No. 009 - Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" changed my life
Adam Forrester talks leaving home, bus rides through the mountains of Mexico, and a night he'll never forget
This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.
• 6 min read •
As a kid, then later a teenager, I didn’t always feel like I could be myself in my hometown. So, I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could.
After college I ended up living in Los Angeles, which turned out to be a difficult place to live for different reasons. After eventually deciding to leave LA, I bounced around the North American continent for over a year.
At the time, I said I was looking for work, but I was really looking for a place to call home.
I spent a lot of time driving up and down the west coast on Highway 1, sleeping in my car some nights, and finding cheap hostels on other nights. I spent some time riding buses through the mountains of Mexico, and taking Spanish classes in the southern states of Mexico.
I camped in Mexico’s Baja California. I traveled all the way to Cabo San Lucas, and when I got to the southern tip of the Baja peninsula I gave a succulent (that I had carried in the car) to a stranger and turned around and drove back north.
I had no idea what I was “supposed” to be doing with my life but driving a small house plant 1,200 miles seemed like a good idea.
Later that year, I cycled through traffic, most of my days in Philadelphia, on a borrowed bike. I wanted to be anywhere but where I grew up. Unfortunately, by the time I’d gotten to Philadelphia, I had spent so much time moving around, that I’d begun to lose sight of what I had set out to find in the first place.
Philadelphia was one of the last stops on my meandering journey. While there, I was admittedly a bit lost and confused. I felt like life was turning out to be harder than I ever imagined it could be.
I was staying with some friends in Philly, but I was striking out on job interview after job interview. I was running out of money to fund my wanderings. I had decided the best thing for me to do would be to leave the city and reluctantly head back home to Georgia.
Before I left Philly, I was invited to a wedding with a lot of people that I’d either recently met or didn’t know at all. It was a magical day.
The site of the wedding was this idyllic site outside of the city. We all shared food and drink together. Weddings tend to bring so many different perspectives together for the sole purpose of supporting two people that we all love.
I do remember feeling like this event would mark a transition into another chapter of life and I remember feeling a sense of loss.
At the wedding, after the ceremony and the meal, a few songs began to play and one by one people made their way to the dance floor. After a song or two, “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire began to play, and all of us on the floor became so jovial, so rapturous.
That day, we danced our souls loose, and I danced my loss away. The song is childlike while also incorporating the challenges of adulthood.
As we sang along, we all joined hands. We began to frolic around in a circle. I can’t really explain how it happened, it just did, like we’d all planned it.
The newly married couple was encouraged to stand in the middle, while everyone else danced and skipped around them. We held hands. There was no leader, no one doing this for their ego, we all just agreed, without so much as a word to one another that this was precisely what we were supposed to be doing right now.
With the couple in the middle of the circle, we all drew closer to them as the song crescendoed. We sang the ballad of this song as hard as we could, Ahh ahh ahh ohh ohh. We were a group of twenty and thirty-year-olds dancing and shouting like we were children on a playground. It was glorious.
It seemed to last forever, and it seemed to be over in an instant, sort of like childhood.
I didn’t figure out my life that day but I realized through this song and this experience, that life was full of moments of childlike wonder. Sure, adulthood includes a lot of cold and painful moments, but I learned to embrace the times when I see an opportunity to look past something painful and just frolic, just laugh, just wish some lovers well, just sing some ohhh’s and ahhh’s.
I learned that day to choose joy when I can. That’s what we all did that day when that song came on. That’s what I do to this day when that song comes on.
Arcade Fire’s latest album contains songs like “Unconditional I (Lookout Kid),” which assures me that they will always make music that reminds us what it was like before we all took on the inhibitions of adulthood, before we may have listened to someone who, as the lyrics of “Wake Up” proclaim, told [us] not to cry. Arcade Fire has shown me time and time again that now that I’m older, my heart’s colder, and I can see that it’s a lie.
I’m back living in Georgia now and I can say that it does feel like home most days. But on the days when it doesn’t, it never hurts to put “Wake Up” on repeat. ◆
About Adam
Adam Forrester is a filmmaker, artist, and writer living in Atlanta, Georgia. From time to time he reminisces about the moment when jelly shoes and Reebok pumps were popular.
Instagram @ar_forrester
Website adamforrester.com
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Beautiful writing! I love this entry! thank you!