreams that — dull, obtuse and fractured — create No Time. I flew into Heathrow from Australia four weeks before lockdown 2020. I go months without remembering a dream, then for days and weeks on end I remember every single detail of every single dream. Layer upon layer, I can’t get them out of my mind. And then they’re gone; I can’t remember them any more, as if they never existed.
"London is a curious and hybrid lucid dream comprised of random opaque stutters. Then as the pandemic crashed into lockdown on top of lockdown on top of lockdown, and as I fell into restlessness and insomnia, and as the world we all knew ground to a halt — clear patterns took shape. I’d never been here before, so you can imagine how the familiarity of these stories, as they built and grew from nothing, discomforted me. Old stories, embedded deep. As if I’d been here all along. I no longer trace different dreams; I can’t see counterpoints; nor can I expel all this scree from my head.
"So I scarper; turn tail; run away. Over and over. Simple, known things: making coffee, cooking food, opening a door. Caught in a world that’s no longer ours (if it ever was); it’s the virus’s now. Eventually, I take flight — but what is dream and what is real?
"Notes: Initially Covid lockdowns spawned a world-wide epidemic of mysterious dreams, but now, one year in, Covid is turning ICUs into what some doctors are calling Delirium Factories: an epidemic of ‘ICU delirium’: a syndrome caused by drugs, infections and lack of oxygen, where patients experience extended periods of hallucinations and delusions — to the patients these visions and illusions are vividly and unarguably real.
"This piece, in part explores, and in part deciphers, the mental and physical landscapes of my London lockdown. I overlay interior and exterior sounds onto field recording 073 (Heathrow LHR T5 Galleries Lounge) to create a domestic claustrophobia (of trying to escape) — is this house mine?, is it yours?, it could be anyone’s. The first two escape attempts (Acts 1 & 2) are artificially sped up and confusion is sewn using interpolation, misattribution and superimposition. Fitful incursions by Australian birds (a kookaburra, cat bird, magpie, cockatoo & stone bush curlew) don’t belong, but they tie me to where I’m from. When we finally escape (Act 3) everything calms and quietens, the confusion dissolves and there’s space to breathe — we’re finally out the other side of all this, but I leave it to the listener to decide what is the dream and what is the reality?
"Articles & music I drew on for inspiration:
1. ‘The worst days of my life: how Covid-19 patients can recover from ICU delirium’ (Guardian, March 15, 2021)
2. ‘Coronavirus has created an epidemic of weird dreams’ (Wired, April 12, 2020)
3. ‘Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein’ (Markus J Buehler, April 7, 2020)"
Part of the Until We Travel project to map and reimagine the sounds of transport and travel in a pre-pandemic and pandemic world. See the whole project at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/travel.
"Lockdown has me sleepwalking though a restless world of fatigue, insomnia and dreams that — dull, obtuse and fractured — create No Time. I flew into Heathrow from Australia four weeks before lockdown 2020. I go months without remembering a dream, then for days and weeks on end I remember every single detail of every single dream. Layer upon layer, I can’t get them out of my mind. And then they’re gone; I can’t remember them any more, as if they never existed.
"London is a curious and hybrid lucid dream comprised of random opaque stutters. Then as the pandemic crashed into lockdown on top of lockdown on top of lockdown, and as I fell into restlessness and insomnia, and as the world we all knew ground to a halt — clear patterns took shape. I’d never been here before, so you can imagine how the familiarity of these stories, as they built and grew from nothing, discomforted me. Old stories, embedded deep. As if I’d been here all along. I no longer trace different dreams; I can’t see counterpoints; nor can I expel all this scree from my head.
"So I scarper; turn tail; run away. Over and over. Simple, known things: making coffee, cooking food, opening a door. Caught in a world that’s no longer ours (if it ever was); it’s the virus’s now. Eventually, I take flight — but what is dream and what is real?
"Notes: Initially Covid lockdowns spawned a world-wide epidemic of mysterious dreams, but now, one year in, Covid is turning ICUs into what some doctors are calling Delirium Factories: an epidemic of ‘ICU delirium’: a syndrome caused by drugs, infections and lack of oxygen, where patients experience extended periods of hallucinations and delusions — to the patients these visions and illusions are vividly and unarguably real.
"This piece, in part explores, and in part deciphers, the mental and physical landscapes of my London lockdown. I overlay interior and exterior sounds onto field recording 073 (Heathrow LHR T5 Galleries Lounge) to create a domestic claustrophobia (of trying to escape) — is this house mine?, is it yours?, it could be anyone’s. The first two escape attempts (Acts 1 & 2) are artificially sped up and confusion is sewn using interpolation, misattribution and superimposition. Fitful incursions by Australian birds (a kookaburra, cat bird, magpie, cockatoo & stone bush curlew) don’t belong, but they tie me to where I’m from. When we finally escape (Act 3) everything calms and quietens, the confusion dissolves and there’s space to breathe — we’re finally out the other side of all this, but I leave it to the listener to decide what is the dream and what is the reality?
"Articles & music I drew on for inspiration:
1. ‘The worst days of my life: how Covid-19 patients can recover from ICU delirium’ (Guardian, March 15, 2021)
2. ‘Coronavirus has created an epidemic of weird dreams’ (Wired, April 12, 2020)
3. ‘Viral Counterpoint of the Coronavirus Spike Protein’ (Markus J Buehler, April 7, 2020)"
Part of the Until We Travel project to map and reimagine the sounds of transport and travel in a pre-pandemic and pandemic world. See the whole project at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/travel.