The Infinite André Project

I was in a basement, there was loads of old tat about — a broken microwave on a shelf etc. Suddenly I heard some jazz music coming from upstairs. I knew if I went up there it would be the Cyrano. Sure enough, I went upstairs and found myself in a café which I knew to be the Cyrano, though it looked very modern, more like something in East London than Paris.

I remembered my task of finding André. I shouted his name, and someone emerged from around a corner — a Black guy with thick glasses and a moustache. I hesitantly said "André?" He said "No," then addressing me like I worked there, asked for some kind of complicated drink containing courgette. I said politely "Yes, I'll get you that in a minute, I just need to find André first." I shouted "André" again and another guy came round the corner. This time I knew straight away it was him: he was dressed in a dark suit and looked just like the pictures, and he was also ridiculously tall, like a giant. I was so happy to see him — I grabbed him by the arms and kind of shook him. Then, wasting no time, I asked him "have you got a line for the poem?" He bent down and whispered the following into my ear:

The characters swiftly shattered abort.

I encountered him in hypnagogia, where he presented as a triangle with three horizontal lines of various sizes coming out the right side of it. I inquired if it was him, to which he made it known to me that yes, this was him, in "wheelbarrow-like form." !!!

Then I awoke in hypnopompia this morning to the repetition of these words being whispered in a rhythm: "Tinker tatter, tort and tell."

I fall asleep with the intention of having a lucid dream. Various things happening in a dream, but suddenly I am holding an old Nokia telephone (like the one my mum gave me yesterday) — it has a simple one line display that scrolls, like the sign in our family's art gallery. The words "the character swiftly shattered aborts" scroll across it. I become lucid! "Nice one subconscious!" "What's the other line?" I think. All I can remember is "tick tack toe." I know that's not right. I keep trying to remember but that's as much as I have. Never mind, I think, and get on with the mission.

I look up. I'm in an art gallery/café but it's a bit dark, as if the lights are dimmed, with surrealist paintings everywhere. I call out "André! Where are you?" A dimly lit figure that is him moves swiftly by. "André, I need a line!!" But he's out of sight. I try to chase him. Every time I get close, he whips by me and I can't quite catch him. "Oh come on dude, I need a line for this poem!" But no luck.

Suddenly I get a "pull" — like something is trying to get me out of body. At first I ignore it and keep trying to catch André, but he keeps evading me, swiftly, almost in a cartoon-like mocking manner. I decide maybe I should go with it, so I call back to whatever is pulling and say "Hey, pull again — I'll come this time." I get pulled out of body but stop very short. All this is quite frustrating as I am just waiting in suspension, but eventually the pulling starts up again and we are off. (The next bit is a long tangent involving me trying to find out if those structures under the pyramid that are 2km long are really real.)

At some point I fall into a dream where I am being recruited to help some law enforcement find a new drug. We are sitting around a table as I try to fix some DJ kit and they explain the drug is snorted. This makes me lucid, as I remember that "I need a line!"

"André, damn it!" I shout into the air. "I NEED A LINE!"

I hear the following: "The line within is the one that dreams."

I walk out into what I know to be a French town. Very convenient — I think I will find an art café (it also reminds me of a post-industrial Brighton). There are grand unfamiliar landmarks and buildings. I enter a huge ex-factory that has been kitted out into a cool art space and call in my bestest French accent: "ANDRÉ BRETON!!!" I find this really funny. In the lobby there are a few arty, interesting-looking people milling around and I call his name again. A man appears and stands out from the others — my white rabbit. I say: you MUST be André Breton! The man is old with long white curly hair and a kaftan on and paper flowers around his neck. We exchange some words, but then he tells me he needs to go and get something and leaves the room and doesn't come back. I'm sad. I take the stairs through a door to try to locate him — and it dawns on me that this man looked nothing like AB.

I am on the stairs and a woman is showing me to the first floor as she suspects he is up there. I am practising the line on her and I keep forgetting the word "Shattered"... and it all seems really fuzzy. Am I just making shit up, I say!

