Abandon all logic ye who enter here

Detailed descriptions of one’s dreams ought to join politics and religion on the comprehensive list of taboo topics for polite conversation, let alone topics for cocktail parties, which must be designed ostensibly to inform (but actually to impress). Nevertheless I feel it important to mention that I have come across a rather compelling reason to explain why I will never be a Person of Note.

I will first digress in order to explain how I was ever in contention for the dubious honor of being notable. Or, more correctly, how I came to assume that such a distinction might be possible. When we are young, and still have imaginations, we ought to place ourselves in all sorts of thrilling and unlikely situations. I was a rockstar, prompting the noisy adulation with virtuoso guitar-playing. Then I settled for being occasionally appreciated as a sensitive, singer-songwriter whose acoustic set induced polite applause. At some point I went through a neoRomantic composer phase, a concert violinist phase, a missionary to the Third World phase, etc. Sane persons cast off these delusions, choose a major, a spouse, a car, a job, a house and a retirement fund. The retirement home and the trite words at their funeral are chosen by someone else. We who are less than sane are paralyzed by the inability to treat events as anything but trail markers on the path to notoriety. Any action must be evaluated in light of the E! True Hollywood Story, VH1 Behind the Music or History’s Mysteries episode featuring our life. How painful it is to realize that Shakespeare’s third category (greatness thrust upon ‘em) occurs the most frequently, that history book material isn’t created by its participants but by mute fortune!

Now that I’ve established the foundations of my delusions of grandeur, let me explain what dreams (in the literal sense) have to do with it. Popular myth attributes the origin of breakthroughs such as Einstein’s relativity and Turing’s universal machine to dreams. MLK Jr. had a dream, although that may have been a figure of speech. I, on the other hand, don’t dream. I fall asleep and wake up later with no recollection of time passing whatsoever. My life has more jump cuts than a Godard film (although the artistic merit of their use is unquestionably more defensible in the latter). The upshot being that I’ll have to settle for a Siddhartha-beneath-the-pipal-tree moment, which apparently requires a great deal of time and concentration, and a minimal amount of food or WiFi access. Or, it will all end with:

Patrick died July 29th, 2057 of coronary heart disease. An undistinguished student, he survived high school and college to enter the Navy, where he served an unremarkable four years during the Iraqi Civil War. After finishing his graduate degree at a second-tier state college, Patrick worked for a moderately successful database software company, where employees will remember him for his abstruse vocabulary, non-confrontational management style and commitment to hair gel, despite its going out of style in the early 2010s. 

I hope that provides some insight into my egocentricity, for which I duly apologize, and thank those who are willing to overlook it and remain friends.