on hollywood and broken dreams

October 10, 2006


Walking down the crowded streets of Hollywood.

People of every shape and kind and color wander these streets, each for their various reasons. Some are snapping pictures of theaters or things they have only read about in books. Some are selling their faces in costume for the benefit of making a dollar by appearing in the photographs of tourists. Some wander without a cause. Some are looking for fame and the American Dream of rags to riches.

I take a look around me at the empty faces and vacant stares of some, and the hopeful and innocent eyes that belong to others. And I wonder: how many dreams were born and buried on this avenue? How many seeds of ideas were born, and hopes turned to dust because of the hold that the idea of 'Hollywood' has on people? Are we all just actors on a stage as life is being played out or our actions the result of Something Greater... something that we, as finite humans, could never understand?

What is it that we find so captivating about the faces on the screen?

Is it their unattainability, their distant status? Is it the way they display many of the universal human emotions with such accuracy… or sometimes inaccuracy? They stun us with their beauty and shock us by always knowing what to say and when to say it. We marvel over their perfect homes and beautiful lifestyles. After all, that's what television and movies have become. Beautiful plots with beautiful characters who lead beautiful lives.

We love them in all of their glory and perfection, and we despise them for somehow attaining the lifestyles we will spend forever trying to achieve.

What if we were content with the simple life?

I know that in dreams there lies something beautiful. I know that there will never be any harm in reaching for the stars and that there is something simple and amazing, human and finite in the way we will all cling to hopes that we know might not ever be completed.

What if there is something more that I'm missing?

I spend my days dreaming of the ways I could change the world, if I only had the abilities… or the money… or the support… or the experience. I dream of changing people with my lyrics and appealing to the human heart and the human experience. I cry out for passion, and for peace. I dream of getting the high and lofty to look down at the mess we've made of what we were given. And we were given so much.

I hope someday, one day, I can be satisfied with where I am.

It seems as though I'm always wishing time away; wishing I were older or wiser, wishing for the days that my eyes will finally see the rest of this world, longing for days when I won't be plagued by school and its rigor. Always wishing for tomorrow, never lingering in today. How much more effective would I be if I would live in the moment instead of yesterday or the days to come?

It's easy to wish time away. I think at one point or another, we all do. But today is all I will ever have. It is all I can grasp. It is all that I can fathom. More importantly, it's all that I can change.

There's nothing wrong with shooting for the stars, and only making it to the moon, as long as you remain content with what you have and where you're at. I look up at the big TV's and the billboards, the skyscrapers and the empty looks in peoples' eyes. I look down this boulevard of hopes and fears and dreams, and I see beauty. Beauty in the hope that one day I won't long for all of this material compensation. Beauty in the dream that one day I will reach what I'm running towards, and I won't have sold my soul in the process. Beauty in that one day I might have the courage to look beyond my own needs and use what I have to fulfill the needs of others.

There is beauty in looking beyond circumstance and into your undiscovered future. My dreams are to change the world. But it first has to begin in the changing of myself.

And therein rests the journey I will come to call my life. I wonder where the path will lead tomorrow, but more importantly: how I will walk that path with what I have been given today?