waiting no waiting

nick was born on this day 15 years ago.  he's 15!  yep, i'm letting that sink in.  i started blogging when anna was pregnant.  i also began my life in poetry in earnest at that time.  i mean, i've been writing for a long time before that.  i'd publish a few pieces here & there.  however, i was alone.  i didn't know any other poets.  or didn't know any other poets well.  it wasn't until i got on the interwebs i started making friends.  lifelong friends.  brothers & sisters in this art & life.  i'll leave my thought there & say i am lucky & grateful for this life in friends, family & poetry.

thank you.

* * *

when anna was pregnant we would do our normal everyday routine things like shop for groceries.  we would wonder: what kind of little human being would be in the car seat behind us.  it was strange to think that soon we would have a little person to care for & love sharing our lives as we tootled to & fro in the daily struggles of early 21st C life.

we know now & yet the magic of being parents of this special human being has not worn off.

* * *

this morning as i drove nick to school i was thinking aloud about contemporary plastic & performance arts.  how much art is not readily or easily accessible to the viewer.  one needs an education in the vernacular of the modes of art as well as a knowledge of art history.  often a piece can seem random to a viewer without that art vernacular.  i do not mean to say that the plastic & performative arts are above & beyond the comprehension of viewers.  however, the arts, what are called the high arts, are not so readily accessible as popular music & movies.  there are artists that bridge these divides, like warhol, or joseph cornell, but even with pop artists like cornell & warhol as soon as you hang a box of detergent in a museum just the placement in such a space renders the object into abstraction.  thus the viewer requires an a priori vernacular to 'get' what the artist might be trying to say.

well, then, nick had a play to attend after school.  cultural events like plays, & poetry readings, are a mandatory component of the curriculum.  this particular play was worth double the points because it was not only a play but a school production to boot.  when i picked him up this evening i asked him what did he see.  ah, it was about two dudes doing a lot of talking about waiting.

waiting for godot by samuel beckett, i radiated.  i love me some beckett, i said.  what did you think of the play, i asked nick.  it was odd, he said.  alienating, i added?  yes, nick answered.

do you think vladimir & estragon are heroes or fools, i asked.

huh?

are they fools for waiting for nothing, or are they heroic in the waiting?  could they be both, i continued.  beckett survived ww2 & as a child during ww1.  the world was ripped into meaningless.  the struggles of vladimir & estragon are cyphers for our crises.  do you think it matters if godot ever appears?  or is the waiting the adventure?

i think nick both got a kick out of my wondering & was non-plussed.  for this play perfectly illustrates my thoughts about contemporary art earlier this morning.  waiting for godot is 66 years old [really not that old as far as literature is concerned] & very much part of our culture.  & yet, the play is odd & affected & alienating to the viewer.  one would need to learn the vernacular of 20th C absurdest theater to get it.  but i say 'get it' provisionally.  because beckett's masterpiece was performed by high school students at a high school.  & that art is available to all of us once we allow ourselves the patience for it.

nick is much better educated than i was at his age.  i wouldn't read beckett until my early 20s when i was also developing into my own human being.  but then again, i was & am an autodidact & late bloomer. 

* * *

& that is what amazes me about being a parent.  anna & i, as well as every parent on this planet [which is unique & fundamental even if so common a thing], have a front row seat in the growth of another sentient being.  it is a fucking miracle of being.  for that i am humbled & in love.