Ok, I’ve been stalling on posting for a while for several reasons. I’m much more of a have-a-glass-of-wine or enjoy-a-recreational-joint-and-talk type of person; it’s when I try to write things down that I have trouble. This show is way deep, and it’s hit on a whole host of things near and dear to me. “A boy and his mom….”
Now it’s not fair to neglect to mention my loving sister and my somewhat estranged father, but for some years after my parents’ divorce and my sister moving to college, it was just me and my mom. My parents split up when I was in 6th grade, and it was the three of us (Devon, Mom and I) against the world.
The central theme of a Youth dealing with his blackness is more universal than it seems – everyone has to look in the mirror at some point and have a conversation with his/herself about who they are. Being a biracial kid growing up in a mixed family with mixed surroundings is a HUGE part of who I am. Damn, an anthropologist should come to my house stat. I’ve even started writing long rambling paragraphs and had to delete them several times because I don’t want to sound like, well…a rambling idiot.
Alllll of us have said or done things to their mother that they’d wish they hadn’t, and the death of a parent is chilling, even if you’re fortunate enough to have both living. All of us in the cast have been called selfish or childish or self-indulgent for our love of the arts (or at least for choosing to pursue them). How many of us have had a Philistine moment where the whole world seems to waggling their collective finger at you?
And there’s always the question of “the real.” How much real can you handle? Scott posted this quote on the New Line FB.
"We have art in order not to die of the truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Desi says just about the same damned thing to the Youth. Maybe you have to be German. Try replacing the word “truth” with “real” and you’d think that Nietzsche was part of the band.
And to me, this isn’t just when reality is too harsh or ugly. Life, whether you see it as perfectly planned in God’s mind, or the Universe’s happy accident can be too big, too beautiful at times. I immediately thought of the scene in American Beauty where the kid is filming the plastic bag, and Kevin Spacey’s voiceover is talking about he thinks that sometimes he feel like his heart will burst, things are that beautiful. Several times the Youth is on the brink of something beautiful, but he leaves “right when it was starting to feel real.” Question is, how much real can YOU handle?
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