I Wanna Hold the Hand Inside You

This post is not about Leonbergers. It is a post about me or rather about us, the family who would come to raise our Leonberger Bronco. Oh, how do I wish we could hold the hand inside Bronco. We miss him every day. “I Wanna Hold the Hand Inside You” or “Fade Into You” by Mazzi Star was released September 1993. That was when our first son Jacob was born in Akron, Ohio. At the time I was working on my PhD in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering / Robotics at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio. The YouTube video below is from October 1994. I was done with my PhD, and I was working for ABB Robotics in Detroit. Our clients were the Detroit car industry. We were preparing for our move to Sweden where our young son would learn to speak English, the adult language, and some Swedish, the children’s language, or so he thought.

To me it seems like times were better back then, but the facts say otherwise. Crime in the US was much worse than it is today, there were more and worse wars, there was more poverty, more children starved, and the Rwandan genocide of Tutsis in 1994 had just finished. 800,000, nearly a million defenseless Tutsis had been intentionally slaughtered in just 100 days. Another thing that had happened that was close to home was that on September 28 1994 a ferry, M/S Estonia, sank in heavy seas as it going from Tallin to Stockholm, killing 852 people, most of them Swedes and Estonians. Only 137 people on board survived. Some of the vicitms worked at the location where I was going. Times were different back then, but they were not better, or were they? Perhaps the time of our youth is better no matter the state of the world.

This song reminds me of the word poignant. I like to use that word. As I understand it means sad, but beautiful and meaningful. The lyrics are poignant, but you don’t really use that word for music, but if you could, I think it would apply to the music as well.

Fade Into You by Mazzi Star recorded October 2nd 1994

The lyrics for “Fade Into”

I wanna hold the hand inside you
I wanna take the breath that’s true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life, you go in shadows
You’ll come apart and you’ll go blind
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what’s not there

[Chorus]

Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew

[Verse 2]

A stranger light comes on slowly
A stranger’s heart without a home
You put your hands into your head
And then its smiles cover your heart

[Chorus]

Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew

You who are old enough to remember 1993 and 1994, do you think times were better back then?

Do you remember this song?

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Author: thomasstigwikman

My name is Thomas Wikman. I am a software/robotics engineer with a background in physics. I am currently retired. I took early retirement. I am a dog lover, and especially a Leonberger lover, a home brewer, craft beer enthusiast, I’m learning French, and I am an avid reader. I live in Dallas, Texas, but I am originally from Sweden. I am married to Claudia, and we have three children. I have two blogs. The first feature the crazy adventures of our Leonberger Le Bronco von der Löwenhöhle as well as information on Leonbergers. The second blog, superfactful, feature information and facts I think are very interesting. With this blog I would like to create a list of facts that are accepted as true among the experts of the field and yet disputed amongst the public or highly surprising. These facts are special and in lieu of a better word I call them super-facts.

69 thoughts on “I Wanna Hold the Hand Inside You”

  1. Hi Thomas, I have good memories of my childhood which I have been sharing recently. I think hope comes more easily when you are younger and less worn out by life and anxieties. I’m not sure if the Gen Zs think life is good for them. They have high rates of suicide and depression. A lovely song.

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    1. Thank you Robbie. Violent crime, other crime, extreme poverty, child mortality, violence and many other bad things have been declining significantly. However, suicide rates have been rising, especially among the young, generation Z. I wonder if it has something to do with social media. I don’t know. It is great that you had a happy childhood. I have been reading your beautiful poems and memories.

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      1. Hi Thomas, sadly what you say here about Gen Z and suicide rates and depression is very true. Of course, we are talking about first world countries, although I have noticed an increase in suicide rates among young, black professionals in my country. I think that young people struggle to keep up with the fast changing world and there is a lot of pressure on them to perform. They need to achieve so much more now and there are far fewer employment options for less academic people. Social media does play a big role as it presents a totally skewed view on peoples lives. We only share the best of our lives on SM, not all the issues and problems. It makes young people feel like failures and they don’t have the experience to understand how SM works.

