So, my current musical obsession is High Violet, the new disc by The National. Don’t know about you, but I generally have two chances to listen to music these days:

1. Driving the car; and,
2. Squeezing in a workout.

This means I’ve been playing High Violet a lot in the car.

My 5-year old daughter Patricia has declared this music acceptable for times when she’s riding with me, which is pretty great because otherwise I’d have to listen to Sheryl Crow sing “I Want to Soak Up the Sun” six or seven times in a row before we mercifully arrive at our destination.

The fifth track on High Violet is called “Afraid of Anyone”:

Then I’m radio and then I’m television,
I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone
They’re the young blue bodies, with the old red bodies,
I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone
With my kid on my shoulders I try
Not to hurt anybody I like
But I don’t have the drugs to sort,
I don’t have the drugs to sort it out.

The repeated line “I’m afraid of everyone, I’m afraid of everyone” is a pretty memorable down-tempo hook.

(“Why am I playing this stuff for my 5-year-old?” I wonder as I type out the lyrics. I immediately tell myself that she’s almost 6, like that makes it any better. I’ll add it to the list of Bad Dad Stuff I need to work out later.)

Well, Patricia knows what she likes, and when she likes a song she likes to figure out the words and sing it — I have video of her as a 3-year-old singing every last line of Al Green’s classic “I’m So Tired of Being Alone.”

Earlier today I heard her singing her version of that same hook from The National:

“I’m a friend to everyone, I’m a friend to everyone”

Sometimes you feel enough feelings in a moment that it stops you cold. I laughed at the kid-getting-the-lyric-wrong thing, winced that she’s really paying such attention to all those lyrics, and felt gratitude for her interpretation.

If an anecdote can summarize a dad’s hope for his daughter, that’s mine.

“Girlfriend, keep taking in angst and turning it into sunshine the way trees turn CO2 into oxygen. Hold onto that and you’ll have the world by the tail. Bottle it and you’ll never have to work.”