Louis Cennamo — December 2022
THE VISION that became A DAYDREAM — and CAME TRUE!
Continuing the Spiritual Diary of a Rock Star — AWAKE IN THE DREAM
In the dream past of the real eternal present, the day came for my aunt to reluctantly follow in the footsteps of her ambitious husband. He had followed his dream to New York, where he had been realising it.
In my part of this true story I am a young boy feeling an empty space where my beloved cousins, Vivienne and (little)Phil had been. All I had left was a sweet photo of us huddled at a desk, happily smiling; and a dream, that began to emerge like a cloud of, well… more than hope, much more a vision of a heartfelt wish that soon developed into a dreamlike but focused intention.
Coinciding with my early days at Grammar School, life had quickly changed from happy family days with lots of music, fun and visits from Italian relatives. Primary school tests and the pressure of an 11plus scholarship took its toll and then the conditioned austerity of Stationers’ Company’s School — a throwback to a bygone age of masters in gowns and prefects giving detentions for such crimes as not wearing a school cap straight. The delight at being accepted, was soon a wish that I hadn’t been.
Something profound also began to emerge from this dip into a dark grey world of exams, fear and boredom. A shoot began to sprout up like a hardy Japanese knotweed out of the gaps between the dull grey concrete. I didn’t pull it out though, and that shoot blossomed like a lotus flower into what at first seemed like another daydream, a mirage-like vision that felt so real that I could touch it — and it in turn, touched my heart.
I would gaze out from the windows whenever a hint of an opportunity arose. Stationers was an old Victorian building perched high on a ridge of a steep hill, with a clear view of what I saw then as distant horizons. I would dream of all the exciting places I could travel to - to free my aching heart from the bondage of an academic curriculum I had no interest in.
Mine was an inner space that expanded outwards into that sky, and there too somewhere within it I would ride up on my bike to my dear auntie Connie’s house and we would all be together again! Bliss. I have since learned the vital importance of projecting an elevated emotion into a desired outcome, and to let its gentle, silent power take wings.
In my innocence, and ignorance of techniques like creative visualisation, I wasn’t yet aware of just how wonderfully, and how perfectly the lotus was unfolding into the Light of a manifestation. Here I was, twelve years later now, about to head off for the first of several nights at New York’s legendary rock venue the Fillmore East with Renaissance, the band that my silently unfolding lotus had folded me into. Only now in this moment can I share with you how that seed had grown, like all seeds, in the dark until all its stages were complete. The circles of love in high vibration, lit up, and all that was missing? — was the bike!..
A few steps into the group’s US tour the much loved bike that my father had passed on to me had morphed into a car that drove us right into the core of the Big Apple; arriving well after midnight in the city that never sleeps. All that time, passing? It was so clearly a dream now — but vividly real.
A fun thing for me — juggling with time. Playing the game within the dream I find gives credence to a well trodden wise notion that transcends the beliefs of the mass-conditioned mind. So please feel free; come fly with me but keep your feet on the ground — enjoy the wondrous truth of that paradox and let it blow your minds and simultaneously blow your hearts wide open! May this story inspire your own story. Let’s share our open hearts’ joyous wisdom — to propel us beyond any old limitations and into a dream-come-true inner space that knows no bounds.
Vivienne’s Letter…
Not surprisingly, cousin Viv’’s path had progressed with some inverted parallels to my own. Like me she was a Piscean dreamer, unworldly in the world, and so uncomfortable to the point of rebellion with all types of conventional programming and pigeon-holing…you might say a free spirit in bondage. She left the Earth dream early, though Spirit never leaves — (paradox!) For this story she is alive in the dream and had been staying in touch with me by letter. That is significant, as her last letter was not long after I had begun my Renaissance adventure….
‘I’m a groupie now Louis’, she sweetly informed me — ‘and my favourite band is the Yardbirds!’ …see where this is going?.. (she didn’t know yet); ‘I love them, especially Keith Relf and Jeff Beck’…OK you get the picture?… It still hadn’t really registered with me just how interconnected we all are, in what I would call quantum ways — intuitive, excitingly illogical analysis-busting, surprise-full and synchronistic, unconditioned wholeness…
Boyhood daydream, how could you not — materialise!?
Viv was living in Greenwich Village with her young musician husband, so when she realised what was going down you can imagine her response; jaw-dropping disbelief comes close. Now you might wonder how she didn’t know before, but that was down to me not writing much, being so absorbed in the music, and the dream. So, cutting to the quick, Viv is there on our first night at the Fillmore and after the show a daydream comes true for my dear shy cousin. In a surreal dressing room scene, with tears and elation — she gets to meet some Yardbirds!…Keith Relf, and Jim McCarty! - (now her favourite too!)
My Daydream, Complete with a Postscript…
The next day we meet up early and take the subway out to Queens. I resume alignment with the surreal. My daydream bicycle had morphed again; into a subway train to Flushing and then a bus ride to Whitestone — and then ‘Shanks’s pony’ to the corner of Auntie Connie’s road, a quiet cul-de-sac…The dream walked us up to the yellow and white, smart and modern detached house. it flashed a snap — and snapped a flash in my heart; there we were - all together again! No dream bike, but that twelve year cycle — complete. Who knew there were such cycles? — so are dream bicycles more magical than meets the eye?
Connie’s husband, Philip Snr was now manager of the prestigious Oyster Bar at the magnificent Plaza Hotel; and during our reunion on that first magical day he invited me to have lunch there. I accepted, and next day the completed daydream added a postscript of a movie scene where I am sitting like a lord in the Oyster Bar, being served a sumptuous lunch by two of his staff.
‘This is my famous nephew from London — give him whatever he wants!’.
The funniest part is that he had proudly told us all the day before how he’d turned another long haired musician out for refusing to wear a tie! Nepotism rules? at least for one tieless nephew …but alas — not for poor Mick Jagger!
The Fillmore East Programme cover below - with some inside info below:
