Wake Up

Sometimes a song happens to go perfectly with the lyrics. Even lyrics, song and film. Where the Wild Things Are. I’d never really listened to the lyrics until now – I just felt the song, that fitted the movie so perfectly – about this never-ending energy that you can find in your childhood, the fantasy, the playfulness.

Somethin’ filled up
My heart with nothin’,
Someone told me not to cry.

Now that I’m older,
My heart’s colder,
And I can see that it’s a lie.

Children wake up,
Hold your mistake up,
Before they turn the summer into dust.

About growing old and allowing childhood to be forgotten. To fill your heart with false hopes. This nothin‘ – is it the false goals, is it the worries, is it the debts? We all have our nothin’ and most of don’t cry when we should.

But we’re also the generations that never really grew up. Forever young. It’s tough to grow up and it can be done in different ways.

I talked to a fella at the bar yesterday that had a simple way to divide between the politicians he didn’t agree with and those he deemed truly dangerous: the first type are at least adults. The rest are Trumps.

But for some Trump is a father figure. Childhood comes in all shapes, some of us grow up too fast because our parents never did.

That’s’ why we have to preserve our inner child – a cliché, I know – but only the part that matters. Preserve the wonder, the part that sees the magic in jumping around and looking for adventure on the carpet floor.

Not the selfish self-indulgent kid we all used to be too, sometimes. Fill the heart with something else then lies. Or to quote the next few lines:

If the children don’t grow up,
Our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
We’re just a million little god’s causin’ rain storms turnin’ every good thing to rust.
I guess we’ll just have to adjust

We grow up and the heart must too. Get bigger. We need to adapt, but keep the heart intact.

Text: Ásgeir H Ingólfsson