Night Dreamer
Composer(s): Kurt Elling; Wayne Shorter
Performer(s): Kurt Elling



Lonely the roses of Avondaire
sing as though somebody still may care
They live only for the dream of living
so come follow where
they will take you there

I once was apprenticed
to a man who was living
in the eye if the hurricane
to know despair

He knew all the dreams by heart
just like sailing in a boat of crystal silence
seeing visions
of the world
of life within a life

In a turning
like a burning
came turning
out of everything stirring
and what had begun before

but all wrapped up
in one great godly becoming

Tumbling and fumbling and stumbling
into bumbling and rumbling along

whirling it and swirling it and twirling it and hurling it
and overturning it and burning it again

I shared a whirling dervish out on the side of a hill called metaphore vivace
swinging en route to a nascent solar with the scissored visored blizzard wizard
gizzarding planets and secrets within
like an avatar

While meanwhile
in turnstyling
and spinning over him
spells bespeaking kingdoms in the dark

calling me to yield
knighting me in a field
covered with armies
and with princes
All were signing
cannons shining 
pennants flying

And when he spoke to me he sang
and his words really rang
this child of the knowledge of the beauty of the night

he sang to me of masters passing on
of father after father after father
climbing up into the lotus bloom
upon the tortoise's back

and of grandfathers
who danced through their living a longer time ago
He showed me a palace in time
in which all the talismans from all the zeuses
swing upon a pendulum of secrets
in a circle that remembers
and when asked a question will surrender

every secret key to every hero's message
given to every heart in time
but only known to but a few
or so it seems

When I asked of them
what shall I do to see the god?
They only said
the goldenrod
which grows inside of
every secret dream you dream
while waiting for the god
it's a symbol from the man in the fire
ling you the thing you desire
is a garment that covers the riddle of everything secretly wished for
and of the world of which you are an inheritor

Suddenly the chamber was flooded with light
hurling me skyward like a meteorite

When I fell to earth I saw everything in a blur
I saw that time was accelerating in a curve

and the palace in which I had stood
it was flowing, like lava, on acres of woodland
like a pompei-an mountain volcano
making archipelago and destroying the planet
at fortissimo

bulldozing everything down
to make room for what
was a byzantine
a labarynthine
knotty mess of manifolding passageways
a tangle of confusion 
where the walls made
an asylum of baroque

Like a joke
words were spoken
to provoke me
and to toss me
nude and empty
to the sea

But I would have none of it
I simply turned my back and walked out
of the dreamscape into landscape
like a bedroom
where I heard that

Lonely the roses of solitaire
sing as though somebody still may care
They live only for the dream of living
so come follow where they will take you there
Stay awake - no mistake - dance the dream awake - and awake