Life Is But A Dream

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

How many times I’ve heard that ancient childhood ditty, sung it in collective rounds on yellow kid-jammed school busses, read the words in Mother Goose picture books, and recited them by rote along with other kiddie favorites like “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “London Bridge is Falling Down.” Only recently, though, in my adult life, did the lyrics to “Row Row Row Your Boat” strike me with sudden profundity. I was unconsciously humming the tune in my car one day, stuck in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour Hollywood freeway hell, and when I came to the “Life is but a dream” part, it hit me: Life is but a dream. I’ll be damned, I thought: all these years singing, humming, and whistling that haunting little nostalgic melody and I’ve never really listened to the words. There’s a simple, obvious, revelatory message in those lyrics that can easily be missed (ignored? forgotten?) in the everyday humdrum of hectic reality-based adulthood. Life is but a dream; what a poignant metaphor. And not: life is a dream, mind you. Life is but a dream. Implying: Life is only a dream. Merely a dream. Just a dream. Simply a dream. And we, the dreamers, wish-oars in hand, are row row rowing our boats religiously down the dream stream. Now, of course, contrary to the song’s idealistic Norman Rockwellian thrust, life’s not always “gentle,” nor is it consistently “merry” (sometimes those currents can get damned rough, sometimes you lose a damned oar, sometimes the damned boat leaks… ), yet it’s most definitely “but a dream”; a surreal, beautiful, sometimes painful, often surprising, joyous, crazy, unpredictable dream where anything can happen… and probably will.

When I was a boy–like most rugrats–I was well endowed with a fertile imagination and vivid dreams. I could fly. Turn invisible. Elongate my limbs to football field lengths like “Stretch” from Fantastic Four. I was Batman. My childhood best pal, Kevin Conley, was Robin. Together, in the Bat Garage, we devised heroic plots to redeem the schoolyard of villainous Gotham City bullies. Other days, I was a mighty white knight in shining armor, galloping gallantly on my trusty Schwinn stallion three-speed to rescue my grade school princess, Beth Slater, from the evil confines of her dark, suburban middle class castle. At night, I transformed into a bazillion-year old vampire and my mother–foolish mortal!–never fathomed that the cherry Kool-Aid she poured into my dinner glass was actually delicious human blood.

As I crossed the threshold from elementary to middle and high schools, boyhood fantasies blended into adolescent and teenaged ones. Suddenly, I developed superhuman x-ray vision and could see right through the gymnasium wall into the girls’ locker room. At home, in front of my bedroom mirror, I was a long-haired rock star breathing fire at thousands of screaming fans like Gene Simmons in Kiss. On Saturday nights at the “Lucky Twin Drive-In,” my fellow carousers and I–fueled by several bottles of piss-warm Rolling Rock Beer–would climb up the back of the 100-foot drive-in screen until we reached the top. Up there, wind in our ears and stars in our hair, provoking honks and high beams from the sea of cars below, we were giants screaming along with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, or catchin’ those gnarly waves, dude, with Sean Penn in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Looking back, it’s no big shock that I ended up an actor in Hollywood. I’ve been blessed with the curse of the Peter Pan Syndrome. I never wanted to grow up (actually, who does?). So how else, in my adult life, could I still be Batman, a white knight in shining armor, a blood-sucking vampire, a rock star, invisible man, flying boy, up on a drive-in screen–and get paid for it?

I’m still hoping to manifest those super-human x-ray vision powers some day.

Actors are dreamers, dreaming big as we row ever onward toward our hopeful destinations. Dreaming of signing with an agent someday… of joining the union and becoming professional… quitting our “day jobs”… writing “actor” on the occupation section of our tax forms… acting in a film… being up on the big screen… a bit role… a meaty scene… a supporting role… a starring role… recognition… an Oscar nomination… an Oscar… or two… or three …

… and on and on…

The dream never ends.

May our boats remain sturdy, our oar-arms strong, and the currents not too tempestuous as we continue row, row, rowing gently down our streams… these lives… but dreams…