Infinite Dreams
'Infinite Dreams' is a song by Iron Maiden on their 1988 album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (artwork pictured). (EMI)
What a dream
When will it end?
And will it transcend?
It's not the fear of what's beyond
It's just that I might not respond
There's got to be just more to it than this
Or tell me why do we exist?
I'd like to think that when I die
I'd get a chance another time
And to return and live again
Reincarnate, play the game
Again and again and again.
Iron Maiden meet the idea of the afterlife in ‘Infinite Dreams’. The character described in the song’s lyrics dares to hope for another life on the ‘other side’. But hope is dangerous. What happens if there is no afterlife.
Nevertheless, we all seem to crave the idea of permanence. Born, live—reproduce?—die: it’s not enough. We want to go on; and when we grapple with the idea of death—with a fool’s hope we creatively conceive of ways—Heaven, Saṃsāra, immortality—to escape a fatal inevitability. How human.