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    2. Yes unfortunately, I believe you are right about everything you are saying. The skills needed in the marketplace are changing fast and internet has made the competition more intense, more automated and data driven, and less humane. AI is increasingly taking people’s jobs and people are interacting on-line instead of in person. Social media is pretty depressing, for the reasons you mention and in addition the anonymity, the lack of good faith in discussions, and the prevalence of so many ignorant people with arrogant attitudes and cocksure opinions, trolls, misinformation farms, all that makes social media quite toxic and our young ones see it every day. There are definitely reasons to be depressed even though it may not be because the world is getting materialistically poorer. Maybe, with internet, social media and AI we’ve let a troublesome genie out of the bottle.

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  2. This is tough question to answer. Personally, I’m better off financially than I was in the 90s, yet I’ve also lost friends to time. I wish they were still here. There are chances I had then that I don’t have now.

    I remember the genocide of Rwanda. Words fail to describe how appalling that was. As I understand it, Rwanda is still recovering from it. But I also remember the slaughter in Cambodia in the 70s. Right now, there is the slow-motion genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar, the “re-education” of Uyghurs in China, and the pressure Coptic Christians in Egypt to disappear.

    At a family gathering a friend was passing around old picture—printed pictures, not on a phone. I saw one of myself from around 1985. I looked so optimistic. I had the same haircut I have now but no gray. What happened to that person?

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    1. Yes I think you are right about everything you are saying. I feel the same way and I remember the things you are talking about. There are terrible things happening right now in the world that are almost never reported on. The wars in Ethiopia and Sudan are the biggest wars going on in the world right now and you never see them in the news. We are getting old. Time marches on

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  3. What a beautiful “poignant” reflection! I remember much about 1993-4, but this is my first time hearing this song. I won’t forget it. Thank you, Thomas. Were they better times? Yes and no – depending upon perspective. We humans seem to forget we’re brothers and sisters, and that forgetfulness has shown its ugly face since creation. 💙

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    1. Thank you so much Gwen. Yes you are right. We forget that we’re brothers and sisters. I came across the song by chance, I remembered it clearly, and then I realized it was released the month of my son’t birth and I started remembering. At first I was thinking that times were much better back then, and then I started thinking, they weren’t.

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  4. My son was born the same year as yours, and he has a “J” name as well. I just thought that was neat.

    I feel like life was simpler back then as a 22/23 year old. But I often look at the past with a lot of nostalgia, so I don’t know if my view is accurate.

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    1. Yes that is kind of neat. That’s how it feels, like life was simpler back then. However, after starting to remember all the bad things that happened in 93/94 I have to say that for the world it was not a good time. Genocide in Rwanda, a lot of wars going on, poverty, crime in US, the sinking of the ferry in the Baltic Sea, a wave of immigration to Sweden resulting in a severe anti-immigrant backlash, a skinhead killing an Icehockey player in front of our front door in Västerås Sweden, my wife feeling unsafe and leaving Sweden for two months with our one year old because of that, and there was a race riot in LA the year before. It was a terrible time, and yet it seems like we were happier. I don’t know.

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    2. Yes “rose colored glasses” is a good expression. It is so easy to do that about the past. We were young, hopeful, and not as aware of the complexity of the world yet. We remember with our emotions, but then you think back on the events and compare the details and the perspective changes.

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    1. Thank you Jacqui. That sounds like a very interesting book. I think we tend glorify the past, but when I started remembering all the bad things that happened in Sweden too, in 93/94, the severe anti-immigrant backlash, the multiple murders by skinheads, one in front of our front door in Västerås Sweden causing my wife to leave Sweden with our one year old for two months, I realized it was not a better time. There’s always trouble.

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  6. I think we sometimes view our past with “rose-coloured glasses”, remembering the good and forgetting the bad. You were doing well personally, so the horrible world events of the time likely didn’t affect you as much. The early 90s were difficult and stressful for us, as we had both lost our jobs and were facing bankruptcy, so I don’t recall what else was going on then. Thank goodness, we eventually recovered, learning a good lesson in the process!

