DIRECTOR’S NOTES — A POEmEDITATION

THE PREFACE
One of the most seductive lovers you can fall into depths with is The Story of who they are to you.

When you catch sniff of that lingering trace of Back Then, an easy, beautiful script unwinds and plays itself out, from the back of the stage to the front.

It is a lie if told as you see it.

THE FATHER
As a story, your Father reads backwards.

Your first Father is the shelf upon which you set your purpose. He is the fine shining example of what the world is supposed to be. His manners are the laws of good and bad. His words are typed into the deepest recesses of your lived experience. He is the foremost.

When the first waves of progression break unto his shoreline, your resistant words spill salt between you. As your separate identity forms so does an eddy, a spiral, an interplay between you him I us we. You question his rules but not yet his existence.

Then comes the clever teenaged wedge of red-lined editing. He is always this. He should not be that. He falls just short. He does not fit in a box. He needs tape. His wing hangs akimbo. He is bent like light falling into hard water.

If only he could be that first Father again.

To your Father, your story is backwards.

EXISTING WITHOUT STORY
He was and is now how he always was. He is the product of the sum man-ufacturing of his generation and his experiences. He is unfolding in real time just like you. Like the pastors and the choirs they preach to.

Practice this one thing. Practice shedding this story. Practice ripping the tape and the top off the box you put him in.

He is beside you on the trampoline staring into a sky full of stars.
He is not your Dad.
He is the witness to a thousand moments of your existence. Parades for holidays. Pews and holy days.
He is not your Dad.
Cuts, hurts, and bruises; splinters, knives, and forks.
He is not your Dad.
He left early to get you. He thought about you, late. When you were sleeping.
He is not your Dad.

He questioned his Father too.

But that too fast passed. He saw the story was flawed. He saw there is no gradient, no beginning and end.

He reached up the tree, held the branch ’til it broke. Buried the branch, unburdened the yoke. Turned around just in time to see you seeing him.

And you see that he is not your Dad.

He is a trail in the forest. He is the fire in the sunshine.

The bent light law at the beginning of the end of the world as we know it.