Carpe Noctem

Issue #1 of Carpe Noctem was published in 2009. And I only even know that because I stuck a copyright at the bottom of it for some reason. So I’ll estimate the first four issues came into existence between 2009 and 2010 (maybe early 2011). It feels like lifetimes ago. They were digital-only, partly because I didn’t want to deal with printing and shipping them and partly because I was just getting into digital art and it was a great way to practice. However, these have not aged well. I do plan to re-create them at some point to make them a little neater and easier to read.

I am currently working on Issue #5 though, so either subscribe to the website or follow me on Ko-fi or Itch.io to grab a copy of that when it comes out, along with any and all future zines I make!

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How it All Began…

I can’t say it all started with any particular dream, but I’ll say it started with dreaming. I was (still am) absolutely That Kid growing up; staring out the window, oblivious to the world around me and sneaking away at parties and family gatherings to hole up in the coat room with whatever book I had smuggled with me from home. I remember dreaming often and very vividly. Hypnagogic hallucinations were frequent. After napping on my grandmother’s bright orange, plastic-wrapped sofa, I’d wake up in a state of panic, asking how long I’d “been gone” because it felt to me like I’d just come back from hours, days or even weeks someplace else. Being told I’d only been asleep for 15 or 30 minutes and not days was always jarring. I have a box of 30 or so journals (down from 50-60 because I’ve been slowly digitizing them over the years) with decades worth of dream records in them. All vivid, some terrifying, some wondrous and all driving me crazy because it felt wrong to just let them all sit there in dusty forgotten notebooks forever.

I got curious about the who, what, where, why and how of dreams early on (kind of an obvious consequence, right?). What the heck was this stuff in my head? Why did I dream the things I did? Were everyone’s dreams so vivid, so frequent? Did they have a meaning? What the heck even were dreams? My family’s conservative brand of Christianity didn’t have any answers for me (no satisfying ones anyway). And, so began years of half-assed study into dreams and dreaming.

Wanting to share some of my 40-year backlog of dreams was partially behind creating Carpe Noctem. The bigger part was to share my dream experiences and see how they measured up against other people’s. Who knows, maybe what’s hyper vivid and strange to me is actually on the dull and boring end of the spectrum?

Let me make clear – I’m not a dream analyst, psychologist, dream interpreter or Jung devotee. I’m just laid-back fan of dreams and the weird, wonderful liminal world they inhabit on the edges of our daily lives. I won’t say if dreams are inherently magical or spiritual (though that’s the side I prefer studying because that’s just my jam) or if they really are just a marginally useful and quirky Stupid Body Trick, because… I don’t know.

The zine updates on a “When I get to it” publishing schedule. Issues #1-4 are currently up on Itch.io and Ko-fi as little thank-yous for donating. Whatever cash they make will go back into supporting this site and making more zines, so if you like what you see, let me know!