Man of LaMancha Revisited

It’s not real. It’s not an actual piece of history. Don Quixote de la Mancha did not actually exist. Or did he?

There are some stories that always make my face leak; Ole Yeller and Man of LaMancha are the top two, both of them fiction, but each is written about real human responses to human situations in real eras. There are others, but I’ll concentrate on my number one.

Man of LaMancha is at the very top because it is not just a story told in text, but in music. I’ve decided it MUST be real, if not in our physical realm, in spirit, which might be even more real than our perception of time and space.

The story is loosely adapted from the Spanish novel by Cervantes, set during the bleak era of the Spanish Inquisition. It is of an aging man desperately trying to discover or create meaning for his life before he dies. He breaks with reality and mounts a quest to prove the power, importance, and holiness if you will, of the human spirit. He redefines himself as the knight, Don Quixote de LaMancha, on a quest to right the unrightable wrongs of the world, to restore beauty, love, and hope. He takes his servant, Sancho Panza, and his horse and leaves home to battle evil, face to face, certain of his mission. Along the way, he finds a world-weary whore named Aldonza, but sees only the fairest of maidens and recognizes her as Dulcinea (meaning sweet one). He asks nothing of her but to honor and celebrate her. She has an understandably hard time accepting his clueless adoration.

In the end, he is tracked down and recaptured by agents of his niece who is embarrassed by his public displays of insanity. Dragged back home, he is completely broken when he is forced to accept his limited reality. But as he lies on his deathbed, Aldonza seeks him out, and with the aid of Sancho, reminds him of his true nature, and reveals that he has indeed transformed her into Dulcinea. Thus, the magic and holiness of his spirit is passed on to two people who will carry it forward for as long as they live, and pass it on to others.

This simple and strange story is given depth and brightness through the lyrics and music embedded in the telling. I was in high school when someone brought the album of the original Broadway cast into our home. Years before I saw the production on stage, I had envisioned it being played out over and over and over again as I listened to that record. And when I got to actually see the score and play the overture at All-State Band, I was thrilled!

Because by the ripe old age of 15, I had adopted “The Impossible Dream” as my personal theme song, moments after Cloyde died, sitting by his hospital bed, I sang it to him as his send-off. I know he understood.

Hearing the soundtrack of this magnificent piece of performance art always brings tears to my eyes. It is not just fiction. We inhabit a physical world, but reality includes the invisible world of spirit that formed us and envelopes us. As sure as I know I bleed when I am cut, I know that this story and this music were born and exist in that spirit world, and through very talented people, were translated and brought into our limited physical world to remind us that we are so much more… if only we will allow ourselves to be.

And if you believe that something this soulful could have originated only as synaptic flashes between neuron cells within an incalculably complex system working with innumerable other symbiotic systems that have occurred by chance, to create a human being without the existence of a Creator God, then your belief in miracles is far greater than mine.