do chairs have dreams?

do balrogs have wings? god, i love pointless questions. don't know about the balrogs. but chairs have dreams. and i am here to prove it (well not really. but i have to justify this blog entry somehow :) ). just please don't call me in the middle of the night to ask me this.

just like humans, chairs can live in two different types of worlds. the world can be a dull and downright opressive, a black-and-white world if you wish, forcing one to find ever new means to satisfy escapist tendencies without getting into (serious) trouble (of course this doesn't work in 1984-type of worlds). or, the world can be your average every day grind - a colour world, where escapism is a perfectly normal way to keep you working as a little wheel in the big system, while at the same time allowing you to keep your personality intact. now, let's analyse the dreams of chairs in the two possible worlds.

CASE STUDY 1 - the black and white world

the initial condition for a chair to start dreaming, is a rupture with the world it lives in. not fitting in the surroundings, no communication with other chairs, be it lack of chairs near the subject, or the existence of other types of chairs that reject communication with our subject, on grounds of its different nature. in other words, in order to start dreaming, a chair must feel alone in a black and white world.


the dreamt "escape" from the narrow-minded black and white world has two dimensions. first is that of the chair's inner world. we, as mere humans, can only begin to fathom the extent of a wooden chair's imagination, the height to which it takes the chair's inner self in its daydreams. neither can we graps the colour spectrum in which wooden chairs of various essences then perceive their otherwise dull b/w surroundings. we can only reach out with our inner eye and thus perceive a chair's dream of spreading imaginary wings and floating above the daily monochromy in levitation.


the other dimension of the chair's escape is the mutation its dreams and trips in imaginary worlds bring into its behaviour in the 'real world'. every chair capable of such dreams wears their mark that it cannot conceal, just as humans may not conceal their inner fire that will always shine through their eyes. sparks of higher spirits will burn through disguises. now, for the unformed human eye, such a manifestation in a chair is hard to detect, and yet there are signs for the willing to see. the drooping chair below is an example. its drooping board is just the obvious manifestation 'against the system' of straight lines that makes up its world. but there are other, more subtle clues. notice that its hind legs are showing, that it doesn't 'stay in line' either. it is a rebel chair in more ways that meet the eye and in that lies its chance of success. while the system might try to opress the obvious signs of rebellion, the more subtle ones will burn their way into the minds and hearts of others and subminate the system from inside.


CASE STUDY 2 - the colour world

as said, the colour world is your average daily grind. escapism is a must if a person - or chair, in our case - is to preserve its personality, its self, its sanity after all. again, as in humans, not all chairs mind being reduced to a wooden mass in a room. others do. and they dream. the image below is an eloquent example of such. remember le fabuleux destin de amelie poulain? there is that part where amelie's father, being too stuck in his routine, refuses to fulfil his life's desire and travel. amelie then 'dwarfnaps' his revered garden dwarf and sends him on travels with someone; her confused father keeps receiving pictures of his dwarf in various locations around the world that he himself desired to see. this is in short what this particular chair does. back to the wall, in a sunny yet unchanged place, it goes back to its spring of power. it rediscovers its green and very much alive inner tree nature, sprouts new leaves and grows out of itself. since it cannot move, it sends a part of itself on travels, to live the life it dreams for itself, to be its garden dwarf on the great adventure of life on which the chair itself cannot embark.


ps: photographs courtesy of bogdan h. more to be found here.