I had a memory yesterday of playing catch with my dad as a kid. More accurately, I laughed to myself remembering how, sometimes, he would throw a baseball at me as hard as he could. It wasn’t every time– part of the point of the exercise was to be unpredictable about it. I must have been six or seven, and he must have been out of his mind, but I hope one day I love my kid enough to trust they’re able to catch whatever I can throw at them.
I was listening to “Mythological Beauty” by Big Thief at the time, which as far as I can tell, is about children raising children, forgiving your parents through reconstructed memory, and seeing them as adults, as an adult, and coming to a new understanding because of that perspective. Hence, why I was chuckling to myself about my dad throwing missiles at me up in Massachusetts. At least, at the time they felt like missiles, but given that my dad and I both top out at 5 foot 8 and are aggressively average in terms of athletic prowess, they were probably moving at cruising altitude.
Gentle comedic self-deprecation and paternal ragging, aside.
I remember being pissed at him when he would do that, but the lessons he was imparting are obvious now—about handling situations as best you can even if you aren’t quite ready for them, about believing in yourself and trusting yourself, about accepting challenging situations as opportunities for growth, yadda yadda and blah blah.
With the added benefit of getting better at catching the ball, too. I was always a headcase on the diamond and therefore very hot and cold at the plate, but for the most part, I could always field a decent third base.
Anyway, there was so much else going on inside at the time, both literally and figuratively, that it was good of him just to get me outside. Out of that house. People frequently joke about the emotional unavailability of fathers, particularly regarding my own father’s generation (which is luckily one problem I didn’t have to deal with, as my dad is a complete and total softie). But I think most of the time, men generally tend to talk and connect more over shared activities where there’s something else to focus on. It makes the words smaller and therefore easier to put out and to receive. Not to say that some fathers aren’t genuinely emotionally unavailable– but I’d wager at least some of the time, the sense that they are is borne of misunderstandings.
I think it’s part of the reason that some of the best conversations I’ve had with male friends have been on barstools—there’s a loud environment to distract us, we’re sitting parallel and not facing one another, there’s a shared social lubricant to consume and distract.
Just because you aren’t facing one another in the lotus position holding hands and talking about your feelings doesn’t mean you aren’t talking, is basically what I’m saying. Not that I’m not down for that, too, either.
I owe most of these recollections to Adrianne Lenker, I guess. The only reason I was listening to “Mythological Beauty” in the first place is because a video of Adrianne Lenker playing it acoustically popped up while I scrolled TikTok, a habitual rut of an activity I’ve sunk into before work these days. The vestiges of the attention span I built up in college and grad school won out, and instead of scrolling past to watch videos of simulated car crashes, or some guy replacing a floor, or some sappy hopecore art video (all three essentially producing an amalgam that functions as a bullshit adult equivalent of Cocomelon), I stayed and watched the whole four minute video of her playing the song.
She has others about parents and childhood, too. “Half Return,” “Come,” and “Free Treasure” come to mind. It’s good for you to hear someone else grapple with issues you’re, as yet, too scared to face yourself. If you (like many others) have ambivalent relationships with one or both parents, or you’ve ever thought moving to Bushwick or dying your hair might fix you, check her out. Side effects may include choking up, buying houseplants, aggressively working out to reassert your masculinity, and/or obsessively trying and failing to play her songs on guitar the way she plays them.
I can’t remember if I’ve written about her before, and I have a cold and am therefore too lazy to check if I did, but her album songs (2020) is one of the best of the last decade, and I had the good fortune to take a wildly over-attended workshop with her that gave me some fresh ideas last winter.
Not that she’s a secret, of course. Far from it, and I’m sure most of you who read this probably know about her already, but I digress.
Most of these thoughts are part of a concerted effort of mine to focus on the small. The election looms a week out, and I’m sure my dread is not unique. Nothing I could say here would add much to the conversation, and it surely wouldn’t change hearts or minds. These rambling performative journals have gotten rather political in the past, and it seems all things these days are political even if only by omission, but my only advice is to get off Twitter, talk to people that are actually in your life, and focus on the radically small band of things that are actually within our control (like voting, for example).
And if you still like the guy, there really isn’t anything I could say to you that I think you’d even be capable of engaging with in good faith.
In the meantime, I’ll be pounding vitamin C to get healthy, trying to get some sleep, embracing the quiet dignity of daily work, and focusing on being ready for whatever comes. Just like dad taught me to do, while throwing missiles at my head.
matt nilsen 