We’re looking forward to introducing you to Walter Berry. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Walter , thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
There are times when I am so deep in the writing process that I completely lose track of time. In those long moments, the ideas are not only flowing, but ideas are bouncing off of other ideas and creating new thoughts and connections. I will be floating along, sometimes pausing for long periods as things start spinning into focus. That is followed by such a joyful hammering of the keys that I have no idea of time.
Suddenly it’s 3 AM and my body informs me I have to simply stop. I finally listen, but I always stop right in the midddle of a thought so that when I return to my writing lair, the excttement is renewed as I pick up where I left off.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am an author, a Dream Worker, and a visual artist working in encaustics and printmaking. The response to my best-selling book- Drawn into the Dream- How Drawing your Dreams can take you to the Land of Awes has encouraged me to write a second book titled The Detective of Dreams- Solving the Mysteries of your Dreams. I am having a ball writing it. For the last 20 years I have been conducting workshops and running dream groups here in Los Angeles and all over the world. I use many of the dreams I have worked (most of them from people here in Los Angeles) to illustrate my method. You would be amazed at what wisdom and understanding our nighttime dreams give us if we spend a little time unraveling the mysteries they throw at us. In the new book I delve into the mysteries surrounding dreams and show people how to work with the clues to understand what their own unconscious is telling them. Along the way I share a few stories about my many years working in Hollywood, such as a story about Faye Dunaway and Tom Hanks whom I interacted with during productions of Mommie Dearest and Sully.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
An astounding experience from my youth has shaped the arc of my life in a powerful way.
In July 1967 I was a teenager working at a 2,000 seat outdoor theater in New Jersey. It was part of the Summer Stock circut where multple stars appeared. We had Jane Mansfield in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, The Temptations, John Raitt, Jack Benny and so many more that performed there. From July 10th until July 15th that year we had Judy Garland. I heard that she was a pain in the butt to work with. Sure enough. when she showed up for rehearsal, she was surly and angry that she had to be there.
My job was to escort her down to the stage at the beginning of the show and escort her back to the dressing room at the end of the show. I didn’t look forward to it.
At the beginning of the show, I walked her down the aisle of the theater in the round to the stage as the full orchestra started the music. People rose to their feet and cheered and clapped as I brought her down the aisle. It was deafening.
There she was, in her sequined paisley pantsuit, holding court in the center of a ring of adoring fans. She smiled and waved, music vamping in the background, as she took control of the room. This is going to be a long night, I thought, she is milking this Wizard of Oz celebrity thing to the max.
Good, My job was pretty much done. I quickly retreated to the top of the aisle and relaxed. I wasn’t expecting much from all this. Give me the Rolling Stones any day.
And then it happened.
She opened her mouth and started singing. Maybe singing isn’t quite the word. I have no succinct words for what happened at that moment, but the angry, dour woman I had met before the show suddenly tore open the heavens, and when she reached her hand out as she sang, sweeping it across the entire circle of the theater, it reached inside everyone’s body and grabbed their soul and shook it to life. I was thunderstruck. I mean, she was mesmerizing. And all this happened in the very first note that came out of her standing there. Resistance was futile. She was the queen of everything at that moment, and she knew it. You could feel the waves of energy pouring out across the crowd from that little woman. It was such a new experience for me, so new that I was utterly confused. Why did my body feel this way? It was as though there was a switch deep inside me that I had no idea was there and it had magically been activated.
And it didn’t stop. For the next two hours or so, she held 2000 people in the palm of her hand. For sure this was one of the seminal experiences of my life—hence my narration of it here. I was in synch with something for the first time in my life, something totally unexpected and a huge shock to my system. It was my introduction to life, really. Everything I do with dreamwork and the way I now listen to the hearts and souls of people at every turn results from that moment—it changed me forever.
I have worked for more than 30 years in the Motion Picture and Television and Music industries and have worked with or been associated with tons and tons of legends. I have witnessed and had conversations with Prince, Madonna, B.B. King, Paul McCartney, and so many more, and witnessed up-close the magic they make; but no one, absolutely no one in all these years has ever exhibited the charisma and draw and magic of that strange little woman.
So, there I was, having some sort of spiritual experience. All of us were in the moment, every damn one of us in the audience was swimming in the pool of awe she created. We hung on every vibration, we flowed like one, and thunderous applause followed each song. People were on their feet for most of the night. People were cheering, and I mean cheering. The thunderous response to her performance was so loud, my buddies who worked out in the parking lot told me later that the tent was shaking like it was going to explode. It was astounding, just astounding. It felt like the entire place was transported to some place not on this planet.
We got to the end of the show and I almost forgot that I had a job to do. My job was to get Judy Garland off the stage at the end of the show and escort her to her dressing room. I had two other guys who would help, but it was my job to make sure she made it off stage safely.
The final song in the encore was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, her signature song from The Wizard of Oz. Near the end of that we were instructed to go down onto the stage, and then walk her up the main aisle to the dressing room.
