...left to write Darkness and stew. To me it's a record about trying to protect a dream while confronted with a growing wall of reality that says the… - Wright Thompson

Meeting Julian and making him talk about his family made me ask myself the same question I'd been asking him: What did I owe my late father? What did I owe a grandfather I never met? What is demanded of a son or daughter? What was demanded of me?

Families stay together because of active decisions, because of patters that turn into tribunals, and they are torn apart most often not by anger or feuds but by careless inertia.0

Aging means losing things, and not just eyesight and flexibility. It means watching the accomplishments of your youth be diminished, maybe in your own eyes through perspective, maybe in the eyes of others through cultural amnesia. Most people live anonymous lives, and when they grow old and die, any record of their existence is blown away.