Proud as Stones

My son stacks rocks. He's an artist. Doesn't paint, doesn't draw stuff, doesn't carve stuff, doesn't do any of the stuff you think artists are supposed to do. What he does, he stacks rocks. Museums pay him huge amounts of money to come and stack rocks. Then they charge people ten bucks a pop to come and look at the stacks of rocks. He goes to a museum, stacks rocks for a couple of days, makes more money than I do in a month.

I tell him I'm proud of him. He's my son, after all. What else am I gonna to say? Am I gonna tell him I don't understand any of this? Am I gonna tell him I think stacking rocks is silly? Am I gonna tell him I'm embarrassed by it?

Down to the plant I hear people talking about him. They're laughing at him. Oh, they're impressed as hell by all the money he makes, but they're still laughing. And the truth is I'd be laughing too, if he wasn't my son.

He invites us, me and his mom, to the openings of his...his 'installations,' he calls them. They're not installations. A rock isn't something you install. We go, of course. He invites us, of course we're going. I eat them little snacks they serve and tell everybody who asks how proud his mom and I are, but I don't know what the hell they're talking about.

I've looked real hard at some of the stacks of rocks. They're sorta pretty, I guess. Sometimes, if I squint my eyes or right after I sneeze, they sort of remind me of mountains. Like the ones I saw in this TV show on China. I asked him once, was the rocks supposed to look like China. He said, "Do they look like China to you?" I told him yeah, and he said "Then that's what they're supposed to look like."

What sorta answer is that to give to your old man? I may not know anything about art or stacking rocks, but I'm damned well not stupid. I don't have to be talked down to by my own boy. So I told him, "Just tell me what the fuck I'm supposed to see when I look at them, in case some was to ask me."

I didn't mean to get mad at him. It's just, sometimes I wish he was a normal kid with a normal job. I wish I could brag about him down to the plant. People come up to me, they ask me "How's that boy of yours, he still stacking them rocks?" "All the way to the bank," is what I say. I don't let them see I'm embarrassed. A man shouldn't never be ashamed of his son.

posted by greg @ 4:57 PM