by Larry Brody
Every night for the last three weeks I’ve had the same dream.
More than every night, in fact, because it comes back to me any time I relax or close my eyes.
For someone like me, who’s been trying to figure out the meaning of life ever since I can remember, this is a wonderful dream. A dream that comes thisclose to answering my questions.
And then—but of course—turns around and gives me about fifty thousand new questions to ask. In the dream, I live in a small town. Like Paradise, it has two main streets. Unlike Paradise, the architecture of all the buildings is Victorian. Also unlike Paradise, the town is along a sea coast. What sea, I don’t know. What coast—east, west, north, south—I don’t know either.
I do know that it’s a beautiful place. One where, along with a Partner I can’t see and don’t really know, I run a business out of one of the buildings closest to the sea. I don’t know the name of the business, but its purpose is crystal clear. I—make that “we”—teach people of all ages how to live.
Specifically, we teach them how to live proudly and openly and with as much style and excitement they can. In this dream Shakespeare was dead right when he said in As You Like It, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” (Except I’d drop the “merely” because I don’t see anything “mere” about this.)
That’s right. Everything we do is part of a show, designed for the entertainment and enlightenment of both an unseen audience of who knows who or what and also one consisting of ourselves. The school I share with my unknown Partner teaches everything you need to put on a show to everyone else in the world.
Now that’s cool.
In the dream, I divide my time between sitting in an office and working with other writers to write scenes for the actors to play as part of their lives (including scenes about writing scenes) and stalking through the halls helping younger students—children—and their parents grasp the general point of everything.
The writing part is a snap. I do it well and love every instant. But helping the kids and their folks grasp the general point is tough. Because I don’t know the general point. I’m clueless as to why everyone in the world is living this show business life. And totally in the dark about who the unseen audience is.
Because of my ignorance, I find myself turning more and more to the unknown Partner for help. Which isn’t so easy when you don’t know what he looks like, or even where she is.
It takes work, but I always manage to find him when I need to. Sometimes she’s able to help me. Most of the time, though, he’s as bewildered as I and the two of us just mush on as best we can.
But every time we “mush” we succeed.
When I was writing and producing television I learned that both jobs were about making decisions. It didn’t matter what you decided, just that you decided something. Making a decision, even the wrong one, meant the show could go on. Not making one brought things to a shuddering halt.
The dream reaffirms that. The dream tells me that it’s the mushing—the trying—that counts, and not whether what we try is right or wrong.
For three weeks now, I’ve been trying to dig down to a deeper interpretation of this dream. One of the main ways I interpret thoughts and feelings and dreams and events is to write them down and see what the act of writing turns them into, which is why I’m writing this.
And in the course of this writing I’m starting to understand that one of the points of the dream is that we’re not going to get any grand meaning out of life as a concept…because the meaning is in the actual living of the life. It’s in going onstage and doing our best. Getting totally involved in putting on that great, big, wonderful show.
I could’ve written this just for myself and then put it away. Instead, I’m throwing it out to everyone who comes to this space. To do otherwise would be to betray my part of the Partnership. To abdicate the teaching thing.
So that’s it, today’s class. The last class of 2009.
On to 2010 and the next awesomely mystifying Dream.