May Your Mouth Be Filled With Morton's

I am emotional. I cry easily. President Obama's inauguration speech....I cried. When I hear music by Fleet Foxes, or a Bach fugue, I cry. When my daughter stares into my eyes, I cry.

I often wonder if I am over-sensitive, or under-expressed, or, as John Irving wrote in The World According to Garp, I have "unsobbed sobs in my chest." I think of myself as an intelligent man, if somewhat prone to childish self-centeredness, who empathizes with the majority of humanity. I don't know the source, but there is a wedding blessing that hopefully wishes, "When one of you cries, may the other taste salt." My mouth is filled with Morton's.

I attribute my sensitivity to a generalized artistic temperament that has gotten me in more debt than it has gotten me employment. The term "artistic temperament" is often substituted for terms like "deadbeat" or "goodfornothing" less than "sensitive" or "undiscovered genius who just needs to be given the opportunity to prove himself, as well as a million dollar grant." Nevertheless, I will continue to be this bizarre combination of masculinity and wimpish sniveling cad and sculpt these disparate elements into the best imitation of a father I can.

I wonder if I can be the strong parent who can stand up to the inevitable tides of pain and anguish my daughter must endure. It is easy for me to watch others' misfortunes and stoically exclaim my indifference, though when a child skins its knee, I cringe, my armpits stinging like snake bites.

This antipathy is more evident when I'm faced with the prospect of labors and I'm tired, or we're all hungry and I just want to order out. I have to begin to make more deposits into this bank of energy than I make withdrawals. I return to my artistic temperament. When I am fed artistically, I have a limitless reservoir of energy and enthusiasm, as do, I imagine, others who work in fields defined by their joys and love.

Quincy Jones, the composer and creator of one my favorite tunes, The Streetbeater, has recently called upon President Obama to create the post of Secretary of the Arts. I endorse this idea, if for no other reason than to begin to ensure a reservoir of energy and enthusiasm for future generations of artistically inclined deadbeats like myself. Who knows, maybe my daughter will have the same problems. May her mouth be filled with Morton's.