By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
Somewhere under my bed, there is a “Dream Book” that I purchased at eight years old at my elementary school’s book fair. At the time, dreaming was encouraged. Hell, if a pigtailed eight-year-old girl cannot dream, who can? The book follows my ambitions from eight years old, to eighteen, and encapsulates my descent into adolescence. Looking at it now, with eyes dilated and scarred, I want to relate with the fifth grader’s dreams; the girl who only wrote in cursive for an entire year, because she liked the way the letters curled. At the time, my ambitions were meaningful; change the world with your writing, open an animal shelter, travel the world, adopt a baby, become a leading fashion designer, never stop dancing. At ten years, old, I would have never guessed that I would be where I am now, because I was young and incognizant about the trials that all adults must go through to be considered “experienced.” I often wonder about the moments in time that led me to where I am today, and every time I turn my head I see a new dream written in big, black, bold letters, melting into the ground, leaving a distinct, invisible odor that lingers in my nose for weeks; sometimes years.
During my early college years, I would occasionally exit my inky pool of negativity and bask in delusion’s warm, reassuring rays. At 18 years old I started researching what it takes to make it on Broadway. Completely intoxicated by my conceit, I went to a dingy storefront music store in a neighboring Upstate New York town. The teacher was about three years older than me, and an alumni member of my college. During every lesson, she told about her odious college experience as a struggling music major. By lesson three, she told me I was tone deaf, and that I would crumble on stage next to harmonious musicians who have put in the hours and dedication to “make it.” She was right, and even though I was vexed at the time, her words increased my lucidness and set me in the right direction. My legacy would not linger in the dressing room of Saint James Theater, or in one of those movies that wins every shimmering award available, but nobody has seen. As if I were in a dark, infinite hallway, desperately searching for a door with my name engraved on it, the door with all the answers, I persisted.
One month before my twentieth birthday I came across a casting call for Radio City Rockettes, and I felt that same overwhelming egotistical drunkenness that I did the year prior. I practiced the infamous kicks in a pair of nude character heels I bought from my local snobbish dance store. The more I watched old audition tapes, the more I realized I was completely unfit to be a Rockette. I would not match what they are looking for, thin, long legged, tall, elitist young women who view dance as a lifestyle. So, I decided to start smaller, and audition for a local dance company’s Nutcracker production. I spent that morning trying to chisel my face to look like the women in the Rockette audition tapes. I also tried to sculpt my body with SPANX, so that I would not look too out of place in a room full of attenuated ballerinas.
At that audition, I was laughed at, mocked, body-shamed, overlooked, and emotionally destroyed. For a while, I replayed the audition in my head, punishing myself for being so un-self-aware. When I published my article about the audition, thousands of people read it. Almost immediately, I felt exploited, and wanted to pull the words back into the hollowness of my chest, their origin birthplace, but it was too late. I started receiving a flood of messages and comments from people who have had similar experiences with snobbery in the arts, and how much my story “meant to them.” Ironically, I felt detached from dance and all of the people who wished to discuss it. This event would have made a true dancer stronger, but it placed a wall between me a wall between me and my ratty, pink point shoes. After years of being told that I was tying the satin ribbons too tightly around my legs, they finally came loose.
At ten years old, I was not philosophical enough to digest that most things in life have expiration dates, even dreams. As I have gotten older I have embraced my bohemian spirit. Even now, given the opportunity to drop everything and write while wandering the world, I would. Renting the cheapest car in the lot, I would drive across America and write about the expressions caked on people’s faces, regional traditions, local tragedies, and my experiences as a nomadic writer. The mind of a dreamer is colorfully euphoric, ever creative, and supremely unrealistic. Where the realist feels nothing while looking at an ocean, a dreamer feels the crests rising over their heads and pulling them down; opening their eyes to the enigmas below. I think I will continue writing in that dusty Dream Book, for not all dreams are come to fruition, some are simply meant to tantalize us for a crystalizing moment in time.
Kaylee Johnson is an Education major with a concentration in English at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY.
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