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Writer's pictureThad McKraken

Phantom Insects Carry the Junkie to Heaven



3/28/2024 –


I’m in various scenarios where I’m creating these astral environments replete with corresponding soundtracks and I’m catering the soundtracks specifically to the environments. In the primary one I remember, it’s sort of an eerie/mysterious world and I’ve created the perfect eerie/mysterious soundtrack to encapsulate the vibe. You could say this is no different than creating video game environments but there is a difference, which is the feeling. You can feel the vibes of the music that’s being created in a way that’s far more profound than what can be experienced in waking reality. Not to mention the fact that I basically am this reality, rather than a character inhabiting it.



Now in a dream state my wife and I are looking at a house in a relatively undeveloped corner of the city far up northeast from downtown. I’m standing out on the porch of this place noting how you can still see the distant skyscrapers over the lush coniferous tree line. It also appears that more developed neighborhoods are just south of us.


My wife is chatting with the real estate agent and I’m like:


“Let me go check out the main drag of the neighborhood while you’re doing that.”


So I head out and it is very strange. The main drag of this particular hood is all dirt roads with these much older industrial type buildings that seemingly have freshly renovated interiors. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this but there’s this feeling of distant pleasant smoke. Like on another level of reality there are these calming smoke vibes making everything super chill. Because of these vibes, I am fine with this hood if we choose to move here. I also can’t help but think about the soundtracks from the prior exercise. There are probably always hidden soundtracks to areas that we’re only picking up on an unconscious level.


This leads into another extended dream in a very chill office. Same sort of shit. I’m working in this office complex in this neighborhood and there are the same distant smoke in the background vibes to the complex. The main tidbit I remember from all this is that at one point I’m going down in this high rise elevator with a couple executives. One is trying diligently to talk business with his boss but the boss keeps fixating on my coffee, intentionally ignoring the money chatter.


“Why yes, I did get this coffee on the lower floor. There is in fact great coffee down there.”


The way he’s ignoring the sycophantic chatter is genuinely amusing.


3/29/2034 –


Continual liminal visions where I’m playing this video game but it’s 4D weird. It’s like my back is turned to the thing and I’m arranging patterns of characters in a bunch of different configurations unconsciously. If I arrange them all this way, it plays out this way, etc. Typical shit but the way my back is turned to the endeavor and I’m arranging, then executing these simulations on an unconscious level is intriguing in an obviously metaphorical context. I’m later told that my body isn’t compatible with the language of my cosmic soul, which is why these things are so difficult to grok properly inside of a monkey suit. This tracks.


After waking up to distort my sleep states I’m now doing magick and they once again have to sort of challenge me to get me to dive in. I am in fact getting better at this shit. I have to live in the deep waters, where the action happens. I feel like I had some development to do with my dream work before any of this added up properly if I’m being honest.


Speaking of dreams: In this sitch I’m roped into going to a charity benefit party with this mid 40’s pretty blonde woman with spiky cut shoulder length hair who I get the vibe is an actress. I agree and basically the second we get there we go completely separate ways. It’s in this incredibly fancy house or possibly even a hotel. If it is a private residence, it’s far gone rich people shit. There are a couple of bands playing and honestly, this seems like it goes on for quite a while and I’m completely blacking out on who these bands are or if they’re any good but it feels like I drunkenly sit through a couple sets.


When I regain the thread I’m out in the backyard space and there’s another stage set up there with even more acts. It’s a sunny day and this very dressed down kind of plain looking young white woman songwriter with curly black hair wearing light washed jorts is about to do her thing and I decide to head back in. When I do, I accidentally walk right in front of my friend’s band who’s apparently now doing their set inside. They’re doing this insane theatrical performance thing that is absolute tits and they’re walking from the aisle to the stage where I unintentionally get in their way. Whoops.


I sit down to catch their act in this swanky ass retro looking astral plane lounge space. Fantastic and you know what’s more outstanding? My friend’s band’s outfits. The whole thing has this golden retro-futuristic diving suit vibage to it. Going on deep dives into the gold studded maximalist 50’s sailor chic world. Just the best but of course there’s barely anyone watching.



