Fortuna Daydream and the Way Back to Wonder

Jams2blues (James Lee)

My mom told me to cry so the sand would fall out.

I had a grain of sand in my eye at the beach near Ferndale, where my family would have bonfires and hunt for sand dollars. That little memory became the opening of Fortuna Daydream. A whole song about wanting to go home begins with something small enough to get caught in your eye.

I grew up in Fortuna, California, surrounded by giant redwood trees, with clover up to my knees. There were huckleberries and blueberries, thimbleberry bushes and wild currants. When I think about what I miss, I go back to that abundance, to having so much right there to explore.

With my younger sister and brother, around the time I first started playing guitar. I was about eleven.

I think about the skating rink and my great-grandfather Harry Goble's grocery store nearby. I remember it as Goble's Grocery. We used to have water gun fights in his store. Once, when I visited him in the retirement home, he fell asleep to "Thong Song" on my portable CD player.

I loved him. When I said goodbye, I kissed his cold forehead in the casket. That feeling and that memory will always be with me. I miss the best parts of my childhood, and I really believe those parts helped make me the kind person I am today.

The second half of Fortuna Daydream carries another part of my childhood: living with Tourette syndrome and being bullied. I remember my mom hugging me, showing me love and telling me it was okay to be different and special.

Childhood had its hard parts too. I have long since forgiven the past. The best parts of Fortuna are what I chose to reach for in this song, and I want to return to the clover and the bonfires. There is so much love in my life today, and I treasure the closeness I have with my family now.

The chorus asks, "Bring me back home, Where I can do anything." That is the home I was craving when we wrote it. The imagination that can make a kingdom out of a pillow fort. Being a vampire for Halloween, going to the arcade, feeling as if the next adventure is waiting for you. There was a freedom in pretending that I missed long after I had grown up.

Adult life gave those words another weight. The year after Anna and I eloped, I became severely mentally ill and experienced psychosis. Her love and support helped me survive and keep looking for answers. Eventually, further opinions led me to an accurate diagnosis and a way to begin healing. Dave Love was there too. He stuck around long after my severe episodic mania and depression, which lasted years, and he is still here today. When I hear the love and forgiveness in this song, I hear that part of my life too. Friends and lovers who are there for you at your absolute worst are the real ones.

Anna is also there in the music itself, as my fellow writer and co-lead voice. She wrote and plays the guitar solo, a simple dual-toned harmony that lifts the song between choruses. There is such peace in that passage for me. After the words have moved through childhood and illness, her guitar gives the song room to feel that gentleness. I can talk about wanting to go back for pages, and then that little harmony arrives and I feel it.

Making music with Anna and Dave, July 2019. From our photo archive.

Having young children has helped me find a way into that world again. I am learning how to play, how to pretend, how to follow an idea without deciding ahead of time what it is allowed to become. The child in me who wanted to be king of the world still recognizes the invitation. I can enter an unfolding story with my children instead of only looking back at stories from when I was their age.

That is the part of growing up I keep thinking about when I sing Fortuna Daydream. How did so many of us forget that we could do this? We used to explore things with awe. We could imagine being a prince or a princess, or the main character in some adventure, and give ourselves completely to it. I miss that openness. I want to keep learning it again, with my masks off and my heart on my sleeve, without a rule for every way I am allowed to express myself.

I hope the song reaches someone else's inner child the way it reached mine while we were writing it. I hope it gives someone room to laugh at a memory and miss somebody at the same time. For me, there are still redwoods in that daydream and clover up to my knees. Now I get to bring some of that wonder into the life I am living with Anna and our children, and see where the next game takes us.

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