In her review, „A Lawyer Who Hears New Ways to Argue“ (The New York Times, 31 Jan 08), Ginia Bellafonte writes about a surprising dreamful aspect of a brand new TV show, "Eli Stone.“ The title character is an attorney who has isolated himself, living, it seems, a stereoptypically ruthless and high-powered life. Bellafonte write that the show, a comic drama, "revolves around a Stanford-trained lawyer who undergoes a moral conversion in the midst of a career spent ensuring that litigious average Joes, bitten by evil corporate carnivores, never walk off with more than the cost of a Happy Meal. The anti-John Edwards, Eli has contentedly sequestered himself in one of the two Americas – specifically, a vast, honey-colored aparment in downturn-resistant San Francisco – until the Armani suits start to feel itchy.“
Eli has gone along with the dominant program, attaining what most people would label as success. Yet something is amiss. "What ails Eli no ointment can cure. In boardrooms, in his office lobby, during uninhibited love-making with a fiancee who looks like a member of the Swedish royal family, Eli begins to have auditory hallucinations.“ One of the types of dreaming intrudes itself into the status quo of Eli’s life.
As with many forms of dream, the content of hallucinations falls outside the realm of the predictable or even of the probable. "First, he hears the initial ecclesiastical chords of George Michael’s 'Faith‘; soon enough he is seeing George Michael performing in his living room.“ George Michael as a voice of divine intervention? Dreams often demonstrate a sense of humor.
Whereas in biblical days, such visitations would have been understood as meaningful intervention by God, in Eli’s world (and ours, too!), these experiences are explained away and diminished. "Eli’s neurologist brother tells him he is simply overstressed. 'Stress gives you premature grays,‘ Eli replies. 'It doesn’t make legendary British pop stars sing their greatest hits live from your couch.‘“ The dreamer is aware that these events are not to be glibly erased and forgotten.
Eli iunderstands that his visions are meaningful. "As it turns out, Eli has an aneurysm and who know how long to live. So with his remaining time he decides to switch sides in the class war and represent the squashed and powerless against the avaricious interests of Big Pharma and Bad Agribusiness.“ A voice in an ethereal body arrives out of the blue announcing to Eli that it is time for him to make a fundamental change in his life. The voice could be rationalized away as a side effect produced by the aneurysm. But for Eli, the important thing is that he has been warned that he must effect transformation.
Rather than ignoring the voice, Eli heeds it. We could say that the message - to live a life of faith and loving kindness - is merely re-inforced by the fact of the serious event of an aneurysm. The aneurysm does not diminish the validity of the message. "There’s a cynicism balancing the upbeat goofiness of 'Eli Stone,' the view that only a head about to explode would turn to altruism in our money-grubbing age, and that a plaintiff’s lawyer is what counts these days as a prophet or a saint.“
Dreams of all sorts often inform us that things in our lives need to change. Typically, we ignore such messages until they are unavoidable, with something in our lives about to explode, be it our heads, our hearts, our bodies, or our souls. If we are paying attention, we will figure out what’s what and make the necessary changes. Even in 21st century, cynical America there is room for life altering visions to speak to us and improve the storylines of how we live.