Late night reading/listening to reviews on pitchfork.

I don't know if I feel edified, aerobicised, or just strung out. Anyhow, their minefields of bizarre and jangly analogies makes you tired. And probably inflects your brain.

"Much of the sample-based, ambient-leaning music under discussion these days falls beneath the nebulous umbrella of chillwave, glo-fi, or hypnagogic pop."

Haha... glo-fi. I do enjoy it.

An Aesthetic Defense of Dogma

Citing other considerations, dogma has primarily been maligned as boring. It's a trifle, bringing defense to these criticisms, but necessary, given our preoccupation with the look over the what. So we begin with a definition. Dogma: a settled or established opinion, belief, or principle.

The greatest criticism of dogma is this: creativity needs movement. If you have a fixed notion, then the discussion of it is no more interesting than observing the sky's blueness. If you have a static emotion, then the color of happiness soon grays; the pang of sadness becomes a numb dreariness; the beauty of tranquility is simply uninteresting, and so on. Like that disgusting water stopped up in the corner gutter of your house, it festers.

So, does this mean that opinions are merely fashion? Well, yes. To most people, anyway. But what is missed about dogma is the more subtle beauty of context. If nothing is new under the sun, then this is the only kind of beauty that truly matters, or ultimately exists. Everything else is just illusion. If this is true, as I think can be demonstrated, then it provides the framework for an objective subjectivity in art.

We've all been given rocks, not clay. Certain universals that persist whether we prefer it or not. The only thing we can do is change the context of the rock. With our words or artistic mediums, hide the rock, cast the light so it strikes a different way, or create a beautiful setting for the rock. However, the rock is still the rock. Some people theorize what the actual rock looks like. Some people contextualize the rock in an interesting way before deciding they want to create a new shape for the rock and create another context for it.

Dogma is simply believing that the rock's shape is knowable. Does this mean dogma is inherently better? Of course not. In many cases dogma can be completely wrong and limiting. Other times it's the opposite. It's like scientific theories. Relativity is encountering some bumps, but it's a useful example. Einstein had a theory that he believed described what he was seeing in mathematics. It wasn't something he had yet seen empirically, but it informed what he was looking for empirically. In time, evidence began to accumulate that supported his theory. He believed he understood some shape of the rock, and it predicted what later was observed.

This works because he worked from a set of established opinions: the universe was knowable, it could be explained through mathematical constants and relationships, and that it behaved in a way that could be testable and verified. With these, he was able to understand part of the rock. And with that part of the rock understandable, it could be made beautiful by considering different contexts: how big the universe is, how complex, how bizarre, and how foreign differences of scale can be. Those are contexts that were enabled by a dogma.

Ultimately, everyone has dogma. Everyone has established beliefs. Sometimes they should change. Other times, you must resist fashion and maintain belief. In all circumstances, one should realize that dogma is always belief. It is always faith to believe the rock is knowable. And the more coherently that belief can explain interpreted reality and account for an epistemology, the more beautiful its contexts can be.

My own dogma is that there can be nothing more beautiful than realizing the love and mercy of Christ's sacrifice at Golgotha. It's a beautifully ugly image that sounds like the Alpha for every other story that has existed throughout mankind. And I believe it will be every story's Omega too. It accounts for epistemology in fallen man and allows for a universe that can be knowable through science in the context of God's supernatural über-will, and demands a law of mercy to coexist equally with a law of justice.

If I am able to proclaim that beauty by highlighting it anew in endless contexts, then I am happy. And I can think of no better Aesthetic. Far from being dull, I think the right dogma is the only way art can be endlessly interesting and vibrant.

The Law of God

A thousand crazed men hanging

On the edge of madness

A thousand crazed men hanging

Toes tickling the glass,

Of that undisturbed watery mass,

We're singing our last song,

Rehearsing the steps for the last dance

The men from the East are coming

Snaking like the river for miles

There is the desert still! think

A thousand crazed men hanging

On the edge of madness

A thousand crazed men hanging,

Toes tickling the glass,

Of that hungry watery mass.

