Dreamer Boy Dan

• Dreamer Boy Dan at Mint Gallery
  
  Dreamer Boy Dan is the collaborative work of poets, painters, and musicians from Atlanta, Savannah, and Brooklyn building a collective lucid dream.
  
  An exhibition of paintings and a live performance by the ten member band opens August 27th at Atlanta's Mint Gallery.
  
  In the spirit Grimm's Fairy Tales, insomnia, and the collective unconscious Dreamer Boy Dan is a gothic fairy tale swirling through a parade of original chimera and contemporary nightmares.
  
  Creators Nic*Rad and Brock Scott began working together while Rad attended the Savannah College of Art and Design, and Scott studied at SCAD Atlanta-- the duo enlisted ten eerily talented musicians to help complete the vision.
  
  The show will be up through September 19. The team hopes to continue with the Dreamer Boy Dan series of nightmares until someone wakes them up, semi violently.

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• Dreamer Boy Dan is:
  Illustration and Poems: Nic Rad
  lead engineer: Pat Brooks
  Cello: James Burch
  Violin: Ryan Gregory
  Trumpet: Greg Hammontree
  Accordion: Ryan Gregory and Brock Scott
  Fender Rhodes: Brock Scott
  Grand Piano: Pat Brooks
  Guest Vocals: Andre Paraguassu
  Guest Vocals: Leah Meininger
  Percussion: Jason Ussery
  Electric Guitar: Josh Martin
  Electric and Upright Bass: Ryan Donald
  Acoustic Guitar: Brock Scott
  Lead Vocals: Brock Scott
  Mastered By: Don McCollister

• Dreamer Boy Dan
  the forever falling man
  who figured out he’s dreaming
  
  And chose instead
  he should not wake
  but soar through lands his mind creates
  
  Accept in dreams
  the facts by night
  not strange, not crude, not fully bright
  When by morning
  in egg yolk light
  they’re cooked
  then blurred
  then mystified
  
  
  But here those facts have been retained
  the abject strokes of neural waves
  for since no smoke of morning came
  what dreams were Dan’s
  have dreams remained
  
  From that sky in which he swims
  before the earth his bones impinged
  his eyes recorded where logic sinned
  his throat recorded the singing wind
  The half-sweet song of endless desperate times
  
  Of those he met in dreamer’s din
  a cast of ghosts that swelled within
  the richest folks who’ve ever lived
  and here their will of dreams begin:
  

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• Dreamer Boy Dan

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Dreamer Boy Dan
    3:38

• Just beneath the bridge Dan lived
  there lived as well a country pig
  tied to which his owner’s wrist
  was led from cloud to cloud
  
  And as Dan fell he heard them kid
  Their jokes were ripe and nicely trimmed
  they worked to fill the spaces in
  the gaps between the clouds
  
  So became the land for them
  A farm in space where soil limns
  the frozen parts of oxygen
  forever floating ‘round
  
  Through it passed our Dreaming Dan
  who saw instead both pig and man
  neither one their eyesight twinned
  both blind as dark in night time’s lens
  
  Neither had the sight to spend
  the cost of footsteps in the wind
  to fall beneath their whispered farm
  cosmic blanket, tempered yarn—
  
  Now Dan knew for all he was
  The sky was but a farmer’s crutch
  The walking path of hoofed dumb-luck
  A drunk and a pinkish cow
  
  Better then he fell instead
  was not God or Science read
  all to seal the gaps within
  a brain whose forms were quite akin
  to those grayish
  wrinkled clouds?
  

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• Blind Farmer

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Blind Farmer
    2:51

• When through watered eyes from windlash dive
  Dan emerged to lights afire
  Daytime hung in nighttime sky
  All the shine of festive pride
  
  At the lectern stood a man
  tall as oak with postured hands
  As he spoke his words were sand
  Trickled down and formed this plan:
  A sand castle built from indifference
  
  All the heads with crooked smiles
  Windswept hair and grins for miles
  Palms were waxed and fingers filed
  Made points sharp, and dull and mild
  
  In the alleys where deals are made
  The muffled sound of trumpets bayed
  Economies of scale paid
  To swines, to crooks, to evil thieves
  
  Who work their deals in twilight shops
  Who hide from all that gleam
  Who need the dark to sell the plots
  Of skin tone enemies
  
  To torture folks
  To tell them jokes
  To keep them on their knees
  To cheer for men in black sport coats
  Who’ll tell them anything
  
  And fell right through
  a city that grew
  From a lectern’s wild sheen
  Where cheering folks add up the votes
  They silently agree
  
  There is no hope for sand castle quotes
  Miles beneath the sea
  

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• Politico

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Politico
    3:05

• What’s the use of pretty words?
  To drunk the heart and dull the nerves?
  To blind the eyes, to plug the nose?
  To pad the flesh despite the bones,
  To make your soul feel fat?
  
