I Could Never Sell

What sells now?  The Dream, says Tom Peters in Re-Imagine.   What still sells when everything else has sunk into commodity hell?   The Dream.

Harley-Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles, he says.  They sell a way of life.  A way for a middle aged accountant to drive through town and make everyone afraid, says an unnamed exec at Harley.

But a dream is a story.  A way of life is not.  Not quite.

Examples:

A Way: West

A Way of Life: Always Heading for Open Spaces

A Way of Life  =  a Way (West)  + What it Means to Someone (Open Spaces)

A Story: Why Ell and I Went West in the Spring of Aught Eight, or Tried

A Story = A Way of Life (Heading for Open Spaces) + Who (Ell and I) + When (Aught Eight)  + When End (Spring of)(or Tried).  Who is who makes West mean Open Spaces.

A Dream: How Ell and I Found Open Spaces Once More in Aught Eight, Again and Forever

A Dream  =  A Story + Never (Never Was, or Never Ends)

The accountant stands over the Harley in the showroom and dreams of riding through town tomorrow and ten years from now, flying like the wind and scattering fear at an age when he can hardly hobble to the mailbox without the neighbor kids tittering behind his back.

So whatever you sell, sell a dream.

Not a wrench set, but the dream: Who do they call when the big ones go bad?  Me.  Who comes when the others run?  Me.

Not an ironing board, but the dream:  I guess I’ll never know what all I could have done on stage, on tour, because I’m the kind who cares for others, quietly, who sets aside my dreams for theirs.

Nobody said the dream has to make sense.  Not to anyone but the dreamer.

Don’t sell the clothes, sell the dream:  I was born to shine.  Not like a desklamp, either.  Like a meteor.

Where do you get the dream?  From the dreamer, where else!  Where else would it make any sense, outside of the dreamer?

My sister wants an SUV.  She likes her husband’s Honda Pilot.  But the Pilot is too big.  A man’s car.  Honda makes a smaller one.  But it’s for college girls in their first job, or moms at home with their first baby.

She’s picking her marker for this next time around the Monopoly board, at the start of the empty-nest decade in her life.  With a house full of rescued dogs, louder than all her kids put together ever were.

But she sighs and talks sweet nonsense in her husband’s ear when she talks about the Acura TSX.   It’s a dream of love.  What exactly?  Who knows?  Not me.  Only she knows, and maybe the person who first dreamed up the TSX at Acura.

Don’t sell the car, sell the dream: My father left and my mother went to pieces, but I hold together, I take in the lost and the left behind, when their lives are going to pieces.

I’ll be Scotty.

Not the waterproof phone, the dream:  I never know when I’ll have to arm-lock a guy who’s half again my size in a 4 AM ice storm outside town, so everyone in town can sleep in peace under their blankets and roofs.  I need a phone that won’t quit until I do.

I’ll be gun.

Not the cordoroy, the dream:  I’ll never shine, and never shoot across the skies like a meteor, but I’ll never let the glow go out, the night light, the walkway light, the light in the hood of the range,  I’m there through the night and into the day and into the next night, when I’m needed and when I’m not, always there just in case, even if you never notice me until you need me, there I am.

I’ll be shoe.

Not the tablecloth, the dream:  You all go on ahead, that’s not for me, I would only slow you down, but I’ll have dinner warm whenever you come back out of the cold, no, no, you go on, leave me, let me get a few things cleaned up, I can’t do it with you all in the way, slamming around everywhere, give me some peace.

I’ll be Thimble.

Monopoly is one kind of game on the top shelf of the closet, another kind of game when everyone has picked a marker and put it on Go.

Then Way…

(the way you play, the rules)

…wakes up Way of Life…

(I build steady, no big risks, like a red hotel with the last of my ready cash, no, I build slow, and wait for the hotshots to stumble)

…and lifts into Story…

(the time Ell and I teamed up and almost won until we got mad at one another, what was that about?  And Casey, remember that kid Casey, hardly said a word, but he cleaned us both out in the end…)

…and, when Ell goes quiet, thinking…

“story of my life, I never learned,”

…passes over into Dream.

Sell Ell her dream, or a dream to keep her dream at bay, keep her bad dreams away.

Hard enough to find the right flooring to feature in the show window, you’re thinking, how would I even begin to find the right dream?

From the dreamer.  That’s not far to look.  In dreams we are all near.  We fly over our differences, nearer together, like the noisy birds that fly from my tree to yours at dawn, while my dog, left behind in the dark, answers yours through the planks of the fence.

Dream, and sell the dream.  Whatever you buy, you are picking a Monopoly marker for your next few times around Go.  So then, sell as you buy.  Whatever people buy, from you or elsewhere, they are picking that Monopoly marker.  They want you to help tell their story.  They want you to teach them to dream.

===