Creasing your brow,

There are ten million

White sails like shrouds, or puffing clouds,

Like white blankets.

Someone stabbed the earth in the East,

Oozing like the river in pulses of blood.

Spilling over and over and over and over and over and over

Down the river, keeping the sails afloat.

Filling the river for their million boats.

It's a new sunny day, but all I can see,

Is my body twitching in a casket of clay.

I live on the left side and die on the Right,

My lies have grown up like Bengal lights.

Thunder's cracking down all around me

And it feels like my heart

Pumping the blood out, out, out

All the unholy blood!

A thousand crazed men hanging

Onto the edge of madness,

A thousand crazed men hanging,

Toes tickling the glass,

Of that bloody congealed mass.

LORD! Oh God, Light of our earth, hope of our souls,

You came in the thunder but-but-

(gave us your whisper)

There's a change, this fear's got a hold of me now,

And the madness like a circle, complete, and feeding

Itself like a damned wreath.

It sounds like gnashing teeth.

God! Oh God-

Walk out into the night, you just have to see it,

You just have to see it you just have to see it you just have to see

What will kill you. The lightning is illuminating

The thousand crazed men swimming,

In their deadly sea, they fell,

Into this deep round cavern, flashing, thundering, and bloody

Like a womb and the labor is agony,

Inside this sphere of death.

Reach to the paternal right hand,

Clap your thighs and kiss the knees,

The great rolling and unblinking eye

Fixed upon you in the bright, white, flashing darkness.

Give up your guns. Give up your guns!

Why won't you give up your guns?

Can't you see that it's the edge of madness

To fire upon them, it can't work.

But they won't see our white flags!

Let us blaze out like these lightning shocks.

And go quivering into the dust, to float their sails,

With our bubbling blood?

You should be my light, and I could be your space

To live in and die in the night.

Good God, we wanted a fight and we got one.

I'm getting cold and fear this damp,

I was hit, I think I've been hit. I don't want to die.

It was a good plan, tell my mother hi.

We were among them,

The thousand crazed men,

Clinging to our madness,

The thousand crazed men,

Now choking on their last breath,

We hoped to carve life from death.

We were wrong, were very wrong,

Ducking in this Sinai valley with our small hands,

Like we'd seen the flash of the atom bomb.

Something like hot melted rock, waist deep

It makes our skeletons all bright,

Like December Christmas light.

Take us away from here! Take us away from our graves,

Take us awayawayaway.

We tried, now we've died, and I'm not even angry anymore.

It seems too just for that.

Thank God I'm a free man.

Percy Shelley

And nearer to the river's trembling edge	25
There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank'd with white,
And starry river-buds among the sedge,
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright,
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge
With moonlight beams of their own watery light;	30
And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green
As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

Edgar Lee Masters

YE who are kicking against Fate,
Tell me how it is that on this hill-side,
Running down to the river,
Which fronts the sun and the south-wind,
This plant draws from the air and soil	5
Poison and becomes poison ivy?
And this plant draws from the same air and soil
Sweet elixirs and colors and becomes arbutus?
And both flourish?
You may blame Spoon River for what it is,	10
But whom do you blame for the will in you
That feeds itself and makes you dock-weed,
Jimpson, dandelion or mullen
And which can never use any soil or air
So as to make you jessamine or wistaria?

Interesting

An honest thought experiment that requests an honest response.

The Incredible, The Incredible Mr. Limpet

This promises to be the most challenging piece I've ever written. For in it, I will try to arrest into a readable exposition, the weblike and fecund themes of one of Hollywood's most cerebral philosophical accomplishments. I will try to assay The Incredible Mr. Limpet.

Let's dive in. The plot: An aloof fringer named Henry Limpet is preoccupied -obsessed- with fish and makes a living as a bookkeeper. He is rejected by the navy even as his friend is accepted for service. Depressed, he falls off a pier near Coney Island and is inexplicably transformed into a Tilefish.

