Just a Note

I got a little spam (of a nasty variety) in the comments section of the last few posts, so I am getting rid of Anonymous comments and putting up a word verification system. Sorry, I know that is annoying, but it is for all our good.

Far As the Curse is Found...

A very merry late Christmas to all two of you who read this thing. I had every intention of posting this post before Friday, but as usual all my good intentions went out the window in the bustle of pre-Christmas movement: family and food and wrapping presents and... not to mention Ryan and Tori's wedding two days before (as a side note, let me say how wonderful it is to be at a wedding just before Christmas -- it helps put me in the right frame of mind). So here it is, in all its delayed glory.

Anyone intimately acquainted with me knows that I am a fanatic for Christmas carols. It is a love inherited from my mother (and shared by my sister), a passion which directs itself in various odd directions. As a result, I have a vast knowledge of Christmas carols, both famous and obscure. Add to this my natural tendency towards arrogance, and the resulting alloy can be best described as a certain amount of carol snobbery. In general my tastes run toward the soulful and minor, and away from the maudlin and treacly. Accordingly I have developed a rather fixed rating system. My basic premise is that most carols we typically sing at Christmas are vastly overrated (that piece of festering crap known as "Away in a Manger", which is only slightly improved when sung to the vastly superior British tune), while a handful are criminally underrated ("Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence"). Of course there is a whole raft of wonderful songs which exist in a category well beyond underrated, closer probably to undiscovered. Hands down my favorite Christmas song is "Of the Father's Love Begotten", which is versatile enough to be sung at any time of the year but somehow gets neglected. Then there are the precious few which seem to be rated just right. A minor miracle of the season is that we sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel" as much as we do -- it is easily the best of the super-popular carols.

This post is not really about any of those categories or songs. It is about a new category, one I saw fit to invent myself this holiday season (granted, I suppose I invented the whole system, but bear with me). The category? The overrated/underrated Christmas carol. At this point some of you may scratch your head and wonder if this is merely some semantic game I play; those familiar with my idea of working in a recursive hospital (or my fondness for "meta" in general) know that I do love a convoluted turn of phrase on occasion.

Allow me to put your minds at ease. The overrated/underrated (henceforth known more succinctly as "o/u") category developed 100% organically (yes, it does contain carbon) as a result of my pondering over one carol in particular, "Joy to the World". It is, I argue, the quintessential o/u carol; that is to say, it is overvalued for its weaker points, whereas it strengths lay hidden.

First the overrated. Everybody knows "Joy to the World", especially the first verse. It merits distinction as one of the few carols worthy of playground distortion (who born and bred in public schools can forget "Joy to the world/the teacher's dead/ we barbecued her head"?). It is a staple of Christmas eve services and wandering carolfests everywhere. And it is a good song; solid words wedded to a catchy tune (that countertune near the end is especially fun to sing). But does it really merit its hallowed place in the carol canon? I can list off close to ten underappreciated carols (off the top of my head) that I would sing before I got to "Joy to the World". The other problem as I see it is that it is almost too catchy for its own good. It goes down so smooth and easy that we don't take the time to process what it is actually saying. Most popular Christmas carols are like lagers: we like them because they are smooth and not particularly complex. Joy then, is like an ESB. It isn't rich and thick enough to make us sip slowly (like the Stoutiness of "Let All Mortal Flesh"), so we miss the richness underneath.

And what a richness there is. Much of it lies locked in the wonderful third verse. Here lies the underratedness of the carol: a majority of carolers opt, due to time constraints or laziness, to cut one of the four verses, and it is ALWAYS the third verse that gets the axe. I think this is due to custom -- in church you always cut the verse right before the last, for whatever reason, so we do it without thinking (the one exception that riles my anger is when people cut the third of five verses from "Be Thou My Vision", but I must grind that axe in a separate post). What a shame! It is by far the best of the four verses. Here it is for your reading pleasure:

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

Doesn't this give such a full, wonderful view of the hope of Christmas? Not merely a baby in a manger; the full hope of mankind coming to us in human form. Beyond cutesy nativity scenes, beyond even the bitter cross: Christ crowned in power and glory, coming to cure the world of that terrible curse, wherever it may be.

This is water for the thirsty soul. I have been longing this year for a taste of that redemption. It has been, of all the years of my life, the most curse-afflicted (or at least the one where the curse has been most obvious). Even more than the year my mother died, it has shown me the awful grasp of the evil one on this wounded planet of ours. This year I have seen families broken; people I looked up to as fathers have fallen far and hard; friendships have drifted or dissolved; I have seen hearts broken and lives in freefall; I have felt the bitter sting of betrayal; and of course I have known my own sin heaviest of all (when I have the wisdom to see it): my failings as a new husband and as an old friend, my neglect of the Word and prayer, the hidden darkness of my heart. The curse is not just widespread, it is all-pervasive. It is why children grow up without fathers and why our oceans are polluted and why old people die alone and even why bullies lash out at recess. The evil of sin which has been passed down from father to son affects all mankind, but it also radiates outward so that "all creation cries out as in the pangs of childbirth".

Enter hope. Christ comes not simply to warm our hearts but to kill the weeds and thorns which infest the ground. In the garden Adam was charged with tilling the soil, but after the fall it was promised that the toil would be hard and the fruit scant. That is what we feel in our lives: we strive and strive and have little to show for our efforts. That is why we cry out in groans like the very earth. And he comes, has come, will come again. The blessings will flow.

Already we have glimpses. I said earlier that this has been the hardest year of my life. But it has also been the richest, most fulfilling. I married a beautiful, wonderful woman. I got a real job which has proved rewarding. I have known the joys of friendship kindled. The blessings have not just trickled, they have flowed. Yet I am left longing for that last fulfillment of the promise. Far as the curse is found. Amen. Come Lord Jesus, come.

Merry Christmas with love to all who read.

Oh the cat's in the stable and the silver moon...

Well here we are again. Sometimes it feels like I have an "Affair to Remember" relationship with this blog. The passionate flurries of sweet embrace punctuated by long months of silence. So far I'm ahead of Jimmy Stewart and co., though -- it's only been half a year since I last wrote. The strange thing is, before abandoning this haunt due to a confluence of many wild events (primary among them marriage and a new job), I had several posts half-written. Appropriate, I think. In my mind I often equate the act of writing with that of taking a large and particularly painful dump. The struggle, the sweat, the pinpricked dilation as you push the transformed lump from your body. Sorry, I got a little carried away, but I stand by the metaphor. If this be the case, then "writer's block" takes on a new and glorious meaning. For some time I could feel the backup developing: I would writhe and clench to expel the thoughts from my body, but could not force the final push.

Consider this, then, the enema. We found a cat (or did it find us?). He lay there in the road; I swerved. Les, for whom compassion comes more easily, demanded I go back. As we approached the cat finally started to move, limping badly to the other side of the street. We followed, and the panicked frenzy of the next few moments (due in part, I must admit, to a certain hesitancy from me) found us with cat inside car, held delicately by Les. He spent the night, and has not left in the few weeks since. In truth, he is not an unwelcome houseguest but an adopted son. Les adores him, and he her, but even daddy has relented and had his heart softened by the good will of our Meshulam ("befriended" or "paid for" in Hebrew). We had a brief, heartbreaking encounter when the vet advised putting him to sleep (due to some blockage, appropriately enough), but he saved himself through that most primal of means: pissing all over the floor.

Les has been an inspiration to me in all of this. I have found myself profoundly affected by the plight of our beloved kitty and by my dear wife's response. As hinted at before, my inclination was to continue on our way that Sunday night, mourning a little for the dying cat but then moving on. In the end, he would have been just one more pitiable creature felled by the cruelness of the world. I have realized lately that the cynic in me looks on the world with despair. I am quite good (nearly expert, I'd say) in seeing the reality of a cursed and broken world. What I cannot see, most of the time, is the kernel of the gospel falling into the cold, hard earth. Why bother taking the time to have compassion on something so far gone?

This is why my wife is so good for me. She forces me to stop, to consider the power hidden in the small acts of love. Rescuing Meshulam from the street was of course a small thing -- miniscule, even. But every cup of water given is a victory of light against darkness. By these faltering steps we advance the kingdom.

Everyone knows the silly little illustration of the girl on the beach. Surrounded by starfish washed up by the tide, she walks along, throwing them back one by one. When asked how she could possibly be making a difference, she throws another back into the ocean and declares, "There. I made a difference to that one." Cheesy, of course; but more to the point, it falls far short of the mark. It is, in essence, a humanistic parable about the futility of the world. It says "There may not actually be meaning in helping others, but we create our own meaning by struggling against the futility." This is not what the gospel says -- not in its glorious entirety, at least. The gospel dares us to hope even bigger than this. Rescuing Meshulam from death did not merely help him; after all, he will die at some point down the line. Rather the full significance lies in the fact that, for a brief moment, the light shone in the darkness. Christ cares for all creation, and it is His will that we show compassion on animals no less than humans.

