Wild Boy

In the first post, I introduced The Art of Life as both a confession and an album that maps out what it means to be human in the fray of modern life. Each track is a fragment of that larger story of falling into this world and everything it asks our souls to encounter along the way.

This track is the next stop on that journey. Every album needs a love song, and Wild Boy is mine. Writing it began with a little guitar riff and then the words tumbled out. Love is among the rawest, most universal of experiences. And are not relationships our best mirrors and teachers? I believe so, but when we are feeling in love, we aren’t thinking about things like that, are we?

And that’s OK.

What I love about this song is its innocence. It captures the short of breath beginning of romance, where friendship tests the edges of being something more, and the whole dance feels uncertain. Does he love me? Is she into me? Could this be something real? There’s this sweetness of vulnerability and ache of longing in that liminal space between play and commitment, between “maybe” and “forever.” That’s where this song lives.

But within the larger journey of The Art of Life, Wild Boy is more than a love song. Along that road we learn that to love another fully, we must first love ourselves. The final lines in the song, Wild boy, you gonna be the one? Finish what you start. Wild boy, you gonna be the one? Hold on to my heart are as much a challenge to the other as to the Self. Are you going to finish the work of becoming whole, so you can hold another’s heart without losing your own?

Which is part of growing up, yes? The song lives in that tension between our wild child and the responsibility life demands of us. We don’t want to lose our joy, our recklessness, our childlike spark, yet we also have to grow into the strength that can hold love steady. Better to tame ourselves on our own terms than let the world box us in. A wild boy becomes a man, and in that transformation, he doesn’t abandon joy, he builds a container strong enough for love, laughter, and the inner child to keep dancing.

So Wild Boy isn’t just about romance it’s about the rashness and responsibility we all wrestle with on the way to becoming whole.

The album full album is available for listen or download on my website. Also on the usual spots: Spotify / Apple Music