Ep. 5. Obligatory dream sequence, feat. Robert Sheehan & Aisling Rogerson

To help guide me through the mire of Moriarty's meandering mind I called upon the help of Robert Sheehan of this reality and beyond, and Aisling Rogerson of The Fumbally.

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Unknown Speaker  0:00  
So I'm in a house in Portobello,

Speaker 1  0:02  
and I'm trying to make sense of a dream, a John Moriarty dream, and who on the dog is waiting for a walk, and she said, was it Robert or rob? Whichever rules off the Toby good. She and Ashley Rogerson, my partner, and I want them to help me see, can we make sense of this, of this? John Moriarty,

Unknown Speaker  0:23  
so we're going to play the first bit now.

Speaker 1  0:26  
Will I tell you a story, a dream I once had? And it will seem a little bit irreverent, but no irreverence is meant when your psyche decides to dream a dream it is very often, won't it very often won't be abiding by the pieties of your everyday image of yourself. So in this dream, I'm walking down Charing Cross Road, and instead of going on down to the galleries, I find myself turning into all Compton Street, which is the red light area of London. It was in those days when I was a young man. And as I walk down on Compton street, I see on the far side of this of the street a striptease club. And I wait for a break in the traffic, and I find myself crossing the street and going into the striptease club, because that's a place I've already been in quite a few times. And when I go in, I am when I just cross the threshold, I am charmed. Now I'm using the word charm in the Elizabethan sense. I am charmed in a state of total wonder. Wonderful wonder. I'm in a state of wondering because instead of all the looted advertisements and all the promises that will be had if you pay at the counter and go upstairs or go downstairs, there is a most wonderful, unearthly light in the place. And I see that the place is full. There are lots of windows, and they're lovely windows, and the big, huge floor space is covered in rack after rack after rack of clothes. And the clothes are bright beach wear, almost. And what has me astonished looking at them is that they're unisexual. I'm in a state of total wonder that these clothes are unisexual. And I leave and I'm in the charm of what I've seen.

Unknown Speaker  2:27  
So like, that's the first bit of it, the dream.

Speaker 1  2:29  
I've broken it up trying to make sense of it. But it's just of any reaction to any of that. Where do you begin with? It's interesting. The do you start with the rhythm of how he speaks, which is amazing, wonderful. There's a great kind of Gaelic rhythm. Sort of Gaelic brain brings that rhythm to the English language, which I love. I find it very funny, actually weird, even though he's not saying anything particularly funny, the rhythm of it makes me laugh. It's a bit like drill music in that way, drill music, course, makes me laugh. And then, like, what popped out that time as well was that he'd, he said he'd have a dream about going to the strip club in the West End of London, which he'd already been in many times. Yeah, Dreamer in real life. I'd, I'd bet it shiny shilling, it was probably in real life, going back there in the dream world, such a vivid memory of a dream. You know, every feeling, not just the what's in front of him, but how he felt about it, and everything he's all committed to his memory. You haven't seen this is only the first part, like his his memory. I had the same I heard this first in Iceland, and just like a few weeks ago, and I didn't know what to do it all, just Coons, come down again. Come on. You. Come on. The

Unknown Speaker  3:46  
dog is very anxious to walk with us.

Speaker 1  3:47  
I just thought, oh, is this in all carry man, as you said, in a sort of, yeah, whatever, the red light district. And what do you say? He got so excited because the clothes were,

Unknown Speaker  3:56  
yeah. The irony was that he walks into his stoop club and all he can see are racks of clothes, unis. Unisexual, and they were beach wear. Yeah, he speaks first about that. He said, unearthly light, unearthly light, unearthly like a kind of heavenly light directly, and

