The 2nd and real meaning of "The Lost Children"

[blue_eyed_belle]

I think it's about both children and adults 'losing their way'.

I'm really not keen on this song though.

 

[brenderchip]

I think the song has a meaning to every one of us, but it all depends on the background we grew up in and what we feel is most important to us. Then we think about what Michael thought about the song, from his background, which is his lost childhood and also his concern for all the children who lost their childhood from suffering or are lost now, plus anything else he might have thought about that I don't know, since I don't truly know the man; I can only infer. This is one of the songs that has so many levels of themes that really makes it beautiful.

Okay, I saw "Kick The Can" before, but I didn't realize the kids are in
The Lost Children"! so, I 'm watching it now...is that really the little boy in the beginning of the episode who counts off during hide and seek and says "ready or not here I come" who is used in the song? It sounds exactly like it!

Another Twilight Zone reference by Michael! I love him more and more! I LOVE the Twilight Zone. It offers a mysterious feeling when you watch it and it does social commentary, like "Kick The Can"--careless sons and daughters who have left their elderly parents to a retirement home, making it such a good show. Not many shows are this good anymore.

 

[Pompous Git]

Magical Child and others have no relevance to The Lost Children. The kids in TLC are Michael's son, Prince and Baby Rubba - no sample credits for the Twilight Zone, right?

However, Michael's lyrics are about trying to make adults feel guilty for leading lives of wealth or happiness with no thought for missing children out there. He's doing the samething here that he does in Little Susie - the blame for the fate of children missing and dead is on the adult society for not taking due care of children everywhere.

Michael talked one way about the inner child and then another way about it - his tke never quite matched, but the gist is that the inner child was never actually lost...just willfully ignored. He, on the otherhand, just as destructively focused on the inner child too much, but that's another story.

 

[loka]

Magical Child and others have no relevance to The Lost Children. The kids in TLC are Michael's son, Prince and Baby Rubba - no sample credits for the Twilight Zone, right?

wrong...There are sample credits for the twilight zone in "The Lost Children"

 

[Pompous Git]

Just checked the booklet - there is a sample credit for Twilight Zone in TLC.

It's just the sound of kids playing and Michael's intention is highly likely to have been for it to serve as a reminder that the laughter and play of children should be paramount. So, it's sad when they are missing.

The inner child never goes missing - in Childhood, the inner child is not missing, but there with him struggling in a world it doesn't understand. Check out the image of the child with wings next to the poem Elusive Shadow - the inner child was never missing.

TLC is about those who literally go missing and not the metaphorical child within. The lyrics aredirect and literal - not ambiguous or metaphorical.

 

[loka]

Just checked the booklet - there is a sample credit for Twilight Zone in TLC.


TLC is about those who literally go missing and not the metaphorical child within. The lyrics aredirect and literal - not ambiguous or metaphorical.

juste because you decide that it's not metaphorical doesn't mean you're right ?

Do you know from which episode of the Twilight Zone the sounds of kids are coming from ?

they're coming from "Kick the Can"

this is the synopsis :

Charles Whitley, a retiree at the Sunnyvale Rest Home, thinks that he has discovered the secret of youth. He is convinced that if he acts young he will become young. His oldest and best friend, Ben Conroy, thinks he is going crazy. One night, Charles convinces a number of residents to play a game of kick the can with him. When he tries to talk to Ben, Ben tells Charles, "I AM old!"

The game of kick the can transforms Whitley and his other friends back into children. Conroy and the home's superintendent, Mr. Cox, go out to the street where they find the group of children playing kick the can in the night. Mr. Cox chases them all off except for one, who stops to look at Conroy. Ben, now seeing the miracle, begs for a second chance to go with his friend. But it is too late: He is left behind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_the_Can

 

[Pompous Git]

juste because you decide that it's not metaphorical doesn't mean you're right ?

Make this circular!

Just because you decide it's metaphorical doesn't mean you're right!

Do you know from which episode of the Twilight Zone the sounds of kids are coming from ?

they're coming from "Kick the Can"

this is the synopsis :

Charles Whitley, a retiree at the Sunnyvale Rest Home, thinks that he has discovered the secret of youth. He is convinced that if he acts young he will become young. His oldest and best friend, Ben Conroy, thinks he is going crazy. One night, Charles convinces a number of residents to play a game of kick the can with him. When he tries to talk to Ben, Ben tells Charles, "I AM old!"

The game of kick the can transforms Whitley and his other friends back into children. Conroy and the home's superintendent, Mr. Cox, go out to the street where they find the group of children playing kick the can in the night. Mr. Cox chases them all off except for one, who stops to look at Conroy. Ben, now seeing the miracle, begs for a second chance to go with his friend. But it is too late: He is left behind.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_the_Can

Yes, however, bear in mind that the purpose behind a TV programme doesn't have to be the same for someone else to include it as a sample/snippet.

The sounds of kids playing served its purpose in TLC - as a reminder that there's nothing sweeter than kids at play. Neither in MJ's work nor in psychology does the inner child ever go missing - it's always there and causes problems in adults. An adult may ignore the inner, but it's never lost.

The thread title is presumptuous though - it should state "possible" instead of "real". However, the episode itself is a warning to adults NOT to wish to be the Eternal Youth because these figures end up being tormented people - look at them in every mythological story, but most famously, that of Peter Pan. The episode is not about lost children specifically, but adults and their ridiculous desire for eternal youth which is often also youthful immortality. It also reminds me of the Kingdom Without Space - again, the boys are eternal youths, but tormented ones.

Michael's TLC is not about this - just those who go missing in the world with families who yearn for them to come home.

