THE JAY LEVINE DREAMSCAPE ARCHIVE
I was originally reluctant to host the Dreamscape Project as part of my site. Jay and I shared a timeline in the early- to mid-nineties (and before) and it could be said that the similarities did not end there. I knew him pretty well during that time, maybe too well. But we parted ways in spring of 1998, and not under the best of terms. I lost track of him and frankly I didn’t care. My wife and I were just about to have our first child, we had other things to think about. So when I was approached by the editors who had unearthed these old journals and who thought I might help go through them and develop the platform to host it, I was torn. Did I really want to dig through that era again, someone else’s stories and memories? Did I even care? But when I flipped through some random pages, I became intrigued, and eventually a little obsessed. What was that time period? Who were these people?
So what is the Dreamscape Project? Most basically it’s a collection of unearthed journal entries dated between 1990 and 1996, various locals, authorship debatable, collected into “experiential” categories. But is it an invaluable archive of a madman’s keen perspective on time and place? Or… the predictable wandering of a humdrum Joe, taking up server space and bandwidth better spent elsewhere? We don’t know, maybe both. There’s plenty of questionable material to be found here, much of it probably fabricated or deluded, as only a diary can be. But there may also be some gems, uncut or otherwise; some humor; maybe even moments of transcendence. So proceed with caution, gentle reader. With eyes wide open and bat ears quivering, to be sure, but also with an open heart. Because, you never know – you may see someone you recognize in these pages. You may even see yourself.
NOTE: All opinions, observations, musings, pseudo philosophy and misguided attempts at humor belong only to Jay Levine.