Speaker 1  4:16  
I'm walking down North Compton Street. And of course, I don't come from North Kerry, from a small farm, from nothing, I find that as I'm walking down in the middle of the day, walking down all Compton Street, no one taking too much notice of me, I'm carrying a four pronged manure fork in my hand. It isn't a rolled umbrella now, like a man from the city that I'm carrying, and not only that, there are scales of cow dung on the manure fork and that kind of dry cow dung like but if you're a countryman, you're a country man, I'm sure you might as well be a countryman in the city as well as be a countryman in the country. So down I'm walking anyway, and I cross out of I cross out of Compton Street and to wardrobe Street, and then suddenly I'm in an 18th century Park, and it has all the associations of the Age of Reason. I've crossed now into the Age of Reason, into the age when people believe that reason could dominate instinct, that reason could was in control, and the 18th century park is the perfect metaphor for we've dominated nature. We've domesticated nature, nature of serving humanity. But as I walk in this 18th Century Park suddenly begins to look more and more wild, increasingly strange and increasingly wild. And eventually it is Savannah. It is African savannah. And instead of seeing 18th century ladies without parasols walking about, I'm imagining that maybe there are hominids in the bushes looking at me, that dryopithecus, maybe Lucy even you know that's the lovely name that anthropologists have given to one of the earliest to Eve for Lucy, the light one, the one with light, the one in whom the light dawned. And Lucy might be in the bushes looking and as I'm walking in this park that has now become a savannah, I see in the grass, in the kind of dry grass, a patch of it that looks strangely different from the grass that surrounds it. And I now know I have this manure fog, and I start digging, and almost again, with easy as mine. This isn't the heavy digging that I've experienced in Connemara. The sods come up, and I uncover quite easily, three granite steps, carved granite steps. Carved granite steps. We're no closer to understanding are we? Are you ever with dreams? There seems to be a kind of quarrel between instinct and reason going on in his dream, the imagery of the strip club, you know, followed by the buttoned up 18th century English park as a metaphor for the kind of domination of the animal within perhaps, you know, I mean, you could, you could, literally, you could spend the rest of your life breaking this dream down and come up with, I'd say, a million different kind of theories on it. Yeah. And like, this is John Moriarty, so it's not a nobody. He's chosen to tell us this dream. And I presume it's back 1992 maybe he dreamt it in the 80s. I'm just thinking we're now in 2024 there's a match. Is that a GAO football match here upstairs? Yeah. Who between? Who between Denmark and Slovenia? Okay. Well, will we go on? Yeah. And I climb down these three steps, and I'm standing on the third ground, step down, and then down below me, I see vastly what I can only call the what that comes to mind. This is an ocean area. I mean, you can have an aquarium in your house, but in Florida and Canada and these places like the Lord save us, like, you know, we have to have oceanariums, something huge, big that we can keep whales and keep sharks and keep walking. So it is this huge kind of Oceanarium, and it is infinitely far down, infinitely far down in time and in space. Do you know the way in a dream, if it wants to create a sense of vastness or infinity, it can create for you. And I have a sense looking down into this pool, into this ocean area, and that it is, it is old, it is infinite in time, and it is infinite in space. And as I look down into it, I see that on a far embankment of it, a granite embankment of it. I see there's a man standing there, and he bends down into the water, and merely in the gesture of lifting, he isn't actually lifting anything. He is miming

Unknown Speaker  8:35  
and lifting

Speaker 1  8:37  
and up under the water something is coming, and as it breaks the surface, I see that it's a great grid, an iron grid. And this thing swings up as if unhinges and back into the embankment I'm standing on, swings all the way up and back, and it becomes embedded almost in the embankment I'm standing on. I'm still on the third step, looking down, and then I see a wonderful boiling in the water, and there's a great tangle of animals and beasts coming up, and as they break surface, I see that there's a great Uroboros or a great snake form draped across the mall, draped undulating upwards into visibility and downwards into invisibility and upwards again into visibility and downwards. And it was draped across them all. And when I see this thing, I think, Christ everything is in the snake farm. I mean, there are tundras under his skin. There are tigers under his skin. The Permian forests are under its skin. You know, the ancient thunders of the Paleozoic are under his skin. Everything that ever was on the earth is under the skin of this marvelous, colorful, wonderful, colorful serpent, Snake form. That's

Unknown Speaker  9:49  
why I call using like, what do you do? What do you do with this? That one just became way more vivid. I don't know if I use, but I started to really see that in that see. Colors and the kind of magic of it, Yeah,

