On Song Lyrics, Growing Up and The Monsters Under The Bed

In particular, the truth of “When I Grow Up”, an amazing song from the RSC musical “Matilda”. The lyrics and music is written by Tim Minchin, so it’s hardly surprising that the song is so wonderful and clever, but the truth behind the lyrics have really got me thinking – I’m in one of those deep “everything makes me think” moods, but this song in particular has made me think about all the things we promise ourselves when we’re children – and how, when we do grow up, they’re suddenly not important anymore, and we forget about it. Here’s some of the lyrics – and the truth behind them!

When I grow up,
I will be tall enough to reach the branches
That I need to reach to climb the trees 
You get to climb when you’re grown up.

With this one, I think one of the biggest challenges most kids encounter is never quite being tall enough to climb that one elusive tree. You just know there’s going to be an amazing view at the top, and there might be all sorts of wonders in the higher branches – but you can’t quite reach it, and if you could grow up just that little bit more, you’d be able to reach it. Then, you hit your teenage years, go through a growth spurt, and although you can reach those branches easy peasy, suddenly the thought of climbing that tree doesn’t appeal as much anymore. You might still do it, just because you can, but at the end of the day, it’s just a tree. The views are okay, but nothing that you probably couldn’t have seen if you just stood on your tiptoes, and there’s nothing hiding in those branches other than leaves. 

And when I grow up,
I will eat sweets every day,
On the way to work, and I will
Go to bed late every night.

Ah, I’m sure many of us have shouted this at our parents at least once in our lives – “When I grow up, I’ll eat sweets every day”, or “When I grow up, I won’t have a bedtime!”. Then you get older, and the way you look starts to matter, and your health gets important, and the thought of eating sweets every day doesn’t sound so attractive. You also start to realize that sleep is one of the most beautiful treasures known to man, and you want as much of it as you can get – suddenly, staying up late doesn’t sound like such a great idea. 

And I will wake up
When the sun comes up

Like before – when you’re little, sleep is boring. You don’t get to play games when you’re asleep. You don’t get to go running or play football or with your toys when you’re asleep – you just lie in your bed and sleep. How boring, right? Until you hit your late teenage years, when a lie-in is the best thing in the world, and waking up any time before 10am is worthy of lots of complaining and grumbling and a whole day of being miserable. Gone are the days of jumping on your parents’ bed, demanding to go downstairs and watch cartoons or get outside and play. Now it’s your parents who are faced with the task of trying to drag you out of bed to go to school/college/work.

When I grow up,
I will be brave enough to fight the creatures
That you have to fight beneath the bed
Each night to be a grown up.

And then there’s some things that never change. Maybe it isn’t monsters under the bed that keep us awake, but there always seems to be something frightening, something that disturbs our sleep – be they in our waking lives or nightmares we dread. Worries about work or relationships affect us at any age, whether it’s hard sums and playground spats or an overdue essay and a friendship falling apart, or a dragon of a boss and an impending relationship breakdown. These things affect everyone, and maybe I’m reading too much into these lyrics, but I think they do an amazing job of showing that no matter how grown up you may think you are, there’ll always be a monster under your bed – and maybe that sounds like a bad thing, but I think it shows that in all of us there is a part that doesn’t want to grow up yet – a part that can still enjoy that perpetual optimism that when we grow up, we’ll be able to do anything, because we will be what all children, no matter whether they’re 8 or 82, see as the age when everything changes for the better – “grown up”. I think the correct term for that optimism is “hope” – and hope is never a bad thing. 

You Know You’re A Writer When…

This is MY list of the things that lets me – and possibly others – know that I’m a writer.

 

1. You have a writing playlist.
2. Your mp3/phone/Kindle is full more of Immediate Music/Two Steps From Hell/anything else your writing playlist may contain than any other genre.
3. You actually have music on your Kindle, and listen to it whilst reading your own stories you’ve sent to it.
4. You ALWAYS have a notebook with ideas in it, and a pen for writing them down – you never know when inspiration might strike!
5. You worry every time you go to Waterstones/WHSmith/any other book shop, in case you find a book that has the exact same plot or nearly the exact same as your novel-in-progress (this has happened to me with a previous attempt at a novel, I wanted to cry).
6. You talk about your characters. A lot.
7. You often ask people to listen to your writing playlist and say “Isn’t this just perfect for chapter _____”. Even when they’ve never read your book. Bonus points if you don’t even KNOW the person.
8. You write everywhere you can. On the train or the bus, in bed, at school, at work – if you’ve got writing materials, you can bet you’ll be scribbling down ideas!
9. You’ve tried drawing your characters, but somehow you can never quite get them just how they appear in your head.
10. You consider getting published to be on your list of things to do before you die.
11. You have researched things for your novel that would look very strange if your computer was examined by someone who didn’t know you’re a writer!
12. You’re proud of your work, but as soon as someone wants to read it, you guard it like it’s the crown jewels.
13. You see people in the street who look exactly how you imagine your characters to be, and you’re faced with the dilemna of either walking over and telling them and sounding like a lunatic, or ignoring them (a little tip, I’ve ALWAYS gone with the ignoring them and recommend you do too, I certainly wouldn’t like someone coming up to me saying that I look like someone they see in their head all the time and write a lot about at night).
14. When “I was writing” becomes – in your head, at least – a reasonable excuse for not doing your homework.
15. Even your texts are full of descriptions and no shorthand!
16. You actually hope you get vivid dreams, because they always give awesome story ideas.
17. You have a “Writer’s Bump” – http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Writer’s%20Bump
18. Waking up early to write when you’ve got the morning off actually seems like an attractive prospect!

 

Suggest more in the comments and I’ll add them in!

Writing when ill…

Normally, when I’m ill, I get my best writing done. I mean, when you’re stuck in bed all day with a bad cold, or coughing your lungs up, there’s not really much more you can do than watch television, grab the old laptop and amuse yourself by writing. Today, however, I’m off college because I’m ill – but this isn’t the sort of illness where you can actually make use of the fact that you feel like crap by churning out a couple of thousand words in between eating copious amounts of chicken soup and watching Jeremy Kyle/other equally amusing-yet-horrifying “let’s deal with your relationship problems live on air” TV shows – or am I the only one who does that when I have a cold?

Nope, today I’ve encountered the horrible problem of BRAIN FOG. *horror chords*. Yep, as well as the fatigue, joint pains, muscle pains, headache and sore throat, my head feels like it’s been stuck in a blender and I could very well pass for a zombie out of Shaun Of The Dead (or one of the Romero “_____ of the Dead” movies if you’ve never seen the brilliant Simon Pegg parody) this morning, and I’m FED UP! I want to write, because I know what I want to write – but thanks to this brain fog, I don’t think the messages will actually reach my hands before my hands have gone “I can’t be bothered waiting for these words, let’s play on Bejewelled Blitz/stalk people on Facebook instead”.

I can’t even write my coursework! I’d actually like to get my coursework done and dusted, but it’s proving impossible because I’m looking at these words I’ve written down in my plan (it’s a comparison of the presentation of the theme of marriage in Much Ado About Nothing, and Cat On A Hot Tin Roof) and I don’t think I even remember writing them. Plus my teacher has made notes that are nearly impossible to decipher when my head’s like this. Even as I’m writing this, it’s going slowly and I can feel my fingers edging nearer and nearer to the mousepad to click on the tab with Facebook on it. Must – resist – must – keep – writing – curses, foiled again. Oh well. Facebook it is!