Sweet Dreams
Ray Charles, Jess Ray, Goose, and dreams
Dream, dream, dream, dream
Dream
—The Everly Brothers, All I Have to Do Is Dream
This semester of the Swap has been a dream, perhaps our best yet, and now it’s time for our traditional summer break.
Before we go, a very gifted writer (like, wrote for a TV show and wrote a novel gifted) has graced us with his presence. Enjoy his piece about David Lynch, dreams, and music.
And for one last time until sometime in August or September, here are three selections from three of the Swap guys - Mat, Kody, and Adam.
Mat’s Pick: America the Beautiful by Ray Charles
We watched “The Sandlot” with our kids the other night. My favorite scene in that movie, and, frankly, one of my favorite scenes in any movie, shows the boys playing baseball by the light of the 4th of July fireworks. The scene is taken from great to iconic because this incredible rendition of “America the Beautiful” is the soundtrack. It’s pure Americana. Give this one a listen and you’ll be ready for a classic American summer. I can’t wait to watch baseball, swim, play golf, play pickleball, hang out at the beach, travel, and more all summer with team Alexander. I hope your summer is as tremendous as that scene and this song!
Kody’s Pick: Dimensions by Jess Ray
This song is a beautiful portrayal of a portion of Jesus’ Upper Room Discourse (John 13-17). Jess does a fantastic job illuminating the tenderness and care of Christ during a moment that must have felt deeply unsettling for His disciples.
The song builds to a powerful “aha” moment near the end, when the music subtly shifts and the lyrics move into a more direct quotation of the Farewell Discourse (John 14:1-4). The first time I caught it, I remember thinking, “Ohhhhh…this is what I should feel when I read this passage.”
“You have no idea how safe you really are.”
Mat and Adam included a YouTube video with their selections this week, so I’m dropping a video of Jess singing this song live on the Mount of Olives.
Adam’s Pick: How It Ends by Goose
This is how it ends
This is where we go
Racing towards the point
The skyline meets the road
Hey, it’s me again with another Goose jam. The summer is here, and I am moving my family back home. A very bittersweet ending to a meaningful season of life. One song stands out as a bookend, and it’s from Goose’s latest album. How It Ends is really about a band breaking up, but I really resonate with the refrain (see below) as change makes you finally see everything and everybody you ever loved.
And all that I am
Fades away
And I can finally see
Everything and everybody
I’ve ever loved
Bonus Track: "We Live Inside A Dream" by Matthew Rasmussen
We are like the dreamer, who dreams and then lives inside the dream… but who is the dreamer?
Picture this. It’s June 1991, and Twin Peaks airs the final episode of its second season on a gobsmacking cliffhanger. When the show premiered it was an instant cultural juggernaut. When it limped to a close at the end of season two, it was sadly yesterday's news. The public had drifted away, and the network understandably pulled the plug. Cryptically, the show’s dead heroine, Laura Palmer, tells us in that final episode that she’d see us again in twenty-five years.
And you know what? She was right.
In the most iconic and unexpected comeback in entertainment history, Twin Peaks premiered its third and final season in 2017, exactly twenty-five years later. (Okay, technically twenty-five years and eleven months later — but get outta here with your nitpicks!)
If you don’t know the late/great David Lynch’s work, I envy you. You have a lifetime’s worth of complicated, surrealistic, and deeply unsettling art to dig into. He is the reason I write, the reason I live in Los Angeles, and the reason I dream. That last bit sounds cheesy when taken out of context, but hear me out — David Lynch was *the* master of dissecting our relationships to dreams and nightmares; the way they dictate, shed light on, and mystify the human experience. It’s not a coincidence that, in his very best films, his main characters can’t quite tell what’s real and what isn’t, unable to escape the literal nightmares they’re experiencing amidst the trauma of their waking lives (see MULHOLLAND DRIVE, LOST HIGHWAY, INLAND EMPIRE, FIRE WALK WITH ME. No seriously, see them! I’m begging you!)
We are like the dreamer, who dreams and then lives inside the dream… but who is the dreamer?
