44yo dad responds to Father John Misty concert
It was weird, Josh!

Here’s the thing. I’ve been watching you, Josh. You’re my proxy for a certain sort of intellectual artistry with which 44yo dads can lose touch. What does it feel like to the kids these days to feel so much? I know what it felt like to me, but that was ages ago! Before smartphones even.
And I have daughters, so there’s lots of this ringing through the house.
I wonder why you became my cipher, my new McSweeney’s, as it were. Let’s chalk it up to a timely, majikal combination of wit, intelligence, solipsism, despair, micro-dosing, trolling, LA debauchery, & big beards in slim suits. From the perspective of this 44yo dad, it’s like you’re ‘round the bend on being a grown man, but still free-ballin’ it enough to savor despair in ways that no 44yo dad can afford.
So this is to say that I knew more about you as a persona than as a musician, until last Friday at Red Rocks. I remember liking that cemetery song with Aubrey Plaza in the video. I really liked that performance on Letterman with the stilted choreography, the going-all-out on ‘white jesus,’ the bewildered audience left in your wake. It was weird, Josh!
And now I’ve seen you live, beneath the giant space rocks, a prancing lothario with a clear voice & bendy knees. It was a good show! Perhaps you battle with appropriate levels of preachiness in a live setting. Like, a 44yo dad could easily roll his eyes, harrumph, & angrily whisper at you to take yourself down a notch, you fucking self-inflated fragile little birdie.
But I didn’t do that! You didn’t say much down there from the stage. Was that for me, for the other 44yo dads, all of us kinda judging you but really too tired to care?
Pretty loud though. It’s hard to make out the lyrics at concerts. Plus some giant dude stood in front of me, parting the sound waves as he swayed in place. I mean, concerts are just tough for me, man, okay?
Glad I went though. Ecstatic, in fact.
Of course there is more 44yo dad re Taylor Swift & Phish.
