Let’s go back in our way-back machine to 1979.
I was just six years old (and yes, I just gave you my age, but so be it).
A very credulous six. At this age, I was dancing to Mickey Mouse Disco and staying up “late” to watch The Love Boat and Fantasy Island each Saturday night. This was also around the time when my family’s problems started (as best as I can remember). My grandfather — who, my brother insisted, bore something of a resemblance to the wrestling star, “Classy Freddy Blassie” — was ill (he ultimately died that fall). There was family strife over the (apparently meager) estate. A series of other troubles started around the same time, too.
Very bad troubles. Troubles that led to grown-ups screaming and throwing things, and led to me and my brother cowering in our rooms in fear. So much fear.
In this mixed-up mash up of careless bliss, grief, and tension; Jim Henson’s Muppets were always good for a sigh of relief, a distraction, and maybe even a smile. I grew up in a household with a couple of siblings much, much older than myself (only one, my brother, even close to my age); and so I fell into the habit of becoming a miniature adult. A sort of parentified child — I bridged the gap between the world of kids and that of adults…but never really fit in either.
The weekly variety program, The Muppet Show, bridged the world of children and adults, too. I never felt normal around other kids when I was in school, but watching The Muppet Show, I felt right at home. The humor was fairly sophisticated. They also had some unusual guest stars (Vincent Price, Johnny Cash, and even Andy Kaufman made a guest appearance as none other than Tony Clifton).
But perhaps the one Jim Henson project that has had the greatest impact on me was the musical, The Muppet Movie, and, especially, the opening number “The Rainbow Connection”.
The Muppet Movie wasn’t the first movie that I ever saw, but it was probably the first I stayed awake for the entire time. I enjoyed it so much, I asked for (and got) the soundtrack LP as a Christmas present that year. A record of my very own! I played it over and over, on a small turntable. Sometimes raising the volume to drown out the screaming.
The lyrics of the song, “The Rainbow Connection” are a bit vague; but I think they can be loosely interpreted as being about pursuing dreams. Take this excerpt:
“Have you been half asleep
and have you heard voices?
I’ve heard them calling my name.
Is this the sweet sound that calls the young sailors?
The voice might be one and the same.
I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it.
It’s something that I’m supposed to be.
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection,
the lovers, the dreamers and me.”
The translation that I heard, at age six, was just this:
“It won’t always be this bad.”
Looking back at it now, I really identify the “voices” in the lyrics to the voices of “the muse”.
I think that, in The Muppet Movie, Henson was trying to ignite in children an embrace of their own creativity. Take the opening scene, in which Kermit happens upon a Hollywood film agent (Dom DeLuise) who is lost in the swamp. The agent decides Kermit might be quite a talent to discover, and persuades him to try to audition for a role in a commercial by offering him wealth and fame.
Kermit isn’t interested. With the Zen composure reminiscent of another swamp-dweller, Yoda, Kermit resists temptation.
The agent only sways the frog by telling him that, with all of his talent (“singin’, tellin’ jokes”) , he could “make millions of people happy.”
And that’s what hooks Kermit.
And isn’t that what hooks all of us? Yes, fair compensation is important. Essential, even. Critical success, popularity, or out-and-out fame..all important benchmarks, too. Harlan Ellison says the only reason to write at all is for posterity.
But that’s not why I got into writing. I started writing stories (not that long after I watched The Muppet Movie) because I first of all wanted to distract myself from the chaos in my home.
I wanted to make myself happy. It was only later that I discovered that I could, like Kermit, “make millions of people happy”.
But wait, I’m an author of weird speculative fiction. Did I say millions? I meant thousands.
Hundreds?
Dozens? 
Over the years, the lyrics to “The Rainbow Connection” have come back to me time and again. I took a five year hiatus from writing from 2003-2008. I just “had to get my head straight”. I tried to quit writing, actually (for a lot of stupid reasons I won’t go into).
But a deep internal conviction — like a little voice inside me — wouldn’t let me. Over time, I had to surrender to myself that writing was one of the most important talents I had been born with, and there was nothing admirable about forgoing its use.
(“I’ve heard it too many times to ignore it. It’s something that I’m supposed to be.”)
Perhaps the most emotional point in The Muppet Movie is the end. A series of catastrophes destroys the set of the movie the muppets are making (the eponymous Muppet Movie). They even destroy part of the ceiling.
In comes a rainbow, which lands right onto Kermit (which reminds me a little bit of the beam of pink light that allegedly hit Phillip K. Dick in February of 1974– was Kermit…like everyone else in the ’70s…using drugs?).
Our hero the frog then looks into the camera and sings the following:
“Life is a movie
Write your own ending
Keep believing
Keep pretending
We’ve done all that we set out to do
thanks to the lovers, the dreamers, and you”
I have, Kermit. Me and thousands of other children inspired by you, Mr. Henson, and the writer of those lyrics, Paul Williams.
We’ve kept believing.
Kept pretending.
Kept creating.
Thanks to you.
