Miguel de Cervantes' early 17th century novel, “The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha” -- popularized three and a half centuries later by the musical play “Man of La Mancha” and by the hit song from that musical, “The Impossible Dream” -- has been called a foundational work of modern Western literature. I read an English translation of the book and saw the play in my teens. Forty years later, as I pick up my guitar, learn to play “The Impossible Dream” and begin to interpret it for myself, I also begin to realize how deeply this work has influenced -- and continues to influence -- my life.
For many years, when people asked me if I played the guitar, I would respond with a self-deprecating joke that also reflected my assessment of my guitar skills. “No,” I would reply. “I don’t play the guitar. I play with it.” Ironically, during the last 10 years I’ve realized that playing with the guitar is what I’ve wanted to do all along. A guitar has its own separate voice, just like a human voice. At the risk of sounding nutty, learning to play an instrument has been for me like learning to communicate with an eons-old yet intimately close friend. As we learn to communicate, our Impossible Dreams are no longer dreamt alone. And Impossible Dreams that are shared have a way of becoming real.
Like an old Don Quixote, who perhaps reads too many books, I have some very big and very impossible dreams. And as in Cervantes’ book, my mortal enemy, the Knight of Mirrors, laughs in my face. “Get real, you old fool! Why don’t you act your age?” His logic is indisputable, of course: nothing new about that.
But the loyal and stout-hearted Sancho Panza, the noble and beautiful Lady Dulcinea, and the good and wise innkeeper are depending on me. So I laugh right back, “Careful sunshine. Didn’t your Momma tell you that people in glass armor shouldn’t throw stones?” For emphasis, I toss a little extra dip in my swagger: “Now that I told you, you can either move on or get your glass waxed.”
The Knight of Mirrors shakes his head. “You Impossible Dreamers are all the same. I’m just trying to help you out, to wake you up. But you are too belligerent.”
“That’s because you, oh man in the mirrors (despite your good intentions), can’t see beyond your own reflections,” I reply. “You can’t see beyond what is, to what might be.”
“You mean like the noble and beautiful Aldonza, excuse me, Dulcinea?” he snorts.
“Precisely,” I answer, totally free of anger or even indignation, but with a mountain of absolute certainty that raises the conflict to a whole new level.
The Knight of Mirrors defeated Don Quixote in early 17th century Spain, by reflecting our hero’s obvious flaws back at him. But this is early 21st century San Francisco Bay Area, California, where getting uptight over flaws is seriously unhip. The real deal nowadays (not for everybody, but for a lot of folks) is supporting each other in our healing journeys, loving unconditionally, greening everybody and everything, and all that other New Age stuff. Dulcinea (and I as well) may have made some poor choices four hundred years ago, but she is still (as the Temptations used to sing it) My Girl.
So instead of whupin’ me like he did old Don Quixote, the Knight of Mirrors is unhorsed by the 21st century anti-reflection technology that I throw upside his old-fashioned mirrors. He stumbles blindly under the weight of his own uppity attitude bouncing off of me and coming back at him, over and over like lightning-fast combinations of left jabs and right hooks. The relentless blows knock hyper-transparency into the formerly enchanted knight’s magic mirrors. But instead of revealing the depths of the wily villain's thoroughly defeated and cringing soul, these brand new store front windows display the noble, beautiful and triumphantly beaming Dulcinea (aka Aldonza).
“Way to go, Baby! I knew you could do it!” she cheers, absentmindedly engulfing me in a clumsily clattering glass-armor hug. “OOPS! My bad.”
She slips athletically out of the armor, still wearing her early 17th century barmaid dress. “I’ve been lumbering around in that glass armor suit, fighting off impostors and trying to find the real you for four centuries,” sighs the tough yet beautiful old warrior queen. “And I would have stayed at it for four more, if I had to, just to free us both and share this moment, Honey.”
I'm just smiling and feeling like life doesn't get any better, when she takes my hand in both of hers, looks at me with the irresistibly wide-eyed innocence of a child and asks, “Tell me what you saw, Baby, when the magic mirrors showed you the depths of my soul?”
“I saw Heaven,” I answer quite honestly, with a smile that somehow doesn’t quite project the level of innocence I was shooting for.
“Are you sure you were looking all of the way through to the depths of my soul?” she laughs, and so do I, until we both become our laughter: riding away on a light breeze, chasing sadness out of hearts and playing my guitar and I like wind chimes making soulful music.
Notes:
1. Wikipedia has nice summary articles on Cervantes, “Don Quixote” and “Man of La Mancha”.
2. Roberta Flack's rendition of The Impossible Dream is one of my favorites.
