I’ve released the latest song on my album, “Howl”, and it’s called “Dreams May Come”. I wrote it because I have had these incredibly real-feeling dreams of people who died many years ago – my brother, and my father. In my dreams, of course, they are not sick, or old, but in their prime. My brother looks and sounds, even smells, so real, as if he is right there with me, but of course he is like he was before 1994, when he committed suicide. He doesn’t do anything in these dreams. He’s just there. My father died in 2008, and when I dream of him, he is just sitting with me, in his usual jacket and cap, smoking his pipe – the pipe that gave him the cancer that killed him. He sounds happy. He looks like he’s been tinkering with stuff, like he always did.
These dreams are both happy and painful; happy for a moment, then painful when I wake up, and realize that they are gone. The dreams seem to be about people that I’ve lost, or things that I wanted but never had, or chose never to have. I think we all have dreams like this – perhaps they are manifestations of guilt and grief that we keep in our subconsciousness. We’re human, and we dream like this. I find these dreams of mine very upsetting, and I wrote this song to process what I was feeling. I realized, while writing the lyrics, that there was nothing I could do to make things right, or to tell them that I love them. If you have someone you love, tell them – now. Don’t wait.
For this song, I needed a female vocalist who could understand and express the feelings I had written about. On SoundBetter, I found Shelley Harland, performing as Dawn Lief, whose warm and pure voice lends beauty and depth to the song.
Dreams May Come – Lyrics
I saw my brother
in my dream last night.
Time had stopped
and he was still all right.
There he was again,
fair and green-eyed.
He was himself
as if he had not died.
What are these ghosts that still haunt me?
Are they memories that never mend?
Or are they forever sadness?
Or are they dreams that never end?
I saw my father
in my dream last night,
in his chair and puffing on his pipe.
He’d been at work
on something outside.
His hands were strong
like before he’d died.
One moment more,
Oh, one moment more ,
to ease the heart that aches.
Dreams may come,
but they don’t last
vanishing when you wake.
I held the child
I never had last night,
born in a dream,
so small but filled with light.
Like all things that’s passed,
or paths not crossed,
they come to me in dreams
of long-gone loss.