Present Johan Terryn

So you were going to be a present father. Promise to yourself. And the next thing you see yourself doing is breaking up with the mother of your children. Suddenly you are only half present. Week by week. And you keep repeating that formula until you suddenly drop off a child to go study in Prague. Your last child, your young boy. And you wave. And then? Then you have 900 km of time to wonder how present you yourself have been. Being present. It seems like a task in a time full of stimuli that lure us elsewhere. In his new show, Johan Terryn tries to crawl into the here and now as much as possible. To be there and stay there. He remembers his father who was present without being present. Just like so many fathers of that generation. Whatever you asked, the answer was invariably ‘hmm’. When he leaves his young adult son in a distant, strange city himself and drives away waving hesitantly, he wonders if he himself has been enough. Present. The feeling ‘I still have so much to give’ haunts him. On the long drive back, he collects the most important things he still had to say. A speech to send his son into life. Helped by his podcast guests, he makes his own - sort of - ‘Wear Sunscreen’ or: ‘900 km of good advice to be fully present in this life’.