ICARUS: Part I

ICARUS: First Flight

ICARUS is a project I've been working on for a little while now; inspired by the Greek myth about "the boy who flew too high"--a well known parable but little known story. If you ask me, Icarus gets short-shrift, he's remembered primarily for being too exuberant and for little else. I'm doing my best to flesh out the story with a new take. My version revolves around the relationship between Icarus and his father Daedalus--this is the story of a boy, his father and the brains between them.

Believe it or not, my relationship with ICARUS, goes further back than my involvement with Kid B. It even precedes Plato's Republic--Icarus comes straight out of my childhood, when I grew up in Bloomington, Illinois, during the winter of my 10th year, when all I wanted for my birthday was a remote control car.

Icarus and his pet chicken Gallus

I didn't want anything fancy mind you, a TYCO would have been fine--I just wanted a car that ran around the room, did a couple of stunts and terrorized my sister's hamster. My mom though (bless her heart), saw this desire as a golden opportunity for my father and I to bond--Suzuki lessons didn't do the trick, but perhaps something a little more mechanical would. Bear in mind my father is a professor--and a smarter man I do not know-- but aside from a passing fancy with model trains, small mechanical objects were not his specialty. I can still see his expression of irritation and incredulity when my mother and I returned from the hobby shop with a big remote control car set in our arms. It must have struck him as odd to think this endeavor would ever work while the name of the car, stenciled across the box in big blue letters, read "ICARUS."

Instant gratification is not something the Fajardo children (at least the first three) ever experienced. Even though my parents were not remotely religious, somehow a harsh Puritan work ethic had burrowed deep into their psyche--that, coupled with the odd Catholic notion that we must suffer in order to be able to truly enjoy something, were the cornerstones of our collected childhoods. That's not to say our parents were tyrants (far from it--the Christmas excesses are still talked about to this day). However it was the rare instance when I got a gift and some amount of work wasn't involved in order to enjoy it.

So it was that to get my remote control car, I'd have to build it (in this case, my dad). Not only that, but I got it for my birthday, which was during the dead of winter and winters in the midwest were bitter-cold with high banks of snow--right out the gate the cards were stacked against ICARUS to be road worthy before spring.

Daedalus

I think my dad saw this as a reprieve. He didn't have to worry about cracking open the box well past Groundhog Day. But, being the good father he was, it wasn't long before he took his medicine and set up a small bridge table in the music room, sat down in a creaky wooden chair and lifted the lid to pandora's box. Such was the faith in my father and his abilities that, with remote control in hand, I was already dreaming of driving around the living room by dinnertime, steering ICARUS around tight turns and kicking up clouds of hamster hair...