When the Ceiling Can’t Hold Us

A towering vision for Egypt's New Administrative Capital: the proposed Oblisco Capitale, a 1,000-meter skyscraper blending Pharaonic and Art Deco styles, designed by IDIA. If realized, it would become the world's tallest building, surpassing the Burj Khalifa.

Last night I had a dream I can’t shake.

I was with a group—people I knew, or thought I knew—headed to a business meeting. We drove there together, but when we arrived, they wouldn’t wait. They were impatient. Rushed. I stayed behind.

A sheikh met me at the entrance of a towering black skyscraper. Not an office building, not a temple, but something in between—corporate in form, mythic in feeling. He led me through the doors. We stepped onto an escalator together, but it looped around and returned us to the first floor, like a conveyor belt of false starts. He disappeared.

I got back on the escalator alone.

This time, the guardrails and the floors around me vanished. No safety. No boundary. Just the ride.

I passed the signs for the 20th floor. Then the 40th. Then the 77th.

And then I woke up.

The dream clung to me. Not just because of the image of ascending past the 77th floor. Not just because it reminded me—immediately—of Jacob’s Ladder and the idea that heaven and earth are joined by a fragile but persistent thread.

But because Blake—my son—has spent the past two weeks making up a song. And the hook? It’s the same as Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us.”

And that song was playing in the dream.

It wasn’t background noise. It was heartbeat.

“Tonight is the night, we’ll fight 'til it’s over / So we put our hands up, like the ceiling can’t hold us.”

The song is about momentum. Energy. Creative defiance. And something in that defiance—the refusal to be held back—was resonating between father and son, dream and waking.

Dreams speak in movement and symbol.
My companions wouldn’t wait for the host. I entered anyway.
The first ride looped.
The second ride lifted me.
And the ceiling—whatever ceiling there was—didn’t stop me.

Maybe this dream wasn’t about climbing toward some divine reward. Maybe it was about being ready—to ride when it counts, to recognize the false loops, to let go of the guardrails when it’s time.

Maybe the skyscraper is the world we’re building. Maybe Blake already knows the ceiling can’t hold us.

And maybe I needed to be reminded.