McGregor died in 1994, but researcher Phil Milstein gathered recordings of McGregor's dream-speech considered too risque to be released in the 1960s and assembled them for the 1999 album, Dion McGregor Dreams Again, released on Tzadik Records. Critic Joslyn Layne writes that "Despite his lack of success as a song lyricist, McGregor's narration of his vivid dreamlife provided a more unique artistic contribution than any usually recorded." He was unable to find much success afterwards, however, and by the 1980s had given up on songwriting. As a narrator of his (often terrifying) dreams, Dion adopted various personas but frequently established a fey, argumentative, insolent approach to the subject at hand – be it a hot air balloon trip to the moon with a group of multi-ethnic children, a frantic journey around New York, or a tattooing job on a woman's tongue.Īs a songwriter, McGregor's biggest success came when his song "Where Is The Wonder" (cowritten with roommate Michael Barr) was recorded by Barbra Streisand on her hit album My Name Is Barbra (1965).
McGregor would essentially narrate his dreams at conversational volume. A book of the same name, containing the transcripts of a wider selection of McGregor's dreams, and with illustrations by Edward Gorey, was also published in 1964. An LP of his dream diatribes – The Dream World Of Dion McGregor (He Talks In His Sleep) – was released to minor acclaim by Decca Records in 1964. The film reminds us that our wakeful self is no richer or more important than our dormant being that is irrepressibly ruminating on the remains of the day.Dion McGregor (1922–1994) was an American songwriter known for talking in his sleep. Our intention is to reconnect with why documentaries are made: to awaken the flesh with which we sense and make sense, to question the enigma that is our lives and what it means to be human, and to reflect and incarnate a world beyond ourselves, our relationships with other creatures, animate and inanimate, real and surreal.
In somniloquies, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor discover a dark, forked path to the unconscious in the ranting, sleep-talking voice of an obsessive and possibly deranged individual whose racist, misogynistic and xenophobic fears are unleashed with propulsive force and screeching climaxes. Almost hallucinatory images of unidentified sleeping figures float across the screen to the accompaniment of increasingly unnerving monologues, the “dream narratives” of Dion McGregor, an aspiring Broadway lyricist who may have been performing for his roommate actively recording these sessions.
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