Quote of the Day (Lupita Nyong’o, on Aspirations)

“No matter where you’re from, your dreams are valid.”— Kenyan-Mexican actress Lupita Nyong’o, quoted by Kanika Lal, “Oscars: Lupita Nyong’o Earns Her First Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Video),” The Hollywood Reporter, Mar. 2, 2014

(The image of Lupita Nyong’o that accompanies this post was taken July 22, 2017, by Gage Skidmore.)

Quote of the Day (Edgar Allan Poe, on What We See As ‘A Dream Within a Dream’)

“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep.” —American short-story writer, poet, literary critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), “A Dream Within a Dream,” first published in The Flag of Our Union, March 1849, reprinted in Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, edited by Patrick Quinn (1984)

Quote of the Day (Robbie Robertson, on Not Giving Up on Dreams)

“People would say to me: ‘You’re just a dreamer. Everyone talks about this stuff, but those kinds of things don’t happen for people like us. You’re gonna end up working down the street, just like me. You’re gonna get your heart broken. Most of the people round here just end up in prison, so you might as well get used to the idea.’

“So part of that is crushing, and the other part of it is: ‘Oh yeah? I’ll show you a thing or two.’ I think I was able to hold my chin up and say: ‘I’m on a mission. I’m moving on. And if you look for me, there’s only going to be dust.’”— Robbie Robertson (1943-2023), Canadian rock ‘n’ roll guitarist, songwriter, and member of The Band, quoted by Rob Hughes, “Robbie Robertson Interview: Life with Bob Dylan, Martin Scorsese and The Band,” Classic Rock Magazine, January 15, 2020

The photo accompanying this post, of Robbie Robertson at the New York City Rock ‘n’ R Hall of Fame inductions on March 6, 2000, was taken by Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel, MD.

Quote of the Day (Henry David Thoreau, on Dreams, ‘The Touchstones of Our Characters’)

“Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness in our conduct in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the intensity of our grief, which is our atonement, measures inversely the degree by which this is separated from an actual unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If this meanness has not its foundation in us, why are we grieved at it?” — American essayist, naturalist and poet Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849)

Song Lyric of the Day (Bacharach and David, on the ‘Dream in Your Heart’)

“Fame and fortune is a magnet

It can pull you far away from home

With a dream in your heart you're never alone.”— "Do You Know the Way to San Jose," music by Burt Bacharach, lyrics by Hal David, recorded by Dionne Warwick for her Valley of the Dolls LP (1968)

Bacharach’s effervescent melody and Warwick’s lighter-than-air vocals can only go so far in camouflaging David’s melancholy, even searing lyric about a disappointed dreamer returning home.

Celebrity can happen virtually overnight, but it’s a big if, and in the meantime “weeks turn into years.” In the freeway culture of Southern California, those looking for the big time may be as likely, in this setting, to be pumping gas as waiting on tables.

It’s all insubstantial and transitory. In the end, the song’s symbol of home, San Jose (not the high-tech center it is now, but a farming community filled with orchids), feels as elusive as L.A.

So, why waste one’s life and stick around for a quest so empty and unfulfilling for so many? It’s that single line, the song’s single light in the darkness: “With a dream in your heart you're never alone.” The songwriting partners could surely relate to that, with Bacharach noting that he “knew  all nine floors” of New York’s fabled Brill Building, where he had to endure constant rejection from the music publishers gathered there.

Warwick did not warm to these lyrics. “It was not one of my favorite songs that Hal David wrote,” she told People Magazine’s Liz McNeil in a 2019 interview. “I just couldn’t imagine Hal writing a lyric that had ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa….'”

Her lack of faith in the song manifested itself initially in her first try at it. “When she performed it at the recording session, I think it was the only time during that period we didn't get a vocal from her that was good enough to use,” Bacharach recalled for Michael Fremer in a 1985 interview for Analog Planet Magazine. “So we had to bring her back into the studio to have her overdub her vocals."

The songwriting duo’s persuasion finally produced the desired result. "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" (asked rhetorically, so, oddly enough, there’s no question mark in the title) sold 3.5 million copies and earned Warwick a Grammy for Best Contemporary-Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

Or, as the singer told McNeil laughingly, she “cried all the way to the bank. What can I tell you?”

(The image accompanying this post shows David on the left and Bacharach on the right, with Warwick between them—anchoring this picture, as she did with so many of their songs.)

Quote of the Day (Elizabeth Bishop, on Dreaming Our Dreams)

 

“Oh, must we dream our dreams

and have them, too?

And have we room

for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?”— American poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), “Questions of Travel” (1956)

Quote of the Day (John Updike, on Dreams)

"Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." —John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs (1989)