Editorial: On Dreams and Life

BY LORCAN MCCORMICK

mccormickwritings@gmail.com

There are many impediments to making true tribute to a passed loved one; our grief struck mind is made a cup, filled over with emotions, and yes, at times, that which it is overfilled with quenches our needs, and yes, at times, that which spills over is what we truly need. A perfect frame in a film is the product of an editor in a booth pouring 30 minutes of professional time to produce a product which will be enjoyed, ideally, by millions to such a sensational point they will want to revisit that frame countless times: in happiness; in grief; in wanting; in their life. A perfect memory in a life is the product of someone pouring an entire lifetime cultivating, improving, reminiscing, musing over a moment, filled with love and joy, revisiting that moment again and again to remember why we must always go and hold on, even for just a second longer.

No man can live up to a perfect memory. My father snored, farted, lost his temper, fell ill, lost his will to walk. This I know, this I loved, this is the man who walked me to school every day in Brockport, New York, whose hand who held me down those roads was so big it could palm my then whole head. Here was a man whose conviction inspired him to wage a lifelong war with phoniness, a conquest in wages he was paid in strained relations. No tribute could be paid to such a man by creating some perfect memory, carefully sculpted by my imagination, for the benefit of people who never knew him, for what's plain is how laughably phony that would be. My father was a writer, and spent his half century on this Earth in love with language and literature, and it brings me to think about Dreams and Life through the lens of literature.

There is a very clear bifurcation in how Dreams are treated by Western Literature, that is, between adolescent stories and stories for adults. Dream we tell children: dream! Faith overcomes great evils in Narnia, believe in yourself and best temptation in Mordor, rely on your friends and an Unspeakable Name shall fall, Huck Finn can cross these untamed waters, Pip can find love even against his own author's initial wishes.

And then there is the cruel winter of adulthood which has been treated, with all sobriety, as where Dreams can catch us by the nap and ruin us. All ships at a distance carry men's dreams, Nora Neale Hurston warns us. It is the leopard in the dying man's vision upon Mount Kilimanjaro, was he prideful and chased a fool's dream or was he escaping a pain only communicable to understanding creatures? It is Hal, ascending to Henry V, looking at his true father Falstaff, whose humanity endowed Hal with a warmth that his biological father Henry IV could never serve, but whose carnal appetites could ruin a court, whose only unfailing ability is to fail, announcing, “now that I am awaked, I do despise my Dream,” and banishing Falstaff for the security of a kingdom. It is the Green Light rolling off the pier, its rays sliding through Gatsby's fingers, constantly reminding him of a love lost or perhaps a love that never was, invented by a febrile mind in need of love. The Green Light, the beacon of Dreams. Literature's great hopeless image by all scholarly acknowledgements.

My father believed in the Green Light. He believed past what was sensible. He believed when he left his home Boston with his first wife that he could make a family and a life in New York. Wounded and stricken, divorced, my father fell in love with a girl who made an agreement with John Kinsherf, his roommate, to room in their apartment for one month while John was away. My father believed he could make a life in Los Angeles, the capital of phoniness, living amongst my mother's family. Penurious and desperate, now with a baby, my parents made scraps in Rhode Island. So, it was my father’s belief in his wife that she could return to college, reinstate her dignity, and become a professor of dance. In this life she would bounce from college to college, adjunct to associate, stuck rudderless in a small town that's appreciation for dance is equivocal to Saudi Arabia's appreciation for the Talmud. So, it was there my father believed she could make tenure against all currents, and so she did. When she was given not one, but two cancer diagnosis of grave odds, my father believed she would live, and so she has.

What did my father think of me? Think of a child who said that he wanted to be a filmmaker, a profession of putrescent odds of success? He believed. When my life took me to hooking lawnmower parts onto a line, he believed. When I scrubbed uneaten chunks of food off of plates, he believed. When I had returned a failure, not once, but twice, in journeys to the West, he believed. Oh, if only every fool, every moron with a Dream, every child who had a bright idea, had someone who believed in them as much as my father believed in me, what a world we'd conceive.

So yes, my father could be abrasive; yes, he could speak with a truculence few men would dare conjure; yes, he took no care of his physical health and lost his ability to walk; yes, he took more licks from life than the average man. Yes, it is now where sober minds make judgements and rule on my father's life, and tell it like it is by letting everyone know such a man didn't cut it.

My father believed in the Green Light. Believed in hopeless Dreams. Believed in people. Believed that if you could keep moving forward, life didn't have you yet. And unlike his flawed son, knew it didn't require unnecessary flights of anger to be heard, or cruel acts of belittlement to have presence. When I stepped over people thinking it would get me somewhere, my father for all his wicked words, would have held them up. All those moments held in perfection in my memory are mine alone, but out of this flawed character comes a thousand tiny proofs for anyone of how to be a better person. My father believed in the Green Light. My father died the most successful man I will ever know.

Dream. Always.

I can't figure it out

It's bringing me down I know

I've got to let it go

And just enjoy the show

I want my money back

I want my money back

I want my money back

Just enjoy the show

I want my money back

I want my money back

I want my money back

Just enjoy the show

John McCormick (1964-2022)