Learning from Abe

A great man. A great father?

This Father's Day objet d'eBay, a copy of a portrait taken by Matthew Brady, shows America's 16th president. Abraham Lincoln, reading to the youngest of his four boys, Tad (Thomas). The master photographer captured the close relationship between father and son, but suggests that there was a formality, perhaps even an order to how Lincoln ruled over his son. For better or worse, the child recognized as his father's favorite was pretty much allowed to live (even within the White House) pretty much as wildly as he wanted. [Earlier: Abe's Tale: Father and Son]

So what can be learned from a picture that is both true and false? Does the great dad allow his child(ren) to run a(be)mok? What if neither he nor the child will see all their days? What will history care, or should the dad really care? Maybe the point is just to grasp all the great moments one can (and leave the question to others of whether or not you are a great man or a great father)?

Created Fathers

Saving a father from debilitating illness is a great trope for art. Not that great art necessarily makes life easier.

In Undertown, Jim Pascoe's manga of Sama's search for the Sugar Stone that is his father's only chance for salvation, an entire dark imaginary universe is lit with hope. (Vol. 1 is out; V.2 is due in Nov. '08.)

And Phillip Toledano's tribute to his "Days with My Father," thirty-five images and text of his father's journey into Alzheimer's, is an extraordinary creation of joy and even sadness stolen from encroaching death. Physically, Toledano's father can't be saved, but something about his spirit and the connection between father and son has been built to last for an eternity.

Alas, art may inspire life, but, unfortunately, it can't fix it. Sama will no doubt find the cure for his father many, many volumes from now, it will be a fictional fix. And, no matter how wondrously Toledano has saved his father's image and spirit from death, the shadow over his art is that he (and now we) will lose him to memory.