I Do Not Like Mondays

Man, I do not like Mondays — although a nice holiday Monday with gorgeous weather to usher out the summer ain’t so bad!

So I did actually like today. And here’s something else I like, from waaay back in the day as well as recently. It’s about five minutes into this video, so I will link it there.

This is “The Impossible Dream” as performed by Howard Keel, an actor and Broadway singer born more than a century ago in Illinois.

“The Impossible Dream” is from the 1965 musical Man of La Mancha, and a New Yorker named Joe Darion penned the lyrics. That musical is loosely derived from Miguel de Cervantes’ early 1600s novel, Don Quixote, telling the story of a man who basically loses his mind and believes he’s a knight.

In the musical at least, the punch line is that if Quixote is crazy, it’s a madness with which more people ought to be afflicted. I’ve never seen the musical and to be honest, am not entirely sure how I stumbled on it. I had learned a little about Don Quixote at school and I think saw some of the Man of La Mancha songs in a collection, “Reminiscing with Howard Keel,” and just ordered it from a CD club.

I may also have swiped the disc from my father, who likes musicals. That might have happened. But it was one of those two scenarios.

“The Impossible Dream” has been done many times and has many different versions. Frank Sinatra did it; Luther Vandross did it. Elvis Presley even sang it more than once. Brian Stokes Mitchell was well known for performing it on Broadway in the early 2000s. Josh Groban included it in his 2020 album “Harmony” and performed it on BBC Radio 2.

And nearly every version I’ve heard, I don’t like. People ad lib and change the lyrics around, trying to add emphasis here or there or soloing off the melody. I find it weakens it, although plenty of people have enjoyed those performances I mentioned. I think Mitchell’s performances are good.

Yet the comparatively obscure version I stumbled into, for me, somehow does it best. Howard Keel rolls through it in his baritone, describing the perspective of Don Quixote in Man of La Mancha as he discovers Aldonza, who he sees as “Dulcinea,” his ideal virtuous woman (though the reality is the opposite). “The Impossible Dream” lays out this delirious madman Quixote’s quest as a knight, as he sees it.

In the disc I have and this YouTube recording, it starts just before five minutes in following two other songs in the medley. It’s the most noble song I’ve ever known, and it has meant something to me at various stages of my life.

“To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong
To love, pure and chaste, from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star”

To me it expresses the very best of the human heart. Not possible? Who cares — dream it anyway.

Something shattered you and broke you, teaching you not only sadness but real sorrow and despair, even hopelessness? Move past it, one step at a time.

Even the most courageous and bravest people wouldn’t dare set foot there? Go and run there.

This is about bold, unwavering courage and strength when those things aren’t even possible — and they’re certainly not practical or sensible.

But my favorite part of those lines is a scenario I’ll bet many have known: exhaustion, when you’re spent. “To try when your arms are too weary.”

That is, imagine a point where you’re done, it’s too much, you haven’t got anything left. Try anyway — just because.

That one is so hard, and sometimes it doesn’t have to be like that one gargantuan thing but more like the straw that breaks the camel’s back — a collection of everything piling up and overwhelming you. Maybe it’s a million little things.

So the message is to keep trying, however many times plus one.

Well, Mr. Darion, those are some interesting words. And Mr. Keel, thanks for being the messenger.

Content © Aaron G. Marsh