Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO: Pod People, and Parenting as an Acid Trip
Jay Andrew Allen | July 13
Recently, my movie-reviewin’ fool of a wife had the pleasure of interviewing Mark Mothersbaugh, a founding member of DEVO and in-demand movie music producer. Besides trying to get my wife to crawl into bed with him (which was a joke…I think), Mothersbaugh described how he’s acclimating to life as a new parent. Mothersbaugh and his wife recently adopted a baby girl, Margaret, putting an end to Mothersbaugh’s sleepful nights and “special time” with the missus. Here’s the artist describing why he was hesitant to dive into the parenting pool:
I gotta tell you, what scares me the most about it is I always thought that people who have kids are all pod people. It’s like, they’re all people who have their lives together, and they know they shouldn’t do it. And then the day after they have the baby, it’s like: Invasion of the pod people! They’re all like, “This is the best thing that ever happened.” And you look at them and you can tell they haven’t slept but two hours, they’ve got two hours of sleep a night for the past three weeks, their clothes are a mess, they’ve got baby vomit streaked down the back of their shirt…
Cinematical: So have you become a pod person?
MM: Yeah. (laughs) In a way having a baby is like — I adopted my baby in China — but when I got the baby, it reminded me of the first time I took acid. In the sense — the quality of the experience wasn’t similar, but what was similar was how BIG it was. It was like, all of a sudden I walked through this door in my brain, there was this whole storm, this expansion, this part of my brain I’d never visted before ever, and I was like WOW, I didn’t even know that was there, this whole dimension.
Parenting as an acid trip? Woould that be a good trip or a bad trip?
He has a point, though. No one ever looks on parents with envy. It’s an experiential thing. Having children, in my opinion, makes you a better person - but it’s an ass-kicking, ego-deflating, soul-battering experience. It’s not like going to visit the wise old man on the mountaintop; it’s more akin to getting your ass kicked by Pai Mei for eighteen years straight.
What about you, dear reader? Did you ever look down on other parents in pity, thinking wistfully, “That will NEVER happen to me”?
Did I ever feel sorry for those who had children before me and now… with tables turned so completely I’ve have at times found myself preaching the ‘gospel’ of parenting to single friends and couples ‘on the fence’. But just like trying to explain an acid trip (I guess) the parenting ‘trip’ is something that must be experienced and is best communicated through example.
Gosh, all I can remember ever wanting was to be a mom and damn, did I go for it, started early and ended late (had my first kid at 18 and my last one the year I turned 40!)
The only people I feel empathy for - buckets and buckets of it - are those who wish for a child and face obstacle after obstacle in realizing that dream.
I know people who don’t want children and that doesn’t bother me at all, as I’m a kind of live and let live person. I do think the awesomeness of being a parent can only be understood from within it.