Interview: Francis Lavergne, Dream Interpreter

That’s the image suffusing my thoughts while speaking to Kaya, a supremely serene, world-renowned dream interpreter, whose show at Assembly George Square is a great way to start the day, while the previous night’s dreams are still fresh in your mind.

A musical prodigy, Kaya – born Francis Martin Lavergne – became a huge star in his native Canada, starting out singing in churches when he was six, and turning professional, recording contracts and all, at nine. By 20, he’d inked a publishing contract with CBS Canada (later Sony Music). His albums went platinum; his singles and videos shot to No 1; he was nominated for Juno Awards (Canada’s Grammys) and toured with Celine Dion.

In a voice as soft as it is soothing, he says: “I think it was destiny. Even when I was young, singing was a way to help people. I was not attracted by money. It was a way to be in contact with people and share emotions. Everyone was saying I had a special voice. I started being invited to festivals, and it became a career. But I would not recommend it to young people.”

Well, it does make for an unorthodox childhood. “I had the best life that everybody can dream of. I was very famous, but I didn’t live a rock and roll life. For me music was about helping people. I was not attracted by all the grandness. It was difficult to be in these environments – when I was young I was very shy.”

Back in the day, with a long, feathery hair cut reminiscent of David Cassidy’s, he was a teen idol and subjected to intense media scrutiny. “It’s absolutely amazing what happened. I had a contract with EMI worth millions of dollars, I had the Celine Dion tour and they were preparing me for an international career. I had multiple platinum records, mostly in French. I had created the perfect life: big houses and cars and my daughter Kasara had just arrived. I have nothing bad to say about my record company, they were good to me. But I felt there was something missing. Even [with] all this abundance, it was not nourishing.”

Kaya pulled the plug. “I started to receive very, very intense dreams. Ten to 50 a night. Prior to that, from age ten to 26, I didn’t remember one dream. But of course we all dream, all the time. The computer is always open! When the dreams started, it was everything I was looking for. I was fascinated. And of course it was very disturbing. I was receiving quite intense nightmares. I could have ended up in a psychiatric hospital, but because I had a good life, and abundance, I decided to walk away and study that.”

Surely EMI went ballistic? “Yes. Everyone. I had been a good artist, never complaining. They said take a sabbatical, travel, you’ve been working hard all your life. I said no, I will never come back. I disconnected, and became a hermit for many years.” He was able to follow through on this partly because of an inheritance he received from a loyal fan.

Not surprisingly, his decision coincided with the end of his first marriage, and made tabloid headlines. But he was comfortable with solitude. He slept – and dreamed – a lot, and meditated on the imagery the rest of the time. “I was like those young guys who play on the computer until they crack the code. Of course, it was scary for my family, for everybody, because I was completely disconnecting from the world.”

He moved to New York, where he cared for an elderly man during the last months of his life. The family had no idea he was famous. “I ended up being anonymous for the first time in my life. It was an extraordinary, profound experience. You help yourself as you help the other person. I started to go very deep into the symbols. The more I did it, the more it was like a memory emerging.”

Kaya’s knowledge comes from within. He never read Jung, Freud, or even popular dream dictionaries. He didn’t even know they existed. He says: “I was dyslexic until I wrote my first book. Though I knew about psychology, this was such an intimate experience, I needed to solve myself, to save myself, in a way.” What emerged was an approach more spiritual than psychological. “Dreams serve only to help us evolve,” he maintains.

In his book How to Interpret Dreams and Signs, he writes: “Dreams give us the best answers to our questions. Why? Because they come from our unconscious. Their message is pure and direct, in the sense that it is not filtered or distorted by the conscious self – by desires, expectations, and preconceptions. In order to understand dreams we must remember that all the elements and all the symbols we see represent states of conscience… that are parts of our being.”

The beginning of a dream sets out its theme, and every change of scene indicates the mind going deeper into the symbols, which Kaya analyses according to the order in which they appear. “It’s like an algebraic equation. All the symbols will specify aspects of our consciousness, our personality.

“What I do is find the root of the symbol. Symbols are very logical. Take a table, for example. How do we live at the table? We use the table to share a meal, to share information. At the root, it is a symbol of sharing. So, if it’s the table of your grandfather, then you have to do the equation, Table (symbol of sharing) plus whatever your grandfather means to you.”

Another hallmark of his approach is embracing both the positive and negative interpretation of every symbol. “Dreams are a state of consciousness, emotions, thoughts, ways of thinking and behaving. They’re a combination of qualities – virtues and weaknesses, plus and minus. That’s the rule of symbolic language, that’s why the table can be positive or negative. Certain dictionaries only give one side of it. Even if a symbol is very positive, if it is not behaving well, then it becomes negative. To be positive, a symbol has to be always in the right place. If you see a spider in the bed, even if the spider is calm and serene, it is negative because it is not in the right place. In real life we will never want our child to have that spider in a bed. That will be automatically negative.”

He’s been doing this for 17 years now. Is there a dream everyone has, all the time? Laughing, Kaya replies: “Water. A lot of people have dreams about water. Difficulties with water. Flooding.”

Not the classic exam nightmare? “Yes, we hear this often. And difficulties with cars. Also dreams about toilets. It’s normal!”

• Kaya – Dream Interpreter, is at Assembly George Square, until 27 August, 10 am. Kaya will also perform songs from his new album, Born Under The Star of Change, at Acoustic Music Centre @ St Bride’s, 20-26 August, 4:30pm. www.kayadreams.com.