There are allusions to Jonah and other tales. Jonah rejects his calling and while trying to escape, a fish swallows him. In the story of Henry Limpet, Limpet is himself rejected, and instead of being swallowed by a fish as he sinks to the depths, becomes transformed into a fish. This is Kafkaesque. There is a significant inversion to this too, however. Gregor Samsa's transformation isolates him and closes him off from human society. As the metamorphosis progresses, he is increasingly isolated from his family, becomes unable to provide financially for them and invokes their ire.

Henry Limpet on the other hand, is just the opposite. As human, Limpet has already drawn himself away from society. He frustrates his wife with his reticent behavior and has trouble meeting financial needs. There is even an illusion to conjugal shortcomings. His ultimate rejection is by the Navy, barring him from participating in the world of man and its affairs of war.

"There you are Mr. Limpet... I suppose we'll be losing you to the Navy soon, then?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Really?"

"No, my eyesight. And a few other things. I'm classified -F."

"Everybody can't be a hero, Mr. Limpet. We need men like you at home too."

"Why?"

"To give to the blood bank, of course."

"They don't want my blood."

Like Gregor, everything changes with his transformation, but the other direction. As a fish, he is able to rejoin the society of mankind, no longer a burden thanks to a newfound special ability. He can create a large underwater noise which locates Nazi U-boats, making him a secret weapon for the U.S. Navy. Accepted into the Navy, he advances rank and is able to support his wife financially and enjoy the camaraderie of his old friend, George Stickel.

Once the war ends, he begins to realize his role in society was dependent on his ability to add value to society. When they lack a purpose for him, he grows purposeless himself. Interestingly, he falls in love with a female fish of the same species, named ladyfish, during his role in the war. He finds that their species is rare and needs a male to help ensure their proliferation. By the end, he rejects mankind- his friends, his wife, the navy- everything. He has rediscovered, primely, all the roles he couldn't fill as a man in the role of a fish.

There is another detail I neglected. The movie is actually a flashback. It occurs because some Naval officers are reopening up the file of Mr. Limpet. There have been curious reports of super-intelligent porpoises and they suspect Mr. Limpet is teaching the porpoises, training them this way. There is no indication whether or not the porpoises are hostile, however. That matter is left cleverly ambiguous. We are left to wonder about Henry Limpet's motivations. Has he fashioned himself as a Poseidon of sorts? An existential hero deified by his ability to create intelligence in sea creatures and propagate his species as some sort of uber-fish-kind? We do not know.

Once the movie flashes back to the present, we see an army boat lowering a microphone into the water, vainly entreating Mr. Limpet. The only response is an aggressive sound, "THRUM." Then credits begin to roll with the song, "Be Careful How You Wish."

Very deep.

Bonhoeffer

Was at Barnes and Noble the other day and purchased a booklet called "Christ the Center" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  It's not a piece of his writing, but rather a compilation of lecture notes he used to teach a course on Christology in 1933.  It's incomplete and very brief, but tastes like a crisp apple in autumn.  Later, when I have the text in front of me, I'll post a sample.  

In an Ongoing Consideration of Literary Criticism

A methodology for reconciling the contents of the last two posts, as well as every other encounter I've had with the discipline of textual criticism is as follows:

I have a friend who is from Finland.  I met him, along with some other friends, while in London.  He's a a very interesting fellow who has extensively studied wine, spending years learning the craft of wine tasting at a college devoted to this purpose (Europe is in some ways, very cool.)  

I bring this up because I think this goes a long way in reconciling the very strong disagreements I find in reading literary critics such as Bloom, Kruger, and others. And I don't mean disagreeing with their opinion, I mean disagreeing with their right to exist as literary authorities.  My Dad is an Engineer.  I am not.  The echoes of his analytical personality are still very much alive in me, though I approach it in a different way entirely.  What charms me about wine infuriated me about literary critics.  And perhaps I am just now understanding why.  

When I read literary criticism, I would be irritated by how they make assumptions I thought unfair, unscientific, and wholly improbable.  "This fellow said he loved Keats, but in reality he was completely instructed by Tennyson.  Hear this cadence, here? Tennyson all over it!"