This whole episode feels tailor-made for Advent. The smallest, least significant act contains the greatest mystery of all: Christ born in a stable. The flickering light shining out into the swallowing dark, overwhelming it with its brightness. And, of course, the animals gathered around, giving voice to the creation's birthpains.

This is my post about minimalism. This is my post about. This is my post. This is my. This is. This.

Simplicity is something with which I struggle. Case in point: my first instinct for the previous sentence was to write "Keeping things simple", a more complicated verbiage than what I actually wrote. My writing could be described as many things (pompous and verbose come to mind), but "simple" is an adjective that does not leap to mind. I tend to strive ever upwards, stacking brick on brick in my Babel-tower of thought.

Maybe that is why I have a thing for minimalism in its many forms; we often love what we lack, and I wish I had the ability to write in sparse sword-strokes, piercing to the heart of bare meaning. Minimalism is wonderfully comforting. It is the beauty of the Spartans at Thermopylae's pass, and the warm words "I love you" spoken on a winter night. I have been thinking lately about it -- probably inspired by Leslie lending me Sufjan Steven's Seven Swans, a very minimal album which I have been listening to in a minimalist way, on incessant repeat -- and my thoughts have been straying in two distinct directions. I feel that there are at least two distinct types of minimalism; certainly there are two present in the Bible, and they seem to describe two types in art as well. One is the minimalism of despair, the other the minimalism of hope. Both are helpful, wonderful, and beautiful.

Part One: You Cannot Serve Both God and Mamet

"All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after." -- Ecclesiastes 1:8-11

The first function of minimalism is to serve as a sort of memento mori, a totem by which we recall the futility of our labor. "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold" says Yeats. We batten down the hatches of our lives, prepare to weather all storms, vow we will bend but never break, but in the end we wear down to the ground. Of course men are never quick to accept defeat; art is in some sense a longing to escape the grave. But nothing is more pathetic than a man who tries to circumvent death through the work of his hands. He is like Ozymandias screaming through the centuries on his trunkless legs: "Look on my wonders ye Mighty." And we do despair, but not at the cold greatness of the man. Rather we despair that good can come from any man. If even the greatest among us fall and ground down by the sand, what chance does man have? The victory of history is shallow indeed.

This type of minimalism strikes me as very present in David Mamet's great play/film Glengarry Glen Ross. Mamet is famous, justifiably, for his take on dialogue. Meaty, masculine, brutal, his words smash the reader between the eyes. The play features a cast of desperate real estate men, pushed to the limit by the demands of their company. They must sell real estate or be fired, yet the prime leads are given only to the man who has consistently been the top seller. The other leads are broken down, no good: crazies and deadbeats. They have been canvassed to death. The salesmen despair, but they continue to try because they have no choice. They call up the same targets, spout the same weary lies, go through the same tired out motions. In particular Shelley Levene, the most veteran salesman, seems a man doomed to run in circles to the grave (Mamet brings this point into sharp focus by the end of the play). His daughter is sick and he needs the money, but he has lost the touch: he could not sell thermal underwear to an Eskimo, much less an icebox. He has no real hope, but he clutches at the straws of his repetition. In this way Mamet's dialogue is a masterstroke of minimalism: key phrases crop up throughout the play, but beyond this his characters speak in circles. They speak their minds piece by piece, as if they needed to gain the confidence to say everything. Their speech is much like the starting of a push lawnmower, a gradual sputtering built to a roar. But of course the roar is full of sound and fury.

In a sense Glengarry runs parallel to the book of Ecclesiastes. Vanity of vanities, all a vanity. Such are the lives of Mamet's men. They toil with the sweat of their brow, but do not know who will reap the reward of their labor. Even Ricky Roma, the slick salesman with the magic touch, sees his conquest vanish in the smoke of futility, set alight by his lies. Things fall apart: sales, minds, lives. The futile circuity of life shows us nothing new, only the vain strivings of men too foolish to realize how utterly consigned they are to failure.

Part Two: Through a Glass Darkly

Yet there is another side to minimalism. Simplicity and repetition are the guttural cries of Qoheleth, the trunkless legs of stone, but they are also, paradoxically, a reminder that all things are made new. This may not seem obvious on first glance, but it makes sense. Only when we strip ourselves of the grand illusion of human progress do we see the real building of history. It is like Babel in that it raises us to the heavens, but at the same time the Anti-Babel, not a tower grasping up but the ladder thrown down from heaven. It is the same old story, yet new every morning.

This is why the Psalms constantly call us back to remembrance. The exodus is not merely a remarkable event that happened long ago: it is the pattern of life. When we remember the cloud and pillar, we see the grace God gives day by day. So to the cross, that final exodus. As Christians we must constantly remember back to that discrete point in history; not because (as some have said) we are anti-progressive, but because we know the startling truth that all progress flows like the water from His side.

"History repeats itself". A cliche, very well. Even a true cliche. But I think we miss the full significance of the statement. We say it when mankind makes mistakes: "Oh there goes history repeating itself again". It is the soundtrack of the blooper real of human existence. We see the first purpose of life's minimalism, but not usually the second. History repeats itself every day: the sun comes up as surely as it sets. Babies are born no less than old men die. Grace upon grace flows to us.

Yeats apparently thought of history as an ever widening spiral: repetition intertwined with progress. This is false in one sense, in the sense Yeats intended. Where he saw some frightening new creature slouching to Bethlehem, we know that no birth can ever happen in that small town again. But in another sense he is on to something, for the circular nature of life does not preclude a building up of things. We do not merely spin in place, nor is the swirling descent to the ground an inevitability. Life in the Kingdom is a relentless moving forward; it merely refuses to move in a straight line. Rather than moving from point A to point B, the story of redemption is the curve of a story, the constant move toward the center from which all things flow.

Think of the miraculous music of Phillip Glass. Many Glass works start with just a pulse, an insistent rhythm which will not be held at bay. Simplicity itself, but strangely affecting. Little by little the piece grows. New instruments add their voice but always circle back around to that main theme, the lifeblood of the piece. People who find minimalism boring simply do not listen hard enough; they are novelty seekers. There in the barebones, the pulse, lies the essence of music, that to which all should return. Not that there is no development: on the contrary, the pieces often build up to dizzying heights. But all growth is focused on that center. In a sense, most great music is a type of minimalism, for you cannot have development and exposition without a theme. No matter the wandering, music returns home.

This, then, is the ultimate sad fact of the myth of progress: it is not merely foolish but empty as well. Man labors all his days to build a bark hut, while the city of God descends unnoticed to earth. Only grace can change the downward spiral of repeated actions into a Jacob's ladder of endless praise.

Poetry: Cosmology or Zoology?

"For several decades now, world literature, music, painting and sculpture have exhibited a stubborn tendency to grow not higher but to the side, not toward the highest achievements of craftsmanship and of the human spirit but toward their disintegration into a frantic and insidious 'novelty.'" -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

This quote comes from a wonderful essay by Solzhenitsyn which you can find here. Though I do not agree point for point with the great Russian (may he rest in peace), his essay is at least a brother to this post.

I would like to talk about poetry, but not in dry words which suck the marrow from its very bones. I want to talk mythically -- poetically -- about something very dear to my heart. Forgive me if this gets a little strange -- I will try to bring it all around in the end.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth". This, the spoken logos which formed the universe (the singing, as Lewis so beautifully imagines in The Magician's Nephew). The word made word: something from nothing, yet in another sense something from everything. Creation ex nihilo in one sense, but in another not, for the creation sprang from the very wisdom of the LORD.

The modern world has, of course, sloughed the LORD off to the side but in a very real sense has kept the idea of ex nihilo creation intact. Like most ideas traditionally kept in the realm of religion, ex nihilo creation has been shuttled to the realm of the aesthetic. Man, in his infinite arrogance, has put himself in the place of God. There is certainly a very mystical side to all this (e.g. man's desire for transcendence "satisfied" through aesthetic means) but I want to focus tonight on the practical.

Let us narrow our focus from the cosmos to a single act of artistic creation. Narrower, narrower: we observe the poet about to write a poem. Now, what happens during those moments of thought and scribbling and editing? I submit that the prevailing conception of this act bears some resemblance to the ex nihilo. This assessment must of course be tempered. No one thinks that the poet shoots up into the Platonic stratosphere, grabs the forms he requires, and makes a flawless reentry right onto the page. Words exist already, and certainly even influences such as personal history are acknowledged as informing the artist, but in the end ex nihilo prevails. The very word 'creates' implies this making something from nothing. We do not speak of those who fashion poems (poetry and music make good examples here, better than the visual arts; one can readily imagine describing a sculptor as a 'fashioner' of artistic goods). Rather the poet would seem to make little universes each time he takes up his pen.

In the course of writing my senior thesis, I read quite a lot about the genesis and shape of the genius paradigm (the dominant artistic from the Enlightenment to today). Tied inextricably from the paradigm is the notion of the genius as just such a demi-god, forging world upon world in the bellows of his imagination. For our purposes it hardly matters whether this gift is egalitarian (it would seem to start out far from there, but of course the slide into post-modernism and "warm fuzzy" aesthetics has levelled the field a bit); the remarkable break with previous thought comes in thinking that it can be done at all.

