When does a dream come true?!

Hey,

I hope you’re doing well! I’m at my desk at the band’s HQ on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning, it’s been such a long while I haven’t been here in the morning, it hasn't happened much since last April! 

This morning feels different. Lighter. There's something about the light coming through the windows that reminds me of those mornings where life quietly whispers, "Keep going."

Maybe it's because tomorrow we leave for Tangier. Maybe it's because, for the first time in a very long time, I don't feel like we're chasing a dream anymore.

I feel like we're finally living inside it.

Life has never been as amazing as now, the vibe in the band has never been as rich and real as now, the creativity and engagement toward the process and the project have never been as serious as now…! I must be dreaming!

🎧 Music I’m listening to

PIL - I Must Be Dreaming

I really loved that song since the very first time I heard it back in 2012! It reminds me how suspicious I've always been of happiness. Every time life starts feeling beautiful, there's still a small voice inside me waiting for the collapse. Waiting for reality to remind me that dreams don't last.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back to this song.

It understands that strange place where hope and fear shake hands.

I just dance with it for a few minutes, knowing well enough that this feeling will backstab me, as it always does, making me feel stupid and ridiculous only to believe this could’ve been something! 

Listen to the Missive Playlist

📖 Reading highlight I’m pondering

A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.
- Yoko Ono

I spent close to seven years, from age 14 to 21, daydreaming while being high on whatever I could easily find for cheap money, only to escape the really harsh reality this world has to offer, always feeling I don’t fit in, I don’t understand this thing called society, and I’m not ready to become someone or something else than what’s on my mind, in my books, in my songs, or in my writings, and getting high makes life so much easier… Well, at least that’s what I thought back then! 

I needed help. Serious help! Like Yoko shared, this has become the story of my life ever since I welcomed Alex Henry Foster within it! 

I wasn't chasing pleasure. I was chasing silence. I wanted the noise to stop. I wanted to stop feeling like I had landed on the wrong planet. Drugs didn't make life beautiful. They simply made it quieter for a few hours.

And today makes no exceptions, once again! :) Dreams aren't made real because they finally happen.

They're made real because someone else decides to carry them with you.

🎙️ Podcast That Inspired Me

Finding Mastery - The Psychology of Truth in a World of Lies with Sam Harris

I really loved this podcast since in this era of blurred lines even in words and language, it becomes harder and harder to even agree on what’s true, what’s real, what to trust, and, of course, to find clarity. 

Being on a "royal road to chaos" at full speed driven by arrogance, which creates global anxiety and stress, to me, truth is what sets me free! 

📸 My Picture Of The Week 

At the Air Canada lounge in Montreal, on the phone with Alex, as we wait to board our flight to join him in Tangier!

💬 Shared in the Long Shadows Chat this week

A year ago, those words would've sounded impossible. This week, Alex simply wrote: "We now officially have an album."

Funny how a single sentence can hold twelve months of sacrifices. Twelve months of doubts. Twelve months of believing in one another when believing in ourselves wasn't enough.
In Tangier lives the Hercules Cave, where Greek tradition says Hercules slept inside the cave before stealing golden apples from the nearby Garden of the Hesperides for his 11th labor.

Also, the Roman tales claim Hercules smashed through a mountain with his bare hands instead of climbing it, linking the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea to create the Strait of Gibraltar.

This year felt, at least to me, as if, like Hercules, we had to accomplish those 12 challenges, one for every month of the year, in order to reach this sentence Alex shared with us! 

Hercules didn't become Hercules because he possessed extraordinary strength. He became Hercules because he kept accepting impossible tasks.
That's what this last year has felt like. 
Every month brought another mountain.
Another monster.
Another reason to quit.
Yet somehow…
We kept walking.
Yes, freedom is a never-ending process! :) 

So, to answer my own question: When does a dream come true?! I think the obvious answer is "The day it stops being yours alone."

They're carried by friends. By songs. By conversations. By impossible trips. By people who kept believing when I or we couldn't.

That's when a dream becomes reality. And perhaps that's why this morning feels so different.

Let’s be great to one another! 

Your friend and Chief Operator, 
Jeff