"I can hear 'em sayin' / Keep on dreamin' even if it breaks your heart"
Last week, I had the opportunity to sneak on over to Washington D.C.'s famed 9:30 Club and catch a live performance by the phenomenally talented Will Hoge (picture a young Tom Petty. Yup, that's about it). I've been a fan of Will's music for a while, now -- but it wasn't until I had the chance to see him perform in front of a live audience that I actually managed to appreciate just how raw, honest, and introspective a songwriter the guy really is.
Will Hoge: A "working-man's Jason Mraz," if you will.
The centerpiece of Will's latest album? An intensely personal, uptempo track called "Even If It Breaks Your Heart," which recounts the story of a young boy growing up in Memphis, a burgeoning fascination with rock and roll music, and a crazy dream to take a shot at superstardom in spite of the staggering odds that might stand in his way.
Here, I'll let him tell you:
"Way back on the radio dialFrom an early age, our songwriter seems to have developed a pretty special place in his heart for this crazy bidnizz we like to call "rock and roll." And as the song rolls onward, Hoge makes it pretty clear that once the seeds of his rock and roll dreams began to take root, there wasn't really much that could be done to shake the fact that he knew he'd just have to buck up and try this whole "musician" thing for a living.
Fire got lit inside a bright eyed child
Every note just wrapped around his soul
From steel guitar to Memphis all the way to rock and roll"
... even if it breaks his heart.
Again, as he says:
"Some dreams stay with you foreverIn short (and as the chorus echoes)? "Keep on dreamin' even if it breaks your heart." Or as our favorite Sweet Transvestite might say:
Drag you around and lead you back to where you were
Some dreams keep on gettin' better
Gotta' keep believing if you wanna' know for sure"
Dr. Frank N' Furter: "Don't dream it, BE it."
Hoge's message is clear: dreams aren't merely passing distractions from the day-to-day grind of everyday existence. Instead, they stick with you, and they hurt for a reason -- because they challenge us to strive for the really good stuff that might just be waiting around the bend if only we're brave enough to take the shot and chase them.
(Even if it breaks our hearts).
Since we're on the subject of heartbreak and dreams, however -- betcha' didn't know that American Gothic uber-genius Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) actually devoted a whole lot of his poetry to precisely such a topic, now didja'?
Yes, *that* Edgar Allan Poe (as in "That Guy Who Wrote 'The Raven'").
It's true: his "nightmare" stories are the ones that eventually earned Poe his reputation. But when he wasn't yammering away about pits, pendulums, tell-tale hearts, and unopened casks of Amontillado -- the nineteenth century Baltimore balladeer actually spent a pretty sizable chunk of his canon musing on the simple and happy stuff that we call dreams.
Here's a sample:
A DreamTranslation:
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream - that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?
Dreams are like "lonely spirit[s]" -- they are "purely bright," but often as elusive as they are beautiful. And our inability to capture them is precisely the sort of thing that can leave a man "broken-hearted." But this isn't a reason to give up on them. For as Poe suggests, dreams can still lead us "throu[gh] storm and night" so as to draw us closer to bigger and better things in the long run.
In the end? Perhaps it's best to stick to the advice of our buddy Will Hoge:
"Keep on dreamin...'"
And whatever you do --
"... don't let it break your heart."