This has been destructive to aesthetics in uncountable ways, but tonight my focus is on this "relentless cult of novelty" which Solzhenitsyn feels his way toward. If artistic creation may be equated with the ex nihilo, then what counts in aesthetics is the pressing on, the continued search to find new worlds to speak into existence. It is not sufficient that art be beautiful or good; it must first and foremost be new. We see this all over, in the very words critics use: bold (new), tired (in the pattern of something gone before).

But we have strayed. Let us once more trade the telescope for the microscope. One area which hits close to home for me is the poetic aesthetic. I must tread the proverbial eggshell here and make sure I am not misunderstood. Over time, poetry has shifted off the tracks, so to speak. Poetic forms long honored have been chucked out the window in favor of an "anything goes" aesthetic. The traditional concerns of poetry have been abandoned to make room for the obsession with personal expression. Let me make very clear that I am not making a wholesale attack on newer categories such as postmodern poetry or free verse. There is much that is good in these things, but I am saying that the general mindset of this aesthetic is fundamentally unsound. The quest for originality has led to a confusion over what poetry is really meant to be. Ideas such as rhythm and cadence (or rhyme and reason for that matter) give way to writing down whatever comes to mind, a sort of a vomit all over the page.

This is where all presumed ex nihilo creation leads. In my thesis (shameless self promotion: ask me if you want to read it!), I describe the genius paradigm as fundamentally self-destructive. There I am mostly concerned with the way that it has undermined itself by exhausting the wells of originality (leading to the ennui driven doodlings of postmodernism). Here I want to put it another way: how the drive for ex nihilo in fact leads to an increase in chaos. The poet sets out to create a world for himself, but instead ends up with a swirling eddy, a sounding fury.

Take, for example, the poetic "style" of flarf. What value -- save comedic, perhaps -- does the random jumbling of search terms hold? True, flarfsters are doing it (mostly) ironically, but this only goes to show how far poetry has fallen (a point I raise in my thesis is that postmodernism represents the downward slope of the genius paradigm, the slow viscious rebellion against a thought system which nevertheless presents indisputable guiding principles). The pursuit of novelty has led to this: mindless, artless scribbles on a page.

Let us turn the page, quite literally, from the first chapter of Genesis to the second. Here we see man in his natural habitat, so to speak. Man in the garden, charged with a special task in the creation process. Not the ex nihilo of the creation; the much humbler task of naming the animals. Man was not tasked by God to perform divine functions; he has not the power to make things that never were be. Rather he was allowed to participate in the divine song by giving order to those things which were already created. The ordering which began when God separated the light from the darkness continued as Adam lumped rhinoceri with rhinoceri, but well away from the lions.

You do not have to believe a word of the Bible to see the very profound insight given in this assigment. It has direct bearing on this artistic conundrum of the cult of novelty. We must in fact shift our paradigm away from a belief in the ex nihilo power of the artist and toward a belief that the proper function of art is to bring order and reason and harmony, both to our own thoughts and to the world around us. The genius paradigm has already proven itself to be rotten at core; we must set our feet on firmer ground.

The poet does not create from nothing. Instead he bestows order on the world around him, the thoughts which flit through his mind, the dog which waddles down the street. He grabs from this place, steals that word, mixes them together like a potioneer. In that sense he does forge; he smelts his various parts into a glittering ore. Freed from the ridiculous desire to create something original, he can concentrate on making something good and beautiful.

What would such a thing look like, practically speaking? It would mean a reverence in art for clear form, balance, order. In poetry, it would mean an embracing of form and especially rhythm. It would not be the endless rote sculpture of the Egyptians, cranking out sonnet after sonnet as easily as making sausage. Certainly the breaking of form can be as artistically significant and beautiful as the strict adherence to it. I fully recognize the good in straying from forms set down, but when those forms are abandoned completely, only chaos remains.

I close with this: what a wonderfully freeing thing constraint is! We are so afraid that boundaries commit us to staid art that we miss the plain truth, that there is immeasurable freedom in pursuing things within their limits. The beauty of Chris Paul breaking ankles on a drive to the hoop is in no way diminished by the fact that he can never score a touchdown; rather, such blurring of lines would be a diminishment. So too with art: when man steps over the line of restraint, grabs greedily at the ex nihilo, he winds up with nothing indeed. But if he will stoop, be content with the naming given to him, who knows what wondrous hippopotami will emerge?

Filler

To tread water until I can find the time to make an actual post (it's coming by the end of the week -- I promise!), I thought I would write some reflections on this past weekend, when I saw Paul Simon perform at the Bob Costas Benefit Concert. It was worth it all: the six hours to St. Louis, the suffering through a not-so-good-but-not-bad-enough-to-mock comedian, the late hour. Totally worth it.

I think one reason was that the concert was the opposite of everything I fear about typical pop concerts (and the reasons I avoid them). It was not ear shattering, but a nice volume that let you hear and understand the lyrics (so important to Simon's work). It was in a theater, and thus maintained a very relaxed, somewhat formal feel. Probably it helped that much of the audience was "of an advancing age"; that made me dig it all the more. I don't go for mosh pits and the like, and the restrained interest of the audience was a plus to me. Also, it made the end incredible; as Simon and his band closed with "You Can Call Me Al" (not counting the encore, a haunting solo rendition of "The Sound of Silence"), it was as if all the pent up excitement of the evening exploded. People danced in the aisles and shouted the chorus back to Paul. It was not cheap; he truly earned the response.

One thing I found gratifying was Paul's stage presence. Some performers have to be in the spotlight; it is what keeps them going, what they live for. But he seemed almost shy; content at many points to let his band take over. It probably helps that his talents lie more as songwriter and singer than guitarist (most of the heavy lifting lick-wise was done by his backups), and that he has had so long to get used to the fact. He knows how to let the music speak for itself. I think this probably contributes to his reputation as an everyman (side note: I have been wanting for some time to write a post comparing Simon to Randy Newman, driven by the idea that Newman is an everyman who seems like an intellectual, while Simon is the opposite). He comes across as so humble that you could easily believe he would love to grab a beer with you after the show.

His band, by the way, was very very good. I liked the way he adapted his more intricate songs to a smaller group, and the expansive noodling done on some of the songs. My favorite was probably "Graceland", which featured an awesome intro which lent it more of a country western feel than the studio version. But yes, his band can really play, from the accordionist to the slide whistlist. The percussionists probably shone the brightest.

My one complaint regards the set list. He played 5 songs from Graceland, which is by no means a bad thing, but it came at a cost: no songs from either There Goes Rhymin' Simon or Hearts and Bones, my two favorites after Graceland (and on the right day Rhymin' Simon ties it). Also nothing from Rhythm of the Saints, another great and bold album. On the plus side, no songs from his vanity project The Capeman were included.

Okay, enough of my semi-coherent ramblings. In short the concert was amazing, an experience I will remember for quite some time. And, if he does an actual tour anytime soon, I would gladly make a long trip to see him, that time hopefully without the surrounding rigmarole.

Easter

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit."

What do you do with Easter Saturday? It's such a strange day, much harder to deal with than Christmas Eve, which is all anticipation and warmth and candleglow in the windows. Easter Saturday: Christ in the grave. The pain of his passion behind us, but the glorious hope of the Resurrection still to come.

I was thinking about Kierkegaard this morning, oddly enough -- about the knight of resignation and the knight of faith. It is a strange topic for Easter morning, that most important of days, full of joy. But, then, a lot of things in life mimic the pattern of our saviour, and we must often taste death before we regain hope. I tasted this morning, and it was bitter in my mouth. I was disappointed in life (but no, not merely disappointed; deeply saddened by it). The comforting shell of resignation, the warm blanket of stoicism I wrap my heart in -- I could feel it creeping in again. But then I stopped and thought about Kierkegaard. I thought how so many people can give something up, a life or a dream, but how the difficult part is believing it will be given back to you. Abraham brought Isaac up the mountain, yet he did not doubt the promise given him. And so I made the choice of a fool: I chose to believe that what had died would resurrect, that my hope was not in vain.

And so our lives are a mimesis of that one life that mattered most. "The Son of Man must be lifted up", John tells us; lifted up only to fall to the ground, to be planted in the Arimithean tomb. Our lives have such tombs, those spaces which are dark and empty and cobwebbed. We fear them, perhaps rightly. We fear the falling to the ground.

This is why Easter Saturday is such a bother. The overwhelming pain of Good Friday is in some ways easier to handle than the blank drip drip drip, the waiting in the tomb. There is somewhat of a debate about what Christ's spirit was doing on that day; I'm content to leave it a mystery, but I can see the appeal in having the question answered. Do you know the feeling of having cried so long that you have no strength for tears? Hope has not yet come back, your resolve is not strengthened. You lie on your bed, exhausted. This is Easter Saturday, that terrible inbetween.

I don't think we always leap directly from resignation to faith. The death of a dream must lie in the fallow field awhile, sometimes, before it springs up into life. For me the wait was short this morning -- a few minutes -- but then again a few moments in time can be an epoch. You have no reckoning of day or night when you're in a tomb.