We enter a huge communal space. There are two Japanese people, quite androgynous, with decorated kimonos on, at singer sewing machines creating cool clothes. I shout out whether André Breton is here. In front of me appears a dark sculpted head of his face — when he was old — floating in mid-air! I don't mess about and ask the floating head to give me one line of poetry. It says something like A river continues to wind through the land and I say thank you, and decide I must awake and write this down. I quickly realise that I have not given the head the last line, and I totally forgot about surrealism. So I decide not to wake and continue — as this was also a talking head and not a 'person'. (Note to waking self... honestly Becky, how much more surreal can a talking floating sculpted head of André Breton be??) I decide to try and remember the line anyway but get a better one when I find 'the real' AB. More facepalm.

I am now back outside in a square and hear jazz playing and enter another big industrial building, following the sound. I walk past two men sat at a desk dressed in military uniform and as I hurry past I say: "Oh — World War 2? Oh sorry, no — World War 1!!" And they both nod at me. I go into a room where I think the music is coming from — it is not: a horrible nursery rhyme, and one woman sits also sewing on an old machine. She holds up a tapestry for me to see.

I go back down and there is a huge tall man — quite young — and I am trying to explain the project to him hurriedly. I get all confused and tell him he met Dave the previous night and gave him a line, and now I'm struggling to remember the line but we need another one. Then I'm like... oh wait... but you are MY version of AB! The man tells me he is AB and I manage to land some of Dave's line but not all of it. I feel really emotional and we have a really long hug. He's so tall he really scoops me up.

In dreams I found myself in a vast architectural landscape — dark, shadowy, and surreal. It reminded me of Squid Game, with endless staircases, winding hallways, precarious platforms, ladders leading nowhere, plinths that seemed both solid and illusory. A labyrinth.

I moved carefully, stepping onto a platform that led me into a dimly lit room. It felt like an old café, smoking room or nightclub — dark wood, a glow of red lighting and flickering candle shadows.

And then... Luis. My friend (an amazing dreamer!) standing there as if we had planned this all along. The shock of seeing him jolted me into lucidity. "Luis!" I was elated, overwhelmed. I blurted everything out — the mission, the intention, the dream-poetry with Breton. I talked excitedly and he was eerie calm.

He looked me dead in the eye and said: "You know that meeting André Breton in dreams is shadow work for you, right?"

Wooooah. The words hit me like a lightning strike. A sudden, undeniable truth. I gasped, astounded, as if something vast and hidden had just clicked into place.

Without hesitation, I threw my arms into the darkness of the club and called out: "André! What is the next line?"

Nothing.

I did it again: "André! What is the next line?"

Nothing.

I did it again: "André! What is the next line?"

Then it was really weird — all of a sudden, in my mind, all of these phrases were flying in like downloads of information. But it was like a wild stream of data that I couldn't hold onto. A bit overwhelming.

I focused my lucidity outwards and again called out into the shadows of the room: "André! What is the next line?"

Then suddenly a booming voice rose from the shadows, reverberating through the space, whilst simultaneously words appeared, luminous and undeniable:

"The L(only) road is death."

I woke instantly, the echo of his words still vibrating in my mind.

I dreamt of choir practice. We usually are 10–15 guys at practice but now we were like a hundred. I had to go to the bathroom and started running through a corridor. Just the ladies' bathroom was free, so I sneaked in there. The female members of the cleaning staff started coming into the room and got annoyed. I changed bathrooms. There, when washing my hands and throwing away paper towels, I accidentally upset the order of a strange trash can that had a circle of white stones and a flower pot at the bottom. I tried to recreate the stone circle and flower placement and it felt like it took me ages. I rushed out to avoid the awkward situation, and suddenly found myself at the family yard. I now got lucid.

I drove away with my car and the five guys went into an old red car and started drifting and drove right into a ditch. I drove out on the big road and saw a scene of a Finnish ice hockey player sitting in a VR tech simulation watching a scene of a German rally. I now got into this rally scene and approached two men standing next to the track watching. I talked to one of them. I asked where André Breton is. He said "That is me!" I said "No!" Then his face shifted to look like André and fine enough. I asked him for the next line. As he was talking I interrupted him and told him the last line was "The L(only) road is death." He replied with another line instead, which was:

The ebony and ivory hue limepicked their guard.

I woke myself up.

I'm visiting a prestigious mansion where many people are gathered to discover more about the people who used to live there. It's kind of like a living museum. At one of the rooms I'm reading about the people who once had it as a bedroom and I actually see them coming down the staircase in the distance — I run over. I'm trying to think of what to say. Struck by someone's unexpected response in another language — she gives me a look of being caught out and this is what gets me lucid.

