Following a private performance, folk music icon Erik Darling wrote the following letter to Josh:

Okay, so I asked myself, what is it about your magic that makes me feel
better?

I’d seen that rubber ball trick at least three or four times, now, and I
realized, that every time I see it, I feel the same surprise, even though I know
what’s coming. My senses observe, ever so carefully, what has to be: then it
isn’t.  And I shake my head, “How does he do that? How in the hell?!” And I
really wonder, “How he does that?” Yet, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to
take that endless possibility of surprise out of my life.

Your stuff is like Country Music, which takes what your senses expect and
turns them around, causes the mind to, necessarily, go to where learning and
creativity happens. One’s normal everyday patterns are turned on their end.  It’s
like what good meditation should do, and so seldom does.  Such phrases, for
example, as “I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane.”  Or,
“She got the gold mine, I got the shaft.”

One smiles at such turn of phrases, without having to try, and it feels good.
The very thing the mind does, is what feels good. Same with a painting :
the mind has to pull the brush strokes together, necessarily, to “see” the
painting. That very act of combining disparate parts to make sense of
something, is what the mind has to do to survive, in other contexts, and
it feels good. Profoundly good, actually.

Your magic does this. The juxtaposition of expectation and utter surprise,
causes the soul to turn inward, I think, to some fundamental process that
reminds the mind of its magic, of how it likes surprise and adventure, and not to be
bored.  It’s the essence of being alive, I think. Feels good to be there, and
all other concerns are forgotten, if only for minutes.  Powerful stuff.

For whatever it’s worth. 

I felt so good about life after I saw your performance that I wanted to write these
thoughts down and send them the night I got home, but it just was too late, and
then life had its way.

But, it is never too late,

Erik