    “Poignant” is a word I often use in relation to music. This song was new to me and it fits the description well! It’s also a good definition for the cherished memories we have of our departed loved ones! 💖

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    1. I think you are right; we tend to view our past with “rose-coloured glasses”. We had some hard times too, in Sweden. My company ABB Robotics transferred me to the headquarters in Västerås Sweden. We left October 15, 1994. When we arrived at the office, they were in mourning because of the loss of colleagues due to the ferry accident. There was a strong anti-immigrant backlash in Sweden with skinheads marching in the streets and a skinhead killing an ice hockey player 100 feet in front of our front door. My wife left Sweden with our one-year-old for two months because of it. I started remembering that and I realized it was a troubled world back then. Not as great as I remembered it.

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  7. Really enjoyed this post Thomas and indeed the song which I haven’t heard in a few years. This whole idea of “life was better in the good old days” is one that brings out strong emotions in me. I have a friend or two and a family member to two who constantly wheel this line out when it clearly isn’t true. What they really mean is that “I want to be young again and experience all those exciting life experiences for the first time again”. Instead, this gets mistranslated to “everything is crap now and things were amazing back then”. We all treasure our youth and there’s nothing wrong with missing those days but we shouldn’t get that confused with the actual state of the world then and the actual state of the world now (as grim as that may often seem when we look a the news). Coincidentally, Sladja and I came across a piece of memorial art during our recent visit to Tallinn in tribute to those who lost their lives in the M/S Estonia disaster. Wish I could upload a few photos here to show you.

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    1. I think those are very wise words Leighton. Who wouldn’t want their youth back and I also think it is selective memory. As I started thinking about that time 93/94, I felt that times were so much better than now, and then I made a better effort remembering and I realized how bad things really were. As I mentioned my robotics company sent me to Sweden, which I was happy about because I am from Sweden. In just a few years Sweden had changed. The anti-immigrant backlash was terrible and there were a lot of racially motivated murders and other murders based on bigotry. A skinhead killed a gay ice hockey player a 100 feet in front of our front door. My wife went back to the US with our one year old for two months because she did not feel safe. At work they were mourning dead colleagues from the ferry accident and they were also very racist, openly racist in a way that would be totally unacceptable today. A colleague of mine was openly bragging about washing his hands after shaking hands with a black person from the US and they were calling them monkeys. I thought of my country as progressive but I was shocked. It was not a better world.

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  8. I often feel nostalgic for the 1990s, the time of my childhood, but I’m sure my location and economic circumstances shaped my perception of that decade. I was in America, where there was no war. And although there was certainly crime and financial hardship for some, including my family, there was also opportunity. The economy in Texas (where I grew up) was much better than the economy in Detroit. My parents had decided to settle in South Texas instead of Los Angeles, California. 1992 was the year of the single worst riot of US history, the 1992 Los Angeles Riots. Instead of being caught up in that, my parents grew their business and moved up in life. I look back on that decade and think on things that will never happen again, both good and bad.

    Oh, and I love that song 🙂 thank you for sharing this.

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    1. Thank you so much pixxg. I certainly remember the riot in LA. That was another terrible thing that happened during that time. I the summer and fall of 1994 in Detroit and I remember how run down that city was back then. I stayed in Pontiac, which was not much better. Your parents were wise, setting in Texas instead of LA. I had been gone from Sweden a few years and when my company sent me there in October 1994 I was shocked to find out about the strong anti-immigrant sentiment, the racial murders, the racism, and a hockey player was murdered by a skinhead 100 feet in front of our door. My wife didn’t feel safe so she went back to the US with our one year old for two months. The funny thing is, I needed a few minutes to remember all of that. There was good and bad and I think it easy to just remember the good from the past. I accidentally came across the song, I remembered it, and then I realized it was released the same month my son was born, so that is why I started thinking back.

