Adam Blatner

Words and Images from the Mind of Adam Blatner

Dream!

Originally posted on September 28, 2017

Dare to dream new dreams! This is not in the sense of the night-dreams that come to you, but rather in the sense of daring to envision possibilities for your life, even if only fantasy.
  At the end of the Muppet Movie around 1979, Kermit sings, “Life’s like a movie, write your own ending! Keep believing, keep pretending!”
   In around 1949 there was a Broadway Play titled South Pacific, and within it was a song called Happy Talk (written by Oscar Hammerstein II), the refrain of which was, “You got to have a dream! If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
  In Stout-Hearted Men, by Sigmund Romberg (1928), a song in the musical New Moon, the first line is “You, who have dreams! If you act, they will come true! To turn your dreams to facts is up to you!”

“Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, ‘til you find your dreams!” are the opening words in a song from Sound of Music, a 1959 Broadway musical production.
   Back to the Muppet Movie, near the end of the theme song, Kermit also sings as the end of the Rainbow Connection—a song by Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher—:
  “…what is it you’d like to do?
All of us watching and hoping you’ll find it—
We know that you’re watching, too!
Some day you’ll find it, the Rainbow Connection,
The Lovers, the Dreamers, and you!”

Frank Sinatra sings in the 1953 song, Young at Heart.
  “Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you, if you’re young at heart.”
    and John Denver sings at the end of his 1969 song Rhymes and Reasons:
“And the song that I am singing is a prayer to non-believers:
  Come and stand beside us! We can find a better way!”

And Dorothy (played by Judy Garland), in the Wizard of Oz, a movie in 1939, sings at the end of her song, Over the Rainbow: “If little bluebirds all can fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?”  So dream on!

One Response to “Dream!”

  • Dick says:

    At first I was surprised you didn’t mention Richard Kiley’s presentation of “The Impossible Dream” in “Man of La Mancha,” 1964.

    Possibly it was because you, like me, are skeptical of grandiose plans (dreams).

    Sometimes it’s probably worth thinking of the time “When dreams were kept beside your pillow” from the opening number “Try to Remember” of the 1960, “Fantasticks” also.

    Also, “Without a hurt, the heart is hollow.” Same song.

    pax vobiscum–and Allee too!

    Dick


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