Herman Wouk wrote a novel called "Youngblood Hawke", about a young writer/author named, oddly enough, Youngblood Hawke; I never knew enough about Wouk to be certain of this, but always strongly suspected that the novel was strongly autobiographical - or maybe was semi-biographical about another author, Thomas Wolfe maybe (whoever wrote "You Can't Go Home Again"), because there seemed to be a lot of parallels although again I was basing that "sense" or "feeling" on an almost complete lack of information other than what I sensed/felt in reading Wolfe's tome. Sometime around the same time, or maybe later, it also struck me that maybe the parallels were more incidental than intentional, that the parallels were there simply because they were . . . there.
To get back to Youngblood Hawke, he--the character--wrote a series of novels, all serious and literary, etc., but essentially designed to make enough money that ultimately he, Youngblood, would be free financially to write his REAL masterwork, a series of novels patterned after some French guy's "Comedy;" Hawke's would be "The American Comedy" and would paint a comprehensive tapestry of American life at that point in history, and maybe throughout its history, I forget now. Anyway, Hawke dies fairly young, having completed several novels including one that was a critical flop which was told from a woman's point of view (see "Marjorie Morningstar," by Herman Wouk). After his funeral, his former editor, a woman with whom he had or had not had an affair, I forget which, who had wound up married to a lawyer, lamented to her husband that Hawke had never gotten a chance to start his "American Comedy." The lawyer--actually a thoughtful, likable character--thought for a moment, apparently mentally reviewing the work Hawke HAD completed, and said something like, "You know, I think Youngblood may have written his comedy." Thing was, he HAD--he just didn't know he was doing it when he was doing it.
What got me started wandering down this particular meandering mental path was a conversation with a friend last night about "dreams deferred" (from a Langston Hughes poem), and what happens to them. The point I wanted to make to him, although I couldn't quite figure out at the time how to verbalize it, was simply that sometimes we are living our dream without even being aware of it--as in the case of Youngblood Hawke. Corollary to that is that sometimes we "mis-identify" our dream, focus on one aspect of it without realizing that our subconscious has entirely different ideas about which is the most important aspect of the dream. Which I'm sure makes no sense at all . . . . In the case of an artist - musician, writer, painter, whatever - the conscious mind may identify the dream by its presumed "accoutrements" of fame, fortune, the "good life," etc., whereas the subconscious mind sees it as simply doing the art, or performing it or practicing it or whatever the hell it is you do with an "art," in and of itself. In the case of a musician, it is not "about" the label, the acknowledgment of the world at large that you are a "musician;" instead, it is about the music itself. Same goes for writing--it doesn't matter if the world thinks of you, and labels you, a "writer;" it is important only that you write. Same goes for any other art form (and just by the way, I still have a difficult time thinking of writing as an "art form;" it's just a communications tool, or a recording device, something, but to call it "art" seems a little . . . the word escapes me right now. Of course).
Once a long time ago I was talking with my former boss, Jean, about I forget what, and she commented, "We're all pretty much where we're supposed to be, when we're supposed to be there." She was big on "sayings." That one stuck with me, obviously (given that it has been 19 years since I worked with her, and probably 14-15 years since I last saw her), and I've thought about it off and on over the years. Whether she meant it in as "cosmic" a sense as that in which I've generally contemplated it (and I think she did; she was bent that way, oddly enough), I've concluded that she was right. I also know that that is an easy thing to prove, looking at any life in retrospect--see Youngblood Hawke, for instance. Even decidedly wrong turns can look, in retrospect, if you wind up somewhere you want to be, even if it wasn't where you started out to go, as so serendipitous or fortunate or whatever as to be "other directed"--fate or predestination, call it what you want. In retrospect, nothing looks like a "fatal mistake"--IF you're still surviving and able/willing/predisposed to contemplate such things. This of course presupposes that at the time you engage in such contemplation, you're more happy with what you ARE than unhappy about what you "might have been, if only _____ (fill in the blank)."
The other thing about dreams, that just occurred to me, is that by definition they have to be "elusive" - that is, always just barely outside your grasp, or somehow just half a step ahead of you, almost within reach but not . . . quite . . . there. Because once you "catch" your dream, what then is there to keep you going on? The dude in the movie, "Flashdance," didn't mean it like this when he told the Jennifer Beals character, "You give up your dream, you die," but it could be taken as, "When you catch your dream, you die."
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