This spring (2012, but I've let this post languish) I got the box-set of B-sides, demos, and rarities from The Posies called "At Least, At Last" (and I also found a huge cache of live recordings as well), so I've had a pretty Posies-happy summer. The song called "Pay You Back in Time" that I wrote about earlier is one of the notable finds in that boxed-set. The subject matter of that song, particularly the issue of thinking about human relations in terms of debt, paying back, and returning, connected it "Please Return It," which was recorded around the same time. Not unlike that pairing, there is another song in "At Least, At Last" that connects up to The Posies released material in an interesting way. In this case it is a pretty straight cover of Blondie's "Dreaming":
With the exception of the change of a few pronouns to make the singer male, as I said The Posies play a pretty straight cover of the song. That's not surprising since the original is pretty rockin' with a great melody with some background harmonies sprinkled throughout it, so it's right up their alley anyway. You can definitely see how Blondie's successful navigation of the territory in-between punk, new wave, rock, and pop in the seventies and eighties, would be formative for The Posies development. Just as interesting, however, are the thematic similarities between "Dreaming" and one of The Posies' own songs (indeed, one of their most well-known, although that's not really saying much for them, unfortunately): "Dream All Day." As you might suspect from the title, Blondie's "Dreaming" celebrates the power of dreaming and the imagination over reality. We can get a sense of the power, and particularly the freedom, involved in dreaming with some of the first lines of the song:
You asked me what's my pleasureIn rejecting either a movie or music, the singer is rejecting the need to rely upon the imaginations of others for her pleasure. The self-sufficiency of the imagination is a big part of the song, and the oft-repeated line about how "Dreaming is free" best expresses this. Unlike the products of other people's imaginations, there is no price-tag attached to imagining, which means that it is quite literally free. Dreaming is free in another related sense as well: the fact that it doesn't cost anything means that it represents freedom from financial constraints. And lastly, dreaming is free in the sense that it is not limited to what actually exists or could exist: one is free to imagine all sorts of things that don't and couldn't exist.
A movie or a measure?
I'll have a cup of tea and tell you of my dreaming
Dreaming is free.
These aspects of dreaming can make it much more attractive than reality, something that the singer in "Dreaming" admits quite readily:
I don't want to live on charity
Pleasure's real or is it fantasy?
Reel to reel is living verite,
People stop and stare at me
We just walk on by,
We just keep on dreaming
Despite the fact that fantasy is not real in the traditional sense (i.e., it is not a "thing"), the pleasure that one can get from it is very real--although the fact that this is posed as a question does complicate the issue. Nonetheless, the play on words between what is "real" and what is simply on the "reel," and how the latter could seem more real than the former, further develops this idea. Then the latter half of the verse points towards the consequences of this stance. In particular, excessive dreaming can easily lead to being isolated from the rest of the world.
Of course, the "we" in this verse and the earlier verses suggests that two dreamers can keep each other company, that is, until we get to the last verse, which makes even that relation to another person potentially nothing more than a fantasy:
Meet meet, meet me at the turnstile
I never met him, I'll never forget him
Imagine something of your very own
Something you can have and hold
The "I never met him, I'll never forget him" suggests that the whole song may have been nothing more than an instance of dreaming, suggesting that its freedom might come with a price after all.
