I had a dream this morning. I didn’t want to wake up, because this was quite possibly the best dream I’ve ever had.
This dream took place several years in the future, and I somehow in that time had gathered enough money to invest in some real estate in Grand Prairie. This place that I bought was an old restaurant building. Many different restaurants had occupied the building, but none had survived for very long. I don’t know why this property appealed to me, but it did. I definitely didn’t have plans for opening a new restaurant in this location. No, I had different plans for this place all together.
I took my time drawing up some amateur design plans for the place; some stuff to be renovated, some areas that needed to be added on. I consulted with some guy I knew who was an architect to see if he had any design suggestions. After a healthy amount of time spent finalizing my plans, construction and renovation began on my new business.
There are some things within this dream that didn’t make much sense. It is a dream though, so I’d be astonished if everything did. Anyways, somehow I had not told Trinity or anyone that was up and building my new business, and he was flabbergasted to find out that I had made so much progress with him not even knowing of my businesses inception.
Anyways some of the details are lost on me at this point, but at the end of this dream, construction of my business, Outlaw Productions is complete, and I had planned a special christening ceremony. By some stroke of luck(perhaps it was because this was a dream) Kevyn and Jerry were in town when the business of making my business was complete, allowing them to join in on the ceremony. The only thing I hadn’t done with my business was to buy a bunch of “house” instruments and what not that would just always stay up there, and my ceremony involved getting the crew together(Trinity, Kevyn, Jerry, Jason, and myself) to go up to Guitar Center, and with my company credit card, pick out a bunch of new equipment with which to stock my business. A good time was had passing out business cards, and picking out guitars, basses, a drum set, a couple of keyboards, some turn tables and other dj equipment, and a bunch of amps and mics. We even happend to run into Trinity’s sister(Brianna) and her boyfriend(Victor), who plays drums. I invited both of them to come back and party with us in Grand Prairie at my new place. We put the word out to most of the musically inclined people we knew to come out and kick off the opening of my business in style.
My dream ends with us trying to leave Guitar Center with more stuff than we can fit out the door in 3 trips. I didn’t want that dream to end. I can still close my eyes and picture the facade in front of my studio. I can still hear all the whining of the construction equipment renovating the place for my use.
It’s little visions like these, like God whispering to me Himself, that keep me going. I can see where the finish line is for me. The facade of my studio is burned in my mind like branded flesh. There is no other destiny for me. I’ve seen what God has waiting for me at the end of this road, and it is good.
I didn’t want to wake up, but I knew that once I did that another day had begun, and I was one step closer to seeing that dream become a reality. If you take things one step at a time, and keep everything in perspective, there is nothing you can’t do.
This kind of makes me think of a bit from a comedy routine that I like. The comedian is Tommy Tiernan, and in this part of the routine he is talking about his family. He talks about his middle child being his “wizard child” in that if reality cannot meet the bounds of his imagination, then he just abandons it.
I always feel like that was my story. As a child, I never lived in reality. Sports and other activities that the other kids were doing felt too mundane. I created my own world where anything was possible, and I lived there every day. I remember running around my house pretending that I was a ninja, or building forts in my game room and pretending that I was a submarine captain, or having some neighborhood friends over and pretending that we were robots from the video games that we loved. I remember going over to Trinity and Brianna’s house and pretending that we were on safari hunting their house pets, or swimming in their backyard pretending we were something out of Water World or something.
As adults, we forget what it’s like to abandon reality, because we can’t afford the luxury of innocence anymore. We’ve seen how the world works. We’ve seen acts of war, and some of us have even gone off and fought in those wars ourselves. Some of us didn’t come back. We’ve seen other members of humanity commit horrible acts of atrocity, so bad that we forget what it felt like to look forward to another day. As adults, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to dream, because most of what goes through our heads at night are the stuff of nightmares.
The path I’ve chosen…no, the path that I’ve been sent down may not be the safest path. I may not be able to see what the next day or the next week has in store for me. But the thing that keeps me walking down that path, is that this path allows me to tap into my creativity. This path allows me to tap into the stuff that used to to keep me entertained for hours as a child, the stuff that allows me to, as an adult, create a new world, one completely void of all the horrors that consume our world. Down this path, I can pull all the wonders out of the world that I create, and place them in the real world, the world that needs all this hope so much more than I do.
I can’t see what’s in front of me on a day to day basis, but I don’t need to knowing what lies for me at the end of the road. I’ve been given a gift, and with it I intend on making the world that we live in a better place, one beat at a time, one step at a time.
Why do I do what I do? Because I can turn my dreams into reality, and share them with the world. How many of you can claim to have that kind of power? If you answered, “I do.” then God Bless you, God Bless all of us.
– The Outlaw
Backstage Conversations 