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

by Ben Folds

Beware of little things that can erode our creativity as we grow up. One after another. One at a time, small choices eliminated incrementally. Flickers slowly dimmed. It never ends. You have to tune those voices out because your interests, those creative flickers, are truly miraculous. They are what drive us to keep seeing what’s around the next corner. Chase ’em. Life is short. After you’ve put food on the table, if you’re so lucky, then what? You follow your interests, that’s what. I believe deep in my bones that every person is inherently creative. But I also think 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. So then. 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. And maybe you are. Until you bottle and share them.