So here I am at Fort Mason, in some rehearsal studio that smells like last week’s ambition and tonight’s desperate grab at relevance. The Magic Theater closed Buried Child and somebody thought I needed cheerleaders. Fucking cheerleaders. And a tuba, or maybe they’re gogo dancers, at this point, who gives a shit? The distinction matters about as much as knowing whether I’m drinking bottom-shelf vodka or bottom-shelf gin when I’m already three sheets gone and the person I actually wanted to talk to left hours ago.
Shepard isn’t here. That was winter. When he and I talked about my father, about the geometry of absence, the particular devastation of men who carve out pieces of themselves and expect their sons to fill in the blanks. Shepard understands that. All those damaged American males stumbling around stages, drunk on mythology and rage and the terrible weight of just being somebody’s son.
But tonight? Tonight’s the after-party to the after-party, and it’s got all the authenticity of a tribute band playing a tribute to a tribute. Everyone’s performing their version of “I was there when it mattered,” doing their little pantomime of significance while the actual moment, the real fucking moment, sits decomposing somewhere back in 1982.
But you know what? Fuck me. At least it’s fucking trying. Some people showed up. At least someone cared enough to turn on the lights and put bodies in the room and say, “This mattered. This still matters.”
The thing about Buried Child is it’s about what grows when you finally dig up what you’ve been burying. Yes, there’s rot, but there’s also that moment when Tilden carries in all that corn from the barren field, that impossible harvest, that suggestion that maybe, just maybe, something can still grow from poisoned ground.
I watch these dancers move with the kind of commitment that doesn’t ask for your approval, and I think about my father. About how missing someone doesn’t have to be pure darkness. How sometimes I can stand in a room full of well-meaning chaos and feel closer to the people who aren’t there than I do to the ones who are. How grief and gratitude can occupy the same square footage in my chest.
This isn’t champagne anymore. We went through the champagne a long time ago. This is serious stuff. The days of champagne are long gone.
Sam Shepard, True West
The champagne’s gone. We’re onto the serious stuff now. And by serious stuff, I mean this: standing here knowing that even this imperfect celebration, even this slightly desperate attempt to honor something real, is better than letting it all fade into nothing.