Speaker 1  10:02  
beautiful. Sort of, how was the the Oceanarium was under the ground. So he'd gone down three or four steps, and then had reached a kind of, yeah, like an embankment, an abutment of ground in front of him, and then underneath that was a was a vast ocean under the ground kind of thing. That's so it's interesting because I was reading this other book, this that I was harping on to you about earlier, called stalking the wild pendulum, you know, by this fellow, Itzhak bentoff, who's around in the 20th century. And he's talking about his theory about reality. And, you know, having studied in quantum physics and everything else and how being or pure consciousness is, he gives an analogy in the book, is like an ocean that is very, very, very still and is completely invisible in its stillness. And it only becomes physical, this reality of ours by virtue of its movement on the surface. But otherwise you wouldn't know. You couldn't, you wouldn't be able to see it, you know. But it's just the ripples, the little wave packets, little quantum wave packets that go across its surface, become our reality. And that's kind of the same kind of vision he's having. You know that ultimately there's this huge, infinite ocean that is expressing form at its surface, you know. And so he's, I mean, he's, he's tapped in deep there, John, I think, you know,

Unknown Speaker  11:29  
yeah, Moriarty has an idea somewhere else. He

Speaker 1  11:31  
says, imagine if you just go paddling in the seashore, and you think the depths of the sea is just when it is when you're paddling. And you have no idea if you paddle out further, it could go to whatever, 2030, fathoms deep. Isn't there something about interpreting that in a way, like when you're looking into a body of water, it's just about reflection. It's about reflecting everything back onto yourself. So everything that he is seeing is all within him. He's, he's, he's having a sort of the same experience as the strip club, but in a slightly different, slightly different form. You haven't heard the previous programs of these anime, but that's he's obsessed with reflection. When he's in Connemara, he imagines the mountains of Connemara reflected in the lakes of Connemara. And he just because he's just so you don't know which is real. Is the reflection in the mountain, in the lake? Real of the mountain, or is it the real lake? And I'm finally understanding silver branch thinking, which is his concept, which I never did. Silver branch thinking is like, you can look at an oak branch or a hazel and they look beautiful. Someday you'll go out and look like silver magical branch is a big thing in Irish mythology, and here in ogunal, because you've seen through the veil and you've seen it's actually both invisible and magical. And there, and then that word you remember, he pronounces the Ouroboros. What I would pronounce, isn't it? That's the snake that eats its own tail, isn't it? It's in the book of hell's he would go on to see, does he get is he going anywhere but the dream like its son? I

Unknown Speaker  12:54  
actually do believe that this is a real dream, that he's not

Speaker 1  12:57  
making it up. Oh yeah. I mean, it's, you can hear it feels very much like he's recounting it from memory, or whatever department of the head he's recounting it from. That's why I think he's like Ireland's Timothy Leary. Ireland's like, you know, mad magic minstrel or whatever. And yet, as I look at it, quite without a sense of paradox, I call it. I call it a dogfish. And then I am below where the man was who walked, who lifted grid. And as I'm standing there, an otter comes past, and I back back, because I'm barefoot, and I think that the otter is going to bite my small toe. And when I think that the otter will bite my small toe, I think of a time when I was down on the borders of Guatemala. I was in, actually in Mexico, but I was right on the borders of Guatemala. And a young boy came in one day, and he had been bitten by a coddle snake on the small toe. So that memory, I think, was revived there. So I backed away from the otter, and then suddenly again, and instantaneously, I was sitting in the water, sitting in this great ocean area, just sitting there on the water. And behind me was a great Mesozoic being, and it opened its mouth as big as a canyon. And I thought, That's it. I'm going to be engulfed and swallowed by the canyon that this creature is. And I saw him backing back and getting ready to come towards me. And I didn't have to look round. Even though I was looking in the opposite direction, I still knew what he was doing. And this vast animal opening its Canyon mouth came towards me, and I was already in the valley of the shadow of death, and suddenly it veered away to the left, but then it backed back again, furiously. And I saw it doing its maneuvers all over again. And I thought, this time, this is it like? And again, he comes for me, the mouse Canyon wide, but this time he veers away to the right. And then I'm thinking, yeah, these are rehearsals. There's only a left and there's only a right. And now. Is between the left and between the right, and that's exactly where I'm sitting. And this creature opens its mouth again, Canyon wide again, and it comes for me, and I am virtually engulfed. And suddenly I see that it has become a tiny, harmless little animal swimming away about its business. This

Unknown Speaker  15:19  
is good. Okay. Well, we've

Speaker 1  15:21  
was one piece left. This has actually proved more hopeful than I thought. I, like, I

Unknown Speaker  15:26  
was totally bewildered by it. You are a fascinated cynic of John, okay,

