The dreams began in November of 2022.
Mysterious nocturnal wanderings through infinite and incoherent architecture.
November 4th, 2022
I was inside of a big building that felt kind of like a hotel. It was labyrinthine and I was not able to retrace my steps without ending up somewhere different. At one point, I was in a big stairwell with another guy I did not know. The stairwell had been flooded and we were trying to pull drain plugs on the landings to drain it.
At another, I went off by myself into an area full of dead-ends, mirrors and then one room full of statues, crystal balls and ornate furniture with a very high ceiling. I was almost completely alone in this area except for “Dave” [older friend with schizophrenia] who was a janitor there.
While I was by myself in the statue room, one of the statues was alive and was trying to give me advice about which way to go. He was a little cupid statue. I became very angry with him for misleading me and tried to strangle him but he ended up telling me he did not know which way to go at all.
This dream was not the first of its kind, but the first of many that soon followed.
The ominous complex reminded me of the hotel room from my favourite film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The decor, chilling emptiness and the feeling of being watched or stalked seemed reminiscent.
November 15th, 2022
I was in a labyrinthine hotel with my father. Nobody else seemed to be there and we were exploring its many chambers and strange hallways. None of the rooms or corridors served any obvious purpose. We seemed to be a little on edge, afraid that there may be something unseen… For most of it, it felt as though we were underground, and toward the end we returned to the upper levels which were more normally lit and structured and prepared to leave so that I could go see “Jack“ [cousin] at another hotel.
The complex was intensely reminiscent of the semi-viral genre of image compilations dubbed “strangely familiar” or some variation thereof which feature “liminal spaces.”
“Liminal” comes from the Latin “limen” meaning threshold, an etymological cousin of “limbo” and “limit.”
Liminality connotes the dim and ill-defined connective tissue between this and that. Here, between consciousness (the “upper levels”) and the unconscious (the weirdly lit and incoherent depths.)
These chasmic corridors murmur unsettling somethings you can’t quite hear. Paradoxical amalgams of nostalgic familiarity and ominous surreality. These places are alienating and feel otherworldly or haunted.
What in ourselves do we glimpse peering into these enigmatic images?
Strangely familiar is, in one sense, an oxymoron — unknown and known at once. Everything’s a copy of a copy of a copy. You look and you feel:
“I haven’t been here, but I’ve been here.”
That second “here” is a real place. More real in fact than those in the photos. And that’s the place I intend to unveil presently.
Proceed at your own risk. The labyrinth knows who you are. If I tell you what it is, it will know that you know.