A Dream about Lightning Bugs: A Life of Music and Cheap Lessons

by Ben Folds

our creativity has to be recognized, encouraged, cultivated, protected, and sometimes even put on life support. It can’t live without oxygen. But it comes back, if you want it to, like your appetite after an illness. Like the lightning bugs when darkness falls again.

What flickers do you see? What beauty glows for you that might have gone unnoticed by others?

Remain just innocent enough to keep dreaming. There’s always some motherfucker who would like to fact-check your dreams and convince you there are no flickers, only the Script™, whatever that might be for you. Too often that fact-checking motherfucker is you. It’s your own voice, whispering to yourself and to others that you’re crazy for seeing glowing insects.