My Icarus...

During the original work on Apocalypse, we were working on the idea of Icarus as Everyman, an iconic character representing you and me as we try to work our way out of the labyrinth that is our world today. What is the truth, who do we believe, why are we trapped and confused, and is there a different way?

Over Christmas, I saw a TV news story about Stephen McPhee, a little boy with autism whose concern over homeless kids sparked the development of a program which supports the distribution of backpacks filled with toys and gifts to families in homeless shelters. The first year, his family worked hard to get fifteen backpacks together. The next year he told his mother he wanted to do 150. She tried to mediate his expectations, pointing out that they had worked so hard the previous year and still only had fifteen done. He said to her, "Mummy, you have to dream out loud!"

That little boy, in that moment, is my Icarus. My Icarus is faith - not necessarily a religious faith, but an essential faith in ourselves and our world. Stephen's statement may be dismissed by the world-weary as childish optimism, but I think it represents an absolute belief in the possible. We all start with such a faith as children, at a time and place in our existence before we are taught what is all wrong, what can't be fixed, what isn't possible. Through our lives, layers of "no" and "can't" are added. Our lightness is burdened by experience. Our faith in the possibility of possibilities is weighed down, or even obiliterated. Icarus falls into the sea. End of story.

Or is it?

This year, Stephen McPhee's charity - Stephen's Backpacks Society -will distribute about 1,000 backpacks.