Friday, June 19, 2015

"The Altar of a Dream" with commentary

This song began life as a tune I wrote to the poem “Starfish” by my longtime penpal Becky Talmadge. Later on, I rewrote the song again as “That’s What I’ve Been Told,” which appeared in my musical “A Heart Calls Quietly.” As for Becky, she and I wrote to each other regularly for over ten years. The correspondence gradually diminished then stopped in the late 1980s as our lives and philosophies drifted further and further apart. I have since become Facebook friends with her brother, John, but I have no idea what became of Becky.

The Altar of a Dream

© Brian Hutzell 1986

Watch the Northern Star
Watch every omen
Ask Apollo's oracle
No concrete plans made before consulting a shaman
Read your horoscope and hope it's something good
Say you saw it in a dream
Predestination, precognition, primeval

Worship ye, the altar of a dream
Put your head between the stocks
Lie down on the butcher's block
Bring your sacrificial offerings
Rest upon the altar of a dream

Dreams to you more real than life
Asleep or waking
The plans you're making, you're faking
It's all pretend
Lost in the lies and superstition
Must be hard to live believing every dream
Say you saw it in a dream
A desert altar, holy water, and writing
Foreign tongue
But still you understand its meaning

Worship ye, the altar of a dream
Put your head between the stocks
Lie down on the butcher's block
Bring your sacrificial offerings
Rest upon the altar of a dream

Burning, worship
Take direction from Leviticus, oh yes
Holy phony
Don't need atoning, confess!
Dreams to you more real than life
Asleep or waking
It doesn't matter - they're both the same
A burning bush calls you to step into the flames
You don't feel the heat through layers of frozen brain
Say you saw it in a dream

A revelation, another vision to save your soul
I've heard that before, but you're never changing

Worship ye, the altar of a dream
Put your head between the stocks
Lie down on the butcher's block
Bring your sacrificial offerings
Rest upon the altar of a dream



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