I only dream when I sleep in my childhood bed…

It’s the horse.

I was introduced to this painting while I was studying the Romantic Movement through the Royal Conservatory of Music in the early 1990s. (There are various versions of this painting and Fuseli’s works are fascinating but will be left alone for now.) I didn’t see it as first. I focused on the lifeless body, still and lovely, in such sharp contrast to the ghastly demon so smug to be sitting on her chest.

I learned that a nightmare in the 1700s was thought to be caused by just that – a demon sitting on the sleeper’s chest. Clever, I thought. It explains the sudden jolt of consciousness, the shortness of breath as the dream is still vivid and the invasion of privacy that could only be the doing of the “impure.”

Then I noticed the horse. It jumped out at me from behind that curtain in a very uncomfortable way.

I still haven’t completely figured out what the meaning behind this horse is. Academic text suggests the word “mare” is a play on the word “nightmare.”

I’m not completely convinced. To me the horse represents an unsettling aspect that captures exactly what a nightmare should. I bet that the use of the same animal’s head in The Godfather was no mistake. The horror continues even when awake.

And just like that I was hooked. Bring on the unusual, the disturbing, the clever and the provoking. I embrace it.