Immediately I remember the mission to find AB and get a line of the poem. I ask if she knows where I can find AB and she tells me he's in a room upstairs on the water toboggan. I go upstairs and there's a boy dressed old-timey in a tailored suit tuxedo type thing. He is the only one in the room and holding what looks like an iPad. I tell him I'm looking for AB. He replies "Tis I" and I go to shake his hand. I share I was expecting him to be older and he replies "the childhood self is where the poet can flourish the most within a dream" — and I figure that's a fair enough point. Then I request the next line and he tells me all will be revealed on the water but we are waiting for more people because it takes 6 to ride.

Whilst waiting I look around the room — the wood is carved with such detail, trims and frills and all fancy things with the high ceilings and sofas with gold plating. A party of four walks through the door. So we all get on the ride.

As we are on it the lights go out and AB says "haven't you seen Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? It's like that!" I'm not exactly happy about this even though I'm still very aware it's a dream. We seem to be on the edge of tipping like rollercoasters do and as we slide down the camera flashes to take a picture of us and I can see the line in the flash: "The poem groes where the water f(L)ows." The L part is like Tree's line from the email and I don't know why "grows" is spelled wrong. But I don't question this.

At the end of the ride I am not concentrating much as I'm trying to repeat the poem line to myself again and again. I see him open the iPad type thing as we get off to take some pictures on it and ask if we can get a selfie. He says sure but then we are unable to unlock the iPad or get to the camera screen before I wake up!

I glimpsed André smiling in the in between state. He was holding his glasses like in a photo I've been using. I heard these lines directly after... "Your feet resolve mad, relephants marching towards the cliff of your tongue."

I fell asleep and was in bed and moved my dream arms and realised I was asleep. I sat up in bed in the dream and everything was white, but I could "feel" the shape of my room and house. I remember being a little disappointed that I couldn't see anything and that my third eye was closed, so I woke up — but it was a false awakening (surprise!) and I was messing around in my house listening to music. I regained lucidity when I realised that the radio I was listening to didn't exist in real life. So I thought, "tune into André radio" and heard the line

"Wilt, whilt, wart. Theater is the buzzed based theremin"

There were infinitely more lines before and after the line I was given. It was an ever-evolving catalogue of words that were also completely fixed and predetermined. I heard what he said, but I was experiencing the whole of this infinite radio station at the same time. He was sort of mechanical sounding in the ramblings and it sounded like he was talking through a tube. He slowed down for my line and repeated it.

There was a weird understanding of the situation that each line is very important and also meaningless — because it was part of the whole of the catalogue that went on forever backwards and forwards. I wanted to hear more, but knew if I kept listening I would forget my line.

I tried to wake up, but couldn't yet. I thought, "I hope I can remember this," because I would just have to relax and wait for the sleep cycle to finish so I could naturally wake up.

I had a lucid dream last night and I remembered the task. I walked into a room calling out for André Breton and he's standing there. I go up to him and ask him for the next line of poetry and he says "and then there were…" (He takes 2 sips of water.) I look at him waiting for the second half of the sentence; he then says "they can figure out the rest."

I was at some kind of destination travel place where they had a movie festival and a golf course and other things for people to stay at. I was walking around the place seeing a couple of people play golf and then there was a kind of steep dirt hill that I ran down. Suddenly it hit me that this place was odd and I must be dreaming — I got excited immediately, looked at my hand and confirmed it was a dream. I started shouting for André and walking toward a public restroom area thinking I'd find him there; but then I saw a man standing there whose face was blocked by something and I knew it was him. I ran up and saw his face — it was him!

I asked him repeatedly what's the next line of the poem. He looked happy to tell me and he started speaking French! I told him I didn't understand and he looked at me and said:

"The poem is the center, it is the mirror."