  Thought that through and then from heights
  Where earth divides the days from nights
  A girl appeared with curls of gold
  Sleeping fingers pressing tones
  To chords that fell about her
  
  
  Whether forced or passively
  By sweet divorce from gravity
  Since his form was traveling
  Downward , earthward, tumbling
  His heart, it simply soared
  
  His voice he wanted thundering
  It came whisper thin and quivering.
  It’s you I’ve been imagining.
  It’s you I’m falling for
  
  She turned her notes quite casually
  Her hair meanwhile unraveling
  Blonde ringlets always echoing
  In rhymes forever poured
  
  But thunderstruck in make believe
  Dan knew the dreamer’s casualty:
  No words did speak in harmony
  For this soloist’s imaginings
  
  And morning made a cruel divorce
  
  The soul that drifts
  The soul does itch
  The soul escapes
  The vessel’s stitch
  Conjures up a pretty myth
  That speaks no truths
  And pleads the fifth
  It silently explodes
  

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• Piano Keys

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Piano Keys
    3:17

• Now tumbling after the girl he wished
  While she ignored his mumbling fits
  Better versed in romantic riffs
  Knew the poems of those whose gifts
  Had swallowed Dan’s by four
  
  Right through his mind
  She then slipped
  How strange it was
  To have eclipsed
  This twinkling diamond in skyline tryst
  By the scent of fried zucchini
  
  But if the heart wants what it wants
  The stomach pays for that at cost
  Not the gland that’s first to talk
  But often has the final say
  
  So scent of sugarcane cut and shucked
  In cakes it blooms to caramel lust
  The pangs of sadness quick to dust
  Or shrinks to mild indigestion
  
  On his tongue could Dan then taste
  The summer time’s
  Organic shapes
  Colors wild and oddly placed
  A creamy easy stew
  
  From what hands could weave this quilt?
  The subtle tastes of childhood
  His newest love
  A rhubarb curd?
  These ochred gut delights!
  
  Then indeed the chef he saw
  A green, diseased, enormous slog
  Who swept him up and held him loft
  And considered this equation:
  
  What taste
  Is Dan’s?
  This dreaming man’s
  Whose head contains such magic
  Will he have a texture soft
  Butter thick and chocolate broth
  Or will his taste be wretched sour
  Bitterness of witching hour
  Will I need to flay him clean
  Those spindle bones caught in the teeth
  Or better is it to fry him whole
  To save the taste of all his soul?
  
  Don’t you know that what you eat
  Holds all the tastes of long dead beasts
  Who’s cells were worked into new things
  By your chomping teeth’s suggestion?
  
  He swung the knife and sound became
  A curving tunnel of silent waves
  If he struck
  the dream forgave
  For Dan was not the victim
  
  He woke instead
  miles from bed
  Just floating in the ether
  His head not split
  His heart was flit
  With fondness for the chapter
  
  For on his lips
  The taste eclipsed
  All the warnings of his captor
  
  

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• Chef

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Chef
    3:04

• At that point the dream became
  a fevered, wild, cavalcade
  The sheep he counted thundered forth
  Were not the white and fluffy sort
  Instead were dark with curls of steel
  Snarl toothed
  And clicking heel
  And at their backs were men with whips
  Patterned jerseys
  Mustachioed lips
  Who threw and rode and flagged
  
  Of that pack, but one emerged
  Wild eyed with a head absurd
  Spurious ethics, credentials earned
  The finest jock in all the world
  
  He charged and called:
  Graze this sheepish cosmic lawn!
  Crack the whips and rumble on
  Crack your hips and rumble on
  Pull the wool man! saddles on
  Kick the heels up bay and yawn
  Whinnie cry and Bah-Bah song
  Sing your sorrows, sprint your scars
  Run as if it’s all you’re on
  The coals of earth, hot embers drawn
  From fawnhood sorrows
  Pastures wrong
  And if you fail me, don’t regret
  You’ll make delicious
  Lamb chops yet!
  

