AMAZON has a fantastic item with a shockingly low price tag. Normally a Johnny Mathis album carries a price of between 15 to 17 American dollars. Amazon has four Mathis albums on two CDs for the same price. So instead of paying $60 for four albums, you are simply paying $15.

So, they had seven CDs available giving you 28 Johnny Mathis albums. I bought all of them. I threw away the burnt CDs by Mathis that I had so I now have the original discs which play better in my discman and the car stereo. This is a fantastic singer in the English language whose voice is saccharine, sublime, serene and capable of amazingly subtly variations. Mathis has put innovative, unique arrangements to some of the English language’s most memorable romantic pop songs that will last forever.

There can never be a more mentally comforting moment than to be on a long drive with your wife by your side with no words being spoken, just the incredible voice of Johnny Mathis singing compositions that took a genius mind to compose. So yesterday, I just took out one of the CDs and inserted it into my discman to take my dog walking. One of the songs was “The Impossible Dream” taken from the movie “Man From La Mancha” which was the movie version of one of the greatest works of literature – Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.

I don’t think anyone who has been to university to do a degree in the humanities or philosophy would not have read, Don Quixote. It is perhaps one of the most widely read novels in the history of the world and is regarded as one of the best books ever penned. At UG, when I was a student there in the mid seventies, there was a remarkable literature professor, Englishman, Bill (William) Carr.

No one could have taught Don Quixote better than Bill. But there was one problem to the mastery of Bill. He excelled in teaching Don Quixote only when he was drunk. None of the administrators at UG sought to discipline Bill because they knew that in a drunken state, he could teach any novel better than any professor anywhere in the world. To see Bill teach Cervantes’ phenomenal novel was a thing to behold.

When he died, I attended his service at the Brickdam Cathedral and, on that day, I knew Guyana had lost one of its most talented professors and one of the most tormented and perhaps psychologically flawed humans to ever come to Guyana. To know more of Bill, see his biography by his son, Matthew, titled, “My Father’s House.” It is not a book to read if you do not like to be touched by the tragic lives of people.
Listening to Johnny Mathis sing The Impossible Dream with my dog by my side yesterday was a maudlin moment for me. I was always attracted to the life of the man from La Mancha. I wanted to be like Don Quixote. I wanted to right the wrongs done to people. But looking back I wondered if I was an idealist or a fool. Or maybe both. But in being a fool the regrets are too many and they torment you forever.

When you reach a certain stage in your quixotic life, you want to look back with psychic satisfaction and deep feelings of passion and purpose. But the torments you live with keep asking you and will ask you forever – what was the purpose? Was the journey worth it? I am glad I spent a life chasing dreams like Don Quixote and not money. But at the end of the day, dreams die like faded roses and life is what Shakespeare made it out to be in his great play- Macbeth. I leave you with the words of Mathis’ haunting song.

“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
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far
To fight for the right without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause
And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest
And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove, with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.”