When you dream
With my son’s birth, I find that there are certain songs running through my head that are very appropriate for my new role in life. Strangely, two of the songs are by The Barenaked Ladies. The first one is “When You Dream” and I’ve posted the lyrics below. The other one, well the title speaks for itself, so I’ll forgo the lyrics but it is titled “Who needs sleep?”
“When You Dream”
With life just begun, my sleeping new son
has eyes that roll back in his head
They flutter and dart, he slows down his heart
and pictures a world past his bed
It’s hard to believe
As I watch you breathe
Your mind drifts and weaves
When you dream,
what do you dream about?
When you dream,
what do you dream about?
Do you dream about
music or mathematics
or planets too far for the eye?
Do you dream about
Jesus or quantum mechanics
or angels who sing lullabies?
His fontanelle pulses with lives that he’s lived
With memories he’ll learn to ignore
And when it is closed, he already knows
he’s forgotten all he knew before
But when sleep sets in
history begins
But the future will win
When you dream,
what do you dream about?
When you dream,
what do you dream about?
Are they colour or black and white,
Yiddish or English
or languages not yet conceived?
Are they silent or boisterous?
Do you hear noises just
loud enough to be perceived?
Do you hear Del Shannon’s “Runaway” playing
on transistor radio waves?
With so little experience,
your mind not yet cognizant
Are you wise beyond your few days?
When you dream,
what do you dream about?
When you dream,
what do you dream about?
I love both of those songs. I too have found that they are very appropriate to my role as a father.
I find that as my roles in life evolve and change that things I thought I was familiar with suddenly have different meanings or at least significance. My daughter and I will always be bonded by Earth Wind and Fire’s “21st of September”.
You can look forward to many more awakenings about the meanings of things you previously thought you understood.
Enjoy.