Dreams are things that we, as people, chase. We cannot simply settle for being as small as we actually are on this big earth, we feel that we need to shoot for the moon. This is what Matt Dahan explores in “More Than This,” the third song in “The Great Moon Hoax,” which began his musical radio series of pulp musicals.
Dahan writes his characters Samuel and Rose, young struggling writers, to be big dreamers. His key to the song’s lyrics are that of imagination, and we see the similarities between dreams and imagination.
An important moment in the song is as Rose says that they will “find their way there,” find their way to the moon and to the world they dream of. Even if they may not be there now, they know they will get there.
But no part of the song is more important to its meaning than the motto to the entire radio musical series, “don’t be scared of the dark, cause that is where the dreaming starts.” They say to not be afraid of the unknown, because every unknown is an opportunity for something astonishing.
People are so often scared of uncertainty, when we need to be excited by it. When anything can happen, why be afraid?
Matt Dahan continues to write the pulp musicals series, which will eventually become a seven-part series. He also wrote the musical “Starry” and several StarKid musicals, and is a composer for shows and movies like “CODA” and “The Muse.” He won an HMMA for best song for his work on the film “Beyond the Shore.”