Into The Great Wide Open

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INTO THE GREAT WIDE OPEN

Some songs are more than songs. They are time machines.

I'm 73 now. And every time I play Into the Great Wide Open, I find myself travelling back to the days when I was a young musician, full of dreams, hopes, ambitions and probably a rather generous portion of youthful stupidity.

I remember that feeling of standing at the beginning of something. The world seemed enormous. Everything was possible. There were no boundaries worth respecting, no roads already closed, no reason to believe that tomorrow couldn't be bigger and brighter than today.

We had dreams. We had guitars. We had a little courage, a lot of imagination, and not nearly enough wisdom to know what we were getting ourselves into.

And yes, we made mistakes. Stupid ones, sometimes. We trusted the wrong people, took the wrong turns, misunderstood love, confused freedom with recklessness and occasionally believed that the world owed us something.

But isn't that part of being young?

Looking back, I realise that the mistakes were not necessarily the opposite of the dream. They were part of the journey. Some doors closed, others opened. Some hopes survived, others quietly disappeared. And somewhere along the way, life taught me that the road itself can be just as important as the destination.

That's what Tom Petty's Into the Great Wide Open means to me.

It's a song about youth, ambition, innocence and the sometimes brutal encounter between dreams and reality. But I also hear something else in it: a celebration of that wonderful, dangerous moment when you still believe that the whole world is waiting for you.

Today, at 73, I know a little more about life. I know that the world isn't always as wide open as it once appeared. I know that dreams come with a price, that time doesn't wait, and that some opportunities never come around twice.

But I also know something else.

That young musician is still somewhere inside me. He never completely left. He still picks up the guitar, still writes songs, still believes in possibilities and still wants to see what lies beyond the next horizon.

Perhaps that's the real secret of growing older: not to become the person you once thought you should be, but to keep a little of the person you once dreamed of becoming.

And if I could meet that young man again, I wouldn't give him too much advice. I wouldn't warn him about every mistake. I wouldn't tell him which roads to avoid.

I'd probably just tell him:

Go ahead. Take your chances. Make your mistakes. Fall in love. Play your music. Don't be afraid of the unknown.

Because once upon a time, the world really was great, wide and open.

And in some ways, it still is.

This one is more than a Tom Petty cover to me.

It's a piece of my own life.

The great wide open isn't behind me. It's still out there. In me. And it's still worth it.

— That's René