FEVERDREAM
CLUB​

It is not news to anyone that fiction exposes our realities. It is unshocking that reality is more absurd than our most implausible fictions. Yet, I’ve found myself plunging deeper and deeper into that latter notion, where the extreme stories I am told (and that I live) cannot be believed - would sooner be understood as fiction. It is a talent to leave a conversation partner confused and struck by how a lifetime of high-drama black comedy can exist within a couple of out-of-order sentences strung together at a bar. We tell our most absurd stories while intoxicated, while downplaying trauma, while laughing through the near-death experiences, while misplacing details here and there. Absurdity lives in the realm of oral history. I want to take the time to record these histories in the way they deserve.

 

I chase the absurd constantly. I am asked if I am afraid of death regularly (I am not, but it's not an adrenaline junkie thing). The dreams I have on the hottest days of summer are nuts, but I know people whose dreams consistently leave me breathless, just in their retelling.

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The luxury of being surrounded by absurd people is not lost on me. Fever Dream is a platform to thank the people I know, and do not yet know, for keeping things interesting (an alternative sub-line for this website was "you can't make this shit up").

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Loving how heat (fever, summer, sex, blushing, whatever kind of heat floats your boat) affects dreams was one thing. Celebrating the heat of waking life, the intensity of absurd experiences in this world, was a more compelling other. I dreamt-up this platform because I want our readers to open this site and feel the relief of other people's embarrassment and vulnerability, in hopes that they might eventually feel compelled to contribute themselves.

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I decided maybe three years ago that embarrassment was simply something I wasn't going to feel anymore. Remorse, regret: sure—I feel these are important to the capacity to be human. But embarrassment was ruling my life and guiding more decisions than I was. Known as the perpetually shy kid who would turn bright red at the slightest ounce of attention, but able to totally sell a performance of confidence on stage (born & raised ballerina here), I decided to translate performative confidence into my everyday life.

 

Embarrassment, or more truthfully, shame, no longer dictates what I am willing or unwilling to do. It leads to a lot of...situations. I share my strangest, could-be-embarrassing stories so others will share theirs, and we can laugh, and collectively not be embarrassed or ashamed together. Join the fever dream, asleep or awake.​

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Your local digital absurdist,

Laken