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Heroes and Dreams
This touching video is a little rough here and there, so please excuse the occasional rough language, but the message I got from it is so inspiring and left a lump in my throat, I thought I’d share it here. It’s about our heroes and how they can give us the spark we need to do great things. This guys’ childhood fantasy about his hero, MacGyver, is not merely about Swiss Army knives, but about heroes and how they can give people dreams to reach up to the stars for. It captures the DIY (do it yourself) spirit and how with some ingenuity, motivation and perseverance, one can do anything.
All of us here share a common passion for Mona and Lisa, our heroes. MLT touch and move us through their music, creativity, and everything they do. They inspire us and make our lives better and give us joy, and hope for the future.
We need our heroes because they enrich our lives and allow us to dream and achieve the impossible.
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17 Replies
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My greatest hero for the last 40 years has been Carl Sagan. I can’t think of anyone who was better able to use an astronomer’s perspective to inspire us about both the universe and how we fit into it.
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“Preserve and cherish the pale blue dot”. David, a very relevant message for the times, and great video. I always enjoyed Carl Sagan’s documentaries, always fascinated me. He use to host Nova correct? The video makes me appreciate how lonely our little blue dot is in this vast emptiness and perhaps we should all be a little kinder to one another.
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Actually Sagan created and hosted the miniseries Cosmos. Nova has never had a regular host as far as I know.
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Hi Jung, the music industry is teeming with heroes, anti-heroes and tragic figures. And yet, as much as I love music and music has influenced me a lot, musicians have played only a subordinate role as ideal or heroes for me. My real idols are novelists, or rather the books they’ve written. Together with Jules Verne I dived 20000 miles under the seas and he awakened in me the desire to travel to distant countries and discover other cultures. H.G. Wells fascinated me: his belief in the many possibilities and the fantastic achievements that we humans may one day have. I enthusiastically accompanied Stanislaw Lem on his exploration trip to the stars, where we humans are traveling in search of ourselves in distant galaxies and Douglas Adams almost explained the meaning of life to me.
If music is the keeper of our feelings and our passion, then literature is the gateway to our minds and our knowledge (maybe I’m wrong and it’s exactly the other way around?) Together they are definitely unbeatable. As for example in Alan Parson’s Projects concept albums “I Robot” and “Tales Of Mystery And Imagination”
„Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry;
music, without the idea, is simply music;
the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitivness.“
– Edgar Allan Poe –
And David: I followed Carl Sagan and his miniseries Cosmos on TV with excitement at the time. Stephen Hawking’s ideas have also always fascinated me (even if I only understood a fraction of what he had to report)
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I know I’m just tooting my own horn here, but I once had a one-on-one encounter with Carl Sagan.
When I was in graduate school I prepared a poster presentation on my recent research results for a planetary science conference that we both attended. I was standing by my poster at the appointed time to talk about it, but no one stopped by for about fifteen minutes.
Then Sagan, with no entourage whatsoever, appeared around the corner and slowly walked down the aisle of posters and scanned them. There was literally no one else present in the aisle, so my heart leapt at the prospect of actually having a conversation with the man.
Unfortunately he didn’t make eye contact or acknowledge me in any way, but at least I had my private moment with my hero!
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These are the moments in life that are priceless, David. I imagine it this way: I go to the bakery to buy rolls and suddenly Ringo Starr is standing next to me and does not know which bread to take. Too bad Carl Sagan didn’t notice you. What would you have said or asked him? (Without getting too personal now: Did you study astrophysics or something similar?) Sometimes such encounters can also be disillusioning. A few years ago I was at a reading of a fantasy author whose books I actually liked to read. It was a small, rather intimate round and I have to say: I was very disappointed with the author. A boring, inconspicuous guy. I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to him. Unfortunately not a hero. Maybe it was even better that you didn’t talk to Carl Sagan: So he has remained in your memory as you liked to see him.
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I think you’re right, Juergen. As much as I’m moved by his poetic way of speaking, I tend to believe that he may have been kind of a jerk personally. Later at a social break in that same meeting I was talking with a mutual acquaintance, and then Sagan walked over and hijacked the conversation, again without acknowledging me.
If I had spoken with him at the poster session, I would have stuck to the purpose of the session and elaborated on my research in the context of any questions he had about the poster, hoping that he would have given me a professional pat on the back that would have stayed with me forever. Oh, well…
I was studying planetary science at the time, which was Sagan’s specialty. Cosmos inspired my fascination with planets in the first place, although I didn’t realize until my junior year of college that the physics background I was acquiring was actually good preparation for planetary work.
