Boyhood

I may be especially emotional at the moment (Archer grew up overnight and I ... don't even... yeah) but this hit me so hard and in so many ways I had to share because holy shit, you guys. 

Beyond the patience Linklater must have had shooting over a twelve year span, watching the boy, his mother (Patricia Arquette) and his world change within a 1:46 trailer was a punch in the gut unlike anything "coming of age" I have ever seen. The wide-eyed innocence, the awkward stage, the sudden MANLINESS of the boy who... wait, weren't you just a boy?... one of the greatest songs ever... it's all there.

The pull I felt to this character is not unlike the pull I feel to many of the childhoods documented in this space, families I have been invested in for a decade or more.

At the end of the trailer, I knew this boy. He reminded me of mine, somehow, and I wondered if in a way, this is the way so many of you look at my children and see your own. It certainly is the way I look at many of the children I have witnessed grow up in this space. (I cry watching Leta on the piano because I remember when she was born. And I can't wait to see what she becomes.)

Everyone is so big all of a sudden, you know? But all it takes is a click here and a click there to relive the infancy, the toddlerhood, the first day of school... yesterday. It's overwhelming. Playing the moments back like a slideshow. Seeing the face and the posture and the attitude and the innocence... evolve, change, fade away into the oblivion of SHATTERED DREAMS OH MYHJAHDKJSAGH. 

Anyway, (as I go off on tangents as per usual) it's pretty exciting to witness such groundbreaking storytelling. I have watched this trailer a hundred times and it never loses its magic.

What a rollercoaster this parenthood thing is, eh? It's like going through childhood all over again except this time, for reasons I still can't quite wrap my head around, It means even more, it hurts even worse and it moves ten thousand times as fast.

yesterday

also yesterday.

GGC