The pure joy of my daughters' anticipation for the Taylor Swift concert
Freeze this moment a little bit longer
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I might make a Taylor Swift joke or two in what follows so let me be as clear as possible to avoid Swifties coming at me en masse. She is a brilliant musical genius. She exudes an endearing earnestness even a decade and a half into super-duper-stardom. She seems charming and insanely likable and anybody who brings my kids that much joy is OK by me.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 1
The first text during our day-long attempt to buy Taylor Swift tickets came in as I sat in a deer blind. It was 7:20 a.m. on November 15 in the Year of Our Lord 2022. The second followed at 7:35. Eventually the thread between my wife and I and another couple, Josh and Katie, ran more than 70 texts deep and contained references to Star Wars and the Hunger Games, diatribes against Ticketmaster, and a confession that we are afraid of our children.
My girls are close friends with Josh and Katie’s daughters. The four of us had signed a blood pact that whoever got tickets first would buy the max of six and share them. During our quest to acquire those tickets, my phone pinged so often I had to turn it off so I could concentrate on hunting.
All the while, Josh and my wife separately waited online to try to buy tickets … and waited and waited and waited.
How long?
From the time the text thread started until it ended, I …
Deer-hunted for two hours,
Returned from the blind to the cabin and ate breakfast,
Walked from the cabin to a tree stand,
Hunted for two more hours,
Ate lunch,
Drove an hour and a half home,
Drove to and from school to pick up my kids.
And finally, these two messages arrived, dismal and triumphant, back-to-back:
Josh: 3:19 p.m.: I’m beyond pissed off now. I can’t even buy them. What a crock of s---.
Josh: 3:48 p.m.: Finally got them! 6 tickets bought and locked in!
What happened in those fateful 29 minutes I do not know nor do I care. All I care about is the outcome: We got Taylor Swift tickets. I repeat. We got Taylor Swift tickets.
The Hallelujah chorus spontaneously occurred throughout all creation.
Or maybe just in my house (and a few miles away, in Josh’s).
Somehow Swift sold 879 trillion tickets on November 15, and nobody got any. The only person madder than parents who waited all day to buy tickets was Swift herself. “It really pisses me off,” she said in a statement, her colorful language the first clue that I would eventually become a fan, “that a lot of (fans) feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” which is ridiculous because bear attacks don’t take nearly as long.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 2
We listened to and talked about Taylor Swift all day.
I asked my daughter to queue up the song where Taylor sings about pining for a boy. She rolled her eyes because she knew the punchline: “Oh wait, that’s all of them.” That’s not fair, because Swift also has a) songs about a boy dumping her, b) songs about revenge on boys who dumped her, and c) songs about exulting in the depth and beauty and strength and grace and fidelity of her current relationship with a boy, which inevitably leads back to a) and/or b). …
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 3
… Then again, I probably shouldn’t make jokes, as my favorite band, Rush, has songs about maples feuding with oaks, an intergalactic war started by the discovery of a guitar, and subdivisions.
After just a few days immersing myself in Swift’s music, I discovered, much to my surprise, a Venn diagram of her lyrics and my life overlap. There are snatches where—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I feel seen by her. …
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 4
… Appreciated.
Affirmed.
When she sings on Anti Hero “I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser,” I wonder how she knows my deepest fear and articulates it with perfect clarity.
Or on Message in a Bottle, she writes, “These days I’m restless, workdays are endless,” I drum on the steering wheel and think, Testify, TayTay.
A lot of her songs are great.
There, I said it.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 5 through 24
We listened to and talked about Taylor Swift all day.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 25
Love Story is TayTay’s second best song** overall but by far the best to sing along with … especially with a minivan full of eight teenage girls (and one exuberant dad), as I learned on this day.
That’s #peakdad right there.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 26 through 115
We listened to and talked about Taylor Swift all day.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 116
We took the day off from listening to/talking about Tay—HAHAHA, no way in hell that would happen.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 117 through 171
We listened to and talked about Taylor Swift all day.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 172
We hit a glitch. My girls wanted to dress as the same era. If you know you know. If you don’t: This is called the Eras tour, and you’re supposed to dress up like one of Swift’s Eras (and each of her albums is an Era). My daughters wanted to go as the same Era and bickered about it. At first, this annoyed the bejabbers out of me. It set a new standard for dumb things to argue about, or so I thought. “Just go as the same Era,” I said. “Who cares?”
That did not go over well.
Then I remembered that if my brother and I gathered in the living room wearing the same Rush t-shirt before a show, one of us would have changed.
The girls eventually resolved it.
One of Swift’s Eras is called 1989 after her album of that name. I told my girls I would dress as 1989 because I still dress the same way I did in 1989. We kept Amazon in business with deliveries for their Era outfits. I’d just have to grab something out of my dresser.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 172 through 233
We listened to and talked about Taylor Swift all day.
Taylor Swift Concert Diary, Day 234
It’s finally here. The show is this weekend. I’m not attending it. I’m driving and staying two nights, but five girls and a mom are going to use the six tickets. I tried to sell a story about going to the concert to justify the cost of a ticket (or to get a press pass), but I was unsuccessful. I think I probably could sell one after the show, but I don’t know that for a fact and I can’t talk myself into forking over the money without a guaranteed return. I’m marshaling all of my self-control not to buy a ticket from a scalper because DAMN they are expensive.
It’s funny — even now, the girls think we are giving them a great gift with these tickets. And we are. But the truth is, all of us parents have received a great gift as well.
Since we got the tickets, I have felt like I’m being transported back in time. When my kids were small, they barely took a breath I didn’t know about. I took them everywhere they went, made every decision for them, and when they were very little, I literally put the food into their mouths (of course my wife did all of that, times 10).
Now that they are teen-agers, I’m only vaguely aware of where they are for long stretches. A bunch of families joined us at the pool on the Fourth of July, and all the parents were so engrossed in conversation the kids could have left and I might not have noticed.
This Taylor Swift immersion feels like they are small again, only instead of them needing me, I’m alongside them. I sing along to almost every song now, and we are sharing all of this together in a way we rarely do anymore—from the stunned joy of buying the tickets to the will-the-day-ever-come anticipation to the non-stop conversations about how awesome it is going to be.
My kids have never been this excited about anything and whatever is second (Hamilton?) is so far behind it’s not even worth mentioning.
At the risk of sounding overly navel-gazely, this kind of thing happens once in a life, and I hate to miss it. But I also want to let them experience it without me … to let go and let them go.
Kind of.
Sort of.
At least, I’m trying to talk myself into that.
The other day, five girls crowded around my kitchen table and spent hours making Taylor Swift bracelets in advance of her concert.
They made those bracelets to give to friends they intend to make at the concert.
Think about that for a second.
Love Story came on as the girls made bracelets.
All five of them sang along and I wanted to cry. I don’t want to travel through time. I want to freeze it, right here, right now.
**Shake it off is her best song and I am willing to die upon this unassailable hill.