But if it dies, it bears much fruit. This is the promise of Easter morning. How small are our dreams when we dream them ourselves, when we grasp them tightly, terrified to let them slip away. How alone we are then. Even when we dream the right dream, have the right cause, are in the know, when we grasp what we are in fact doing is choking the life out of that which we hold. Yet when we let go -- when the single kernel spirals to the ground -- then we are free. It is the cry of Christ as he breathes his last: Into your hand I commit my spirit. And though we do not always see clearly, rebirth lies in the very seed which falls. We should not be surprised when our shattered dreams bear much fruit. He who raised Christ from the tomb, who restored Isaac to his father, is the same God who hears our prayers, who has conquered death utterly. The tomb does not have the final word. It is only a fallow field, waiting for the seed brave enough to plunge beneath its soil.

John in Real Life

[Ed. Note: Funny how writing works. I had a long post in the works for tonight on another topic entirely, but found myself hitting a wall partway through. So I dug up this one which I started awhile ago. Hope the pinch writing works alright.]

Sometimes inspiration just strikes. As I showered yesterday, I was hit out of the blue by a realization about my movie preferences. For some reason John Cassavetes came into my mind; I thought about his monumental film A Woman Under the Influence; about why, great as the film is, I have held it at a distance and refused to really embrace it. Cassavetes worked primarily as a filmmaker of ultra realism, striving in all things to be faithful to "real life".

The film certainly can be painfully true to life (and consequently very hard to watch), but even at its finest it fails to capture a certain something about the experience. Why should I fail to connect to it when I love documentaries so much? I suppose the fact that the events in documentaries actually happened could contribute to this preference. Then again, my interests range far beyond mere history to the truth about the human condition, so why should I be constrained by matters of fact?

No, the reason that documentaries work for me in a way that ultra realistic films do not is quite simply this: good documentaries always capture the unexpected moments of life. I am thinking of that magical, heartbreaking scene in Hoop Dreams when the father of one of the boys challenges him to a game of one on one, and all the bitterness of their relationship plays out on the blacktop. Or the lynchpin of Gates of Heaven, when Errol Morris interrupts the story of pet cemetaries to let an old woman ramble on for several minutes about her grandson. It can be as simple as the moment in 14 Up when the cameraman pans away from Suzy's face to record a dog chasing a rabbit, or as significant as a killer admitting onscreen to his crime. These are the wild and wooly moments of our lives that really ring true, the unexpected swerves and nosedives that make life worth living.

It is precisely these moments that fictional films can never -- by definition -- capture. In fiction there is always some conceit driving the film, always some direction. Even if all the dialogue is improvised, the general plot moves forward and the actors must still play roles; they are not truly themselves. Because of the constraints of the medium, you simply cannot capture the sly, strange moments of life.

This is not so much a problem in general fiction films, whether they be genre pieces or straight dramedies. It is when the director swoops in close to real life that the problems begin. When you collapse the space between screen and viewer, dangerous things happen. I suppose this is why part of me still prefers hand drawn animation to "realistic" CGI (or medieval painting to Renaissance). When you ape life too closely but lack an essential ingredient, the result is offputting and is more disturbing than something clearly not real. Think about cyborgs: no matter how much they may resemble humans on the surface, dig deeper and you find essential differences; the fact that they come so close yet fall so short makes them unnatural and creepy in a way that, say, forest animals could never be.

Like Pancakes from an Aerosol Can

It seems as if I start off every post with an apology for not writing more often. My intention really is to write at least three times a week, but that falls by the wayside with regularity. I am finding it difficult to balance the things in my life: work alongside relationships and the other sundry things I must do. Life gets even more complex during those weeks when I have a symphony concert (such as last week). I barely have time to breathe, much less write.

The hectic nature of my life right now gives me pause to stop and think about why we rush around so much. Why are we angry that speed limits exist; why is punctuality a most treasured virtue?

Last week I heard on the radio probably the worst performance of Rhapsody in Blue I have ever had the displeasure of experiencing. No, the notes were not wrong and the tone was perfectly acceptable, but the piece was ruined for the simple reason that the performer took it much, much too fast. He rushed through every little cadence, goading the orchestra on with him. The piece lost the wonderful, relaxed feel of improvisation which lends it so much of its charm. I wanted to shake the pianist by his shoulders and say "SLOW DOWN! Everyone knows you can play the notes. Take time to enjoy yourself!"

Two confessions from my past. The first relates to the above paragraph. After I learned the Gigue from the 3rd Bach Suite, one of my favorite things to do was to challenge other cellists to race me by seeing who could play this tricky movement the fastest. I can only pray that Bach finds it in his heart to forgive me the travesty I inflicted on him. The Suites are first and foremost dances, and the joyful rhythm gets lost at high speeds.

Confession number two: as a child I hated the slow movements of pieces (especially concertos) and would always skip them when given the choice. My sister and I would battle about this, and I would always give the explanation that I found the slow movements boring. Truly, when I was a child I thought like a child and spake like one.

Thankfully my tastes have matured a little. Now I find few things as pleasurable to listen to as a beautiful slow movement. Whether it be the delicate unfolding of the second movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto, or the hearrending slow build of the third from Shostakovich's 5th Symphony, I find that slow movements give me the breathing room I need to fully digest what is happening.

Life is like this, of course. We buzz from flower to flower, our eyes set to narrow focus, looking only at the task in front of us. Brute efficiency rules the day. We cannot stand the dead moments of life; we require constant stimulation to shield us from inactivity. In this way slowness relates to silence. We hate them both because they push us toward reflection. Our whole lives are an effort to crowd out the things which make us stop. Video on demand. E-mail. Instant messaging. Instead of all things in their own season, harvest time goes year round (this is true in a literal sense of the foods we eat. No longer do we have to wait for the spring to eat fruit -- it is always at our fingertips).

We call it convenience, praise it for making life "easier". What we really mean is that it makes life faster. We think that, the more we cram into our pitiful existence, the happier we will be. We just need that one extra experience, that one film or album or whatever: then life will satisfy.

Who fully understands what is lost in this Faustian bargain? Certainly we harden our hearts, dull ourselves to the little moments, the slow build of truly beautiful things. If we cannot acquire something instantly, we gripe and complain -- even question the point of having such an inconsiderate thing.

I think this way about grace. One of the unforunate side effects of the modern view of conversion is that it defines the experience as a one time, chosen event. It misses the thousand-thousand little moments of grace built up over time in our hearts as God calls and nudges. The song of spring's first robin. Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. The smile of a stranger and the arms of a friend. The brokenness of losing someone you love, or having a friendship fall apart. The ineffable experience of real forgiveness. All these are minor miracles, cataclysms that shift the tide of our lives like twigs in a flooding riverbed.

Prayer is a bit like walking up to an ATM, at least in my mind. I swipe my card, press the PIN, specify the amount, and voila! Cash, ex nihilo. When I pray for my friends or even for myself, my general expecation is that I will begin to see results almost immediately. The problem with this expectation is not that God is slow to answer, but that my eyes have been dulled and reined in to the point that I cannot see that slow build up of grace that is metered out to me daily. I want things to be the way I want them as soon as I want them. Just add water.

Next time you are in a rush to accomplish some oh so important task, take the time to slow down and think of all the things you might miss. Turn off the t.v. for one night. Put down even your book of the moment. Just sit and think on the delicate slow build of grace that has led you to where you are.

Look Underneath the Floorboards...

"Then the disciples came and said to him, “Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says:

“‘You will indeed hear but never understand,
and you will indeed see but never perceive.
For this people's heart has grown dull,
and with their ears they can barely hear,
and their eyes they have closed,
lest they should see with their eyes
and hear with their ears
and understand with their heart
and turn, and I would heal them.’

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it." -- Matthew 13: 10-17

Believe it or not from the opening quote, this is actually a semi-sequel to my last post. It was rather late when I wrote it, so I published it unfinished just to get it out there. Because of the advanced hour, I think I failed to adequately communicate one of my main points about Paul Simon and Sufjan Stevens, which is their propensity for, to use the Kierkegaardian term, "indirect communication".

Let me step back a moment. One of Kierkegaard's obsessions is how one communicates about faith; he believes it to be impossible to do so directly. In the speaking of words about faith, something essential to the faith is lost. Therefore one must communicate indirectly through means such as irony and paradox. Though frustrating, these means help others by forcing them to appropriate faith for themselves.

Now, one does not have to wholeheartedly agree with Kierkegaard in order to recognize the value of indirect communication. Jesus used it often; without having done a tally, I would venture to say that a majority of what he says in the Gospels is indirect, whether through parables of merely intentionally veiled sayings. I remember Dr. McMahon, in his lecture on the Prodigal Son, mentioning that one of the purposes of the parables was to act as a catalyst for inward reflection -- to see oneself inside the parable.

