Part 1: Dream Presentation
Dreams often arrive as cryptic messengers, and this particular one arrives wrapped in a paradox of familiarity and strangeness. I encountered a man whose head glowed with the vivid, cel-shaded animation of A-ha’s 'Take on Me' music video—crisp lines, saturated colors, a dreamlike fluidity that felt simultaneously nostalgic and otherworldly. His body, however, was resolutely grounded in reality: a muscular, shirtless torso, blue jeans that clung to his frame, exuding a casual confidence. As he stood before me, he began to sing, the first phrase cutting through the dream’s surreal atmosphere: 'Hey, I got a question...'—and then I woke, the rest of his query lost in the transition between sleep and consciousness. What perplexed me most was that I’d never heard this song before in waking life, yet its melody felt oddly compelling, a contradiction to my usual preference for rock music over pop. The visual style, too, blended two distinct cultural touchstones: the iconic 'Take on Me' animation and the retro, cartoonish aesthetic of Steve Madden commercials, the kind that appear in The Wolf of Wall Street—bright, stylized, and slightly unreal, yet strangely familiar. Despite its disjointed nature, this dream has haunted me, leaving me to wonder: what does an animated head singing an unasked question reveal about my inner landscape?