One of my birthday gifts this year was a new CD titled "What Matters Most - Barbra Streisand Sings the Lyrics of Alan and Marilyn Bergman." I have to admit, driving around in my car with Streisand blasting is a pleasure I have not allowed myself in a very long time, even years, perhaps. You see, I listen to the market I'm supposed to be writing for, and it's not that I don't like it, but hearing a real live orchestra with soaring strings and a magnificent voice sent from heaven itself touches something deep within me that reminds me why I wanted to write songs in the first place. And those lyrics - expressive and poetic and intelligent - well, that's just not allowed anymore. But current market aside, the words speak to me, they soothe me, they move me, and inspire me. And so I've been thinking about "pieces of dreams." No, not the song with that title, but my own pieces of dreams.
Sometimes in order to move forward, we have to take a moment to stop in our tracks and glance back at who we were and where we came from. Sometimes we need to be reminded of how far we've come, or of why we set out on a particular journey. It's so easy to get sidetracked and veer off-course. It's easy to tell ourselves that the dreams we once had in their purest form were pure folly. But it just isn't true. Those dreams, whatever they were, fueled us for a journey, impossible to embark on without immense passion. Passion propels us forward in the moments when we would ordinarily give up. And even those dreams on which we did ultimately give up, well, even those had their place. Nothing great was ever accomplished without the seemingly impossible dream. No distant land discovered, or disease cured, or technology invented, or social justice come to pass without first the dream.
So yes, if Barbra Streisand ever records a song of mine, I will be able to walk away from the music business altogether without so much as a glance back. But maybe, just maybe, there are people listening to songs of mine, feeling the same way I feel about these songs and Barbra's voice. Maybe the beauty and the value to be found in what each of us does along the way isn't ours to know.
What I do know is that I still have pieces of the dreams I held in my heart when I first started out and truly - "It's not how many summertimes we had to give to fall. What matters most is that we loved at all."
And so it is. Thanks for stopping by. Here's hoping all your dreams come true.
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