We Americans have a distaste for irony and paradox. Our pragmatism pushes forward -- if words don't solve a problem, what's the point in wasting your breath? That is perhaps one reason we cling to science and technology, which give us a place to hang our hat; they promise straightforward answers which require little reflection (whether that twin headed beast actually delivers on that promise is more of an open question than some might imagine -- but that is a post for another day). Put another way, we love answers but despise questions.

So what does all of this have to do with Simon and Stevens, ostensibly the foci of this post? Well, part of what I tried to communicate last post (perhaps so indirectly as to be a bit too obscure) was that they were both masters of communicating about the lives of people not through lists or chronology, but through abstract word pictures, metaphors which succinctly capture what a human life is like.

Tonight I wish to expand on that a bit, because there is a double layer of indirect communication which often takes place in these songs (oh wouldn't Soren be proud!). At the same time as they use abstract pictures to convey the lives of people, Simon and Stevens also use those lives as illustrations of abstract concepts -- what a reflection! Let me give examples...

Paul Simon's song "Train in the Distance" has always been a favorite of mine off of his criminally underrated album Hearts and Bones (his lowest selling album, but in the top three of my favorites). On the surface it is a simple narrative: boy meets (married) girl, they fall in love and have a son, they start fighting and drift apart. It is filled with wonderful images (e.g. "She was beautiful as Southern skies the night he met her") which describe the process of two people falling in and out of love. But in reality the song is about more than just telling a story. It is about the restless longing which drives people ever onward, and sometimes drives them apart from what would really satisfy. This is best shown through the line which appears from verse to verse: "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance; everybody thinks it's true". What a beautiful, mysterious phrase. The train sounds its whistle, sweet and appealing from far away. Certainly it must continue to bear down on us, rooted inevitably to its track. Yet we ourselves are moving it along its terrible course; we fulfill our own predictions through the chug-chugging of our desires.

Sufjan Stevens is perhaps best known for his announced intention to write an album for each of the 50 states. Some see this as a tiresome gimmick, but what they fail to realize is that Stevens is gifted enough to make the idea work. What he is ultimately interested in is not cataloging the idiosyncracies of each member of the union (and thank goodness; I can only imagine the thrilling masterpiece that would be "North Dakota"), but using whatever concepts he chooses as platforms for his musings. Most of the tracks on his album Illinois work both as a description of things unique to Illinois and as meditation on some theme, often spiritual.

"John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is a startling track, unlike any other of which I can think. Relatively stripped down for a Stevens song, it is a tender acoustic number about everyone's favorite touchy-feely subject, a man who raped and killed teenage boys. What is so unnerving about the song is the tenderness which Stevens affords to Gacy. He details John Wayne's childhood traumas and treats his subject with remarkable sympathy. In the end his intention becomes clear: the song is a meditation on the hidden depths of sin in people's lives. Just like John Wayne hid the bodies underneath his floorboards, and hid behind a clown's facepaint, so Sufjan hides every day from those around him. The secret evils of the heart are buried deep, and we would rather no one stumble across them.

Two songs about an uncomfortable subject, the hidden destructiveness of sin. In Simon's song, the heart is a locomotive, charging ever forward to its wayward goals. For Stevens, the heart is a serial killer which hides its victims in shame. Hard words to hear, but that is the critical point. For indirect communication will always drive some away with its hard words -- indeed, that is the point! But without the offense there cannot be true faith, true greatness. The buffoon of much of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments is the bumbling Assistant Professor, who is ripe with self confidence but low on actual greatness. He pontificates but never really creates; he is to be pitied above all others. This is essentially because he believes things can be known and communicated directly, out in the open; that things are easy to understand. This man, when he bumps up against the paradox of indirect communication, has no idea what to do. Jesus described himself as both the cornerstone but also the rock of offense, the stone of stumbling! Either you will balk at the paradox or embrace it.

One final point: I think that indirect communication is one hallmark of great poetry. It is not enough to simply record events; the role of the poet is to translate them into imaginative language. This is why Simon and Stevens are among the most poetic of songwriters; they transcend the song form and acheive real poetic value. Anyone can speak directly about life, but it takes a poet to tell you in veiled ways.

Ghosts and Empty Sockets

Little revelations are wonderful. I feel as if lately I have had several striking insights into my tastes and preferences. There's a post in the works about my preference for documentaries over realistic fictional films (the reason for this came to me like a flash while I was showering one morning), but I thought I'd take a detour tonight to write about another startlingly abrupt realization.

Those of you who know me well are aware of my deep passion for the songs of Paul Simon. He is a giant of American pop music, at once capturing the hopes and fears of the moment (decade after decade) and also pushing his listeners forward into unexplored territories. Well, another favorite artist of mine, one more of my own generation, is Sufjan Stevens. I think some people find Stevens a bit off-putting, potentially for several reasons. His music is bizarre: minimalist but with lush orchestration, with lots of jangles and oddities and a shifting meter. His lyrics are strange and often obtuse.

Thinking about this brought about the aforementioned insight. Their is a lyrical connection between Paul Simon and Sufjan Stevens, a talent they share that few others possess, and something which draws me back to them both time and again. I realized that Simon and Stevens have a unique knack for narrative songs (with a little twist to be discussed later). Most songs you think of deal with a theme, an idea such as love or loneliness. They dwell on this subject for all of their three minutes. There is a good reason for this: how would you give the plot of a novel in song form and still get radio play? The format of pop music forbids drawn out narrative. The magic of Simon and Stevens, then, is that they both excel at providing what I will call "snapshot narrative". That is, they manage to tell a story in their songs -- often giving a life's worth of backstory -- but they do it in ultra-condensed word pictures.

For the purposes of comparison, I will pick a favorite song of mine from each of the artists. Simon's title track from his seminal album Graceland comes very close to perfection. The singer talks about a trip he is taking to Graceland in Memphis with his son. Packed into this is his sadness over the failure of his marriage. But Simon does not give us a run down of everything that went wrong, or the reasons his wife left, or even a detailed description of all the pain he felt. Instead, he gives us an infinite nothing: "She comes back to tell me she's gone; as if I'd never noticed, as if I didn't know my own bed. As if I'd never noticed, the way she brushed her hair from her forehead." Years of arguments and heartbreak are jammed into that little line, one of the most powerful I know.

There is so much going on in Steven's "Casimir Pulaski Day" that it can be hard to keep it straight. Stevens sings as a boy who loses his dear friend (and potential love interest) to cancer. Like Simon, Stevens can succinctly capture the complexity of relationships in a few words. "Goldenrod and the 4-H stone: the things I brought you when I found out you had cancer of the bone." The key to this writing is mystery: we do not know exactly what significance those gifts had, but the image opens up a window on the tenderness between the two.

Part of the job of the poet is to take experiences and translate them into imagery. It is not enough to describe; the creative genius of the poet lies in reimagining events in a new light, with new language. By this measure, Simon and Stevens are masters of the form; they are the rare singer/songwriters who are accomplished poets. They are not content to catalogue events; they translate happenings and emotions into beautiful pictures.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Today Leslie and I had two of the last cups of Ethiopia Sidamo Koratie that Doubleshot will brew for a very long time (possibly ever). What a way to go out. It was the most perfect cup I have had in quite some time. Before he poured it, Garth described it as "buttery", and I could see what he meant. The mouthfeel was delicious, so chewy and viscous. The usual Sidamo richness was there, but this time I would swear that it tasted like Earl Grey. How could it get any better than my two favorite hot beverages melded together?

I always get sad when Doubleshot stops roasting a particularly good bean. When they stopped the Tanzania Ruvuma (still the best coffee I have ever had), it was a terrible day. Or the Sidamo MAO Horse, which tasted exactly like blueberries. I change very slowly, and take great comfort in familiar things. Because of this, losing a coffee is a bit like saying goodbye to a dear friend.

One of my favorite ideas in Lewis' Space Trilogy comes in Perelandra, when it comes out that, on Venus where no fall has happened, no creature wants anything out of season. That is to say, no one wishes for more of something when it is gone, or wants something outside of its limitations. What a beautiful image of what our lives should be. Accepting things as they come to us; enjoying them while they last, and letting them go when their time is over.

Friendship is like that. We so desperately want our friendships with people to stay exactly as they have always been; we tremble at the thought of undergoing any alteration. Yet change comes to us all; bodies move, or worse, souls drift apart. Though it is right to mourn the loss of these things, it is sin to keep longing after them when gone. What is more, it is only blindness which gives us these thoughts. We grasp to what has come before, not knowing that what comes next will be just as glorious, in its own way.

It is the terrible tension of our fallen state to want things we cannot have. We are torn apart from those we love without the capacity to deal with the separation. The state which would give us freedom to accept this comes only in glory. People often imagine heaven as one continuous togetherness with loved ones. This strikes me as a misunderstanding. In actuality "heaven" will be a physical reality on the new earth, with life restored to its original balance. We will work and see the fruits of our labor unfrustrated! Perhaps then, "heaven" does not entail never being apart from those we love, but being able to know that it is good to be with friends, and good to be apart from them. That we can find a sweet satisfaction in the moments we share with one another without wishing to prolong them forever.

