I watched The History of Sound the other night-- it's currently featured on MUBI -- and was very moved by the film. The protagonist asks himself in old age: Would his life have been better had he not met the remarkable person who devastated it with both love and abandonment? Or was his great love the defining experience, the one that gave his life meaning?
I can barely remember the dream now, but I woke full of anger and frustration in the middle of the night. I've come to know that my father is the one who provided this map of loss, the warmth followed by the chill. But in the last years, D is face of love and abandonment, at least in my dreams. Probably I've made him up. He's imaginary, my creation in the qualities I've bestowed upon him. Really just an ordinary jerk. My father was exceptional, however, at least in the fact that he was my father.
Would I have written all those songs without him? Would I have made a mostly solitary life?