Jeez, and you can tell this seemed like such an amazing gig and it should have been, but it’s nice outside and it’s Seattle. People wanted to watch folk rock in the sun. This all feels so real to me as far as my experience playing shows in the skin world it’s nuts.


I do recognize the one dude from the night before catching the action though and he’s presented here as the memory mutant from Legion. I go over and he starts chatting me up about donating to the cause to which I’m like:


“Yeah, you told me all this last night and sent me an e-mail my man, do you not remember that?”


How he can’t turn it off is genuinely funny and sad simultaneously but a bit sadder that he’s doing this rather than watching my friend’s band. Anyway, after their set this Avant Garde director is debuting his new feature in this packed theater with crystalline chandeliers. Once this thing starts it’s like I’m sucked into it for hours, living the film. It’s all quite amazing and eerie as shit. In the Lynch/Cronenberg genre of arthouse horror for sure.


The one thing I do recall is the ending. All of a sudden I’m in the mind of the main character. He’s in this mostly empty run down looking wood floored room by himself and these fictional looking winged insects start appearing. They’re like black and white buzzy moth creatures and they keep materializing into his world. Now they’re moving toward the character and this slips out into multiple arty angles. They’re getting closer and closer. Now they’re enveloping him and there’s this scene where all these art moths are flying in front of this glowing orb with secret black text written into it.


“They’re carrying him to the higher realm.”


This unidentified swanky woman exclaims. If I’m being entirely honest, I’m not sure I would have grasped that if she wouldn’t have interjected but it’s pretty obvious now that she mentions it. The movie only lasts a bit longer and when it’s done, the slick looking pale young rich kid looking director guy in the dark suit pulls the video cassette out of the machine. I am the only one left in the theater and I’m all like:


“That was fucking amazing kid. Seriously.”


The ending is also clearly a reference to the movie Naked Lunch. I am not remotely surprised no one else made it to the end. Not really a party movie. I’m about to leave when I run into the blonde actress lady I showed up with. I’m confused because I genuinely thought she hooked up with someone else but we awkwardly leave together and I don’t get the impression there’s any romantic chemistry there at all.


Next a disturbing vision. My wife and I are about to have sex and my brother is outside our bedroom door and keeps interrupting us. My wife eventually gets pissed and he smacks her around a bit. Now I’m in the awkward position of having to chase down my brother and whoop his ass. He runs and cowers in his bedroom and I’m about to reluctantly pound on him when I wake up. Can’t say that was a fun one.


3/30/2024 –


A distant part of me is hanging out at the type of upscale fancy “clubs” that I’ve intentionally avoided since I was a teenager. I’m part of a semi-regular basketball game with a bunch of other aging pros and astral sorcerers like myself apparently. I’m recruiting Kobe Bryant and he’s reluctant but I do manage to rope him in. I can tell under the surface he really wants to run and I manage to push the right buttons.


The next thing I know I’m shooting hoops in this white light void region of the astral plane. It’s just a practice gym floating in the middle of whited out space. I hear what’d be the equivalent of a knock at the door and this opens a phantom hallway attached to the gym also floating in the void. I go get the door and it’s Kobe. We exchange the mildest of pleasantries and I briefly say hi to his wife as well who walks through the gym on her way to other errands. Then we just set up on opposite ends of the gym, getting in our shots before the run. The fact that I got to the gym to get in work before Kobe is certainly an amusing metaphor that I didn’t even grok until later in the morning.


For the rest of the night I’m placing these characters in different positions of the white light void space, which is a metaphor for the Christian concept of heaven quite obviously. I’m bored by this endeavor. It’s not really necessary, it’s tedious, costs a minor amount of money, and it doesn’t even seem to really matter how I arrange these characters. I essentially just hover the icon in the position of the void I desire and click a button in my mind to lock them into a particular position.



This blandness goes on for quite a while until I’m told that it makes money. That’s the only point.


That’s the 3rd time someone who’s passed has shown up in my dreams this week. 2 celebrities and 1 neighborhood kid from my youth. That is in fact how spirit mediums have traditionally made their cash I must confess. I shot hoops with Kobe Bryant in the afterlife. I’d like to think I’m beyond that sort of shit but if I do it by accident? Sigh.






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