So… how does this relate to the Swap, you ask? Well, in Twin Peaks’s perfect final season, a hodgepodge of bands and musicians played the show’s Bang Bang Bar (think The O.C.’s Bait Shop or 90210’s The Peach Pit). We got iconic performances from Eddie Vedder, Nine Inch Nails, and a bunch of other cool bands I’d never heard of. But the first band to perform was synth-pop band Chromatics with their dreamy song “Shadow,” and boy did they set the tone for the season.
In the song, Chromatics singer Ruth Radelet croons to the titular shadow, imploring it to “take me down with you, for the last time.” I still get chills when she sings that line, as it certainly felt when it aired as if David were speaking directly to us through her. Sit up, lean in, pay attention he seemed to be saying. Dream with him, for the last time. It might be a morbid coincidence, but it certainly proved prophetic — David died in January of this year, and while he continued to create art after the final season of Twin Peaks, it was his final major artistic statement as a director.
Early on, the song flashes back to the very first scenes of the series, all those years ago, when the corpse of poor Laura Palmer washed ashore, iconically wrapped in plastic. "You're in the water. I'm standing on the shore, still thinking that I hear your voice. Can you hear me?" Radelet croons nostalgically.
In the song's back half, Radelet rides around in her companion’s car, daydreaming of escape, “pretending that we’ll leave this town…” But as the song progresses, and they watch the streetlights fade together, Radelet realizes with increasing dread that something is very wrong, that maybe her companion isn’t who they seem to be. She fears they’re “just a stranger’s dream…” and confesses that she “took your picture from the frame, and now you’re nothing like you seem, your shadow felt like last night’s rain…”
Is her companion who he or she says they are? Is Radelet, for that matter? Or are they both a figment of a nightmare from which Radelet can’t break free? This, in turn, magnificently pays off in the final scenes of the series, when -- SPOILER ALERT!!!!! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!!!! -- two people find themselves riding in a car together, unable to place where exactly they are in time. They certainly look like each other, and the place they've arrived resembles one they knew long ago -- but as the series cuts to black, we can't help but fear that they're eternally trapped in an inescapable nightmare.
(Yes Swap fam, that's the *other* most important David of all time, David Bowie. He appears in the Twin Peaks prequel film but declined to return for the third season. His character was replaced by a giant talking bell. Yes, you read that correctly.)
We are like the dreamer, who dreams and then lives inside the dream… but who is the dreamer?
This dream/dreamer question, by the way, was asked directly to David Lynch in the middle of season three. (David appears throughout the series as Gordon Cole, a quirky FBI agent who’s comically hard of hearing.) Exactly how many layers were intended in this moment? Was the character -- Monica Bellucci playing herself in a dream Gordon had, cuz why not -- merely reciting her scripted lines within the world of the show, or is there more at play here? Did she hijack this dream to confront the show's co-creator and captor, aware of the waking nightmare in which David has trapped the characters of Twin Peaks? Or is David talking directly to *us* via this dream sequence, offering up a thesis statement which possibly summates his entire body of work?
If you’re hoping for answers to those questions, I don’t have any. Neither would David. His work notoriously asks questions but refuses to offer answers. Many cinephiles dislike him for this very reason, and look, I get it. I understand why it feels like a cop-out — but dreams don’t give us easy answers either. Hell, I’d argue that’s precisely why they’re so worthy of our eternal examination.
It’s also why I’ll continue to return to David’s work for the rest of my waking life. I’m not looking for answers; I want to live inside a dream. His dreams, specifically.
Farewell, David. You inspired generations of dreamers. I sure hope you knew how loved you are.
Matthew Rasmussen lives in Los Angeles. His very first concert was New Kids on the Block (against his will, to be clear.) He once punched Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson a little too hard in the shoulder at a Soft Moon show in DTLA to tell him how great Hole was, to which Eric genuinely replied, confused, "Does it hold up?" (Yes Eric, of course it does! Are you insane?!?!)
We’ll probably drop into your inbox this summer with a special edition or playlist, but the usual show has been paused.
It’s been real, and real fun. Thank you so much for subscribing and reading.
Sweet dreams.
And may all your favorite bands stay together!
-TheMusicSwap