Recently, for the umpteenth time, I watched The Wall again — Pink Floyd and Alan Parker. Only this time, unlike before, I was watching it with my son. I tried to warn him in advance not to pay attention to me: basically, the electric jolt I get every time I encounter this miracle is hardwired somewhere deep inside me, likely part of my operating system, so the teeth-grinding, groaning, and squirming in the armchair — like a proverbial stepped-on worm — are an inevitable part of the experience. And as any father knows, that's not exactly the best way to say anything to your son, whatever that “anything” may be.

And yet the fiasco — which I’m only now, in the calm after the storm, able to think about and even understand, at least somewhat — caught me completely off guard. The boy was squirming in his chair too, but from boredom. He glanced occasionally at his father, who was sniffling in his own armchair — and commented on the crazy images on screen in such a sensible way (“If that guy really wants to cut his wrists, he should do it like this, not like that”) that the father once again felt hurled back into some half-forgotten memory, with all its walls, canals and ditches, all its raging anger, powerlessness, and absurdity… And in his mind, against his own will, certain little words began to form, echoing the ones coming from the screen:

hush, my daddy, daddy, don’t you cry
sonny’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true
sonny’s gonna put all of his fears into you
sonny’s gonna keep you right here under his wing
he won’t let you fly but he might let you sing
sonny’s gonna keep daddy cosy and warm…

Ugly, disgusting, petty little thoughts. Thoughts filled with fear and quiet despair, standing — who knows whether facing or turned away — before a wall that feels just as insurmountable and unshakable as the old one. God, are we really so different? But how’s that possible — this is my flesh, my blood, my seed, dammit! How can he entirely lack the antennae for rebellion, for absurdity, for defiance, for terror? And if that really is the case, then what’s the damned point of growing up free? Of not being forced to clean your plate of slop shoved under your nose with zero love? Of not being watched at night to see whether you’re reading under the lamp — or masturbating? Of not having your parents faint every time you bring home proof of yet another teacher’s idiocy and apathy? Of not being forced to show gestures of filial love and loyalty that stick in your throat like fish bones — useless, fake, invented… Of not being constantly shown what it means to “become someone”? Of not being expected to be active, to join the next Organization — or any other brainwashing laundry?

Of not being required to… succeed?

But what, then, is the point of Freedom, Lord? Or of an environment that produces, on a conveyor belt, human variants of the dodo bird — wingless, flightless, content to live down here, post-everything creatures?

Not that I see my son this way — God forbid! Nor do I want The Wall back — here in Berlin, there are still plenty of them without my help. And yet, when I catch myself again going to the library to find him books, because without my nudging he’d spend 24/7 in Warcraft, I can’t help but start praying — half as a joke:

“God, God, God, in whom I do not believe —
Please let it be that I’m just another ridiculous old man who’s lost touch with the world;
who blames his children for his own impotence;
who stubbornly refuses to step aside, waiting to be pushed out of the way.
Please, anything but a world where pigs on the wing reign supreme.”

Or maybe it’s just time I started taking myself a little less seriously, huh?

February 2009