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• Black Wool

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Black Wool
    3:32

• As they charged
  Dan near escaped
  A drop out hatch
  in the track’s intake
  What he saw
  by no mistake
  Shocked him ever after
  
  A funeral before his face
  A grave hole dug, the grave stone placed
  But no one round to watch his fate
  A silent, empty pasture
  
  The saddest thing
  A life that takes
  In quietness, and lonely haste
  An obtuse form so harsh replaced
  By an acute silent disaster
  
  But shortly he was calmed to see
  That from the sky
  it was not he
  Who meant to fill
  that gapping abysmal crater
  
  Instead a shape so light and worn
  Where from the clouds it won its form
  Was white on white
  Was barely born
  The wind of muffled laughter
  
  As it grew
  And more defined
  He felt he knew
  Those curls divine
  It was his girl from mind’s eye blind
  The one who’d never answered
  
  So as she fell
  In liquid time
  He spoke to her with lips inclined
  The poems of their disaster:
  
  I saw you
  Falling
  You said nothing
  Your fingers long and playing
  Notes from happy endings
  Things composed
  In perfect worlds
  I’ve never known
  And now I see you dieing
  So what is it
  That makes me want
  To follow you right after?
  
  She
  Smiled
  Ghosteyed
  Long lashed
  Easy breathing
  Said this one and only word
  And it made perfect sense:
  Hope
  

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• The Places You Have Been

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – The Places You Have Been
    4:38

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  It would be nice
  If easy death had met them
  There and ever after
  But in this night
  This dreamsmoke life
  Where sanity is fractured
  Endings turn and twist and learn
  That ease is not a factor
  
  Through the grave they found the woods
  Firefly sparks and ancient alabaster
  The ground was soaked with slugs
  And frog’s throats could not be blacker
  
  There in the swamp they might have lost
  Their ages in a blender
  For she was old and he was young
  Time somehow elapsed her
  
  Beauty gone
  Her wings were clipped
  Her hair was straw
  Her nails chipped
  She stoked a fire
  With an angry stick
  In brackish water
  Tight chapped lips
  And memories depressed her
  
  
  How old is love?
  And is it lived?
  Is it time, or timelessness?
  Does it last
  Unconscious past
  Or will it always remember
  The injuries of little dreams
  The murmurings of unreal things
  The darkest light that nighttime brings
  A worried heart’s
  Worrying
  
  I’m old now Dan and hardly lived
  Just fell from one unto another
  A thing to do
  A heart to win
  Neither master or the captor
  Just floating in the sinking wind
  A pretty life of preciousness
  But knew it all the while
  My biggest fears were sealed within
  This question I can never answer:
  
  Am I a ghost in a dreamer’s head?
  Am I just a figment?
  Will my bones break when I
  At last have found the pavement?
  

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• Miss Lou

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Miss Lou
    2:29

• Dan looked through the smoke at her old skin
  Hardly could he answer
  He smiled and held his hands abreast
  And spoke with earnest candor
  
  You’re the prettiest thing
  You’re what pretty means
  If the heart exists
  You make it bleed
  But knowing this does not proceed
  The inklings you have gathered
  
  I dreamed this out and now can see
  That waking does not matter
  For though in light a logic strings
  One moment to what’s after
  Here in dark
  All things have use
  Melting forms and lines obtuse
  The poet’s eyes are rendered
  
  I’d rather live in spacelessness
  Open to the wild shifts
  The characters whom linger in
  Then drift into the batter
  And think my life
  A kind of gift
  For which my soul surrenders
  So instead not reel it in
  Or damage it with patterns
  To accept that’s what it is:
  A beautiful disaster
  

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• Pillowcase

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Pillowcase
    2:07

• As Dan spoke his eyes went thin
  And flickered from the clatter
  A ringing clock
  A rushing wind
  A heartbeat pitter patter
  
  Expect to see his bedroom walls
  If still coated in a lacquer
  Of tired tales
  thought or saw
  The sleeper’s prism captured
  
  But there was no morning shift
  Of warming tones and swallow calls
  
  There was no light or curtain lift
  Or sweet return to consciousness
  
  Above him loomed a bridge too tall
  The sky was red and getting long
  
  And when he rolled to look below
  The earth was charging faster
  
  It was not a dream
  Or midnight rant
  It was not a world
  He did invent
  The ground itself would not assent
  To the dreamer’s subject matter
  
  A small suitcase, his lover’s face
  The artifacts of travel
  Erupting in
  A nauseous din
  The cracking of a skeleton
  The sighing of the soulful wind
  
  Dreamer Boy Dan
  whom ever lives
  drunk of poems and the songs he gives
  will know him that much better
  
  For what is life if not then lived
  In universal chatter?
  
  And how can one compose such art
  Fretting what comes after
  

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• Abstract

  • Dreamer Boy Dan – Abstract
    3:30
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• No upcoming events.