Tomorrow Thomas starts his first paid job in theatre. It isn’t exactly playing Hamlet on Broadway, but it’s a real job with a cool theatre company that pays small amounts of real money, so we’re pretty excited. He’s doing an internship with the Chester Theatre Company, where he’ll be assistant stage manager (aka Chief Flunky) for their production of An Iliad. The show sounds super cool (as does the season), and I’m much of the sadz that I won’t be able to see it. You New England types should definitely go see it and report back!
The following text exchange between Sue and I was kicked off by my dropping Thomas off at the MSP airport for his flight back to Massachusetts:
Me: Tom’s heading off through security looking all grown up and scruffy! Love you!
Sue: Sniffle
Sue: Hug
Me: Ditto!
How exactly did we get to be parents of an increasingly adult-like creature?
Below is a wonderful exchange of text messages between Thomas and I. My response makes a lot more sense if you’ve heard this excellent song from The Uncluded:
It might also be useful to read the lyrics since Aesop Rock’s verses (which are crucial to our exchange) are tricky to follow and understand. (I totally missed the “Vin Van” reference to Vincent Van Gogh until I read these, for example.)
Now to the exchange:
Tom: Thank you for paying for that [something minor]… For paying for college and so many other things… I feel like I owe you guys more than I could ever pay back…
Nic: DON’T SEND ME AN EAR!
Tom: That was the single best response you could’ve sent :-)
A nice example of why art and music matter. They give us a short-hand language for describing important and difficult concepts. Tom and I had discussed the lyrics to this song at some length when the video came out a few weeks ago, and Tom’s initial text really resembles some of the ideas Aesop is presenting in the song. Because of that conversation, I could respond with could appear as a bit of a non sequitur that would instead carry with it tons of information, and manage to raise a smile at the same time.
I’ll wrap by definitely recommending The Uncluded album. I think “Delicate Cycle” (video above) is a really wonderful song; I listened to it about a zillion times when the video came out. While some of the songs seem to have Kimya and Aesop’s parts kind of pasted together, Perhaps the two most “unified” sounding songs in my opinion are “TV at 10” and “Organs”, both of which are just killer. Tom really likes “Bats” as well. So check it out, and share your thoughts.
