“Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.”

― Lewis Carroll

 

 

The song Dancing in the Moonlight, originally written by Sherman Kelly, is a feelgood staple, sonically capturing the essence of a lively and memorable carouse. But behind this jovial and upbeat tune is a story that is marred in trauma and tragedy.

In 1969, Kelly and his friends ran a nightclub in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. One day, they made an off-the-cuff decision to rent a yacht and sail to St. Croix, which was about a seventy kilometer journey away. Both Kelly and his girlfriend, Adrienne, were seasick during their crossing.

When they arrived in St. Croix that night, Kelly’s friends planned to get themselves dinner and immediately head back to their yacht. But Kelly and Adrienne were still feeling queasy, and chose to stay onshore. Unfortunately, though, Kelly left his wallet on their yacht, and couldn’t get a hotel room to stay in for the night. 

Adrienne suggested that they simply camp out in the open. “It’s a beautiful night,” she said. “Why don’t we just stretch out on the beach?”

“So we did,” said Kelly, recalling the incident. “And that’s all I remember very clearly.”

While they slept, Kelly and Adrienne were brutally beaten by a gang of five with baseball bats. Adrienne was raped by the gang leader, while the other members “lined up” for their turn.

Kelly regained consciousness and despite the state he was in, having broken ribs and a dislocated arm and multiple fractures in his face, he somehow managed to fend off the gang members. 

The horrific incident was among the earliest reported crimes of the Fountain Valley gang, which would make nationwide headlines for a mass shooting in St. Croix a few years later.

Mustering the little strength they had left, Kelly and Adrienne trailed the lights along the beach and made their way to the only hospital in the area. 

While at the hospital, Kelly overheard his doctors saying that his chances of recovery were slim. Yet, he was determined to brave all odds and keep pushing forward. 

During his difficult recovery, songwriting was his therapy. It was his way of giving himself the strength to persevere, by dreaming up an alternate reality, or a vision of a better life. The lyrics he wrote during that time later culminated in a song titled Dancing in the Moonlight. 

As he remarked about the song, “I envisioned an alternate reality, the dream of a peaceful and joyous celebration of life. It was just me imagining a better world than the one I had just experienced in St. Croix.”

The song went on to become a timeless hit made famous by the band King Harvest in 1972, and later by Toploader in 2000.

“I felt that I was rewarded for taking this horrible bummer and getting it up onto higher ground, and celebrating the positive,” Kelly said of the song’s success. “I think it speaks to people. I think the universe enjoyed my response. And I’ve certainly enjoyed the universe’s response.”

This story hit a nerve in me, because sometimes, you just have to delude yourself into thinking that things will change for the better, when you feel that there is absolutely no reason to.

With that, you dream of an alternate reality where your life will unfold according to your wishes, and you hold on to this alternate reality as if it will certainly come true.

You do this so that you can finally get yourself out of bed, brush your teeth, have a shower, and keep on living. 

Essentially, this is what faith really is, isn’t it? It’s choosing to look ahead, even and especially when you have no way of knowing what will come your way. Or, paraphrasing a quote by Martin Luther King Jr., it’s taking one step after another, when you don’t see the whole staircase. 

But the point I want to hammer in is that your alternate reality doesn’t have to be “realistic” per se.

To borrow an idea by the entrepreneur Derek Sivers, your alternate reality only has to be “useful, not true.” It doesn’t matter if your vision or dream isn’t objectively correct or even possible, as long as it gets you unstuck, and it propels you to take the necessary actions and move forward with your life. 

Let me give you an example. 

Some time ago I came across an interesting entry in The Guardian’s advice column. The advice seeker was an anonymous person in her late 20s, who was feeling incredibly anxious about her future. Unlike most of her friends, she was still single, and was deathly afraid that she might never find a partner to settle down with.

And on top of that, she felt increasingly lonely, as her friends were drifting away due to their own priorities that she wasn’t sharing, like being married and having babies.

In response, the columnist said something profound. As an exercise, she asked her to imagine that everything she wanted (especially settling down) will certainly happen eventually. 

Of course, realistically speaking, nobody can guarantee that anything will happen. But by doing this exercise, or imagining an alternate reality, she would be more likely to treat her present moment differently. Rather than wasting her precious remaining youth to endless worrying, she can focus on more productive pursuits. She can also do her best to enjoy the freedom that does come with being single while it lasts. 

We may not be able to control our external reality, or the world around us. But we are fully in control of our internal reality, or the lens through which we see the world. So we’d might as well make it an empowering one.

Even if the world goes to hell, we can still dream. 

Cue Dancing in the Moonlight.