Monday, January 13, 2020

Monday's Poetry: "In Dreams"

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

This weekend I had the opportunity to watch director David Lynch's 1986 cult classic film, Blue Velvet, a twisted look at some oddball crime which was being perpetuated in a fictional North Carolina logging community called Lumberton, a town that would have seemed more realistic if it had claimed to be located in Oregon or Washington rather than North Carolina.  The story revolved around a college student, Jeffrey, who came home to be with his family when his father was hospitalized after suffering a heart attack.  Jeffery was played by Kyle McLachlan, a young man who went on a couple of years later to play the lead in Lynch's quirky television show, Twin Peaks.

One day as Kyle was walking home from visiting his Dad in the hospital. he stopped to throw rocks at a trash burn barrel.  As he was bending over looking for rocks to throw, he'd discovered a severed human ear.   He turned the ear over to a local police detective, and in the process of doing that, became connected to the detective's daughter who was a student at Kyle's old high school.

Kyle and the girl, Sandy (Laura Dern), involved themselves in trying to solve the mystery of the severed ear.  Their misadventures in detection caused Kyle to become involved with a cabaret singer, Dorothy Valens (Isabella Rossellini), who seemed to be dealing with several personal issues - including a kidnapped son, and a local criminal ably played by Dennis Hopper.

Two songs from the 1970's were pervasive throughout this movie.  Dorothy sang the title tune, "Blue Velvet," at the "Slow Club" on two separate occasions and was strongly identified with it throughout the film.  The other song was a Roy Orbison classic.  One of the campiest points in the film occurs when a gangster named Ben (Dean Stockwell) suddenly held a mechanic's light up next to his face and began lip-syncing Orbison's "In Dreams."  Later in the movie Dennis Hopper also lip-synced the same song.  Those two songs, "Blue Velvet" and "In Dreams," helped define the strange characters who populated this very unique film.

This is perhaps my favorite Roy Orbison song of all time.


In Dreams
by Roy Orbison

A candy-colored clown they call the sandman
Tiptoes to my room every night
Just to sprinkle star dust and to whisper
"Go to sleep, everything is alright"

I close my eyes and then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you

In dreams I walk with you
In dreams I talk to you
In dreams you're mine all of the time
We're together in dreams, in dreams

But just before the dawn
I awake and find you gone
I can't help it, I can't help it if I cry
I remember that you said goodbye

It's too bad it only seems
It only happens in my dreams
Only in dreams
In beautiful dreams

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