Here’s what I want: for you to tell me who you are.
Think of this as a way for me to sift through the clues you gave me. I imagine that you were telling me who you are in every deed, every action, every word, every glance you cast in my direction. It was just that I didn’t know enough to hear what it was you were trying to tell me. And I suppose it’s true that you didn’t even know yourself what it was you were trying to tell me.
So I have to go back over it, as best I can, every tiny detail, in the attempt to recapture what I failed to capture at the time.
I wrote an essay about this once: “Tell Me Who You Are.” The essay was an attempt to convey what it was that I was looking for, when I wrote professionally about art and artists. And that was the best I could come up with. Tell me who you are.
I have come to think this way about all creative work, including my own as a writer.
I see art—and writing—as a way to share the experience of being a human being in the world, among other human beings, and a way to learn from others how to be more fully human.
It’s not “telling” in the usual sense of that word—though it can be that, exactly.
The kind of telling I’m talking about is the telling that happens casually, as though by accident, in a simple, unthought gesture, a movement of the body, a word, or words, put out into the world without particular intention.
So I hope this explains a little what I’m trying to do. There’s no particular order, no chronology, no progression, just a growing understanding, and expanding consciousness, if you will, about the mystery of my father.
Your son,
Peter
PS I signed this off at first with a typo: “Your sin” instead of “Your son”! I thought you’d get a laugh out of that!
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