i can’t remember what i thought my adult life would bring. as i write now, i struggle to recall a clear vision. the “when i grow up” dreams don’t count. watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports as a kid, i just knew i would be one of the Harlem Globetrotters. i never realized at that age that the whole thing was a staged routine.  i thought they were the absolute best basketball team in the world.

being a Globetrotter just looked like a lot of fun, and seemed amazing as a “career.” i had great reverence for the skill and entertainment value of Meadowlark Lemon, Curly Neal and Geese Ausbie. but i never put in the work or focus to follow through on that short-lived ambition. plus being grown and having a career was so abstract and distant. that’s why when you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, they always respond “i’m gonna be an astronaut!” “i’m gonna be a race car driver!” “i’m gonna be a scientist!”

“a scientist??” what is that?

pretty damn generic, that’s what! because kids are not sophisticated enough to dream of being obstetricians, nutritionists, actuaries or luthiers. i’m still not sophisticated enough. after giving up on the Globetrotters, i decided that since i always stayed up ’til ungodly hours–i could be Blacula!

i don’t know why i couldn’t have just been the regular Dracula? there was some stuff going on with me, i guess…hey, it was the 70s, man.

anyway, i used to stay awake awfully late, because we never had a bedtime. i think it was just assumed that we’d run out of steam at a certain point and pass out. i used to outlast my siblings, and then do things like read Encyclopedia Brown mysteries or go in the bathroom and eat soap. i didn’t eat soap for long, though. not because i thought it tasted bad. Ma always bought Dial (“gold”), and the color was really enticing. but the flavor just didn’t meet my expectations, so i quit. no one ever asked about the bite marks on the bar.

i would sometimes drink as much cold water as i could straight from the bathroom faucet, until my stomach felt like a water balloon. or a waterbed (although i wouldn’t experience one of those until many years later. i will not elaborate on that now, or at any time in the future). at any rate, i would idle away time at night in many different–and stupid–ways before trying to sleep. and once i slept, i was comatose.

so the next morning, Ma would always lose valuable time struggling to wake me for school. it was almost impossible to pull me out of the abyss once i was unconscious. then, as now–i had very active dreams. y’know, like fully engaged in another world, another dimension. sometimes that world is more tangible to me than this waking “reality” we share.

to pull myself out of my dreams in later years (specifically college), i had three clocks–each set anywhere from 6-13 minutes ahead of the actual time. i set each alarm to go off at different times. then i positioned the clocks in various places around the room so when the alarms sounded, i would have to physically get out of bed to hit the “snooze” button and jump back into bed knowing that another alarm would sound a couple minutes later. after a certain point each day, i annoyed myself into consciousness and staggered to the shower–the ultimate pick-me-up. this also annoyed the living hell out of my roommates.

but i blame the system. there should be more professions for people who are wired to wake up at 11am or noon. and who need 90 minutes to re-enter their bodies after deep slumber.

this aspect of my internal clock derailed the one dream i did have in the 80s. ready for this? stockbroker. i was fairly certain i would carry a briefcase and ride the 4 or 5 train to Wall Street. had i succeeded in that dream, i have a feeling that the global financial crisis would have arrived well before 2008. but i did only apply to colleges as a prospective Business or Economics major. then i did a year of Business School (we called it the B school. with my grades, it was more like the D school (i’m being generous)). without my mother there each morning to yank off the covers and throw me on the floor, i just didn’t get in gear and make those morning classes.

so i changed majors to Theater and made sure to schedule all my classes for later in the day, which helped greatly. there’s a whole backstory to my choice of acting as a major–which we’ll cover in a separate post. but jumping ahead, this was NOT on my “dreams” list as a youth.

of course, most identify me as a musician at this point. i skipped over how i got to this point, but here we are. yet another activity that consumes my time/attention and was never on the radar of my ambition. sometimes i feel like i know how to do things, but never know what i’m doing–or why. i just do stuff and see what happens, then i do additional stuff.

however, my “career” in music has been a mainstay. maybe all my previous dreams led me directly to my current state? i am a globetrotter who sucks women’s necks at night, terrible at business and comfortable on stage. who sleeps at 5, 6 or 7AM and wakes up somewhere between 11 and 1 in the afternoon. i suppose i always dreamed of being an artist and never knew it until right this minute.

when i sleep, i’m fully engaged in another world, another dimension. i dream hard, man. in this waking state, i visualize how i’d like (the next chapter of) my life to be but am totally blank on how i will get there. it’s out of my hands, really. that’s the challenge of being wired to commit to the arts–you need patrons, public support and god-knows-what to even have a chance of attaining a modest existence. now, that’s all i dream of.

do YOU dream enough?