Dearest Waking Dreamer

by Meg Bartlett
Issue #1 | March 20, 2026

"Bob Saget gets thrown into the back of a van... 9-1-1 isn’t working... cars [are] on fire and buildings are just starting to fall down"

Dearest Waking Dreamer,

Welcome to our very first issue! 🥳

In this newsletter we'll explore and interpret a detailed apocalypse dream from Jess and answer Ingrid's question about the meaning of music in dreams.

Let's dive in!

Dearest Waking Dreamer is the twice-monthly paid newsletter from Meg Bartlett, dedicated to interpreting dream submissions and answering your dream or OBE-related questions.

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If you have a dream submission or a question for the column you can reply to this email or send a new email to meg@megbartlett.com​

Jess’s Dream

"This dream was really wild because it felt very, very intense like I was in an action movie but I felt very clear headed the whole time. It started off with a big group of people hanging out in Northeast Minneapolis and there weren't that many people that I knew but [a close friend] was there. Other than that it was just a bunch of random people including Bob Saget and it was funny because he’s definitely a very famous person.

All of a sudden this band shows up and Bob Saget gets thrown into the back of a van and everyone's very nonchalant about it, but they drive away and I'm like, “Hey, you guys that was really bad, they just kidnapped Bob Saget, we should call 9-1-1.” And everyone was being very laissez-faire about it like, “Yeah, maybe...” I was like, “You guys, someone just got kidnapped and we should call the authorities immediately because outcomes improve dramatically if you can get these things moving in action as soon as possible.” But everybody was being so dismissive of me.

I start to realize something is really funky and that people are not responding in an appropriate way to something that's as horrible as someone being kidnapped off the street. I grab [my close friend] and I'm like, “Hey, let's get a couple of the people who can start to think logically about this and pull ourselves into a different group. Because I think there's something going on here.” It didn't feel like people's intentions were good, it felt really uncomfortable like why are these people being so dismissive?

Then we ended up in this upper room that felt a lot like the Hewing [Hotel]. It's like an old warehouse-y style building with big rafters. I said let’s climb up into these rafters so that we're not by these people. We start talking about it and call 9-1-1 but it's not going through, it's just disconnecting. I see another girl who I went to high school with and ask to borrow her phone to call 9-1-1 and she lets me use it but it’s not working… 9-1-1 isn’t working.

This is very bad. Like something is going on. The other people who are being really dismissive of the situation are starting to believe me and I'm like, you guys, we should probably get out of the city right now.

So a group of us gets together and we're on the bridge that goes across Washington and we're running. And as we're running, the bridge starts to collapse. As it's collapsing, it’s turning into carpet so it doesn't have any structure. We all got to the very end where I managed to grab onto the end of the bridge. I'm holding onto it and two people are holding onto me. I had a concrete post, I could fully wrap my arms around and there were a couple of people who had made it off the bridge and we asked them for help and they reached down and grabbed the people who were holding onto me and pulled them up.

It was just so intense and it was so crazy and it was like we all almost fell to our deaths and then barely pulled it through. But then we get up and look around and chaos is ensuing. Like there's cars on fire and buildings are just starting to fall down and we're like, “Okay… well, this is validating that everything felt super fucking weird. So how about we get out of the city now?”

Then we all, as an apocalypse squad, start to make our way away and that was when I woke up.

The whole thing just felt so vivid and so intense but also had this sort of camaraderie vibe to it. It was really frustrating in the beginning when they weren’t paying attention to this but once we started to work together it was really great."

The Interpretation

Dear Jess,

What a perfect example of an apocalypse dream! Before we dive into the specifics I'd like to share a quote from my Compendium of Common Nightmares e-book (it's free!):

Right off the bat, your mention of Minneapolis is imperative.

Minneapolis has most recently been in the news for extensive I.C.E. activity, the grassroots comradery of Minnesotans coming together to protect their neighbors, and a national cry for justice regarding those being unlawfully targeted, profiled, detained, harassed, deported, or straight-up murdered by I.C.E. agents. I think your dream has a lot to do with these recent events.

Let's break it down!

[A note to readers: dream meanings can vary based on your unique life experience and perspective. Always take what resonates and leave the rest. Click here for more on self-interpretation.]

Imagery List + Definitions

1. Location + Events, NE Minneapolis: see above description of defining events
2. Close friend: camaraderie, support, you don't feel completely alone in this
3. Random group of people: (in the context of this specific dream) the general public and your thoughts or feelings toward them
4. Bob Saget: a well-known wholesome individual, "America's Dad"
5. Drive-by kidnapping: a sudden, negative event in which someone is taken away against their will
6. 9-1-1: first responders, people or a service you can rely on in times of need, the most visible, every-day representation of government
7. Warehouse: storage space
8. Bridge: almost always represents a major life shift or crossing a new path in dreams
9. Chaos/apocalypse scene: something is being destroyed

The Weave

The main concept of your dream is most likely exploring the recent events affecting Minneapolis (I.C.E. agents and their interactions with the public).

Your dream gets rolling when Bob Saget is kidnapped. His kidnapping likely represents a particular story you noticed in the news regarding the disappearance, kidnapping, or unlawful deportation of someone. Bob represents the every-day person, the parent, the neighbor who's life has been wrongly upended.