Speaker 1  15:33  
I'm gonna and the last little piece actually sums up what Moriarty says the dream is about. So, like, we've all given our offering, I'll give you. This is what he says the dream is about. And what the dream was saying is Fear not. Don't be afraid of your own psyche. It will look terrifying. It will look as if it has a mouse big as the Grand Canyon. In actual reality, it is a harmless little animal swimming away about your business now. Now supposing the answer was like, Don't be afraid of inwardness. Don't be afraid of your nature. You can let your nature happen to you. The grid can go up in this. I mean, if you look at the dream, I go into a place, a striptease club. Now that means that there's going to be a stripping we're going to get stripped down to the naked truth. I mean, that's fine. That's what the meaning of the script is. The stripping club in this dream, in other words, doesn't have sexual connotations. It is about a Salome dance. Veils will come off, and we will see some naked truth, and I see that all the clothes are unisexual, so that like, I'm going below a level of the psyche at which the psyche lives in opposites, the opposite of good and evil, night and day, of right and wrong, sanity and insanity. I've gone below that now into a place where the opposites are no longer opposites. There is no duality, actually, between male and female, you know. So I'm going below the surface level of the psyche and going below the truth. And then I travel through the modern city into an 18th century Park, and then I go back from the 18th Century Park to the Savannah, and then I dig, and there are three stone steps, and I look into the infinity of time past, you know? So it is a journey back to the very origins, for the very beginnings of the psyche. This is what is happening in the dream. And you will notice, like the I say, of the great animal, of the great snake farm, I say that it's a dog fish. So again, you have the union of opposites. You have the dog, which is a land animal, and the fish, they are now united. And again, when I'm down below by the pool, it is an otter that comes past. And the otter, of course, is a water animal. It is both a land animal and a water animal. So all the way in those in that dream, we're being told that a union of opposites. Opposites have become united here, and then I sit in the water, and I'm in the canyon, you know, I've gone down Bright Angel Trail. In other words, this whole dream journey is, is, is the Bright Angel Trail. You're going down to the floor of the Grand Canyon in the stream, and the canyon doesn't swallow you. Now, that is good news, isn't it? That is good news about our nature. We can let our nature happen to us. We can let our nature happen to us. It's not going to swallow us up. Believe it, folks, that's true. We can trust our instincts, despite what anyone might have told you anyway, that's enough for this particular session on the couch with John Moriarty, I want to thank the great Ashling Rogerson of the fumbly cafe and the good Robert Sheehan of well, of everything good. A shout out to to John's dear friend Mary Hughes, who made the original audio recordings that you're hearing in these episodes, and, of course, to the series producer, Ronan Coleman, who has patiently stitched it all together. Oh, and if you like the music that has subtly backgrounded this podcast, it's called Murray Artis musings, and it was composed by Ronan you'll find it as a standalone track on Spotify. Just search under Ronan Coleman. Now there are only two episodes left in this series. That's a lot, seven in total. Of course, there are many more Moriarty recordings, but Ronan and I committed to volunteering our time for free to make just seven episodes and no more. We just wanted to share his wonder with you. If you want more, someone's going to have to come up with a way of funding them. In the meantime, if you're eager to delve deeper into the bog shaman, to share his thoughts, his ideas and instincts with others, I'd recommend the John Moriarty Institute's Facebook community. They share bite sized quotes and passages from his. Writings, and often these spark conversations and further insights within the group. It's a good place to hear about upcoming events and activities in El Mundo. Moriarty, Bueno, este es bastante para Oi. That is enough for today. Fogamit marciona, let's leave it if you want. You can hunt out episodes six and seven of the series, and then be done with the whole thing. Go back to listening to Radiolab, or This American Life, or whatever. Or better still, find my own sweet podcast, the almanac of Ireland. Or even better, Robert Sheehan's gorgeous podcast, the earth locker with him and his Umbrella Academy co star Tom hopper. I wonder what Moriarty would have made of the Umbrella Academy. But here shinskale, that's a story for another day. Togeboge, take her handy. Genairi on bow her live and genairi on bojar Liv or lat doesn't mean May the road rise with you. That's that's just stupid. No, it means may you be successful on the road ahead genairi

Unknown Speaker  21:04  
on bohrliv, Bucha.