Jean Morin, After Jacques Fouquières:
Landscape with a Wheatfield (17th century)

" … it matured to say precisely what needed saying …"

One Mysterious Dream

"I will take to the morning on the first day of my life
and wander through the sparkling dew and sunshine,
and let her icy tingle wipe the sleep out of my soul,
for it seems to me I surely have been dreaming all this time.
But I almost half remember this One Mysterious Dream
that came upon me just before I rose."

Metaphysics might be the one consistent sub-theme running through all my lyrics. Some mystery's present and remains acknowledged if unexplained. This added another dimension to my stories and also pleased the part of me that had always treasured ambiguity. I might be incapable of nailing down anything. I much prefer opening up things, like cans of worms, for instance. Also, I often far exceeded whatever rights and privileges even an advanced poetic license generally allows. I took liberties with the permissible. Few of my songs seem very well grounded in three dimensional reality. Unseen forces usually intruded. I thought this fuzziness rendered me more mysterious. I fancied myself a minstrel then. That mystery was my brand and my middle name, though I went by the stage name of David. I included the PureSchmaltz much later in an act of middle-aged audacity.

"There is something in this universe that everyone has dreamed
everyone has seen at least the shadow.
Moving on the moonlight like some phantom or a God,
she seems to leave some questions and some sunshine as she goes.
But I always half-assumed, ever since I was small,
that there was really something there to see."

A companion theme seems to have been the relative accessibility of the mystery to pretty much everybody. I strongly rejected the notion of a hierarchy of spirituality. I never once believed that priests were closer to any deity than were the least of anybody else. As a dedicated deist, I was my own priest and this world, my church. As a poet, I pretty much tried to stay close to stating the obvious, as if to reinforce what we all probably suspected: Nobody's holier than thou or anybody else. My world view was mostly half-assumed, by which I mean, not the result of formal or even informal study. I could write about what I felt as if I'd witnessed the feelings.

"Oh, and I have heard it echo on the wheatland
and whispered in the shadows by the ones we never see;
though there be some mystery, if I can hear the song,
then someone must be singing."

This song became my funeral dirge, though I didn't originally write it for that purpose. I think it curious and probably instructive to notice how often something eventually serves as something other than its original intention, just as if it had been well designed to serve that purpose. This song serves as the prime example of that effect for me. I remember standing on the edge of the vast wheatlands north of my hometown and feeling as though I was smack dap in the middle of the universe, as if everything emanated from precisely that point where I was standing. Perhaps I was standing in the center of the universe. I probably harbored grand delusions, like that I would one day make a difference and have an impact on this world. My early songwriting days were largely encouraged by just such destined-to-greatness delusions.

"I will take to the morning on the first day of my life
and wander through the sparkling dew and sunshine,
and let her icy tingle wipe the sleep out of my soul,
for it seems to me I surely have been dreaming all this time.
But I almost half remember this One Mysterious Dream
that came upon me just before I rose."

Many of my songs circle back upon themselves. Some, like this one, are missing a third verse. Others just seemed to have needed the opening statement reinforced, as if most of the rest of the story had proven extraneous. In this case, I really loved the sense that first verse imparted. It surprises me every time I sing it. It well describes the felt sense I hope it induces in others. To assert plans for a future first day of my life seems amply audacious. It's hardly surprising that this image influenced this song becoming my funereal contribution. I think of death as another form of life and of this life as just (I said "just"!) One Mysterious Dream. I figure the first day of my life might be roughly equivalent to my last day.

"Oh, and I have heard it echo on the wheatland
and whispered in the shadows by the ones we never see;
though there be some mystery, if I can hear the song,
then someone must be singing."

And the song ends with me repeating "must be singing, someone, must be singing …" to fade. It's become more dramatic over time. It has a life all its own, distinctly different than all the others, as if this song itself became its subject, One Mysterious Dream. I cannot really claim credit for anything that was apparently quietly evolving over fifty largely unwatched years. This one, too, resided in some bottom desk drawer and was rarely removed. At times, I'd feel compelled to open that drawer and tune up the old guitar and try to perform what I'd almost successfully forgotten I'd ever created. This one came back different than it packed away. It came back better than I could have ever expected. Out of its original intentional ambiguity, it matured to say precisely what needed saying, and continues doing so to this day.

——

Songwriting As A Spiritual Practice
I feel as though I found my voice this week. I think that the purpose of this SetTheory series became much clearer, and that purpose seems very different than I'd imagined when I proposed this inquiry. I love it when that happens. I consider this effect a clear indicator that I'm engaged in work right for me. Had I merely managed to manifest what I'd originally envisioned, there could have been little transcendence involved. I guess that I firmly believe that my plans serve as points of departure, that I do not really intend to deliver what I promise, but something much better. I'm always up to exceeding my own expectations, though the scale against which I measure my successes seems calibrated in absolute values, not positives or negatives. I'm interested in the magnitude of shifts more than the perceived return or loss on my invested effort. Producing much less than expected might bring unanticipated benefits. Sometimes less is more and sometimes more sure seems like less. I wonder if I should confess that I always approached songwriting as a spiritual practice, much the same as I now approach my story writing.

I began my writing week Unconvinced that I was engaging in my right and proper work, the opposite of where my writing week ended up. "I'm Unconvinced that my, or anybody's, ambivalence, really matters very much in any broader scheme of anything."

I caught myself engaging in a standard impossible activity, believing myself recreating the past in Past-ing. "My job must be to maintain possibilities, not to construct and maintain some mausoleum holding my pasts intact. My pasts were gone in the moment they flickered, like some quantum event. They were light, not the lightning bug, and could never have been held in any glass."

I'm surprised that this story was found the most popular of this period. I never suspected it would, but then it did give voice to an often overlooked universal, *Elbowing. "Everything requires Elbowing, vengeful or loving, frantic or languid, for that is the way of this universe and of this world, and even the greatest undertaking, which I'm not insisting my SetList rises to that importance, earns no exception. It's just a run of the mill objective, hectored by equally pedestrian concerns, performing high rise construction with tweezers."

I next took a deliberate side trip on the road to completing my SetList and performing my SetTheorizing, Wandering. " I was briefly a somebody heading nowhere instead of a nobody headed there. Man, but we sure do love to take ourselves on rides!"

I next stumbled upon what will most certainly prove to be a prominent pattern of the remaining SetTheory stories, where I imbed a lyric within a story about the song, its writing, and its writer. I called the first one Estranging. "Not a single song was ever once fictional in origin. Each blesséd one began with some hard-won life lesson I wanted, for some reason, to stick with me long term. So they became songs."

I posted a backhanded update on The Muse's progress through cancer treatment with AWOL. "The Emotional Support Animal can at least—and perhaps at best, too—merely be present, patient, and witness. My admiration for the patient grows as my sense of impotence increases."

I ended my writing week recreating another of my greatest hits for my SetList with AFriendOfMine. "These songs visit me like indigent friends needing a couch for the weekend. They've fallen into disrepair."

My writing week took me full circle, from Unconvinced to rediscovering another old and still dear FriendOfMine. I righted my course, from focusing backward to leaning forward. I acknowledged the distractions and continued Elbowing my way through them, no longer expecting to ever lose them; they're constant companions. I re-created and recreated along the way, arriving after an absence without leave, and all seems pretty right with my world. It's okay to be happy, even necessary when re-discovering one's long lost heart's delight again. Thank you for following along with me, friends!

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SetTheory, #PureSchmaltz