Matt's Liner Notes: 1 Dreams
Posted by Matt
Warning: There are three (3) paragraphs of liberal claptrap just ahead. Things clear up after that.
Around 2005, as the Bush administration settled in for a second term, I became overwhelmed with frustration at lies we Americans were being told by our government. Falsehoods regarding the war in Iraq, the torture of prisoners, wire tapping – almost everything – were so widespread that to talk about the situation with anyone but a close confidant would always make me worry that I would be perceived as a crazed conspiracy theorist.
At times I felt like we were a nation of children with a terrible lying father. We believed and repeated what we had to just to get along, walking and working in a haze of deception.
Along with the lies, to my mind there was self-delusion going on in the halls of government as well. The intellectuals who had provided some of the rationale for the Iraq war had developed a belief that if the US could overturn the Iraqi government, a western-friendly democracy would take root there. And then, inspired by that democracy, the remaining states of the Middle East would transform themselves like a chain of falling dominoes into a sprouting garden of free democratic republics.
That particular theory, and the thousands of young lives it was costing our country, forced into my consciousness the words, “I must learn to not pretend. These dreams are killing me.” The phrases just spilled out along with their melody in a single moment.
But what made me excited to finish this song was that these words about dreams and reality had meaning for me personally as well. As a musician I had fixed myself in my mind to a certain self-conception that was beginning to feel more and more unrelated to my true life. Somehow during the previous decade I had metamorphosed from a long-haired touring musician into a divorced man with a full time job living alone with his 3 year old daughter. I needed to study a little bit of reality myself.
I remember at the time, well-meaning friends warned me against the perils of letting my daughter sleep in my bed. But, really, who in our situation could ever resist? Neither one of us. I remember working excitedly on the words to “Dreams” while lying on navy blue sheets with my girl sleeping at my side. Most of the lyrics unspooled for me right then on that first night. Such a beautiful memory.
Enjoy this post? Bookmark and share with others.