July 2020
Dreaming Denver, a thirty-stop dream-tour of the city of Denver is now up at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
from MCA Denver:
Recognizing that not everyone will be ready or able to return to the building yet, Dreaming Denver, created by artist Mathias Svalina exclusively for MCA Denver, will be a spoken-word audio tour of thirty dreams to be listened to at thirty locations throughout the city, tapping into a collective subconscious of imagined histories hidden in plain sight. The first loop of twelve dreams takes listeners on a three and a half-mile trek throughout the neighborhood surrounding the Museum of Contemporary Art. The audio experience, which is free and accessible via telephone, begins at the museum and winds through lower downtown, and concludes at Confluence Park. An additional eighteen stops, which can be experienced in any order, are constellated throughout the outer suburbs...Visit MCA Denver's site to learn more
Junuary 2020
In January Dream Delivery Service will mail out daily hand-written postcard dreams to subscribers. Only five subscriptions will be available. Then in mid-February to mid-march, the service will be delivering dreams in Nashville, Tennessee.
Feb 10
Dream Delivery Service will be in the Pacific Northwest this spring & summer, delivering dreams in Portland in April & in Seattle in June.
While in Portland, I'll also be running a two-day workshop on Dream Poetics at the wonderful Literary Arts.
Dream Delivery Service will be in Boise in September & Durham, NC in November.
Aug 19, 2018
From mid-September to mid-October, the Dream Delivery Service will be in Chicago! Visit Mathias at The Poetry Foundation on Thursday, September 6, 2018, 7:00 PM for a dreamy reading.
You can subscribe right now for bike-dreams in Chicago, or mail-dreams wherever in the world you are.
April 2, 2018
For May the Dream Delivery Service will be delivering dreams in Buffalo New York. It will be hosted by the wonderful Just Buffalo Literary Center. You can subscribe now! Bike-dreams in Buffalo, mail-dreams anywhere!
I will also be conducting writing workshops & hosting some events:
May 8 & 10 Dream Poem Workshop – JBWC
May 15 & 17 Writing As A Daily Practice – JBWC
May 19 Adult Workshop – Writing As A Daily Practice (register by emailing nfalck@justbuffalo.org)
May 22 & 24 Dream Films – Buffalo Center for Art & Technology – in collaboration with Squeaky Wheel
May 29 & 31 Dream Binding – JBWC
Nov 27, 2017
Mari Cleven’s Emmy-winning short documentary about the Dream Delivery Service
Nov 21, 2017
Dreameaning: A Night of Collaborative Dream Divination
Please RSVP on Eventbrite if you can.
Like speed-dating for dreams, like a social cartography of the unconscious, like a nest of knotting images, DREAMEANING asks you to offer your weirdest dreams up to a room of amateur interpreters. Join us for this joyous celebration of the weird things our brains do.
Come with a dream in mind to share with kind strangers. Bring that dream, your interpretive prowess, & a healthy sense of wonder. Expect a bit of chance absurdity along the way.
This event is a part of the Dream Deliver Service’s November residency at Understudy. You can subscribe to a month of daily-delivered dreams at dreamdeliveryservice.com
Understudy is located at the Colorado Convention Center / Theatre District light rail stop near 14th and Stout. Look for the B-Cycle station next to the light rail tracks or Shantell Martin's art bench.
Nov 16, 2017
The Denver Dream-In: Open-Mike Storytelling for Dreams
A house that’s your childhood home but also a treehouse filled with sleepy hyenas, scuba diving through a wrecked train with The Rock, & the inevitable cascade of teeth falling out: tell us your dreams at The Denver Dream-In!
The Dream-In is an open-mike storytelling event for dreams, a night to tell your weirdest, most memorable, most mystifying dreams to an appreciate audience. It is a celebration of the narrative power of the illogical, the wisdom of the absurd, & the primeval fears of taking that test for which you never studied.
You can sign up in advance or at the event to tell your dreams. In preparation, think about the dream & how to tell the fullest version of it. Recall the sense details & concrete details. Recall the precise complexities of the dream’s emotions. Keep it under ten minutes & keep it PG-ish.
