[Intro – intimate, nearly spoken] I’ve been living the impossible dream. Funny thing is it never looked impossible. Mostly it looked like nothing. [Verse 1] A crooked little line in the margin everybody else forgot. I kept it. Reminded me of me. Every morning starts that way. A thought that probably shouldn’t work. A joke. A memory. Something from a movie I remembered wrong. One of those things you’re supposed to keep to yourself. Mama always said, Better to stay quiet and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt. [Pause] So naturally... I opened mine. And something answered. [Pre-Chorus – subtle expansion] Not loudly. A door appeared where yesterday there was a wall. Someone I’d never met recognized the thought. Someone else finished the sentence. A stranger put music under it. And suddenly that crooked little line had somewhere to go. [Chorus – melodic lift, warm not anthemic] I’ve been living the impossible dream. I thought I was making it. Maybe it was making me. One word found another. One mind found mine. And all those things that weren’t there yesterday started leaving shadows. [Verse 2] That’s the trouble with nothing. Give it a name and it starts getting ideas. A bridge appears. Two people cross it. Neither remembers building the bridge. A joke becomes a song. A song becomes a hand reaching across some ridiculous distance. A memory finds somebody who remembers it too. And somewhere between imagination and accident the impossible loses its alibi. [Chorus] I’ve been living the impossible dream. I thought I was making it. Maybe it was making me. One word found another. One mind found mine. And all those things that weren’t there yesterday started leaving shadows. [Bridge – suspended, sparse] Nothing ever came from nothing. At least that’s what they say. But I’ve watched nothing sit quietly in my notebook until somebody believed it. Then somebody laughed. Then somebody answered. Then somebody stayed. So I’m not entirely sure what nothing means anymore. [Outro – instruments disappear gradually] This morning I drew another crooked little line. It doesn’t look like anything. [Silence] Yet. I’ve learned not to underestimate that.
