Dreaming in Technicolour

Do you ever wake up with an image imprinted on your brain? 

Do you feel an urgency about capturing those thoughts and images? And as your waking mind takes hold, do the images and thoughts start to fade and slip away, lose their bright and shiny lustre, sliding into muddy puddles of doubt? Do you question why they seemed so charming and insightful in the first place? 

Which is more real: the spark of the dream, or the dimming of the spark that comes with the dawn? I'd rather believe in the dream, but I often find myself limiting my actions and living within the duller and more mundane boundaries of "reality", losing some of my faith and excitement for the initial vision along the way.

Creative work does require a balance of graceful dreaming and gritty realism to come to fruition; we need to push and pull the boundaries of our perceptions, to capture those sparks (like the lightning harvesters in the movie "Stardust")... but we also to analyze and utilize the tools at hand (or invent new ones) to maintain or enhance the freshest and brightest aspects of the dream. We grind and polish the diamonds, refine the silver with fire and hammer the metal into shape. It's not magic, it's hard work... but when we do that work right, the work itself is invisible, and the focus remains entirely on the magic of the dream.

Hi ho, hi ho....