It is like this with coffee, too. In some ways it is better that Sidamo Koratie go away, in order that new coffees might be roasted, might present their striking flavors to my tongue. It would be a sin for me to only want Sidamo Koratie for the rest of my life. Not merely a sin, but stupidity! Who knows what wonders I would miss out on, clutching at my cup of overworn Ethiopia? It is better this way. As I sucked the last life breath from the cup and threw it in the trash, I was content. What more is needed?

Mimesis

Isn't it amazing how art evokes other art? I woke up this morning, fresh off of Karl's recital last night, with the desire to write poetry. Everything about the pieces he wrote was so raw and wonderful, so deeply affecting, that it made me remember why I write.

Sounds silly, maybe, but I think this week I almost forgot entirely. I started my job -- HR Temp at a hospital -- and I am grateful to have it, but something about working with Excel all day (or maybe it's the suffocating atmosphere of corporate America) choked out my remembrance of writing. Have you ever worked an 8 to 5 job? When you get home, all you want to do is fall onto the couch and play video games. Creating something of value really does take effort; I find it physically exhausting, and who has the energy to do two exhausting things in one day?

But good art is worth the trouble. To see Karl up there on stage, baring his soul, not hiding at all, moved me to tears. To hear such personal thoughts combined with sublime music was indescribable. I may never write anything half as good as Karl's songs,but he makes me want to try.

Why I Write (This)

Since I have been spamming out movie reviews lately, I thought I would take a step back (and give my Netflix queue time to cool down) and write a meta-post about why I keep this blog (and for those of you who think that half the reason I decided to do this was to use the word "meta-post", you are wrong. It was at most 47% of the reason)

Probably the first and foremost reason I like to keep a blog is that it gives me a steady, reliable outlet for writing. The process of writing -- the formulation of what to say and the best possible way to say it, the slow tasting process of diction, sloshing each word around to see if it complements the rest -- appeals to me like little else. Much as I love playing the cello, even that lacks something which writing holds for me (probably involved in that is the creative aspect of writing compared to the reflective aspect of playing someone else's music).

Well then, why this particular blog? Why pick this format? I could, if I wanted, write one that was more personal, detailing the events of my life and my reflections on them. And I won't brush this aside by saying "Personal blogs are boring"; several people I know keep blogs about their lives and do it with skill, keeping it very interesting indeed. Maybe I am a little afraid of being boring; Lord knows my vanity would hate that. But beyond this, I just feel a prohibition concerning writing about my life. I have always been bad at keeping a private diary; multiply this by the pressures of a wider audience, and the difficulty grows. So yes, perhaps it is a move meant to deflect scrutiny, to keep a little distance, though the balance to this is that I think I do reveal myself often in my posts, even through indirect means.

Even more specifically, why pick this particular format and subject matter? Ah, now we get to the meat of what I have been thinking about. First of all, I love culture. High, low, pop, art; I love it all. I drink in the ability of music to elevate the senses, whether it be Beethoven's 9th or Eminem. I love the power of a well-written poem or story or essay to transform the mind. I thrill at the visceral pleasure of movies like Lawrence of Arabia. And yes, I hold a special place in my heart for that which shows us the failings of mankind's culture; the B-movies and mindless bubblegum pop which are a memento mori of our abilities. But this could be said of most people; even those with "low" taste generally have high levels of response to culture. Not everyone enjoys picking it apart the way I do, however. Some are content to experience and then dismiss it. Who knows, perhaps that purely experiential approach is the more fulfilling, but I cannot stop turning over in my mind the things which I experience. A confession: I do indeed enjoy the thrill of criticizing someone else's work (and I think I am snarky enough to make a good asshole critic), but I would much rather review something I enjoy, because those are the works which force me to stop and think about the way life is.

Zoom in one more notch with me. Why, having chosen to keep a blog about culture, do I make so obvious my Christian presuppositions? I could easily put these aside for the purpose of obtaining a more general critique (I avoid the word "objective" for this reason: while I believe that there is an objectivity about concepts like beauty, it is not something we can approach directly. Beauty is shrouded in fog, and we must sound it out as best possible.). This is, I feel, an important question for me to answer (and really to keep thinking about). In a sense I am fighting a two front war: I must defend the value of culture to Christians (who sometimes feel the desire to retreat entirely) while seeking to demonstrate to non-Christians who read this both that Christians can think critically and deeply about are and that Christ has everything to do with beauty and goodness, and that art apart from that context must inevitably fall short.

Allow me to clarify what I mean concerning each side of the issue. My family used to receive a monthly "magazine" which reviewed pop culture from a Christian persepective (mostly CD's and movies). The idea was to give parents a resource with which to guide their children, especially teens, toward good things. Unfortunately, what most of this reviewing consisted of was counting up the number of curse words and sexual references in a song or film and dismissing it on those grounds (or, on rare occasion, ok'ing it). There is something wrong with your criteria of guidance when you recommend Fireproof for viewing but not something like In Bruges. Or when you find more value in the vacuity of Michael W. Smith's latest album while dismissing the raw power of Jay-Z because he uses profanity. Please note that I am not saying that parents should let their children consume whatever, simply that the guiding process is more complex than some would like to admit.

Perhaps because of the general failure of Christians in America to think critically about art, most of the time their opinions are given very little weight. People in art movements have swung to the opposite extreme: they believe beauty can be found separately from goodness, that aestheticism is the god which will save mankind. This leads to all sorts of problems, not least of which is the dissolution of standards in favor of an anything goes mentality, where only the artist himself can determine the value of a work. The art world desperately needs people willing to be critical not just of particulars but of entire worldviews. If the foundation is shaky, how can the house be secure?

This is the unique position of the Christian, that he can see both man the image of God and man the fallen sinner, ruining all he touches. He can see the immense beauty of a work of art and the destructive impulses of art devoid of context. A Christian seeking after the mind of Christ does not divorce himself from the messiness of the world; he dives into it that he might point to the one who makes all things clean. This, then, is why I write this blog, that the reader might understand that, if truth and beauty would save us, it must not be through themselves but as a conduit for experiencing the grace of God.

A few caveats: first, to the unbelievers here, welcome. I want you to read and comment galore and never feel as if I am judging you or looking down on you. This is not Sunday School, nor is it a Jack Chick tract. My purpose is not to win converts by convincing them that I am right. What I said earlier about beauty applies: we are all in the sounding-out process, and forbid it that I should think that only I have the right perspective (or others like me). I learn more and more every day about beauty, and I am constantly surprised by it. Just as many great artists create without being Christians, so most of my favorite critics of culture do not share my presuppositions. When I am arrogant (and it will happen), please correct me.

Second, a thought about the usefulness of this blog. Sure, I have made some grand sounding claims about the role of Christianity in thinking about art. But I don't write for the New York Times or have any influence in Hollywood. I'm just a recent college graduate with too much time on his hands and a readership you could count on ten fingers (which reminds me: if you like my blog, tell your friends!). What good am I doing? My defense is simple; I'm not writing this to change the world, I'm simply trying to get my thoughts organized and out there, and to hear the thoughts of others whose opinions I value.

Last, on thinking over this (I started writing a few days ago and only just came back to clean it up a bit) I realized that parts of it could be construed as a defensive response to direct criticism or questions from people. That is not the case; most of the point-counterpoint comes from conversations within my own head, and the original impetus for writing all this was just a desire to get my own thoughts about the purpose of this blog in order.

madness... Madness... MADNESS!

I watch too many movies. Monday's culprit was The Devil and Daniel Johnston, a documentary about a troubled but legendary folk singer. Watching, I could not help but think of the other "crazy but brilliant musician" doc I have seen in the past six months, Wesley Willis: The Daddy of Rock and Roll. Some of the similarities between the two are uncanny:

Both unemployed (and essentially unemployable)
Both with rabid cult followings
Both producing music of questionable value
Both gifted visual artists
Both deeply religious
Both with mental illnesses
Both claiming to battle against demons (in the real, not metaphorical sense)
Both wrote songs about Casper, the Friendly Ghost

My questions for the day: what draws us to these men and others like them? What about walking the line between genius and insanity appeals to us? How much of their popularity stems from their instability?

Perhaps a quick rundown of the two is in order. Wesley Willis (sadly now deceased) was a homeless man who would roam the streets of Chicago playing his songs on a Casio Keyboard. The basic template for his songs was to take one of the premade tracks on the keyboard and loop it, singing in his gravelly voice overtop with cut and paste lyrics (a sampling of song titles: "I whipped Superman's ass", "I whooped Mighty Thor's ass", "I whupped Batman's ass", "Birdman kicked my ass"). Really any description fails to do him justice, so here's a chance to listen to the man himself: I would especially recommend "Rock and Roll McDonald's" (profanity free!) and "Cut the Mullet".

Daniel Johnston, meanwhile, is a folkish singer who at least has less of a schtick than Wesley Willis. All of his songs are different from one another, and he has legitimate talent as a piano player. The only problem? On most of his songs he chooses to play guitar, an instrument with which he is far less skilled. Additionally, his voice is the most horrendous sound known to man, a plaintively squeaky affair. Also, though he does not just cut and paste his lyrics like Willis, his "poetry" is hardly better; awkwardly metered, it never quite seems to fit into his music.