I'm in a room — a gym — and I sink through the floor into a dark space. Lucid. As I enter, my sensed dream body disappears. Space feels bounded to the sides but open both up and down. My awareness rotates 180 degrees and then I drift further into the darkness. I remember to find André Breton. I drift down, the space is dark and my breathing is choppy like it is in sleep paralysis — I feel a boundary below then I move through a ceiling into a vague room space, then out the floor and into another, layers of floors and spaces, until I find myself in a hallway. A small man is here, the size of a child, wearing a suit and with a moustache. "Are you André Breton?" He smiles widely and shakes his head no and contorts his body, nearly bowing at the floor. "Will you show me where André is?" He lifts his arm and points his finger down the hall. I take his hand and say "let's go!" He is delighted. We walk down the hallway together into an antechamber with tall ceilings. To the right is an opening into another room — a giant nude woman is poised in the opening, covered in tattoos and posing as if being drawn. I step past her into the room — it is a bar. Half a dozen people sit around and André is sitting there, holding court.

He is saying "I want to ask you a question—" when I enter and I quickly say "No, I want to ask YOU a question." He's wearing a creamy orange suit and a white lacy cravat. He has bangs, a thin moustache, and rectangular spectacles. He looks middle-aged. Then the dream fades.

I'm back in the first space. I lay down and again drift into the dark void. I emerge in the hallway again. People are rushing out of the bar — as if a bomb is about to go off. I see André, he comes out with a hood on obscuring his face. "This way," I say and I lead him to safety. The hall branches and as I move us to the left, he pulls back and motions for us to go the other way.

Now, in this hallway, André is inside a large old-fashioned television set. I am laying on the floor, turned towards him. I ask him something like, "Why is it so hard to make art when living itself takes so much energy?" It takes a great amount of effort to ask this question and I feel very emotional and vulnerable saying it.

André responds, "Do you really believe this?"

"I'm afraid... I do," I say.

"Are you afraid of making art?" He asks me.

"No," I say, "I'm afraid of the opposite…." He nods his head with a slight smile. Then I remember about the line and I say "What is the next line in the poem?" Oddly my voice comes out sounding like a little child. I am small now, and feel like a little girl. I am looking up at the television set — it is taller than me now. André looks confused and says "poem? What poem?"

"Surely you know about the poem," I say, but I can't remember much else myself.

Then he bursts into song, and as he sings he holds out a scroll that unfurls. The scroll is covered with words — I do remember the word BLOOD written in all caps. Then André sings:

"Industry and fashion dance in culture—
Orange blossoms dance in the sky."

After he says the lines I repeat them — meanwhile the words are still shifting and changing on the scroll. I thank him but he's still singing new lines that are coming with their own captions on the television. I'm becoming overwhelmed and concerned I won't remember. The dream fades and I wake up.

I was in a dingy theatre/cabaret venue — very run down. My son Ricky was on the stage. I was searching through cupboards when it dawned on me that they were the cupboards from my old college and this is where all my old artworks were stored from when I was an art student. I got a rush of emotion in anticipation of the nostalgia I would feel upon finding them. But every cupboard I opened just led onto a selection of smaller cupboards and draws within them.

I turned back to where Ricky had been on the stage but he wasn't there anymore. In his place was a strange looking lady — just a torso, no arms or legs, with black hair and a 1930s bob, her face was also kind of deformed and she may have even had two heads. It was at this point I realised I was dreaming.

Just then the lady said "The show is about to begin" and with that hundreds of people started swarming into the room from all sorts of openings in the walls. I started shouting for André into the swarm of people and one of the men rushing toward me confidently said "yes" and stopped right in front of me.

He didn't look like the André from the photo — he was Middle Eastern looking with black, side-parted hair and a moustache. He was wearing a velvet smoking jacket with a yellow embroidered letter on it, possibly an "S." I said again "Are you André Breton?" He replied "yes" — and it very much felt it was him despite his different look.

I said "Remember that poem we're doing?" He said "yes" and immediately started rattling off loads of lines. I grabbed his shoulders, laughing, told him "please stop." He responded with mock indignation like "Who dares stop André Breton mid-flow?" Then I said "let me give you the line first: The orange blossom dances at night." He said "Oh yes" then proceeded again at breakneck speed...

"The orange blossom dances at night. The dogs are running from the park. Dogs are horrors."

He kept going at an incredible pace, kind of like he was rapping — I had to grab him again and plead with him to stop. At this point someone standing next to him shouted "He did it!" Then someone else piped up "it was syncopated!" Just then I realised there was a big crowd around us, uncomfortably close. The guy who said the syncopated comment was putting his hand under my jacket and rummaging around in the internal pockets. I woke myself up.