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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