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The Dream I Had About Phil Collins

  First I will give the backdrop and backstory before I say the dream itself.
   When I was teaching class piano, a student asked me to show him the song "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)" by Phil Collins, thereby calling my attention to the song. After school that day, I went to my then-girlfriend Ruth's house, and showed her the song on piano with the lyrics on my iPad. We toyed around with the song and took turns playing the piano part and singing the vocals. The song expresses something extremely emotionally heavy, which was not applicable to our relationship, so I wondered why it was effective for expressing something I felt deep down. I simply could not put words to what I felt inside me with any specificity. The song could express it, but I couldn't explain the context, the people involved, or why I felt that way. I would have to tell people that a medication problem was involved which prevented me from being in touch with my feelings about things.
   After forgetting about the song for a year, I had a dream in my sleep. In the dream I was at a family gathering with Danielle Collins, and in the fictional story of the dream, Phil Collins was her uncle or a distant relative. Phil and group of people walked over to me and asked me what was up.  He showed me his bag of belongings and said "This is all I have in life. I just walk around and show people the recordings I made in life." He showed me a black satchel which had a handful of CD's. "These are the recordings I made in life." Then he wanted me to play "Against All Odds" on piano so that he could sing it.  I started to play it, but I couldn't remember it because I hadn't practiced that particular song in a long time. (I should add that everyone should just know that I am perfectly capable of playing piano even better than ever at this time in my life).  We had someone else play the piano part, and then Phil began to sing it. His voice sounded different up close compared to how it sounds through microphones and on recordings. He sang it with a great amount of sincerity and gentleness.
   After I woke up, I realized what I was trying to say to myself from my heart level in the way that I desired to play that song for people. There is a specific person I can sing it to, and it does have that level of weightiness and sincerity. People sometimes want to make it seem like I'm the only person who has been through the kind of struggles I have, but a lot of Phil Collin's music (lyrics) reflect the same concerns, struggles, problems, and solutions. I would never assume that just because a person wrote lyrics that the words apply specifically to them, because many songs have fictional storylines. The songwriter could be talking about anyone. I just happened to notice a common thread with experiences described in those songs.
   I guess what I am trying to communicate is, if I have a situation where I can sing that song choice to the people involved with sincerity, it means that I have a scenario where potential consequences match the level of the consequences described in the song, and it matches the level of heartbreak, failure to connect, and frustration. It matches the level of seemingly impossible odds stacked against me.
   As the Bible says, though, with God all things are possible.

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