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  9. You pose an interesting question, Thomas. I don’t think there’s a definite answer for me. In many ways, technology has improved our lives, but it’s also made things more complicated and created new problems. We’ve lost the personal nature and ability to talk to people when we need help. I find AI frustrating, especially when we’re not understanding each other and I just want to talk to a human. All of the stuff with two-step verifications drives me batty because some passwords are saved on some devices and not on others. Simple tasks have gotten so much more difficult. A couple of examples: 1. When I call to make a doctor appointment, I now often have to wait for them to call back. That can take a few hours. Then they call back when I’m driving and don’t have access to my calendar. 2. I inadverently hit a button (way too many things I don’t need) on the television remote that makes the picture go wonky. Then, I waste 30 minutes trying to get things back to where they were. 3. The constant stuggle of compatibality with any aspect of technology. It seems I’m always having to buy new things because the new doesn’t work with the old.

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    1. Yes you are right. Some things are getting better and other things are not. technology has often made things more complicated, like the things you describe. That is thanks to all the hackers and con-artists who have made using technology so risky. In that sense life was easier before. I remember when I worked for Ericsson in Sweden. We were building an fighter jet called JAS Gripen. We had what was called red Vaxes. Vax computers that were electronically isolated for security reasons. They only had a power cord, no other wires. It was a simple solution but I think it would be impractical today.

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  10. I remember 1993 and 1994. There were some hard times and good ones too. I don’t think times were any different than today. There were worries about the economy and rumors of wars and inhuman treatment. I have not heard this song but would agree the words are indeed poignant.

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    1. Thank you so much John. I came across the song by chance and I recognized it. I had not heard it in a long time. I thought it was beautiful and looked it up and I realized it was released the same month our first son was born. I started remembering at first with nostalgia but then I started remembering all the bad and horrible things that happened back then, and the statistics support it. We are living in less violent times now and people have it better on average even though some things have gotten worse.

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    2. I haven’t looked up the homelessness statistics, but even though the crime statistics has fluctuated a bit over the last few years, crime is still much lower now compared to what it was in the 1990’s and most of the beginning of the century. It seems counter intuitive but crime is down not up. It may not be true for specific cities but on average for the nation.

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    1. Thank you so much for your kind words Jan. Yes you are right it is all in the perspective. At the same many things have gotten better since then, but not everything. It is easy to be nostalgic and glorify the past, that is what I did at first and then I remembered how much worse wars and poverty was back then. The past wasn’t better.

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  12. I think “poignant” is an accurate way to describe the song. I very much enjoyed it. I wasn’t born yet in 1993/1994 so I don’t really have an opinion. But I do think that there’s usually good and bad most years. We just often look at the past with rose-colored glasses.

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    1. Thank you Pooja. It is funny, I’ve lived in the US for 30 years and I am still not sure about the correct usage of some words. Debbie above from Canada pointed out the same thing. I can use the word poignant for a song. Yes there is good and bad every year but I think you are right we often look at the past with rose-colored glasses, especially when we get older but then you think back and remember all the bad and you realize things weren’t better, they were on the contrary worse in many regards.

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      1. My pleasure. Yeah, I think as someone who migrated to the country some things remain foreign no matter how long you live there. Absolutely, we think of older times being better but in reality they’re usually worse.

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      1. I’ve lived in Kenya and Canada, I haven’t been to India but my mum’s Indian. She migrated to Kenya in the 80’s. I was definitely an adjustment moving to Canada and although I loved living there, I think it’s always a little foreign. Like certain things were just very different to me.

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    3. I see. I can certainly understand that Kenya and Canada are different, much more so than Sweden and the US/Texas. I’ve been here a long a time, 30+ years, and now there are things that has become foreign to me in Sweden. When I came to the US my English was not great even though we studied English in school. It is much better now but not perfect. My accent never goes away. It’s like Arnold Schwarzeneggers English. I am not great with languages. I am currently learning French, just as a hobby, but, well, I am not best in class. Best in class was an Indian woman who was fluent in English, Hindi, and Spanish and she was pretty good in French and learning it fast. She quit the class because she had a baby.

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      1. Yes, it was a big change. That’s understandable, I’m sure Sweden is very different now than when you first left. I think it’s really difficult to change your accent. Especially when English isn’t your first language. Most Indian people know a couple of languages at least since Hindi is rarely our mother tongue. My family speaks English, Swahili, Gujarati and Hindi. French sounds like an interesting language to learn. It’s difficult though. I took French in school and was awful at it. I preferred German much more.

