It Was Just My Imagination (or Daydream Believer)

I was born in the 50’s. I grew up in the 60’s. I’m now almost 70. I remember them well. All the rock groups. The Beatles came to Ed Sullivan. Oh how we were fascinated by them. The careless way they tossed their hair, the way they talked of love, while standing there on the dance floor. What little girl wouldn’t dream of that: a prince to carry her off. I saved the bubble gum cards, pictures of them on a boat in the Caribbean. Of course, it was all about Paul for me. I was 6. 

Life raged onward and my sister and I were acting out the words of Marty Robbin’s “El Paso.” She did a very good job of seeing “the smoke from the rifle.” Then there was also “Running Bear.” You “dive” from “cliffs” into the raging river!

Then came the world of the radio. After growing up with my father’s twangy country music (we had one Beatles record and that was somehow lost in a shuffle when Mom and Dad brought out country!) The local station had some “regular” music. We had a DJ called Barefoot Bob Kinney. That was all we knew. Until my dad gave me an old radio, and I could get an AM station about 2 hours (by car) away. It played ROCK AND ROLL. Oh my! Skip WCHN with it’s Barefoot Bob and try to strain to get in a clear Syracuse station. In a world of the cassette, I’d sit quietly and when I heard a song I liked, Shh now, hit “record.” There was probably more static than anything else!

We would watch “The Monkeys,” and Rowan and Martin’s “Laugh-in.” The Smothers Brothers introduced us to our favorite groups and tunes. Ed Sullivan was still around. Sonny and Cher! These were our shows. While my grandma watched Lawrence Welk, we were all about the new groups coming in.

A trip to my Indiana cousin afforded us with all of her 45 rejects (she was older and was married now), and a Huge Montenegro LP.

I grew up. I was a college dropout, preferring to work in an office. Me and friends would go to bars where we could dance, they’d have groups from the local area, or as far as Utica sometimes. Disco was coming in and we all were “feverish” with Saturday Night Fever’s disco!

Let’s fast forward now to these days. I am nearing 70, and realizing the beauty of the groups I grew with on television. I am a YouTuber and I watch documentaries on these people. I read obituaries on my favorite characters, but that doesn’t stop me from finding the old black and white images and sound. This music is inside of me, it shaped and formed me. It was more than music, it was my romance. As I watch the life of the BeeGees, my heart breaks with Barry as he talks about the loss of his brothers. I not only watched them, I watch The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and then on to other musical groups and acts: Randy Travis, George Strait (oh how I love the whine of the fiddle on “Amarillo by Morning”). John Denver and Placido Domingo “Perhaps Love.” It melts my heart. And then Placido Domingo smiles and puts his arm around John Denver. Aww!

While we shouldn’t get carried away by music, there is a reality to life, I think we need to allow our imagination just a little bit of niceness, of beauty, of peace and love.

I need to go and “start a joke” in “Massachusetts” now. (Thank you Robin Gibb, for your life of music. You and the others have helped me to grow up in a lovely world where there are a few things that still can heal the heart.)

A Simple Bit of Nonsense

The dream. It has got to be post-high school, for all the players were from my high school. I think. I’m trying to fry eggs, and get them to these men, and talk to them because I had not seen them since we were in high school (so yes, post high school, but who knows how long as dreams tend to not be dated material). I cannot remember most of it, as in all dreams we only remember snippets by the time we are fully awake, unless we have the pen and paper beside the bed (and then I’d have to write in the dark, no, that will not work). I remember I was trying to talk to them, I was delighted to see them after many years (which dates ME, as I graduated from high school almost 50 years ago), I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to find out how they were, and what were they doing, I had not seen them since high school. Come to think of it, I had not ever seen them since, no reunions, nothing. I had not really thought too much about them. The one boy I have driven by his childhood home almost daily, but it’s only once in awhile I think about him. I know his mother died recently. His brother had passed on a few years back.

At any rate, that was the dream. I call it a bit of nonsense, because I have no idea where this came from inside of my brain. What longing? What bit of validation am I trying to require in my life, that should produce such a dream as this? Or, maybe it’s simply a bit of nonsense, something my personal computer (the brain) is working out the kinks.

Yes this is for You

The Dreamer

I was reading about dreams in the wee hours of the morning, sleep escaping through the lashes of my lids, as the cold wind brought the change of weather.

I did go into a lucid thought of Dad saying something as he was working on perhaps a repair, in a brief spot of dream, but it did not stay, I was awake!

Some dreams are nonsense, others create a deja vu later. Some, if you are fortunate (or not), are clairvoyant, and some prophetic.

Mine are a little clairvoyant, I think. Probably because they involve the dear departed to me: a grandmother, a grandfather I never met (and did not resemble any of his pictures, by the way), a friend here and there, that have come at odd times.

At any rate, it appears half the night was dreamless, as I awaited All Souls’ Day!

The Dream

I dreamt my parents were getting re-married.  My father arrived in a colonial blue golf shirt that had been hanging up in the closet too long.  Incredibly dusty, as I beat out the dust I wondered if he would be dressed up enough. I myself had a dress, my sister had a “better dress” one that resembled that of a flower girl, creamy white satin with curlique’s of white on the bodice and a little pink satin flower….I was supposed to be the maid of honor and my sister’s comment was that we should trade dresses.  She could not be maid of honor as she was still nursing a child.  Somehow there was a cake involved.  I kept having to go here and go there, and not just a run around town, it was MILES away everything that was needed.  We finally all were there and ready to take our places.

That’s all I’ve got.  I don’t remember my mother there, any other siblings, but there was other people there.

Why do we dream what we do?  Honestly, I’d requested, before I went to sleep, that I’d have a revelation as to where I left my Jabra earpiece, my answer to not having a smart phone planted next to my brain.  I guess that dream is lost in the spaces of my mind.  Well, at least, the Jabra is.

Anyway, I needed to record this dream, in hopes that I’d recover more of it.  And there you have it.