Now for the amazing part: both of these men in their prime gained massive cult followings. Johnston is an icon in the Austin music scene and gained national exposure in the early '90's when Kurt Cobain started incessantly wearing a Johnston t-shirt for his public appearances. Willis never had that measure of fame, but was pretty legendary in underground music circles, often touring the nation.

One might be immediately tempted to think that the adoration of these two figures was yet another ironic move by today's jaded society. Yet this cannot be completely the case. I will admit that most people I know who listen to Wesley Willis do so for the sheer ridiculousness of it, but there were many people in the documentary who took his work seriously (or did a very good job pretending to do so). With Johnston the admiration is even more clear cut: critics and friends describe his first work as better than early Dylan or Robert Johnson.

I think that there are several possible explanations for this seemingly misguided adoration. One would be the pursuit of novelty. The phrase that people keep using about Johnston's songs is that they are "unlike anything you have heard". This I cannot deny. Certainly Willis' music has no known ancestry, as my previous inability to adequately describe it would suggest. But does this legitimate interest in them? There are plenty of novel things in the world which I have no interest in experiencing. The problem with the cult of the genius is that it demands novelty, such that, to paraphrase Dr. Gardner, "You start out with Mozart and 200 years later you wind up with a bullwhip sticking out of your ass."

Is that it, though? Do people obsess over Johnston and Willis merely for sake of observing the strange and exotic? If this were so, I do not think they would hold the staying power they do over people. The answer, rather, lies in the very fact that both the artists battle against mental illness. Do not misunderstand; it isn't as if people take pity on them and listen to their music like you would congratulate a second grader for drawing disproportionate stick figures. What I mean is that both men have veered toward insanity but in doing so have created works of searing, raw power.

Again, a clarification: I do not find much of artistic value in the music of either Johnston or Willis, nor do I listen to them with great regularity (though I do enjoy the occasional Willis song). What I find appealing about their work is its primal intensity, its desperation. When Johnston sings about lost love, you can feel his heart being ripped from his chest. When Willis sings "My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks", it is easy to imagine Wesley the child cowering in the corner as his mother winds her way into oblivion. And when either sings about faith, it is something to behold. Johnston wailing about going to the funeral home is enough to put the fear of God in anyone, and one of my favorite Willis moments comes in his surprisingly touching "Jesus Christ", where the childlike rhymes hide a tender affection for Christ.

In a sense, I think, this sort of power comes only from direct experience with "battling demons". Whatever your views on the actual existence of demonic beings, the two men clearly are engaged in a war within themselves. They are no cut and paste saints. One of the harrowing parts of the Johnston documentary is the account by Johnston's father of the time when Daniel forced his father to cut the engines on their small plane and took over the controls, doing loop-the-loops before relinquishing the controls in time for his father to bail them out. Clearly Johnston is a disturbed man, dangerous when he is off medication. But this same man can speak earnestly of faith and it does not seem a contradiction. Likewise, Willis is a man who penned both the heartfelt "Jesus Christ" and the shockingly profane series of songs about sucking certain appendages of various large cats. Again, you get the sense that this is not mere hypocrisy or posturing on Willis' part, but rather an expression of the duality inside him.

The artist as mad genius is a common enough idea, one that nevertheless holds a unique appeal. Perhaps it is a matter of transcendence; we think that the artist, already reaching new heights of ecstasy through his work, will be propelled even higher by psychosis (or perhaps mind-altering drugs). We in the modern world long for art to save us, for the artist to step in as the one mediator between the gods and man. Johnston and Willis are refreshing, then, in the ways in which they shatter the myth of the insane artist. Madness for them is no desired muse; it is a destructive force in their lives. Yet it does lend their work a certain gravity. Rather than ascension, it gives their music the quality of descending down into the earth -- not in the mundane but the grave sense. Such earthy quality might scare you, but do not hold it against them; after all, you must die to be born again.

A Place of Quiet

I've been turning over my last post in my head quite a bit. I tend to do this, to obsess over what I've written or said for days on end. The nice thing about blogging is the ability to be proactive and do something about it. Anyway, I have been thinking about one aspect of In Bruges which I touched on briefly in my review but did not give as much space to as I would have liked.

When talking about the structure of the film, I mentioned that Martin McDonagh has a wonderful way of circling around a subject without coming out and yelling the point in your face. The death of the little boy hangs over the film, but only sticks its head into the open on rare occasion. This makes so much sense given the nature of what has happened.

Do you want to know how to comfort a grieving person? When mom died, there was no end to the awkward sympathy people gave me. What would have been better is if people had talked to me about anything else, or had just sat with me in silence. I am not saying that you should never talk to a suffering person about what they are experiencing, but quite often what is best is to allow for the space the person needs to process all that is happening to them.

We are so afraid of silence that we will create any sort of noise, however unpleasant, to block our ears from the deafening roar of quiet. We have learned to love instant gratification, and we expect that any problem we have with another will be immediately solved head on. In a sense we have become deaf to the subtle movements of the heart, the way those around us communicate what is really happening.

Have you had a wonderful conversation like this? Something obviously is going on, but you and the other person talk of everything but the matter at hand. Some find this irritating (myself included), but if we really stop to listen, I think we will find that things are being talked about.

Kierkegaard returns again and again to the idea that faith cannot be directly communicated, that something essential is lost in that secret translation between tongue and ear. He has hit something there. Plenty of Christians want to preach the gospel at people without giving space for the words to resound. We would do well to remember that though we plant, it is God who grows the seed. Yelling louder will not aid this flowering a tenth as much as keeping our peace. Be still, and know.

Like a F*@#ing Fairy Tale

Well, it was a photo finish, right down to the wire, but I have my favorite films of the year. Obviously this comes with the disclaimer that, as a poor college student, I don't get much of a chance to see things till they come out on video, which creates some gaps. I didn't see my favorite film of last year, There Will Be Blood, until after awards season had come and gone. This year there were many films I wish I had seen (Happy Go Lucky, Rachel Getting Married, Standard Operating Procedure, My Winnipeg) but have not yet had the chance to catch. I don't even have enough films to make a top 10, but I would like to briefly discuss my three favorites.

Running third is Wall E, about which not much needs to be said. If you haven't seen it, shame on you. It is a beautiful, stark film which pushes the boundaries of animation.

In a surprise tie for first are two different but equally striking films. For a more full assessment of Slumdog Millionaire, you can read a few posts back. My other favorite film is one I just recently saw from the comfort of my own home (ah, the power of Netflix), and one that surprised me with its intricacies.

In Bruges is the filmmaking debut of Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, and what a debut. Part dark comedy, part crime drama, In Bruges avoids the perils inherent in making a multi-genre film (primarily a loss of identity) and in the end becomes something even more than those two things. In its own bizarre way, it is a striking meditation on sin and guilt, a full contact wrestling match over law and grace.

First a bare bones summary: Ken and Ray and hitmen who are sent to hide out in Bruges, a sleepy town in Belgium, after one of them accidentally kills a child. Most of the film focuses on their adventures in Bruges. Ken (brilliantly played by Brendan Gleeson), the older and more grizzled of the two, becomes almost childlike as he explores the medieval sights of the town. Meanwhile Ray (a surprisingly likeable Colin Farrell) is bored to distraction, at least until he stumbles across a movie set where he finds a belligerent American "little person" actor and a very pretty girl to occupy his time. They spend their days in this mixture of ennui and wonder, all the while awaiting instructions from their boss, Harry. A fateful set of circumstances sets in motion the final third of the film, which becomes more of a crime drama than a fish out of water comedy, but resolves into a bittersweet but very satisfying ending.

That the film won me over is a little astounding. Being written by a playwright, it is first and foremost character and dialog driven. I tend to be wary of films like this because of the great danger of them becoming self-consciously clever (see Juno, a film I enjoyed but that was inhibited by its incessant "cute-speak"). McDonagh, however, pulls off a masterful stroke, crafting a genuinely funny and moving screenplay which remains true to its characters every step of the way (McDonagh is up for best original screenplay at the Oscars, and it will be a shame if he does not win -- which he probably won't). There are strange diversions aplenty -- meditations on the use of the word "alcoves" and a discussion of the impending war between white and black midgets (sorry, dwarves), but you never get the sense that McDonagh threw in these lines for cheap laughs.

What makes In Bruges truly special, though, is the way the dialog circles around serious points. At the heart of the movie is the tragedy of the death of a little boy (the flashback to his death provides a perfect balance between tragedy and comedy, and is one of the most sublime moments in the film), and the guilt which accompanies it, both as an internal and external consequence. I very much appreciated the seriousness with which all the characters take the act; there is no easy moral about "learning to forgive yourself" or something stupid and new-agey like that. The killer is judged not by intentions but by his actions. Sin and guilt, punishment and Hell, are very present things. Yet the film does not come across as preachy; in fact the subjects are hardly brought up at all, only touched on in subtle ways.

