GENESIS OF DREAMBUSTING ☁️✨

In 2024, I read two books that radically shifted how I think about the future — On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint by Maggie Nelson and Everybody: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing. While Nelson's writing primed me to understand Freedom in the academic sense, Laing's book covered that scaffolding in a rich, vibrant tapestry woven with stories about artists, writers, and thinkers who've yearned for a freer world. It's her work that's brought us to this moment. It's her work that's brought about the genesis of DREAMBUSTING.

The through-line of Everybody is the work of Wilhelm Reich, a 20th century psychotherapist eager to support people in the labor of getting free. Over time, he identified what he believed to be a universal life energy he called orgone, an expansion of Freud's libido. In his framework, a blockage of orgone caused a slew of ailments: at the individual level, it could lead to different expressions of mental illness; at a societal level, it could lead to fascism.

Reich's work was, in many regards, ahead of its time. Tragically, he was relentlessly persecuted for it: first by the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe which forced him to flee the continent, then by the U.S. government who, after years of harassment, sanctioned the burning of his books in New York in 1956. This persistent opposition to his work led Reich to experience a gradual yet significant break from reality.

Towards the end of his life, he lived with his son, Peter, on a ranch in Arizona. There, they constructed machines called cloudbusters, which father and son believed to an instrumental tool in a "conflict" against both aliens and a toxic form of orgone Reich dubbed deadly orgone radiation. They fought this "battle" until Reich's imprisonment in 1956. He died in prison one year later. These events severely delegitimized his work with many believing he was a pseudo-scientist and, perhaps worse, a quack.

What I found most captivating about Olivia Laing's book was her unwavering belief that, despite the steady decline of Reich's mental wellbeing, he was fiercely committed to helping people get free. I read Peter's memoir, A Book of Dreams, which recounts his childhood leading up to his father's arrest. This is how Reich, as Peter recalls, described the impact of blocked orgone in our society:

"It is an emotional plague that comes from within. It kills people emotionally and makes them keep their belly tight. It makes them lie and slander and spy. This emotional plague is more vicious than the black plague because the people do not want to be cured. They strike out in rage at one who tries to cure it because they have been sick so long they think the sickness is health. And that is why they are attacking me. I am trying to tell them that they don't have to hate and they hate me for it."

I'm not sure if I believe in orgone as Reich described it, mostly because I've yet to read about it in his own words. That said, I find myself hard-pressed to dismiss his fundamental beliefs as pseudo-science. This quote, in a contemporary context, easily describes how we understand the powerful grip white supremacist thinking holds over folks who'd rather perish than change. So, like Olivia Laing, I believe in Reich. I believe he wanted us to learn how to get ourselves free.

Others too have believed this, many of whom were influential artists and thinkers of the late 20th century. What brings us back to DREAMBUSTING, specifically, is Reich's influence on none other than the legend herself, Kate Bush. As Laing tells it, Bush was wandering around an occult bookshop in the 1980s when she found a copy of A Book of Dreams. After reading it, she wrote the song Cloudbusting about Wilhelm Reich from the perspective of Peter. The music video depicts the moment of Reich's arrest and features a replica cloudbuster made by the set-design team from Alien (why I know this I can only justify by saying that I live for the lore!).

All of this was swirling around in my brain — still is, clearly — on a much needed beach day with a friend and artist last summer. I recounted this whole story to her, focusing on the story of Kate Bush, whom both of us love, which led us to admit how much courage is required to speak our creative ideas into existence. We confessed how scary it feels to dream yet how important it was for us, as artists, to have the space to dream openly, recklessly, boundlessly.

As we left the beach, we made two commitments: (1) to remember our friendship has so much space to dream and (2) to make a collaborative playlist so we can revel in our shared love of music. As a joke, I titled the playlist 'Dreambusting' in reference to Kate Bush's song, my fascination with freedom, and our commitment to dreaming. It's remarkable, and incredibly silly, how significant this joke has become. Dreambusting now contains the countless ways in which we live beyond our wildest dreams or, perhaps more accurately, beyond what we felt possible.

So, I nervously, gleefully, and humbly invite you to DREAMBUSTING ☁️ ✨ It's the beginning of what I hope to be a dream busted, a dream to build a creative studio that makes work that speaks to community, sustainability, and freedom. For now, it begins with a space for me to gush about the art, music, film, books, and ideas that inform my work. It will be a space where I try and fail to properly articulate just how much I love the work I do. It will be a space where I invite you to Dreambust, too.

In return, I ask that you help make this dream a reality through subscription. Your support of DREAMBUSTING ☁️ ✨ will grant me the capacity to make work with more ease. It's especially meaningful in a world that's slowly becoming the stuff of Wilhelm Reich's nightmares. I thank you for your generous support.

It feels appropriate to end with a song, one that nudges the aching desire for freedom slumbering within our bones that patiently awaits the chance to fill our bodies with grief, joy, clarity, and hope.