A Musical Dream

Before reading:

Why do some memories disappear while others become engraved so deeply within us that they quietly shape everything that follows?

When we lose someone, something, or even an imagined possibility, what actually remains,  the memory itself, or the person we became because of it?

Can longing preserve what time has taken away, or does it gradually transform the past into something that never quite existed?

And perhaps the more difficult question: when we carry an old loss for years, are we remembering what was lost, or continuing a conversation with an earlier version of ourselves?

The Original Writing

I dreamed that somewhere in the depths of my mind, among those strange ruins, somewhere behind my eyes, I sat and fixed the watchful eye of my consciousness upon the images that, moment by moment, appear upon the dark screen of my existence and then disappear. Yet every so often, some of those images rise into relief and become engraved so deeply across the expanse of my being that their traces remain for a long time, perhaps until the end of my life. And when they begin to fade, they do so slowly, accompanied by a sigh, an ache, and the moisture of an eye.

Yet the spirit that remains from those images shapes the images that follow. Sometimes, the meaning of a single image burns through the screen of my existence and travels into the deepest reaches of my feelings. It is then that my sorrow becomes a legend, and my dream, searching for interpretation, gives birth to the meaning of captivity and love.

I dreamed that in the darkness of the house of my existence, I was painting longing upon my face, making it sorrowful all the way to the borders of dreams. I dreamed that my pen would no longer take on the color of love. Each time I touched it to the beautiful portrait of union, it erased its lines from the breadth of my existence and distorted the image with separation.

And how tear-soaked and orphaned my image had become. The sky of my heart, too, was now empty of stars, and its darkness echoed across the barren land of my desires.

From the wasteland of my existence, the harmony of breath could no longer be heard. An absolute silence — the silence of estrangement and distance — had taken possession of my entire being.

The image of my heart had become like the image of Earth seen from the galaxies: a wave of desires, tears, and smiles; a wave of black wilderness; a wave of cries, screams, and mockery — and finally, from that great height, silent and strange within the heart of nothingness.

I dreamed that my heart had died, and that in the pool of lamentation, within the cemetery of wishes, I was washing its body and painting flowers and jasmine upon its frozen veins. I dreamed that my jasmine flower was dying. Terrified, I took it into my arms and wandered through streets and alleys, searching for someone who could breathe from the depths of their being into the withered throat of my flower, so that the magical force of life might awaken within it once again.

I would ask:

“Sir, forgive me,  are you a magician?”

“Madam, forgive me,  are you an enchantress?”

But no one answered.

It was as though their breath was not the breath of life. As though they had all returned from the City of Death, emptied of spirit. For only the enchantment and magic of life can breathe pure life into a soulless body and grant it existence. When I had completely lost hope, after sitting for hours among those dead beings mourning my flower, I tied the body of the flower to the hair of a mischievous and greedy little girl. I asked my flower to become a part of her beauty, even though I had not been worthy of holding it in my arms and had offered its existence nothing but impurity.

I dreamed that the little girl was Time itself, that ill-fated Time which took my flower away with its colors, its ornaments, and its false innocence. I dreamed that even after many years, within the wasteland of my existence, the breeze of the heart still carried the fragrance of my jasmine to me.

And after all those years of separation, without even seeing its form, I could still experience the scent of my flower along the dry and burning paths of my existence,  paths that had once longed to become fields and meadows. An experience within nonexistence and being lost. I dreamed that across the colorful expanse of the horizon, which at every moment was surrendering its face to the blackness of darkness, I flew — so weightless and without pretense.

A butterfly and I raced toward the jasmine flower in a contest of affection. Through the heart of night we beat our wings. Silently, we flew toward distant shores. Until dawn, we cried out and danced, until the first brilliant ray of life appeared,  and I was blinded. And what a sorrow it was to discover how enduring the feast of darkness remained.

I dreamed that for you to appear only once within the wasteland of my existence, I had been lost a thousand times.

I had cried a thousand times. I had been cast far away a thousand times,  and how many forms of longing I had experienced from within the womb of time.

How many lifetimes had ended with the song of longing? I dreamed that I dreamed, that the caravan of sorrow had sounded the drum of departure,

and the caravan of love had raised its banners, so that through the passage of time it might accompany me toward the final destination. And this was a musical dream, a dream whose interpretation could not be contained

even within a dream.

A Visual Echo of the Text

Reflection After More Than Three Decades

Reading this again after more than three decades, what interests me most is not the sadness itself, but the way I was trying to understand memory.

The language is young, intense, and sometimes excessive. Everything becomes enormous: love becomes captivity, separation becomes a wasteland, memory becomes a landscape, and a flower becomes something almost alive enough to die. There is little restraint. But perhaps restraint was never the purpose.

What surprises me now is the recurring idea that an experience does not simply disappear when it ends. It leaves something behind. Early in the piece, I wrote that the remains of one image influence the shape of the images that follow. Looking back, I find that thought more interesting than the romantic sorrow surrounding it.

We do not experience life on a blank canvas. Every experience arrives upon traces left by earlier ones.

The jasmine flower also feels different to me now. I would resist explaining exactly what, or whom, it represented. Symbols often become smaller when we explain them too precisely. What matters is that I was trying to describe the strange persistence of attachment: something can disappear from our lives while continuing to exist within our imagination.

Time is another presence throughout the piece. At one point, it becomes a little girl who simply takes the flower away. That image now seems almost innocent compared with what experience eventually teaches us about time. Time rarely asks permission. It takes people, places, possibilities, convictions, and versions of ourselves, and continues walking.

Yet the piece does not quite end in despair.

The caravan of sorrow prepares to leave, while the caravan of love raises its banners.

I like that my younger self allowed love the final movement.

More than three decades later, I would write about these ideas differently. I would use fewer images, distrust some of the absolutes, and leave more room for ambiguity. But I would not correct the young writer. His excess belongs to him.

What remains worth preserving is the question beneath all those images:

What survives when the experience itself is gone?

Perhaps memory is not simply an archive of what happened.

Perhaps it is one of the forces quietly deciding who we become.

— Farshad