review

so i’m so sad
after seeing
Father John Misty sing
on SNL

he sang two songs,
but the one he sung that so
got.
me.
was “Pure Comedy”

see here:

( for both performances,
with lyrics
(which i’ll refer to below)
and editorializing,
see “Father John Misty Questions Virtual Reality And Religion on ‘Saturday Night Live'” )

so why so sad?

first let me say:
my reaction
reminds me of
that i had
when reading and
writing about
(the so excellent
and amazing book)
House of Leaves
(see said react here)

both Misty’s song
and that book
are in similar vein,
saying similar things,
and even in similar strain,
format-wise
(experimental, sprawling)

so, saying what?
exactly?

something like
what one might say
if one tried to say
the interlocking gist of
a whole twisted mass of
a certain set of
“isms” all at once:
relativism/deconstructionism/
postmodernism/materialism/
naturalism/nihilism/
atheism/secularism/
existentialism/humanism

tldr version:
God is dead.
So now what?

House of Leaves
says it like this,
with this metaphor
where the world’s a
groundless tree:

Y g g
d
r
a
s
i
l

What miracle is this? This giant tree.
It stands ten thousand feet high
But doesn’t reach the ground. Still it stands.
Its roots must hold the sky.

“Pure Comedy”
sums our situation like this,
with its quiet,
out-of-the-cacophany
coda:

Just random matter suspended in the dark

I hate to say it, but each other’s all we got

so is that why
i’m so sad
after seeing
Father John Misty sing
on SNL?

cuz he sang so of
all them -isms?

nah.

i’m so sad cuz
“Pure Comedy,”
ironically
(intentionally),
is a sad song

it’s artful
and soulful
and beautiful
and musically adventurous
and plenty accurate
and justifiably biting
and eminently understandable
and relatable in its perspective,
but it’s darkly,
ironically, intentionally,
undeniably sad –
not a “pure comedy”
in the
story-where-things-
work-out-in-the-end sense;
that purer, older,
original meaning
of “comedy;”
but in the bitter, dark
“…comedy…it’s like something that a madman would conceive!”
sense

so i’m so sad
cuz the song‘s so sad

and
i’m so sad
cuz Father John Misty hisself
is so sad about said so sad song

how do i know?

go back and watch
the performance;
it is the performance
of a man who knows
that what he says is –
however clever,
regardless of its
apropos and earnest delivery –
bleak and hopeless
and ultimately sad

and why is he sad
about it?

cuz, assumedly,
presumably,
he thinks the
song he sings is
also so –
that it is true
(whatever that even means)

it is the lyric of a man
a quick Googling
reveals was raised a Christian,
but who now faux-mocks Jesus as a
“risen zombie,” son of a
“celestial virgin,” as the song says –
a man who now sees humans
not as “special” beings,
not as “created in God’s image,”
but as “godless animals,”
“…random matter suspended in the dark.”

and so i’m so sad
cuz the song‘s so sad,
and cuz he‘s so sad,
cuz he thinks the song’s so

finally,
lastly,
mostly,
i’m so sad cuz
the failed-palliative status of
“I hate to say it, but each other’s all we got”
is so apparent,
yet still, apparently –
if you take
Father John Misty at his word –
is a perspective that’s
supposed to be embraced

the fact that he
even offers a
palliative at that point
is instructive, isn’t it?
it’s interesting that
softening the blow
is intuitive to him
at that moment,
isn’t it?

regardless,
he does offer it,
though he “hate[s] to say it,”
and concludes,
leaving us to feel . . .
sad.
so sad.
so understandably sad.
like him.

so that’s why
i’m so sad
after seeing
Father John Misty sing
on SNL:
sad cuz the song,
sad cuz he’s sad,
sad cuz it‘s sad
that he has
seemingly knowingly owned
the problem of
groundless trees
and “random matter”

the problem of:
God is dead.
So now what?

the problem he has no
fix for,
though he
grudgingly offers
an already-failed one

the problem,
in the end,
there is no fix for,
unless you just
deny it altogether,
and rediscover –
reimagine –
that purer, older,
original meaning
of “comedy”