Aside from Jung’s discussion of archetypes, I was not interested in dream diagnosis or dream divination. I thought it was a forced and convoluted idea, a shallow attempt to interpret everything through reason. When I learned of Nabokov’s cynical view of psychoanalysis, I knew that I was right. I learned from a friend at the time that a Japanese novelist also kept a dream diary, which may have dispelled my fear of “dream diaries and madness,” and I may have started one myself. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. My dreams were transferred from “the impressions that linger in my mind when I wake up” to the words on the notebook.
The impression of the dream was so strong that, as in early childhood, when I awoke in the morning, I was overwhelmed by the vision of being in another world for hours, in the water or on the roof of a building. I had the feeling that I did not want the dream I had seen to disappear into the motley haze of the real (post-waking) landscape. I scooped up a handful of river water with both hands, and while the water remained in my palms for a while, it would eventually spill out through the gaps between my fingers and be gone. I wanted to make a note of that eerie, beautiful, strange sensation before the memory of the dream was drowned out by the noise of the so-called “reality”.
Some of the articles on dreams were, for some reason, very brazenly stating that “dreams have no color,” while others, for whatever reason, gave advice such as “If you keep a dream diary, you will become a psychic,” or gave the exact opposite warning in a threatening and meaningful tone, “If you keep writing it, you will go insane.”
Whenever I read such occult books and complete works of wonders, I always thought that dreams are still an uncharted territory for mankind, and that although the books say they seem to have it all figured out, there are still many things we don’t know.
It seemed very meaningful to think about dreams, but what was written about them was often vague, and many of them were written in a hearsay tone of untruths. It seemed to me that the authors had only summarized the rumors by saying, “It is said that…” or “It seems that…,” and did not seem to have seriously addressed the mystery of the dream.
I had no desire to acquire psychic powers, much less go insane, but I began taking notes of the dreams I had when I was a college student.
When I was in junior high school, I still saw another powerful image in my dream. Three women are on a golden tray. It could be a Greek-Roman foot-washing place or a fountain. The girls, clad in light clothing, are bathing in the water. Inside the golden building, three half-naked women stand in a row like the daughters of a goddess, each standing on a golden plate like a large lotus. The shining water is running down their bodies into the golden lotus dish. The place looks like a Greek temple.
After I had that dream, I was so impressed that I went to the local library to find out what it was all about, but I could not find any books that could give me a detailed explanation of the dream I had as a junior high school student.
I can still vividly recall the dreams I had as a child as if they were yesterday. I kept wondering about the mystery of the dreams that occupied so much of my mind, and I kept wondering what they were and why I had such dreams again and again since I was a child.
I have dreamed of intense images since childhood. Dreams of burning houses, pistol shots, falling airplanes. I used to think that everyone had such impressive dreams in their sleep that were equally similar to reality. Sometimes I would go to the same place in my dreams, and sometimes I would have the same dream over and over again. I had asked my parents and other people around me about the dreams I had at night, but most of them answered that they did not remember much about the content of the dreams, and since they did not seem to be that concerned about the content of the dreams, I had to look them up in encyclopedias and books about dreams. Encyclopedias for children were not very reliable and often stated that “we don’t know much about dreams.” I rarely touched anything that seemed to be lightweight, such as dream fortune-telling or dream diagnosis, because I thought it was too irresponsible and judgmental.
When I actually used Stable Diffusion, I was able to generate an unlimited number of images of the kind that online services refuse to output. As I was working with Stable Diffusion, I thought to myself, “This is ‘Until the End of the World’” . ‘Until the End of the World’ is a 1991 film by Wim Wenders, and I was very impressed by its deeply thought-provoking content about “dreams”.
I am referring here to the dreams we have during sleep, not to the “what about the future?”
Upon further investigation, I found that the photo generation AI technology used by the online service is called Stable Diffusion. Apparently, it is open source and can be used locally by anyone with a PC, and with a fast video card, it can output images even more comfortably. I had just purchased a PC with an NVIDIA high-speed GPU (video card) for video editing, soI installed Stable Diffusion on the same day I found out about it and started using it.
Since I output images in my local environment, I don’t have to worry about censorship or the eyes of the community, and I can spell out as many images as I want to see. Stable Diffusion requires downloading the model data of the images beforehand, but the site where these data are made public by volunteers contains a variety of beautiful girls, demons, landscapes, pornographic images, anime illustrations, etc., that have been summoned by users using Stable Diffusion, to the point that it is almost too much to eat.
As I downloaded the Stable Diffusion model data, I looked at these grotesque, free, obscene, shameful, horrific, and splatter images of people doing whatever they wanted to do. By all accounts, this was not a guideline-like atmosphere of compliance with public order and decency, and the threshold for regulation seemed to be loose.
I think it was around 2020 when I was first exposed to the online demo version of being able to create images with words. It was an illustration/painting that could generate words, not pictures. I think the first words I entered into the image-generating AI in my life were something gloomy like “rainy day, children at home with parents fighting, dark house even though it’s daytime”. I remember waiting a few seconds for the output time, quite excited to see what kind of picture would come out. Three small images of 250 pixels square were output, but none of them were as good as I had hoped. They looked like large German Romantic oil paintings, not at all like the delicate style I was looking for. After that, I tried to output a few more images from the same site, but soon stopped using it because of a series of disappointments.
Then, last June 2023, I learned of an online service that could also generate pictures, this time with words. A beautiful swimsuit woman was output with reasonable speed. Sure, they are small in size and somewhat illustrative, but they are very different from the German Romantic-style oil paintings of the past. This is sensual and could pass for pornography. I tried various generated words, but since it was an online service, all of my desired spells (generating prompts) were rejected for output as “against guidelines. I guess I shouldn’t have used so many words like “nude, blood, schoolgirl, flame, etc.” I was, however, strongly attracted to the idea of generating photos with words.
Finally, or rather, my computer started to malfunction and I decided to send it in for repair.
I guess that’s what happens when you abuse your computer like it’s on fire for 24 hours a day.
Since I learned about stable diffusion last June, I’ve been working on it almost everyday like I’m obsessed with it, but I have to take a pause here.
I’ve been thinking about AI image generation, so this might be a good time to take a break.
I’m taking a break from the new stuff in stable diffusion, but I need to work on other things that I haven’t gotten around to, so I’m going to do those.
I have a lot of images, so I’ll keep uploading them✌~.
