Art Exchange 2012: The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library writes a song inspired by Dug McCormack’s “twelve little dreams of large things” – Dug McCormack creates a piece inspired by “Faith in Free Part III”

https://mjeml.michaeljepstein.com/ has collaborated with five amazing visual artists to write five new songs based on their works while they created five new works based on our songs. Visit our project summary page for more information. Each day this week, we will release a video showing our creative process in writing the song inspired by each work, leading up to a showing of the works and live performance of the songs at:

Out of the Blue Gallery on September 14th.
106 Prospect Street, Cambridge MA
Facebook Event
http://www.facebook.com/outofthebluegallery
We will be giving out 50 CDs of the songs associated with this project out for free at this show.

Our fourth artist collaborator is Dug McCormack. We met Dug originally when the children’s band that Sophia and I play in, Space Balloons, was on the pilot episode of Rob Potylo’s TV show, Worried All the Time. Dug did all of the artwork for the show, and he also had a showing of additional work at the Worried premiere, which we really liked. Many months later, when this project came up, we were very excited that Dug agreed to collaborate with us!

twelve little dreams of large things by Dug McCormack

“twelve little dreams of large things” by Dug McCormack

We were given “twelve little dreams of large things” to inspire our song. One of our goals with this project was to select artists who each had unique work, but created work that would fit in some way with the others. Dug was intentionally selected to be on one edge of that spectrum, generating the most surrealistic pieces of the bunch.

As such, we also wanted his song to reflect his place in the project as a whole. We came up with the idea of exploring “twelve little dreams…” as a doorway into the mind of the dreamer with a series of surrealistic sideshows and bounding creatures. We created a 3/4 circusy number and wrote lyrics about traveling through this strange world.

Here’s a video telling the story of how we created the song.

Lyrics:
Come with me to the land of dreams
Twelve of the largest and tiniest things
Flowers and colors and the cheeriest bees
laughing hyenas as elephants sneeze

Come to the big top (come to the big top)
Do not delay (no do not delay)
The clowns are cartwheeling (for the clowns they are here)
in your pons today (well hip hip hooray)

Where are the tickets, I’d like to go in
for I’d like to enter your dreams once again
Come with me to the land of dreams
Twelve of the largest and tiniest things

Down, down, down, down, follow me down, down, down, down

Follow me down and down to the deepest of depths
where the light shines the brightest and the darkness has left
down, down to the deepest of depths
where the children are laughing with the pale horse and Death.

Come to the big top (come to the big top)
Do not delay (no do not delay)
The clowns are cartwheeling (for the clowns they are here)
in your pons today (well hip hip hooray)

I must bid you adieu, for it’s time to awake
to return to life’s largeness and fate
tomorrow once more, we shall venture ahead
to the land of the small dreams resting large in your head