I got a small shock while working in the flower shop a couple of days ago. A customer entered the shop, and he looked exactly like this DC:
I realise that my subconscious must have used this person from my memory, because his red hair and beard fits the role. He has probably been in the background in the mall several times.
I wonder if most DCs are made up in this way? There have been some outstanding and memorable DCs who don’t resemble any living person, but could ordinary ones be taken from the huge amount of “background” people that we see every day?
People see, feel, smell and hear more than we realise. Not everything we experience ends up in our contiousness. In fact, most information does not pass the threshold from subcontiousness to contiousness.
This information is saved ‘subliminal’, wich means that the info is in your memory, but you cannot access it on demand. A trigger is needed to put the info from subliminal to your countiousness.
I guess a lot of DC’s are people we saw and remembered subliminally. But I don’t believe every single DC comes from subcontiousness. Some will be combinations of people, others will be made up completely.
My guts say me that it’ll be 80% subliminally and 20% in other ways, but that’s just a feeling, no prove for that.
Yes, that was what I meant. Some DCs are obviously entirely made up, because they have grey incomplete faces, purple eyes, or glow.
This “background” face from my subconscious memory was chosen because his looks matched what the story needed. It could be interesting, the next time a DC stands out, to look for that person’s double IRL and see what the connection is!
Years ago my mum and sister both had dreams about being murdered by the same DC… and then were shocked to see him riding a bike around the local area!
This choosing of random DCs from real people would explain it.
I agree with Siiw and DutchThor, I think many of our dream characters come from knowledge that we don’t know we have; tacit knowledge, I think they call it.
I probably dream of people all the time that I see on the street. I also think that many of my DCs are probably also original creations, or combinations of original elements as well as real people that I’ve encountered throughout the day.
I remember sometimes the people when I wake up… I can recall specifically now a DC of an old dream of mine that, as soon as I woke up, I remembered to be the gas station man…
I think this is one way of choosing DCs, yes. But maybe there are others…
This reminds me of a dream which was related by Alfred Maury. While walking in an area of Paris, he met IRL an unknown person he had just seen in a ND. Wondering how it was possible, he realized that many months ago, he used to walk in this very area at the same time when this person was often here. The presence of this person had been stocked unconsiously in his memory.
I was always taught that DC’s who we don’t know in dreams are reflections of ourselves. If we see a man with long scruffy hair and scruffy clothes, its how we are viewing a certain part or personality trait of ourselves. Our brain conjured up the image of the DC from what we know and see in our everday lives.
But maybe there are others…