So I am stealing this from LP the spinning instructor, she had a wonderful Dream Themed Spin today in honor of Dr. King and this song stuck out to me.
This is a song that made an impression on me as a younger person, for all kinds of reasons, but the goal of these posts is to focus on me as a writer, so I am going to talk about why I think writers are so important to society and why I think, it is the writers we come to study years and years after their deaths. There are reasons we read books written by people long dead.
Let's take a look at the lyrics to the song Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I Travel the world and the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Hold your head up, Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on, Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on, Keep your head up, movin' on
Hold your head up, movin' on, Keep your head up
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
On one hand life is mundane. I think the writer of this song has captured the reality of the human condition. Some people want to use or be used and so on and so forth. I also think there is the tendency to fall into ruts and we just keep doing what it is we are doing. We identify with a side and stick to it, unlike Madonna, very few of us actually reinvent ourselves all that often.
I think the writers of the world, the dreamers are hell bent on finding the magical in the mundane and they are seekers. They are dreamers. Culturally speaking there are all types of writers. There are historians, memiorists, journalists. They keep the facts, the chronicles, the stories that are happening now. One could say that some story tellers also serve this functions, you can learn many things about a culture by its stories.
Then you have the creative writers, the dreamers, the thinkers and the puzzlers. Some may be gifted story tellers and others may have a deeper purpose, they are the fablists and the myth keepers. Then there are the poets. Ah, the poets. The writers of music without sound.
Some writers do it for money. Popular fiction anyone. Understand I am not mocking, I think they have their role in society, I think it is important for entertainment to come in all forms. Shakespeare was an entertainer. He was not revered in his day. In many cases it is the popular fiction, which hundreds of years later has such relevance. We would know very little about the common man, had it not been for Shakespeare and his stories.
Poets write to inspire, they paint pictures with words, they write grand epics, they often die penniless and troubled. It is troubling to be blessed with a gift for words and images. The gift of dreams both while asleep and awake.
As is so often the case for many writers, when there is time to write there is a complete emptiness, the world is colorless and dreamless and when one is crushed with "busy work" or other obligations, the dreams flood reality like a raging river.
Sometimes the darker realities of life are best expressed, explored in words, in stories, than in personal terms. Sometimes it is easier to allow the brain to work with the material provide in fictional terms. Some messages are heard better in the form of a story.
Censorship is one of the strongest means of social control as is propaganda. Is it any wonder then, that the written word is such a powerful and important tool to society? Writing is a tool which informs, inspires, records, exposes and conceals. Those who write inevitably seek, looking for and find something.
While the press can be controled, books burned, and poets ignored, no one can stop a writer from dreaming.
They are always looking for something.
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