On Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On
Searching for FM stations, folk fans, twins, and the American Dream
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” (4.1.156-158)
Upcoming Shows
Weds, 1/24 | Brooklyn, NY | Highside Workshop | 7:30 PM (RSVP)
Sat, 2/3 | Pound Ridge, NY | The Kitchen Table | 7:30 PM (RSVP)
Tues, 2/6 | Manhattan, NY | Baker Falls | 7:30 PM (RSVP)
Fri, 2/9 | Sparta, NJ | Krogh’s Brewpub | 7:00 PM (RSVP)
Sat, 2/10 | Manhattan, NY | Postcrypt Coffeehouse | 9:30 PM (RSVP)
For drives to and from Folkie Fest in Center Moriches this past weekend, I borrowed a friend’s car, whose dashboard tech was unfamiliar enough that I didn’t bother trying to set up a bluetooth connection. In lieu of Spotify, I played that anachronistic roulette game which is letting the radio seek signals along its FM band.
I listened to 1930s big band records. I listened to radio hits from the mid-oughts. I heard a theology professor trace the evolution of Christianity and a preacher execrate the moral sin of sexual impurity. I listened to salsa stations and classical stations and hip-hop stations and Q104.3, still spreading the gospel of Creedence Clearwater Revival after all these years. Finally, I lingered on a station airing a debate over the question: “Is the American Dream alive or dead?”
The question could scarcely be vaguer, but that was the point. To answer it, the debaters first had to define “The American Dream,” then measure it, and finally assess whether those measurements indicated life or death.
Measuring the vital signs of an undefined concept proved trickier than measuring the vital signs of a hospital patient. Where nurses and doctors have tangible metrics like blood pressure and pulse rate to quickly determine life or death, social commentators have to get more creative.
Their preferred measuring sticks were economic in nature: GDP growth, unemployment rate, inflation rate, etc. They also considered non-financial metrics like volunteerism and happiness rates.
As they debated both statistics and the proper way to interpret those statistics, they couldn’t help but speak in outlandish generalizations, painting over elections, administrations, and wars; stagflations, recessions, and booms; years, decades, and half-centuries with brushes unfathomably broad. “From about 1950 to 1975, things were pretty good, and then starting around 1975, things got bad until about the mid-’90s,” one debater explained.
Hearing the debaters generalize about 350 million people — to say nothing of the billions who’ve lived and died since 1920, the earliest decade they mentioned — felt both inevitable and ridiculous. Inevitable because I don’t know how else you assess the condition of a nation, ridiculous because generalizing at that scale felt impersonal to the point of irrelevance.
Hours earlier, I stood in a community center in a small Long Island town, singing “Searching for My Twin,” a song I wrote as an 18-year-old college freshman. Reaching the third and final chorus, I was lifted by the sight of several audience members mouthing the lyrics, which encouraged me to repeat the chorus and invite the rest of the audience to sing along. I’m not someone who gets easily carried away except within the echoey confines of my own mind, so I hope they forgave me the indulgence.
I’m most inclined to dream after powerful moments of human connection. The more I have, the more my head fills with ideas and plans and enthusiasm to see them through. The longer I go without them, without people, the more I’m inclined to take the dark view on life: that it’s absent of magic, absent of dreams.
Gratifying as Folkie Fest was, I don’t mean to suggest that it alone was a more credible benchmark for the health of the American Dream than any mentioned by the debaters. What I do mean to suggest, however, is that generalizations obliterate specifics. Lost in the disquisition on GDP and war and despotism and happiness was the feeling you get when you make eye contact with a stranger (whose name I later learned was Eileen) who’s smiling and singing along with a dream you dreamed twelve years ago.
Being at the beginning of a musical career, I never know what to expect when I play someplace new. My music life is very like seeking along that FM band: combing for diamonds in the rough, learning what I can from imperfect matches, and searching, all the while, for my twin.