Anniversary dinner yesterday. Matilda absolutely housed her ribeye. Meanwhile, Z and I struggle-bussed through our “flights” of food, each consisting of a trio of entrées. I suppose good things do come in threes (including our little family unit), but ten ain’t so bad either. Here’s to the next ten, @zhitongz ! 😘
We went back to visit our venue with Matilda last fall. Self-timed photo on the second slide took a few tries and quite a bit of running up and down those stairs before we got a decent one!
Save the date, ten years plus one day ago! Magnet was designed by @zhitongz using portraits from our trip to Amsterdam. Photo of magnet was found in my messages history from a friend, let’s see if he recognizes his fridge!
Matilda asked for some merch from the concert, but they didn’t have her size (XXS, extra extra sweet). Oh well, maybe she can catch a Feist (or Philip Glass?) concert with me when she’s bigger.
A few more snaps from this and other Feist concerts over the years (or at least, just the ones I have readily available on this phone):
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1. Last week.
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2. Boston 2019, opening for Bon Iver. My first concert as a dad, a month after Matilda was born. (My last concert as a non-dad was supposed to be the Philip Glass Ensemble performing Koyaanisqatsi, but Matilda had other plans…)
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3. Harvard 2017. @zhitongz and I had just gotten back from hiking the Inca Trail. Our tour group woke up at 2:30AM to be at the front of the line for the final trailhead. I listened to the new album while we waited in the dark. Z and I booked it and ended up being the first couple to reach the Sun Gate and lay eyes on Machu Picchu out of all the hikers that day.
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4. LA 2011. A rare double header. After attending (coincidentally enough) a Philip Glass lecture at LACMA, I booked it over to the Mondrian Skybar to catch Chilly Gonzales performing solo piano poolside, with surprise guests. (I would also see Philip Glass performing solo piano a couple of days later in Costa Mesa. I had a lot more free time as a grad student.)
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5. Peaches and Feist baptizing each other in the waters of the Skybar pool after covering Tweet/Missy Elliott. If you look up the professionally shot video of this moment, you’ll catch a glimpse of me talking to a fellow concert goer (and making her sorry she asked about what I was writing my thesis on, most likely).
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6. On the way out, I ran into Feist in the hotel lobby. I asked for a simple signature, but she immediately started doodling this drawing instead. It took me a second to see what she was going for, but now I think of this moment and her quick wit whenever I hear the phrase “bon mot.” (Or perhaps she makes a habit of diving into pools and signing this particular album just so—pretty cool either way.)
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Always nice to look back and see how you’ve passed time with an artist and their art. No pictures from the times I saw her at Coachella, Governors Ball, or on her Metals tour, but luckily the music is more than enough to remind you.
Finally got some downtime to watch my snippets from last week’s Feist concert—and still processing and digesting the whole experience, to be honest! Perhaps the only concert I’ve been to that I feel the need to spoiler tag, which tells you how unique it was. Some vignettes, including my favorite moment of the night (and perhaps of my entire concert-going career):
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1. My very first performer-assisted concert selfie (that’s me in the Moon Climbing sweatshirt and hat 😆). You can see a couple of fellow solo attendees to my left. We all got there about a half hour early, snagged primo spots right by the stage, and made small talk. I overheard him tell her that he shoots music videos “for fun.”
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2. Feist asks for a volunteer to take the camera and “Colton” ends up being the lucky one.
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3. We contain multitudes.
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4. He’s pretty good at this… 🧐
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5. Feist disappears.
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6. We all disappear.
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7. Green screen action. By now it is abundantly clear that Colton was a plant. The other solo attendee confides to me that she feels betrayed.
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8. The show never ends.
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Hats off to @feistmusic and @colby__richardson for a night full of the numinous.
She’s a natural! She’s got the most important part of cragging (i.e., snacking) down pat. As for dada, the best he could manage on this crisp million-degree (OK, maybe more like mid 60s) fall day was greasing off a broken two-move dirt-burglar lowball before the sesh was abruptly cut short by a minor emergency. Thank god there was a gigantic shopping mall within spitting distance and a very nice lady at The Container Store who directed us to the nearest potty. Still a 5-star megaclassic day out with my favorite girl! 🥰🥰🥰
Thanks for going to see my favorite band for *your* birthday, @zhitongz ! I hope you at least got to enjoy some nice moments with your girl. Now you have to put up with her musical taste, as well! Happiest of birthdays, we love everything about you.
She still looks adorable in headphones. A couple of pics from her first concert last night: @boniver in East Providence! Plus a selected few (of increasingly worse quality, cell phone cameras have really come a long way) from their shows I’ve caught over the years:
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Boston 2019: Grandma and grandpa were in town and helped mama out, while dada had his first night out since baby was born. Dad rock.
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Milwaukee 2018: You know you’re getting old when your favorite bands start having 10 year anniversary shows.
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Providence 2017: Actually managed to meet the man after the show and he was kind enough to sign some throwbacks. “My mom doesn’t even have a copy of this!” Maybe I should’ve given them back to him?
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DC 2011: My adviser moved institutions in the last year of my PhD, so I packed up my car and made a cross country trip to follow him—luckily @zhitongz was in the same city, as well! Just happened to line up with their tour at the time, so I caught 3 shows over the 2 week trek.
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Coachella 2011: Lost in the World during Kanye’s closing set. Probably peak filthy hipster for me. I didn’t shower the entire weekend and got so dehydrated that I’m 99% sure I herniated a disc, which is probably why I threw out my back twice in my first year or so of fatherhood.
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LA 2009: Flip phone photo during re: stacks. My first concert in LA, just a few days after purchasing aforementioned car. Finally having a car was a pretty big deal for me—a new kind of freedom, especially in LA, after being a carless under/grad student for so long. Z and I managed to get into the pit. I vaguely remember a dad being there with his daughter and thinking it was kind of cool.
