Where would dreams go if you could give them up?
"Here's to the ones who dream, foolish as they may seem. Here's to the hearts that ache..."
Sunday evening. Empty sky. Cool wind blows away the autumn leaves in mini tornadoes that falter right before they can rise up. Piano plays in my ears as I stand outside my apartment overlooking the street. A dog barks somewhere, a cat astray elsewhere. Flickering lights line the dim streets. Dying stars in an empty space. Ambulances going off all around. An empty world filled with people. Empty people filled with—
Empty? No.
People filled with dreams. Not the ones that descend upon us at night. No. Dreams that live within us when we’re awake. Dreams that drive us forward and backward and sideways and freeze us. Dreams that everyone around us tells us are too stupid to keep alive. Dreams that were supposed to be cremated the day we turned 18 or 21 or 25 or whenever we were supposed to grow up. The sacrifice of adulthood. The fool’s errand. Those dreams—the ones that sustain us.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we torture ourselves clinging to these dreams as the world, time, pulls it away from us? Pull apart a thin cotton cloth and see the fibers tear away slowly. That is what we do to ourselves. Why?
Seb and his jazz club. Mia and her acting. We’re all in our own la la lands, dreams buried deep within, dreams worn on our sleeves. Music. Movies. Novels. Paintings. Art of some kind. All art is useless1; all art important.
I look at the trees around me, barely green. Bare. Brown. Below, green shrubs still green. Leaves waltzing in the chill breeze. Photosynthesis—keeping life alive. Did the leaves ever dream? Did they give up on their own dreams just so they could do their boring jobs of keeping us all alive? Is that the meaning of their lives? One life, grounded, keeping all the rest of life alive as we waste away our days.
What is this trick then? Why do we suffer? Why do we keep these painful dreams alive? Is it the dreams that keep us alive?
The piano in my ears plays Mia and Sebastian’s theme over and over and over and over. The same street under the same sky on the same night. Stationary. The same wind playing with the same leaves. Moving. It is all the same. In these few minutes, the world has changed. Hasn’t it? A different world, same. What a mess these dreams.2
“All art is quite useless.” — Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
The subtitle is the lyric from the song The Fools Who Dream (La La Land).
Yashvardhan, as a devoted La La Land fan, this struck me like a chord from Mia and Sebastian’s theme. Aching yet beautiful.
You’ve captured the bittersweet ache of dreams so well, it’s as if you’re waltzing with them under those flickering streetligths
Reading this makes me want to sit at the piano and play that theme, asking my own dreams if they’d still dance with me.
This is a beautifully written love letter to the fools who keep them alive, no matter how much it hurts.
Reminded me of ,
What happens to the love when lovers part pays , who keeps that picture incrusted in a key , who keeps the memory who moves on with ease …..