“I Had a Dream, A Song to Sing..”

Once upon a time there was a little boy whose head was full of daydreams and wonder. Deep within his very core he had a song. A beautiful song, one which the birds of the air themselves would envy. It was a song of joy, of energy and of delight.

Day in, day out the little boy would sing this song, to himself and the people around him. He would sing loud, he would sing soft, a lullaby of laughter like a babbling brook, dancing and rushing to meet the wide, wide ocean.

He sang and he sang, he sang and he sang. Other children would hear his song and join in, combining voices, creating a sea of sunlit-sparkled melody. Voice upon voice, flowing together til the little boy’s song led a mighty crescendo-roar, each child around him lending their voice, layer upon layer...

The adults however could not hear this roar. Their minds were too full of adult thinking and too empty of song. A world of mortgage, of bills, of acquisition, of outcome, of object, of production. They were impervious to the little boy’s song. They were deaf to the laughter of children’s voices swirling and dancing all around them.

Instead, the adults imposed their own song. His teachers and his parents and the Adult World  drowned out the chorus of daydream and delight. They had no time for things that they could no longer hear. They once had sung a song of magic, they once had a dance of delight and daydream. But no longer... Theirs was a decayed song, a tuneless cacophony of demand and expectation, devoid of rhythm or rhyme

But the little boy continued with his song. Louder and louder. Yet the louder he sang, the more the adults closed their ears. Until one day the little boy realised that the Adult World would not listen. The song in his heart began to choke in his throat. The vivid dreams within him seemed less bright or clear, the adult voices around him began to become his song instead, out of tune, broken and cracked. His song started to die.

The little boy sang his broken song - a song he thought the adults would want to hear and slowly they began to take note. Day after day a broken song, twisted and out-of-tune getting quieter and quieter, more broken, less dreamt, until the song became silent, un-magic and dumb.

Spring turned to Summer, to Autumn to Winter, season after season sliding by until the little boy was no longer a little boy but a man. On walks he would hear the thrush and the skylark singing their joy and something momentarily would stir inside him, a brief candle, then gone. On these walks his son by his side tried to sing to him his own child-song of joy and wonder, joining in with the sweet bird clamour but the man’s ears were closed, his mind full of bills to pay, money to make, of expectation and outcome, his own long-forgotten childhood song boxed away, gathering dust.

And so once upon a time there was a little boy whose head was full of daydreams and wonder. Within himself he had a song. A beautiful song, one which the birds of the air themselves would envy. It was a song of joy, of energy and delight....