While Childhood is about childhood and the alluded promise of eternal youth, TLC is simply about thinking about kids who go missing while counting ourselves lucky we still have our own families around us for comfort when they don't.

 

[loka]

but why this particular espisode of Twilight Zone ? Is It a Coincidence ? I don't think so...

Michael was smart...very smart...

 

[Pompous Git]

^^^Because it had the sounds of children playing a game and, during the recording of Invincible, MJ and RJ chatted about fave childhood shows with their families...including Twilight Zone so the clip sprang to mind. Add to this around that time MJ was talking a lot about broken families that are "disconnected from love, disrespecting each other, whatever happened to protecting each other!".

So, he wanted to make a song to remind people of the importance of family and cherishing every moment with their own kids cos you never know when it's gonna end. It's not about eternal youth.

 

[Sunflowers]

A song can mean so many things, because you relate it to your own life. That is what is great about Michael's songs. He sings about his life, but it's so recognizable, that it could be your or my life as well. (not all songs of course)

The Lost Children is one of my fave songs of the album. Fell in love with it first time I heard it.

 

[loka]

It's not about eternal youth.

i disagree...

it's not a coincidence..."lost children"'s meaning is also related to this episode of TZ imo...

 

[Pompous Git]

^^^No, it's not. Ben's an adult who realises too late the magic of eternal youth and so is left behind to grow old. TLC isn't about eternal youth, but the plight of missing kids.

It's just an appropriate clip to use.

 

[filmandmusic]

I love the arrangement of this song. It sounds both sad and hopeful which is also what the lyrics are going for.
Michael’s voice is very soothing here it has a calming effect, it feels warm and hopeful but then the song ends in a rather foreboding way. It is like the magic he creates will not be enough to save the kids. Perhaps he was thinking of himself how he lost his innocence after all the accusations, he feels alone, mistreated and lost. He asked us before if we have seen his childhood and with the lost children he has lost it forever

I also think an instrumental version of this song would be a perfect lullabye. I would listen to it before bed.

 

[zinniabooklover]

I love the arrangement of this song. It sounds both sad and hopeful which is also what the lyrics are going for.

I adore this song. I get something different out of it every time I listen. Beautiful, melancholy, hopeful, as you say, but the hope feels somewhat fragile.

Michael’s voice is very soothing here it has a calming effect, it feels warm and hopeful but then the song ends in a rather foreboding way. It is like the magic he creates will not be enough to save the kids.

You've captured it perfectly. It kind of almost echoes Little Susie. Not exactly, obviously. I love LS but find it almost unbearably frightening and distressing. Also, LS is a masterpiece which, as much as I love TLC, I wouldn't call it that. It's really good but not a masterpiece, imo. TLC is just not on that level but, in terms of the content and the feeling it conjures up, there is that feeling of foreboding, as you say.

But still with that wisp of hope which LS obviously does not have.

Perhaps he was thinking of himself how he lost his innocence after all the accusations, he feels alone, mistreated and lost. He asked us before if we have seen his childhood and with the lost children he has lost it forever

oh god. I hadn't got that far with my own interpretation.

Having said all of this, although I do have many different ideas and feelings when I listen to this song, I also think the obvious story that Michael is telling us - about kids going missing, families left behind - is just so ... 'satisfying' feels like the wrong word. Feels like it hits the wrong note. I know what I mean but don't have the vocab. Anyway, the picture he paints of the fear, worry, yearning, confusion that the families have to live with. All of that is so complete in itself I don't always need to go beyond any of that when I'm listening to the lyrics.

 

[Maxym]

For me this is one of many songs, always had way to be interpreted. It's not difficult to shift interpretation and think it's about adults in various ways... (same for Will You Be There ...)

But reasons it's probably about actual lost children: in the beginning of the 2000s, MJ seems to be quite into "the importance of family". If I remember well, but maybe this should be fact-checked: the late 90s drew a lot of attention to actual missing children being found dead or found alive... (Which contributed a lot to have victims speak and getting believed (my mother told me, in the 50s~60s, kids who would complain would actually tend to be blamed... after the 90s, public presumption mostly shifted to the benefit of the victims.)


Haven't seen that Twilight Zone episode and not seen The City Of The Lost Children for a very long time ... maybe I could re-watch those someday.

 

[mj_frenzy]

For me this is one of many songs, always had way to be interpreted. It's not difficult to shift interpretation and think it's about adults in various ways... (same for Will You Be There ...)

But reasons it's probably about actual lost children: in the beginning of the 2000s, MJ seems to be quite into "the importance of family". If I remember well, but maybe this should be fact-checked: the late 90s drew a lot of attention to actual missing children being found dead or found alive... (Which contributed a lot to have victims speak and getting believed (my mother told me, in the 50s~60s, kids who would complain would actually tend to be blamed... after the 90s, public presumption mostly shifted to the benefit of the victims.)


Haven't seen that Twilight Zone episode and not seen The City Of The Lost Children for a very long time ... maybe I could re-watch those someday.

Michael Jackson offers 2 different layers of meanings with that song.

The first, and more obvious one, is about the actual, lost children.

The second, and deeper one, is about the lost child in all adults/grown-up people who lost the spark of youth inside them.

It is also interesting what certain music critics wrote about that song, for example that 'The Lost Children' is a song better suited (vocally) for the Irish female singer Sinéad O'Connor.

 

[Agonum]

It is also interesting what certain music critics wrote about that song, for example that 'The Lost Children' is a song better suited (vocally) for the Irish female singer Sinéad O'Connor.

Really? Trying to imagine her singing it…