The Mechanics of It…

…with “It” of course being the writing process. I have just decided to merge two story ideas into one. Originally the two “The Birth of Aidan” and “The Paternity Test” were meant to be respectively about fatherhood from the perspective of the father, and fatherhood from the perspective of the fathered.

The influences, inspirations for these two stories – now this story – are varied. There was one particularly brilliant piece I read eight years ago at the Cropper Foundation workshop, written by one of the other participants Lenworth Burke from Jamaica, called “The Driveouts”. Lenny’s story was voted the best of the workshop and won the Jamaica Observer Arts Award the next year. It did what I believe the best short stories do, in that it achieved its message with a subtlety that is worked within the thread of the story. The story was essentially about the drives a young boy took with his family, his father in particular, over the span of perhaps two decades.

Other influences behind this reflection on paternity include Eric Clapton’s tragic song about the loss of his son, Connor, “Tears in heaven”. Then there is this brilliant sci-fi story called “Story of your life” by Ted Chiang, which is more about maternity, motherhood but still, within its telling by a man (Chiang), something comes out that is closer in spirit either to paternity or more neutral parenthood.

Then there is that fucking shameless tearjerker The Champ with Jon Voight. I watched that movie more than twenty years ago and cried my ass off…then I watched that movie last year and almost cried my ass off. The difference of course is that my sympathies lay two different places the two times I watched that movie.

The last time I watched almost was around the same time I watched The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith and his son. There was a scene when they were sleeping in a public restroom that I think strikes a cord with any father who has been in the struggle, particularly with that one son. Since I am at present technically a single father and technically unemployed, the Will Smith and Jon Voight characters are ones that I feel a strong association with.

With this foundation, this background, I ended up working on “The Paternity Test” which is what the two merged stories are now called…

“It is what they illustrate, which is at once everything and nothing, that suspends our friendship at the top of staircases or when walking around in the city, the latter being rarely done. It is why an open gateway provides a glimpse of oblivion.”

Excerpt, “The Paternity Test”