Some people glaze over when you tell them your dreams. We are not those people.
This event is a part of the Dream Delivery Service’s November residency at Understudy. You can subscribe to a month of daily-delivered dreams at dreamdeliveryservice.com
Oct 13, 2017
For November Dream Delivery Service will be running out of Denver's new arts incubator space, Understudy. More details to come, but we'll be hosting some dreamy hynagogic events, all in site of the Big Blue Bear.
Oct 9, 2017
Denver folks: Ben Loory, the weird, wild, inventive, & hilarious short story writer, will be reading at Tattered Cover 10/22.
And I, the commonplace, tamed, reductionist, & sad dream (& sometimes poem & fiction) writer, will be reading with him.
10/22 is a Sunday & the reading is at 2pm. Which is an odd time for a reading, but maybe perfect if you, as I do, consider 4pm an appealing bedtime.
July 1, 2017
Dream Delivery Service in The Denver Post
June 2017
Dream written for The Denver Post
You are walking in the desert before dawn when you come to great pit. The pit extends as far as you can see. It is full of scaffolding & cranes & half-built skyscrapers & new condos. Workers in hardhats & orange vests rush about, lifting beams & digging trenches & welding things to other things. They are building a brand new city in the pit, a city of right angles & white paint & freshly cut stone. A city of tomorrow. Then the sun rises over the horizon & sunlight beams into the pit. Where the sunlight hits it melts the pit-city, the half-built structures turning into water, the scaffolding collapsing into puddles. They have built pit-city out of ice. They must have known it would melt when the sun came out. You decide to write a song about this, a song called “The Ballad of Pit City.” Before you can write the song you need to find a guitar. You walk down into Pit City, hoping to find a music store or a pawn shop, but all the buildings have melted. The workers are huddled in the shady edges of the pit. You walk up to a worker & ask where you might find a guitar. Not here, the worker says, not now. But you should try tomorrow. We rebuild this city every night once the sun goes down. You thank the worker & walk through the flooded puddles of the melted city. And who is this person walking beside you, carrying a bundle of firewood? It is enough to know they are a friend.
March 19, 2017
On Sundays everyone dreams the same dream
March 14, 2017
Dream written for NPR's Morning Edition
You are in a dark tunnel. You have a small flashlight, which illuminates tiny specks. The tunnel stretches out in front of you & behind you. Water drips & plops from unseen sources into unseen puddles. You walk into the dark for a long time until you trip over something & fall: a stack of newspapers bundled up with twine. You turn your flashlight on the bundle: It is all of the newspapers from every city from the day you were born. The bundle is too heavy to carry so you leave it & keep walking until you trip & fall over another bundle. It is all the newspapers from your first birthday. You keep an eye out as you walk now & come across another bundle: all the papers from your second birthday. Then your third. Fourth. So on. You grow accustomed to the bundles & pass by them without looking until you find a bigger bundle & a steel bucket. The bucket is full of keys. The bundle consists of every newspaper from your last birthday until today. Some are normal newspapers, some are blank except for ads, some are filled with unreadable stories of nonsense & gibberish. Each has a keyhole on the front. You take keys from the bucket & try to fit them to the newspapers’ keyholes. When you fit a key to a blank paper & turn the key, the paper fills with stories. When you fit a key to a nonsense paper, the paper falls apart into dust. When you fit a key into a normal newspaper a bit of light fills the tunnel. And as you unlock more newspapers & the tunnel fills with more light, you realize it’s not a tunnel at all, but a home you recognize on a street you recognize in the neighborhood in which you live.
Jan 15, 2017
On Sundays everyone dreams the same dream
July 1, 2016
Today was the last day of Dream Delivery Service in Richmond. In 31 days I biked over 800 miles & delivered over 1400 dreams. I love Richmond.
Next I will be delivering dreams in Tucson. Monday 10/31 I’ll be giving a talk at the MOCA Tucson about dreams, delivering & whatnot.
If you live in Tucson please come by the MOCA on Monday & chat with me!