Why Should I Cry For You?

This is a great version of what is easily my favorite Sting song:



Men are brought up in my culture to be very low in emotional intelligence, and when I discovered (around 15 or 16) that Sting wrote this song about his father, I was surprised and intrigued. Lines like 'sometimes I see your face/stars seem to lose their place' aren't written for fathers! We write lines like that for girls that we want to fuck.

In my cultural context, guys aren't supposed to be sentimental about each other. We're not supposed to love one another. Fathers raise their sons to be soldiers, and sons raise their sons to be soldiers. Creatures of mere utility. Like replaceable liners for garbage cans. I know I don't want to raise my children like that, and I know that I can't be reduced to some utilitarian function. I love my boys, and I want them to feel comfortable loving me.

I'm not sure if I'm ready to write this post. Maybe I need some more years on me before I'll be able to make enough sense of this subject to talk about it. Maybe it will never make enough sense to talk about. All I know is that life is short, and there are aspects of it that can be difficult to understand. Our relationships are constantly evolving, and if we don't pay attention to them, they can atrophy.

I'm glad to be a father, whatever that means. I think it's supposed to be a support role. As our father below did, I suspect I'm responsible for sharing some kind of illumination with my children; some kind of hard-won knowledge plucked from the tree of my experience. I think fatherhood is about stories, and games, and openness, and daydreaming; but also discipline, and hard work. Christ, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.