Sad Dads

The National’s new album has been getting some fairly regular play in my headphones lately. It’s a great album, in my view, but then I suppose I would say that. I gather that over time the band has picked up a reputation as appealing to a certain sort of brooding, melancholy, bookish, middle-aged audience. It’s mildly embarrassing to admit that one likes precisely the sort of music that one is supposed to like, but what can one do? We can’t all be sui generis, however diligently we labour to prove otherwise.

This morning I listened to an interview with Aaron Dessner, The National’s guitarist and lead composer. Near the end, the host addressed this popular conception of the band’s music and audience:

Often times I see people calling The National “sad dad music.” How does that sit with you?

I was sort of readying myself for the stinging riposte. Hoping for it, even. There’s something vaguely pathetic about “sad dads,” after all. It brings to mind a kind of squishy, nostalgic dude who’s past his prime, who’s settled, who’s been kicked around or given up or whose kids are wearing (or have worn) him down. A guy who’s barely hanging on. Sad dads almost certainly have dad bods, and that’s just pitiful, right? The only thing that could make it worse would be to throw the word “white” in there somewhere. Could there be anything less cool for a rock band than to be known for making “sad dad music?” Surely Dessner would push back hard against this unflattering designation.

Except, he didn’t. Here’s what he said:

It was my idea to take that and put it on a sweatshirt. We sold like thousands and thousands of them instantly… I think it’s a badge of honour… I kinda love that people think of us as sad dads or dad rock… I kinda think, “bring it on.” I’m so proud to be a parent. And also, it’s just life. I think aging is beautiful and interesting and I kind of love everyone’s wrinkles and how we all look… and I wish society wasn’t so anti-aging and all of that. It just really depresses me.

Well. Didn’t see that coming. All of a sudden, a certain sad dad’s chest puffed out just a little and started to feel slightly less pathetic. How intriguing to hear someone actually lean into an insult and say, “Yeah, you know what, we make music that appeals to people who maybe feel things a bit more deeply, who have been through some stuff, who maybe feel a little adrift, who find a lot of what passes for music to be superficial and fake and terrible in all kinds of ways.” How cool to hear someone imply that sad dads might represent more than an sneering epithet.

Dessner’s comments about aging were also welcome, particularly in a culture that glorifies and fetishizes and prostrates itself before and slavishly attempts to placate youth. People who have been through some stuff, in my experience, are actually quite a bit more interesting than those who haven’t. At its best, there can be in aging this beautiful coalescence of wisdom and pain and desire and hope and longing and love and patience and simplicity and holy indifference toward the things that so many of us spend our earlier years chasing after. It’s so terribly odd to live in a time and place where the older and theoretically wiser seem so desperate to take their cues from the young.

Nick Cave recently responded to a question from a fan who was wondering how on earth he could be attending the king’s coronation this week. What would the young rock and roll rebel Nick Cave have thought about this gross capitulation to an institution as uncool as the monarchy? Cave, too, had a brilliant response:

I am not a monarchist, nor am I a royalist, nor am I an ardent republican for that matter; what I am also not is so spectacularly incurious about the world and the way it works, so ideologically captured, so damn grouchy, as to refuse an invitation to what will more than likely be the most important historical event in the UK of our age…

And as for what the young Nick Cave would have thought – well, the young Nick Cave was, in all due respect to the young Nick Cave, young, and like many young people, mostly demented, so I’m a little cautious around using him as a benchmark for what I should or should not do. He was cute though, I’ll give him that.

Love it. So very much.

I, too, am growing ever more cautious about using the young as a benchmark for anything. When I was young, I was I suppose very predictably eager to be “edgy,” in some sense of the word. I never really had much of a desire to leave Christianity behind, but I certainly didn’t want to be a boring old Christian with boring old beliefs. I wanted to push the boundaries, sniff around the edges, question tired old dogmas, explore new forms of music, etc. I could be a Christian, I thought, but certainly not the unexciting kind.

And now? Well, I often find myself just wanting to be plain, unexciting, orthodox Christian. I’m happy to sing old hymns. I’m happy to affirm ancient creeds that some find weird or offensive or whatever. I’m happy—actually, check that, “happy” is probably not the word, maybe “willing?” “eager?”—to confess my sins and to hear words of absolution. I’m happy to pray with and for people even if I don’t always understand the mechanics. I’m happy to read Scripture (even the ugly parts) and feel no burden to systematize or rationalize or defend or apologize for it. I have no appetite for the pop-psychology marketing and relentless programming of so much of what passes for church culture these days. Maybe this makes me the religious equivalent of a “sad dad.” Increasingly, I just don’t care.

My younger self was an idiot, frankly. He didn’t have a clue what he was doing. He didn’t know what he should want or why he should want it. He hadn’t experienced a genuine trial, hadn’t emerged out the other side of anything. He had plenty to learn and unlearn. He had no idea what real love was, and he didn’t know how to say he was sorry. He probably wasn’t even that cute. He would make a terrible benchmark for anything of any importance. “Sad dads” may be easy to mock, but maybe they at least know this much.

Image source.