Dreams Underground

These research notes explore dreams as historical and cultural artifacts within the context of an ethnographic study conducted in 1990s and 2000s of unhoused populations in New York City. The individuals the author met offered a cross-section of life underground in terms of age, gender, and ethnicity. After, by chance, hearing people speak of the “big dreams” they had while living in the tunnel, the author asked several underground residents to record their dreams using tape recorders he provided and to write their stories and dreams in journals. These journals became instrumental in understanding how environmental and spatial factors and surrounding darkness affected their imagination and experience. The dreams of this unhoused population, who found shelter in bunker-like spaces with no windows and no separation barriers along the two-and-a-half-mile underground expanse, combined sensory input of the sounds, sights, and smells of the tunnel with memories and fears, even as rest and sleep provided solitude, tranquility, and a kind of freedom

Ethnography · Narrative · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Night-time city culture · Spatial and Cultural Studies