Singer-songwriter Ichiko Aoba still remembers a dream where she broke into pieces.
“I was experiencing sleep paralysis. My mind was moving, but I couldn’t move my body,” she tells The Japan Times. “It must have been in some kind of battle or war, and I remember being hit by a bullet and my body just sort of coming apart.”
Though such dreams are terrifying, Aoba allows them to shape her waking life. Since 2010, the 35-year-old has been taking what she sees in her sleep, whether fantastical or painful, and using it as inspiration to create art both intimate and epic. “Making music is never easy. It’s not like the pain of childbirth, but it’s like taking a drop from my painful dreams and distilling it into something pure,” she says.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.