Our Dream (2025)
violin, piano, and electric guitar
PROGRAM NOTE:
We needed a truck, so we were at a farm equipment auction somewhere in Beckham County, Oklahoma. My dad was tired of waiting on other people to haul his equipment when he had work to do. While he kicked the tires and checked under the hood of a purple Kenworth that stood out among the other trucks in the lot (pronounced kay DUB-yuh), I found myself drawn to the back of the cab where a decal used to be. The outline was still there if you looked close enough: “Our Dream”.
There’s something haunting about stumbling across the remnants of other people’s abandoned aspirations, especially at farm auctions where the tools of someone’s trade — their means of making an honest living — get scattered to the wind. That purple truck, with its faded declaration of hope, became a meditation on the dreams we carry, the ones we’re forced to release, and the traces they leave behind.
Our Dream explores the weight of inherited hope — how one family’s abandoned dream becomes another’s foundation. I’d like to think they moved on to bigger and greener pastures, but I know they probably didn’t.
— Cody Criswell-Badillo