Dreaming a Little Dream (on the Dangerous and Delightful Edge)

I’m a day late with The Wild Reed’s “Friday Night Music Spot,” but here for your enjoyment is the beautiful Cass Elliot song, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” as featured at the end of the gay coming-of-age film, Beautiful Thing.

Notes Wikipedia:

The [film] ends with the two boys [Jamie and Ste] slow-dancing in the courtyard of their council flats to the tune of the Cass Elliot classic, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” while a guarding Sandra [Jamie’s mum] dances defiantly at their side with [Jamie’s friend] Leah as the local residents look on; some of them shocked, some of them enjoying the moment themselves.

This particular scene from Beautiful Thing reminds me of the poem, “So Here We Are,” by Rosie Miles.

So here we are
Dancing on the edge,
The dangerous and delightful edge.

So here we’ll be
The irritant in the eye
Of the church:
The cracked lens through which it needs to see.

So here we’ll not be silent, or invisible,
But we’ll say our names
And show our colours
And others will know
Who we are.

So here we’ll laugh and love and dance
And sing and play and drink and
Whose edge is it anyway?

This edge, we say,
Is ours; and we will
Fill that edge
To overflowing:
Loving it with passion,
Embracing it with desire,
And flirting unashamedly with the centre.

This dangerous and delightful edge
Is the edge where we are dancing,
So, here we are.

Rosie Miles

(From Courage to Love: Liturgies for the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Community, edited by Geoffrey Duncan)

Previous artists featured on “Music Night at the Wild Reed”:
The Church, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, Wall of Voodoo, Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy, Pink Floyd, Kate Ceberano, Judith Durham, Wendy Matthews, Buffy Sainte-Marie, 1927, Mavis Staples, Maxwell, Joan Baez, Tee Set, Darren Hayes, Wet, Wet, Wet, Engelbert Humperdinck, The Cruel Sea, Shirley Bassey, Loretta Lynn & Jack White, Foo Fighters, Jenny Morris, Kate Bush, Rufus Wainwright, and Dusty Springfield.