Blog 2972 – 12.20.2023

A Million Dreams

“A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make” is the conclusion of this wonderful song from The Greatest Showman. I had a lot of fun listening to this song over and over, memorizing it so I could sing along as seamlessly as possible.

The first time I ever sang karaoke was at a casual night at my twenty-fifth high school reunion. My wife and I opted to attend the Friday night event on a river barge docked on the Tennessee River rather than attend the more formal and more widely attended event at the Fairyland Castle Hotel on Lookout Mountain just outside Chattanooga where I attended and graduated Central High School in 1968.

They had a karaoke machine on the boat and my wife Linda asked me to sing. I picked When I’m Sixty Four by the Beatles. I had sung this song along with the Fab Four countless times in my youth so I was confident that I could pull it off and even surprise my wife and former classmates a bit. My first karaoke song was a success.

A few years later at my wife’s bank’s Christmas party held in her manager’s home I was again asked to pick a song and sing karaoke. Over confident from my first outing, I picked an Elvis song, Heartbreak Hotel. There is no strong melody line in the song so I did the song rather poorly because I had never memorized it and it was only the drunkenness of the audience that covered my very poor and shabby performance. After the party I told my wife that I wanted a karaoke machine for Christmas so that I would never be caught unprepared again. She got me a nice one and I started collecting karaoke songs that I practiced and practiced so I would be ready the next time someone asked me to sing.

In 2010 I started taking longer away from Houston work assignments and on one In Little Rock, Arkansas I found there were two local bar & grills near the motel I stayed in that had karaoke nights so I ate my evening meals there and got to perform several of the songs that I had practiced. Sometimes the DJ’s karaoke play list might have a slightly different arrangement of the songs that I picked, but I found it easy to make the adjustments. Most people who sing karaoke have one or at most a handful of songs that they sing over and over, yet I was determined to never sing the same one twice unless especially requested to do so.

I was mindful of comedian Jimmy Durante’s line, “I got a million of ‘em.” He was referring to jokes, but I songs and dreams. Often songs inspire and inform our dreams. The children’s round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Merrily, Merrily, Merrily answers the question, “What is life?” quite profoundly, “Life is but a dream.” I can only add to that, “A million of them.”

Sweet and beautiful dreams still come true.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UNCWY9PEiYixUsn0_6LjpkTriqrj-PAs/view?usp=drivesdk

A Million Dreams