Happy Birthday to "The Grown Ups": Comets

As a way of celebrating the first birthday of my debut album, The Grown Ups, I thought I would write a little "behind the scenes" feature about each of the songs on the LP. You can listen, download or buy the album over at www.mickterry.co.uk

COMETS

Our lives are shaped by the choices we make. They wrap around us like a blanket, woven deep into the fabric. What would the 16 year old version of yourself make of the path you have chosen? Time has the power to distort your dreams beyond recognition, to blur the line between sacrifice and compromise and leave you, ultimately, feeling cheated. The struggle to hold true to your beliefs gets harder with each passing year and the pressure to conform almost unbearable. Some days, that little voice inside of you is barely audible and it can leave you wondering if it was ever, truly there at all. Those are the days when compromise sneaks up on you, whispering sweet nothings and false praise in your ear. The temptation to put the car into drive and head for the “easier road” suckers most of us in the end and renders us powerless to ignore the siren’s beautiful lament.

Fast forward and we are knee deep in mortgages, offspring and reality TV shows. Having convinced ourselves that we are happier, we lose sight of what really mattered, what still matters. The kick you got from playing a Clash 45 at full volume, from reading Steinbeck or the thrill of a warm kiss. There are a thousand reasons why you can’t do something, but, only one reason why you can: because you should! Nostalgia is just regret viewed through prettier spectacles.

Driving back home through Islington on a summer’s night, I saw the moon almost perched upon the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was breathtaking. A moment of staggering beauty in the greatest city in the world, my city, my London. I pulled the car over, parked and sat outside the Betsy Trotwood pub in Clerkenwell. I watched as the planes twinkled above the London skyline, the modern world intertwined with the old, and realised that this was exactly the kind of choice we very rarely make. We never stop the car, we never gaze at the moon and we never see the wonder that surrounds us. I wrote "Comets" the next day, believing it to be a comment on the lives of people around me. Looking back, I think it was more like a "note to self" from the 16 year old me.