The Lovers, the Dreamers, and We

“Is this the sweet sound 

That calls the young sailors?

The voice might be one and the same…”

– Kermit the Frog, with no help from Me

I remember once, during my freshman year of college, I posted on my private Snapchat story to much critical acclaim (i.e. a satisfyingly large number of people who replied to bestow upon me the compliment of the assurance of their laughter) a picture which read:

sometimes i get insecure about having anxiety but then i remember my ancestors

Accompanying this text were four pictures of four characters: Arnold from The Magic School Bus, Justin Russo from Wizards of Waverly Place, Mia Thermopalis from The Princess Diaries… and Kermit the Frog, who needs no introduction or epithet. 

Reader, I feel a certain kinship with Kermit that I insist – supremely arrogantly and yet with such desperate emphasis, such wretched wholeheartedness one may think me almost pitiful with humility – is quite impossible to be understood by any of the other millions of souls who smile at the thought of a softhearted frog with a wistful singing voice and alarmingly well-developed leadership skills.

I have long since wanted to write about Mr. The Frog. In truth, circling at the back of my mind is a small collection of ideas and inspirations for what I might write one day – when the time is right, when I am right, when the stars align and the rainbows emerge and men in white sailor’s suits are kept awake by musical noises that break with the waves against the side of creeping black schooners. 

I think it unlikely this day will ever come. 

Reader, I can not think of a loss of that which is wholly mine own that would grieve me more than the ruin of my imagination. With twenty-two years behind me, I think I am scarcely less enchanted by forgotten wardrobes, rain-soaked forests, and empty pages than I was at age twelve. Mistake me not, I admit this with pride, my colour rising as I write these words not because I feel silly, but because I am too aware of the inadequacies of my voice to explain, to show, to bring you into my head for a moment and envelop you in this thing that does not exist. And because, should I fail in this pursuit, I will feel rather silly. 

In my mind, I believe I see the world as a sort of almost-finished work of art, brushed onto canvas by a student whose master brings audiences to their knees in weeping prayer with the beauty of his compositions, but whose own achievements are just that – achievements in the most mundane sense of the word. I am not a cynic, I find this earth to be an exciting and hopeful place, but I do not think it would be so without the embellishment of a persistent and youthful determination to create magic where heart is lacking. 

I am certainly no great master of anything, and I do not believe the world I see is the greatest one to exist today. But I do believe and feel most ardently that my imagination deepens the pallet of my world, sketches into being that which has no corporeal presence, relieves the heaviness of trying days, and distorts all it has created and all it seeks to colour when used against its wielder. It is a thing both within and beyond. 

I am a dreamer, Reader. That is the definition by which I know myself, the constant to which I turn, the solace I seek when necessary, the root of my most intense ambitions and horrors. I am a Dreamer. 

Why, then, if I am so passionate about the core my identity, if it is so integral to my person, would I – who claims here often to seek vulnerability and growth and all that is loathsome to hear preached outside of a self-help novel read with a watery smile and resolution to listen to more Brene Brown – be so avoidant to ever expand here, my private-public correspondence with my dearest friend (you), about who I am? What reason would I have for years of dishonesty to you, who has shown me nothing but loyalty, in neglecting to divulge even a thousand words on the topic? 

You may hate me for saying so, Reader, but the answer is actually rather funny – I skirt the subject of Dreams because I am, in fact, a Dreamer. It is because I am a Dreamer that I do not want to taint the magic of a Dream with the reality of doing it. I do not want to attempt to pin down what swirls with the clouds, because I fear the cotton-candy coloured streams above will melt away and resign themselves to the rigid, ugly pink lines engrained beneath my skull. I fear this reality so deeply, I sense its consequences so strongly, because a vibrant Dream exalts its Dreamer to the highest ranks of joy, and shows her with no uncertainty all the hideous what-if’s that could at any moment leave her, rain-soaked, in the rubble of her ruined castle, no sun in sight to conjure a multicoloured illusion.

It is very frightening, you understand, to stop dreaming, and start doing, so that the most treasured dream has a chance at becoming reality. It is much easier, though much more disruptive to the heart, to Dream. I think it is time I stop waiting for perfect seafaring days, and begin sailing anyhow.

This notion, I think, is why Rainbow Connection is such a melancholy, beautiful song. It encapsulates in a medium which is often the only one that can properly affect our souls the entrancement of Dreamers by their Dreams, the deception of their own minds into which they so often fall when that brilliant creativity is used to further the scheme of fear, and the irresistible pull they feel toward the imaginative anyhow. It is a song of longing for what has been – for nostalgia is often the root of the most heinous, stunning Dreams, chasing after what we can no longer have –  yearning for what is to come, resignation to the knowledge it may not be, and sheer idiocy in the determination to pursue it even so. 

As for the Lovers…I like to think Kermit and Juliet get along with much bright-eyed smirking and full silence. 

But Kermit is neither  a Lover nor a Dreamer, if we are to take his understanding of English grammar and sentence structure to be true, and given everything else we know about him, we will do so. Kermit is not a Lover or a Dreamer, he is a singing frog. By all known scientific accounts of the physical world, he can not be real. 

I am very much enjoying finding the Rainbow Connection with him.

Love,

Lettie Anne