Impossible Dreams

A number of years ago I was in a failing marriage and, as one does, thinking back on my life. I was writing a lot of songs at that time and often used my songs as a way of working through my own thoughts about the world as I see it. Sometimes it is a great way to see how I got from where I was before to where I had come to.

I’ve never been able to walk lockstep with the culture I was in, partly because I grew up in many cultures. Living in America, I realized that the women I’d been attracted to tended not to be the Miss America types—the gorgeous, perfect women. The model wife of that time was someone who inspired praise for qualities such as her appearance and domestic abilities. They were attractive, certainly, but not people I wanted to be in a serious relationship with.

When I was young, in the sixties, I hung out in coffee houses (playing and learning) and most of the women I admired I met there--women who were well read, clever and independent—kick ass women. More than once, however, I found that such women didn’t believe I (or maybe anyone) could care for them as they were. They thought I was in love with a fantasy I had about them. Perhaps that was true to an extent. I certainly was affected by the American Dream in some way, and this song, in its earliest incarnation, was my attempt to resolve the woman of the American Dream with the women I was attracted to. I called it American Dream.

A few years later I started working with Harper John in Hong Kong and we formed The Lapsap Blues Band, which became Indie Kline. We were working on the album WORLDS APART and I suggested doing the song. When Harper John began playing with it, without knowing the background, he suggested that it was bigger than just an American Dream -- it was an Impossible Dream. I decided he was right and the new version of the song really nailed it much better. He made a few other lyrical changes too (and still does), and they have served to keep the song vital.  

He still performs it in concert and here is a video of him doing it live at The Gates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO5S-hNYOts