My Dad had a dream.
I don’t know when it started.
Somewhere in his teens, like most dreams do, I suppose.
He wanted to be a rock and roll songwriter.
A lyricist, he called it.
Maybe because poet sounded like something way different than rock and roll wordsmith.
Sometime in the 80’s he made friends with a pharmaceutical rep who played piano and they made plans to write songs.
I guess the guy was moving to Nashville.
All I really remember about him is going to his apartment for dinner and listening to them talk.
My Dad had a couple of bona fides that gave him street cred.
Pictures of hippie hair trailing to his butt, stories about getting high with Tommy Shaw pre-Styx fame.
Maybe a few others that my ears didn’t hear.
But his early twenties dreams got derailed by marriage and divorce and kids and responsibilities, like so many dreams do.
The real world intervened.
He may have pursued it on and off, through a stint