millsworks

As I’m ploughing through my various tasks to get my new shit happening, I’ve had to reorganize a bunch of hard drives to make space for rendering and storage and other arcane and bothersome fucking nonsense – and during those travails (which are minor in the world scale scope of things, I know) I came across this video.

It’s me and my son, Henry, farting around in front of a web cam. It was shot quite a while ago. He’s five years old. I’m forty guhzillion five hundred and three or something. We’re singing. He’s more interested in seeing his delayed and blurry hands move about on the monitor. I’m more interested in kissing his sweet little jelly bean head. Just a moment of gratuitous sillyness and joy.

I spent this morning shaving the face of a dog puppet.

There is a point to all of this.

I’ve had my head down, focused on my plans and schemes and dreams. I’ve been busy. My missus is busy with her studies and building shit for me and doing all those things that inevitably get handed to women while slobs like me stumble through life proclaiming their artistic intent whilst swilling beer.

I’m good at what I do.

Henry has been home sick, yesterday and today, from school with a bad cold. Having him around while we work is an opportunity to see him outside of the routine of day-to-day existence. He’s twelve years old now. He’ll be a teenager this summer. He’s a whimsical, solemn, intelligent, goofy, thoughtful, young man and child. He’s a good looking kid with a razor sharp wit.

And he’s old enough to start looking at his parents sideways.

That’s what I did at his age.

You see them, your parents, from a different angle. Sometimes from a distance. An acrostic view. You see their flaws and foibles and quirks and weaknesses. You see their humanity.

So, there I am – shaving the face of a dog puppet. In the bathroom. There’s clumps of grey fuzz all over the place. There’s clumps of grey fuzz all over me. I’m wielding an electric razor and grinding it against the face of a cute dog puppet. Henry arrives at the bathroom door, wiping his nose, and watches me in the mirror. I catch his gaze. Studying. I look in the mirror and see what he sees.

Any pretense or assumption of authority dissolves.

I look back to Henry. He wipes his nose again, smiles, and says: “You like what you do, don’t you, Dad?”

“Sometimes.”, I admit.

“It shows.”, he says, and wanders off down the hall.

I look in the mirror again to see what it is exactly that shows.

I see a fifty guhzillion one hundred and twelveteen something year old, balding, overweight, worn out artist – covered in a shifting haze of grey fuzz, like a soft focus Pig Pen – holding a clenched ball of abused fabric and an appliance that would probably get confiscated from my carry-on baggage at the airport.

What does he see?

I’m seeing him differently these days as he grows and matures and emerges as a human being of his own creation. But I will always and forever be holding him in my arms, sitting on my lap, singing and laughing together. I used to be a producer and a writer and a puppeteer. Then I became a Dad. I’m getting back into the other stuff but I will always be a Dad.

Yeah – I like what I do.

Cheers.