If you are in a place, #11: Spike Jonze and HomePod

HomePod — Welcome Home by Spike Jonze — Apple - YouTube

Spike Jonze and HomePod

If you are in a place, watch this commercial that Spike Jonze created for Apple’s HomePod.

I have eight words tattooed on my arm: “and the walls became the world all around.” They’re taken from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. The line comes just after Max has been shut away in his room by his mother, deprived of dinner. At this moment, Max uses his mind to escape his punishment and begins to create a new world around him.

I remember doing the same with Ninja Turtles action figures when I was little. Instead of battles and fights, I’d imagine Leonardo married to April. In a calm home. They’d have the monotonous conversations I wished my parents had. And suddenly, everything would fall away.

And the walls became the world all around. What I would do with books when I got older. And eventually music as I grew older still.

Here, in this four-minute spot, we get an extension of that idea. Makes sense considering it was Jonze who directed the emotionally heavy adaptation of Sendak’s book. The things we use to make the walls around us become our new worlds. Make the new worlds real.