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    4. That is interesting. “English, Swahili, Gujarati and Hindi”, those are all quite different languages. Now when you say it, the Indian woman in class spoke the language of Karnataka, Kannada. She was from Bangalore in Karnataka. She was very good with languages.

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      1. Yeah, most Indian’s speak Hindi along with their mother tongue. It sounds like she was from South India. It’s great she was fluent in so many languages. Learning languages as an adult is very much a skill so it’s impressive she was so good at it.

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  13. Thank you for sharing these memories with us.
    It almost always seems to us that times were better in the past, even if the facts generally say otherwise.
    But we were younger, less disillusioned and perhaps with fewer scars

    PS I didn’t know this song and I thought it was fantastic

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    1. Thank you Luisa. I remember the song. I just had not heard it in 30 years and I did not realize until today that it was released when our first son was born. I think you are right. Younger, less disillusioned and with fewer scars. We tend to remember with our emotions and then we have to work to remember the actual state of things.

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  14. I definitely remember that song ― in fact I have the album, so I know the other song of theirs you referenced as well. If you like “Fade Into You”, you will probably also like “The Light Before We Land” by The Delgados.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg0k18F2Fkg

    As to 1993/1994, things were pretty okay then for us on a personal level, which makes one forget about things like the Rwanda genocide or the Bosnian war in the Balkans. But still, it was before 9/11 and all the ongoing fallout from that …

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    1. It is interesting that you remember it and have the album. I’ve heard it on the radio 30 years ago but I totally forgot. That is a nice song you posted. Thank you for posting it. The Bosnian and Yugoslavian wars is another thing during that time I did not remember, and also all the big wars going in Africa.

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    1. Yes they were good times for me too. I had already been working as an engineer in Sweden a few years but I was finishing up my PhD. in the US, working at a US national laboratory, getting a Robotics job, getting married, having a son, moving back and forth between Sweden and my new country the United States. It was a good time for me, but it was not a good time for the world, and thinking about some things were bad for us too.

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  16. somewhere I read that things are far better now than in the 1950s, but especially are much more more afraid of crime these days, because of the extent to which media strives to frighten us — an incident in NY is made to feel as if it were happening everywhere & in our very livingrooms. fear sells ads, keeps people watching…

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    1. Yes you are right. Impressions given from by the media aren’t very reliable. They try to get your attention as much as possible. It is still a scary world with a lot crime and bad things happening but it isn’t more of it.

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  18. A beautiful post, Thomas. The word poignant feels like the perfect fit. I haven’t heard the song before, but I’m glad I got the chance to read the lyrics and listen to it. Music holds so many memories, and I have a whole list of songs in my subconscious which bring me back to my childhood. Thank you for sharing with us.

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    1. Thank you so much for your kind comment Damyanti. You are right, music holds so many memories. I stumbled upon this song that I hadn’t heard for I think 30 years and then I started remembering.

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  19. I’m afraid I don’t remember the song, but I really like it hearing it via the YouTube link. I do remember 1993. I have few complaints about that period in my life. That would have been soon after I started at Kitt Peak National Observatory. My wife was just finishing her MBA. That said, I feel like life is better now. In part because I’m older, wiser and a bit better off than then. In part because the world actually does feel like a somewhat safer place to me. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

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  21. Thank you for this thought provoking post! Things have changed fast, Thomas! Technologically and medically we have advanced, many scientific innovations have made our life comfortable, but in this age of mechanisation, we look back and think that we were close to nature, leading a simple life, which was more satisfying and rejuvenating. We didn’t know what was headache, tension, depression etc. Now a stage has come when we realise that the most difficult thing in today’s world is to be simple.

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  23. A poignant song! Thank you for sharing your memories! Today we are financially well-off, and so is Gen Z, but peace of mind is not there, everybody is in rat race, resulting in depression and suicide. As a child, I had not heard any case of depression or suicide. I didn’t know what is headache until I turned 20.

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