As you acknowledge his kidnapping (what you see in the world that is wrong), your concerns are dismissed. I would ask yourself when you started noticing the wrongness in waking life, did it seem like no one around you actually cared about what was happening?

You then turn to your friend and suggest distancing yourselves from the people who dismissed you. You enter the warehouse which likely represents a time you physically or emotionally retreated in waking life.

The warehouse represents a safe space to withdraw and search your memory (the storage space) for how to handle or respond to this situation. Did you feel retreating in waking life to take stock of any past experiences for reference?

The dream suggests, however, that you haven't encountered anything quite like this moment before (seeing your community so affected by an outside force). Therefore, despite the group of dismissive people, you fall back on what you've been raised to know: that assistance is always available.

In the dream, you call out to the people who are supposed to help in times of crisis but the call doesn't go through. You call again on a different device (trying a different method to reach out) but 9-1-1 is completely down.

This whole section of the dream could indicate that you feel the protective, lawful systems you were taught to rely on, are not currently working or available. That's a huge internal shift for the brain to rewire!

You now know that something is very, very wrong and this is where the dream shifts from the past to the very recent past or even the present moment.

The people around you in the dream (the general public) are finally acknowledging what you already saw and felt: that something is very wrong.

You all come together in awareness and begin running across the bridge. In waking life, I see this as the everyday Minnesotans who decided to act and do something, coming together as a community to protect their neighbors. Transitioning from bystanders to activists (there are 4 different roles in activism: helpers, advocates, organizers, and rebels) is another major shift and is represented by you all crossing the bridge.

The group barely makes it but is able to hold on and you are all pulled up by others who were already on the other side. When you look around you see total chaos but feel a sense of camaraderie.

It got pretty intense here in Minneapolis and the city is still experiencing the ongoing efforts of I.C.E. Now that you've "crossed the bridge" you and your community fully see and acknowledge what is going on and you've found a like-minded group to stand by your side as you navigate a drastically changed world.

The Dream's Wisdom

This dream is asking you to fully acknowledge how the recent events in Minneapolis have affected your life, your views, and your relationships with others.

When times get tough or the world feels overwhelming, think about the like-minded individuals in your life and lean on them for support.

You mention at the end how you felt frustrated in the beginning of the dream but once you started working together with others at the end you felt better despite the circumstances.

The news may be intense right now but people are re-discovering their friends, family, and neighbors. We're all re-learning how to provide assistance to those around us and how to ask for help ourselves.

We're reintegrating.

Your dream is incredibly powerful, Jess, and I hope this interpretation gives you more to think about and digest as you and your community move forward.

For all of us...

This is a time to come together.

This is a time to re-build community.

Music in Dreams

This week's dream question comes from Ingrid.

"What does music in dreams mean? I’ve dreamed music that has been classical, artists that I active listen to, and some songs that I don’t listen to or haven’t in a long time." - Ingrid

Hi Ingrid, great question!

I'll start us off with an overarching theory: it's been argued by evolutionary anthropologists that music was the precursor to spoken language (though this is still heavily debated).

The argument draws from our observations of great apes, particularly gibbons and bonobos, who sing and communicate through song.

In my opinion, this suggests that music may be the default language of the dream space. Music could connect dreamers to a deeper, more primal part of themselves or perhaps a part of themselves more connected to the natural world.

My personal out-of-body experiences support this hypothesis.

During my OBEs I almost exclusively communicate with others (human and non-human beings alike) through the language of concepts. No words are exchanged, instead an energy created by the overarching thoughts and emotions of individuals is exchanged. It's a much more effective form of communication as there's no room for misunderstanding the nuance of words!

Music, at its roots, is a combination of sounds and rhythms which evoke emotion (think of all the different genres and their particularities).

So it's possible that music is a much more effective form of communication than language and that the dream space could default to music to provide greater clarity.

Music in dreams may be:

• an added effect to hone in on a particular emotion or theme
• the psychological brain intentionally communicating something in a way that would be hard to misunderstand
• pulling a personally-significant song to add memory or nostalgia into the dream
• contact from another being or entity using the language of concepts or think-feeling to heighten clarity in communication

To take it a bit further, researchers studying music's effects on the brain have "found that an area in the left hemisphere decoded words while one in the right hemisphere decoded the melody."

As a refresher, the brain's left hemisphere is centered in logic while the right hemisphere is centered in creativity. Music with lyrics could activate a fuller experience.

My suggestion, Ingrid: view the music in your dreams as a highlighted passage calling for your attention. Ask yourself what the music makes you feel, what it reminds you of, or what the artist is trying to evoke. Think of it as a dream interpretation aid within the dream itself!

That's all for this week. Let me know what you thought about Jess's dream, the interpretation, music in dreams or anything else on your mind.

Talk to you soon,

Meg 🐝

If you have a dream submission or a question for the column you can reply to this email or send a new email to meg@megbartlett.com​

Who the Heck is Meg? Meg Bartlett is an author, dream interpreter, experienced out-of-body explorer, US Marine Corps veteran, and new mom living in NE Minneapolis. By day, she enjoys writing, disc golfing with her husband, and reading fantasy and sci-fi novels. By night, Meg explores the universe through her dreams and out-of-body experiences. She is currently working on bringing these galactic encounters to the waking world through creative writing projects. Learn More

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