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Planetary Science? I imagine this to be very exciting (or sometimes very theoretical?). Too bad that this is “only” a music forum. I would have a lot of questions for you. I like to watch science documentaries in which astrophysicists present their latest findings (i.e. popular science. Comprehensibly stated theories without formulas and calculations. So in the manner of Carl Sagan). Exciting and interesting, even if sometimes very detached.
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David, it was Cosmos I was thinking about, not Nova. Anyway it was a great show and with Carl Sagan it was the passion and excitement he always described the science with that really stood out for me. Wow, so you saw Carl Sagan in person! Another astrophysicist I came across recently and enjoyed some of his youtube videos is Neil Degrasse Tyson. I discovered him a few years ago when he appeared on a fountain pen talk show, as he is a big fountain pen fan, so I naturally became interested in him. Anyway, I found his videos and some of his scientific insights quite fascinating.
Jurgen, some great novelist/writers there to have as your heroes, Jules Vernes and HG Wells. I thought Orson Wells “War of the Worlds” was great, both the 60s movie and the more recent Tom Cruise one. I believe he is credited with creating one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, “Citizen Kane” that I watched. I really enjoyed it. I’m not too familiar with Jules Vernes, though I have heard of his famous “20,000 leagues under the Sea” book and movie. But your story about Jules Vernes and impact it had on you makes me want to check out his work more.
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If you like science fiction, Jung then you might also like Stanislaw Lem. Actually a Polish physicist, he has written wonderful books like “Eden” “The Invincible” or “Solaris”. (I don’t like the film adaptation Solaris with George Clooney that much. Actually, the whole time only George Clooney was in the foreground and the interesting plot has been completely lost in the personality cult Clooney). Stanislaw Lem has accompanied me since my youth and has always been a great role model for me. His literary themes such as human cognition / insight, neural networks, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, but also very satirical approaches I have experienced as very inspiring and make his life’s work incomparable.
By the way, the radio play version / musical of “The war of the worlds” by Jeff Waynes is also very nice and remarkable. The story is told in a very exciting way and is always enveloped by beautiful music. Just sit back and enjoy.
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For me Beethoven and Einstein are the great heroes from history. Beethoven because he changed music forever and elevated it to an art form on par with visual arts like paintings and sculpture, and literature. Before Beethoven, there wasn’t even measured time or tempo in music, it was all approximated. He was instrumental in introducing the metronome. In Beethoven’s work, in most of it not a word is spoken, yet his works take you through an emotional journey. A story told and felt in emotions. Einstein, because he was as much an artist/musician as he was a scientist. In fact, they are one and the same thing for him. “Imagination is greater than knowledge” is profound.
Great music, whether Beethoven, Beatles, MonaLisa Twins, you never tire of it no matter how many times you listen to it; there is always something new and refreshing to experience. The “..music remains endlessly satisfying, interesting, and moving…infinitely durable and universal”
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Brian Wilson, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr are the epitome of heroes, all pushing 80 (Ringo is 80) and still go into their studios to do their “thang”. It is so endlessly inspiring to see them continue to create. True heroes in their craft having changed the world for the better through their music for 6 decades continue to do what they love. They have the right stuff to be called heroes. They are true super heroes for us mere mortals to look up to.
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Hi Jung,
thanks for the very nice video contributions. Yes, I also find it amazing that these musicians, despite their advanced age, still go to the studio and follow their passion. Fantastic. I hope that at 80 I can still be as active. For me, they’re heroes too: not superheroes, but people who have made their dream of music come true. People who have followed this dream incessantly: they have not let themselves be distracted from their path by mistakes and have picked up where others might have left off. And that’s what I actually find admirable: the energy, the perseverance and ultimately the belief in your own abilities and yourself that have brought these people to where they are today.
Here comes a whole bouquet full of aged “heroes”. The “Traveling Wilburys”. First up for me is George Harrison. I think the whole song clearly bears his signature. Then the unforgettable voice of Roy Orbison. Jeff Lynne and his ELO also gave me many wonderful hours. Personally, I can’t do much with Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. Important contemporaries in music history, but to this day I have not found any access to their attitude towards life and their music.
I am always a little cautious when such a pack of celebrities appears at once: Sometimes then a lot of self-loving stars meet who do not harmonize with each other. With the Traveling Wilburys, I don’t feel like that is the case. I think they all harmonize well with each other. And especially with George Harrison, I have the feeling that he is enjoying performing with a band again.
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Hi Jurgen, thanks for the videos about the Traveling Wilburys. I wasn’t that familiar with them, but learned a lot about them on that one video. It’s amazing the talent that formed the band, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison….Together they made some great music which is a feat in itself with the potential potential clash in egos that could happen, but it looks like they all cooperated and created some great music. It’s too bad Roy Orbison died, and George Harrison, and Tom Petty. If they had all lived longer, who know how much more they could have achieved together.
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