Reading aloud

Reading aloud in a dream is the dream's image of turning a page into a voice that a room can share. The reader is not improvising; the words are already there, and the work is to give them the rhythm and weight they need to land in the listening. The dream brings reading aloud when something in your life — a story being told to a child, a scripture being read in a household, a letter from someone gone being read out at a table — is currently being lifted off the page and into the air of a room. Reading aloud at the right pace, the listeners settled, is the dream affirming the kept transmission. Reading aloud to a room that is not listening, the words being made and going nowhere, is the dream noting that the act of giving the text breath has been kept and the receiving end has gone quiet.