Tied into this is the central difference between the three main characters (N.B. In case you haven't noticed, I am doing my best to remain "spoiler free". This necessitates some vagueness on my part. I apologize.) The difference between them is that two are dominated by the law, and one by grace. This radically alters what will become of them. The two who are law-oriented reap according to that, and the one who understands grace does the same. That is the beauty in the ending of the film, which some might scratch their heads at. Everything which happens makes perfect sense: it is according to the nature of the characters, but there is also a sense of basic rightness about it.

One more thing about the film, since some of my readers might be a bit sensitive. Though I believe it is one of the best meditations on faith I have seen in a long time, In Bruges does not shy away from getting its hands dirty. It has about as much (and as bad) profanity as I have heard in a film, so if that sort of thing is a turn off to you, stay away. But be warned, in doing so you will be missing something wonderful and human. It reminds me (appropriately) of Frederick Buechner's novel Brendan, about the Irish saint. His life too was brusque and ribald, yet full of grace. Not to stereotype, but I think that might be part of the Irish character: that they understand grace so much better because they are an earthy people, unafraid to roll around in the dirt of life. What a shame that so often Christians miss out on grace because they are so afraid of getting their hands dirty. I wish that most "Christian" films had a tenth of the understanding of important things that In Bruges posseses. It dares to be serious and real, and because of its integrity it is a triumphant film.

P.S. It's pronounced "Broozh".

Make 7 Up (and the rest) Yours

"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." -- Jesuit saying

Hello all -- first things first, I want to apologize for the scarcity of posting as of late. It's been two weeks, and they've flown by for me. First I had problems connecting to the internet from my house, but even after that got fixed I didn't feel like writing for awhile. I've been a bit depressed over unemployment and other things; nothing serious, but when I get blue my desire to write vanishes posthaste. I will, as atonement, attempt to post pretty regularly for the next few days.

On to the fun stuff! Monday saw Alex and I watching 49 Up and thereby completing what has so far been made of the fascinating "Up Series" of documentaries. The story goes that in 1963, Granada television in Britain made a documentary about the lives of 14 British schoolchildren, all around the age of seven. They cut a wide swath through British society: upper class, lower class, city, country, suburban -- all kinds of children were involved. Granada sat them down and interviewed them on all sorts of topics: school, poor and rich people, the opposite gender, and their hopes for the future. I get the impression that, at first, no one knew if anything more would come of it, but director Michael Apted has gone back every seven years to revisit them and find out about their lives (as I said, they are through 49; 56 should come out in 2011 or 2012). Amazingly, all but two have stayed with the series somewhat consistently (a few drift in and out, disappearing for one but then coming back).

What exactly is the significance of these films (or, rather, film in the singular, as I think it should be regarded)? Originally it was to "get a glimpse into Britain's future"; Apted admits that the liberal Granada had somewhat of an agenda to stress the class differences between the children. Yet in the end, class comes up very little in the films. Early on Apted wisely abandoned any social agenda in favor of simply getting to know his subjects. This, I think, is the film's true power, that it deals in delicately human stories, never sacrificing personal intimacy for some overbearing attempt to find meaning. Put another way, it lets the characters speak for themselves, and though some are guarded, the end result is a startling display of honesty.

Accordingly, one of the biggest strengths of the filmmaking is simply getting the hell out of the way. I wholeheartedly salute Apted and Co. for making themselves mostly unobtrusive, and not trying to impress through ridiculous flourishes. With a few exceptions, the subjects are mostly filmed in their natural habitats, at home and comfortable. The camerawork tends to be simple but clean. Perhaps the only part of the film which really stands out is its editing. As the different segments come along, there is more and more material to be juggled (each installment tends to review the lives of the subjects up to that point by intercutting old footage), and the daunting task of picking the right clips is pulled off with aplomb.

As I mentioned, the real strength of the film is simply the concept itself. Though none of the children grew up to lead epic (or in a strict sense important) lives, each has something fascinating to offer: a window into the ways they have and have not changed since they were seven. Young compassionate Bruce, wanting to be a missionary, who grows up to teach in the inner city. Disenchanted Suzy, who spends two films utterly uninterested in life, only to turn into a loving wife and mother and find a delightful warmth. Bright eyed Neil, who finds himself cowed by the harsh realities of life, only to acheive a redemption of sorts. Upper class nitwit John, who stays the consumate snob through 21 only to become a kind, caring middle aged person. The wonderful thing about this is how open most of the subjects are, and how the very process of filming seems to open up their self-awareness. Things that remained stored in the back of their minds for years suddenly come spilling out on camera. One of my favorite examples of this is when Tony, the poor boy who dreamed of being a jockey, blurts out at age 21 that his greatest ambition would be to have a baby son, and that doing so would see his ambition fulfilled. "No one knows that, except you", he says sheepishly to the camera.

I would like to spend the rest of this post just describing some of the characters, that you would have your curiosity piqued and would want to discover their lives for yourself. Nicholas comes in at age 7 as the token country boy, very curious and cheerful, though sometimes guarded (his famous quote when asked about girls: I don't answer those sort of questions). At 14 he is a reclusive youth, his eyes avoiding the camera. Yet he dreams big: escaping the confines of the farm for the halls of higher learning. By 21 he is at Oxford, finishing up a degree in physics (or whatever you earn at college in Britain. As a side note, I discovered that pretty much every facet of English life is labyrinthine, from the schools to the legal system. I gave up early on trying to figure out the differences between public and state and comprehensive and every other type of school). At 28 he and his wife have left the UK for Madison, Wisconsin, where he will be for the rest of the films, teaching and doing research into nuclear energy. Eventually he and his British-born wife divorce, leaving him with little contact with his son, and he remarries an American. What I love about Nicholas is his insatiable curiosity. At 7 he "wants to find out about the moon and all that"; by 28 he teaches "all that" at a university. Little wonder that he kept on expanding, eventually leaving his homeland for new opportunities. Yet for all this, he is very conflicted. He desperately misses Britain and his family -- even the countryside he so reviled at 14. When the filmmakers take him back to the Yorkshire dales at 35, something inside of him seems to come alive, something primal waiting to leap out. The country, far from inhibiting his curiosity, helped develop it.

Jackie, one of the poor girls in 7 Up, provides a fascinating character sketch while simultaneously being one of the least likeable subjects of the film. She is defensive and combatative every step of the way. (In a meta-moment in 49 Up, she and Michael discuss their feuds over the years. "I like it when you yell at me", Michael confesses) Questions about social class especially seem to enrage her; she does not like the suggestion that the upper classes have gotten on better than her. Yet for all her prickles, she really is intriguing. Married at 19, she and her husband decide early on that they will not have children ("I'm too selfish" she admits in 28). After she and her husband split up, she gains a baby boy from a brief relationship. By 42 she has two others from another man. To see the transformation in her, from completely self-absorbed to giving her life to serve her children, is a touching one. Moreover, to see the joy her children bring her is a marvel. In my mind this is one of the most touching transformations that takes place in the film.

Lastly we have Neil, who seems to be the favorite of many. At 7 he was cheerful and energetic, but by 14 you can see signs of him slowing down. Rejected by Oxford, he attended Aberdeen University for one semester before dropping out. At 21 he does "casual labor", squats in a London apartment, and rails against his upbring; "I feel like I've been kicking in mid-air this whole time", he says. From 28 through 42, he has no job and lives off of social security benefits. Moreover, he drifts from place to place: Scotland in 28, the Shetland Islands in 35, back to London in 42, and northern England in 49. Eccentric to an extreme, he has much trouble forming relationships and spends most of his time alone. In one of the most searing moments of the film, Michael asks Neil if he thinks he is going mad, and Neil implies that he is. Everything about Neil's trajectory is ominous. Will he end up dead in a ditch somewhere, or go on a killing spree of his own? Yet there are signs of hope: in 35 he has found a hobby in acting and directing local plays. Then, in 42, the resurrection: while still jobless, Neil has become a councilman in London. Politics seems to change him, give him a purpose. By 49 he is drawing a salary as a councilman in northern England. The man who drifted so long seemed to finally find a port.

Two other things I found touching about Neil. One was his faith. At 21 he was wracked with doubts; he says that he thinks about the existence of God a lot but hasn't come to any conclusions. By 35, he hints that faith has helped him, and it gradually plays a more significant part in his story. What touches me about this is the simple nature of it; no grandiose flourishes or soapboxing from Neil. He clings to Christ because he is a man who has nothing else. The other wonderful thing is his brief but significant friendship with another of the subjects, our friend Bruce the missionary. When he returned to London before 42 Up Bruce (still unmarried at the time) offered to put him up for awhile. The two became friends, and to see the tender affection between them is a testament to true friendship, which crosses boundaries.

The question will probably go unanswered: does the child at 7 reflect the full grown adult? What then, in the end, is the value of the Up films? Simply put, they tell simple stories of simple people who just live their lives, only to get interrupted every 7 years. Is anything more necessary? The importance stems from the humanity of them, the tender way in which each of the stories unfolds. Without that, the films would be just another novelty. Instead, they are a refreshing look at the lives of individuals.