Well, you can imagine what happened. She started into the song, and the place erupted. In all my life I have never witnessed anything like it. By the end people were crying—no, bawling. Middle-aged guys in suits with tears pouring down their faces, women’s makeup smeared into mush, and the screams and clapping were deafening.
And then my worst nightmare happened. They mobbed the stage! People pushed into the aisles, then down onto the stage from all directions. Some bold souls actually climbed over the chairs to get to her. It wasn’t mean or pushy, but the entire stage was suddenly filled with adoring fans.
So, the three of us workers sliced through the sea of taffeta, pinstripe suits and deafening cheers to the stage. Oddly there was a slight clearing around her as she shook hands and embraced people. We stepped into the circle, and my buddies formed a wedge pointing up the main aisle towards the black curtains, behind which were the dressing rooms. I was tall and thin in those days, weighing 128 pounds, but strong, so I slipped my right arm under her knees, put my left arm around her back and picked her up. She was small, so she fit nicely into my embrace. She leaned into me, her right arm over my left shoulder, waving at people and her left arm grabbing me around my chest to stabilize her. I guess I understood the theatricality of the moment on some level, so I lifted her enough that she was higher than me, so that the crowd could see her, and when I did this, a cheer went up. I yelled, “Go! Go! Go!” to my guys, and we slowly moved up the aisle, slicing through the sea of people that enveloped us and then filled in behind as we moved. I could feel people tugging at me, grabbing for Judy’s hand, but somehow we managed to creep up towards the backstage.
And here is where things got just weird. Now that we were on the move, and the panic of getting things under control was pretty much over, suddenly I became more aware of my own feelings. Hmm…. How do I put this? Well, frankly, I became Judy Garland at that moment, as embarrassing as that sounds. Somehow, I was completely aware that whatever that thing that Judy Garland possessed was pouring from her body into and through mine. Does that sound crazy? I felt like I was connected to everyone in the room and feeling love from them, making love to them. This was weird. Somehow by having Judy Garland in my arms while she was in this moment of blazing glory made me a conduit of feeling, no, more than feeling, I was a conduit of awesome love and empathy. And what a feeling!
That experience changed me forever. Whatever sensitivity and care I have for others comes from that moment.
Thank you Judy.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
Like so many people, I lived through a difficult divorce that threw my soul to the ground. At the same time I divorced I also left my religion which had played a central role in my devout life. I lost all my friends and lost my direction in life. I was a lost soul. I went into therapy and that opened up all the wounds I had so carefully hidden deep somewhere in my soul. With all of that exposed, my dreams became distressing and nightmarish. What a mess.
My therapist suggested I take a course in dreams up the coast at Esalen Institute in Big Sur from a guy named Jeremy Taylor. And I did. I spent a week with this group of people who worked with their dreams and it changed everything in my life. I felt listened to for the first time. My dreams were still dire, but now gave me direction. I dreamed that I was trekking across the frozen tundra of the North and killed a sacred buffalo with a gold-tipped spear. Jeremy saw the frozen land as frozen emotions and the death of the buffalo as a huge moment of change I needed to execute. That week in Big Sur took that failed, self-doubting soul and brought him to life. Working with my dream and other people’s dreams saved my soul.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What do you believe is true but cannot prove?
Dreams are mysterious and compelling. They are mysterious because they often come in a strange symbolic tale that takes some work to understand. They are compelling because if you take the time to think about your dream and do a bit of work around it, a compelling part of the understanding of your life and purpose will present itself, but I cannot prove that at all.
My very unscientific experience is that if you spend some time working with a dream, without warning, a powerful sense of awe will ensue as you uncover the meanings and emotions packed into these wild stories cooked up from our deep interior. Dreams are here to help us, even when they have powerful negative emotions and events.
Yes, even that dream where you lose your wallet, or the one where your teeth fall out, or the dream where you run a sword through someone in complete anger are there for your movement forward in life.
Something magical happens in the process of working on a dream. This strange and almost inexplicable magic is so overwhelming that I disappear from my own sense of being.
During the entire process of investigating a dream, I am swimming in the currents of an undeniable uplifting force that is so powerful I can only smile and ride the wave. My god, what a feeling!
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. When do you feel most at peace?
I am one of seven children and while growing up in New Jersey I had a secret no one knew. When it would rain, I would sneak out to the backyard and hide in the tiny tin shed that housed the lawn mower, I would sit on that smelly old machine and revel in the pounding rain. I would make up voices where the rain would talk to me, sing to me, fight with each other. It was my secret place of peace and solitary delight.
I still find my peace by retreating to a place of solitary contemplation. I dare not tell you where that is now. It would ruin it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.drawnintothedream.com
- Instagram: Artistwalt
- Linkedin: Walter (The Wizard of Awes) Berry
- Facebook: Walter Berry
- Youtube: @walterberrydreams •