What was obvious to me about wine (that there is a high level of subjectivity to its appreciation) wasn't obvious to me about the written word.  I wanted to be told with certitude that this poet was good, and that this one was not.  With wine, there is at least an element of physicality involved.  Wine is made up of atoms and molecules that may be retained or qualified by the soil, the climate, the aging process, etc. Even with these scientific considerations the art of wine-tasting is nowise a science.  How much more so, the world of thought, ideas, and interpretation.  

What literary critics are observing instead, is how certain references, ideas, motifs, conceits, schemes, meters, etc.  are striking them, rather then influencing the author.  I think there is some level that you can be precise.  Shakespeare wrote sonnets.  Sure.  But concluding that Shakespeare wrote sonnet A, half of sonnet B, and 2/3 or sonnet C, D, and E, is opinion and could be severely effected by whether someone had just read Milton or Spenser 5 minutes before the Shakespeare, 10 minutes, an hour, etc.  It's the subjectivity of wine times 3 million.

So is literary criticism useless? No way!  Should it be trusted?  Certainly not always, no matter how qualified the source.  My experience with my Finnish friend and wine is illuminating in one other way. 

I asked him if he'd like to go and taste some wine sometime and, if he was feeling generous, teach a no-nothing about wine tasting.  He agreed and once we both sat with glasses of wine before us (types of his recommendation), he started giving me the lesson.  He told me how to swirl the glass, cleanse the palate, enjoy the color of the wine, the texture, the nose and how to sip for maximum flavor exposure.  I sipped it and he looked at me, expectantly.

I had absolutely no idea what to say.  I didn't taste much else but wine.  After a little reluctance, I told him as much.  He seemed to expect that and then revealed the most important lesson about wine tasting.  "Keep a journal," he said "and for each entry, record the wine, vintage, etc.  Then, when you taste it, try your best to apply a flavor to the taste.  If you decide something tastes like plums, look for that flavor again in the next wine you taste.  In this manner, your taste will be refined."

When you read literary criticism of any kind, realize you aren't reading a scientific analysis.  No matter who they think they are, it is not a scientific analysis.  Not even the most vacant-eyed, white-washed anthropologist is presenting a scientific analysis.  They are presenting their interpretation of the text they have encountered.  They are presenting you the text, defined by their vocabulary and set of precluded assumptions.  Also remember they are telling you how to enjoy the text.  The metaphor quickly breaks down here, because interpretive methodology quickly starts to become opinion, but they still teach how to enjoy it.  I disagree with Bloom about T. S. Eliot, utterly.  But when I see the way Bloom enjoys Shakespeare, I can apply a similar satisfaction to Eliot.

This isn't relativism.  I think there is good wine and bad wine, good poetry and bad poetry.  But it does meant there is some ambiguity on these matters.  Now on the topic of substantive issues, (e.g. the Bible) this still applies.  What I mean is that as a member of the invisible Church, a believer in the inerrancy of scripture and all that comes with that, I begin with a certain assumption: my faith. 

From that perspective I approach the Bible, and that really makes all the difference. Additionally, I fully believe that the perspective of this faith in the Judeo-Christian God, and this perspective only, presents an internally consistent framework for understanding and interpreting reality.  And the Bible.  

I really do love wine.  And I think this post sounds way more deconstructionist than I mean for it too.  But it will be refined, perhaps.

Literary Criticism

There is a phrase, one which I think sums up the entirety of literary (as well as modern biblical) criticism:  

"The poems were not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name."

I am an author and I hate you.

Writers, literary critics, and worst of all, literary critics who call themselves writers are guilty of one fault especially: boiling people in a vat of pseudo-psychology till they can present their vision as fact. This is an excerpt of a novel by Ian McEwan.

There were things she did not know and was interested to learn. She knew little of the poet's [Milton] life, and, amazingly, it seemed that it was not part of her studies, to consider the circumstances of his times.

Earlier, the protagonist, his mother, and his father are fully distilled in an Oedipal quip that McEwan undoubtedly thought clever. Here, he himself criticizes the fictional girl's lack of insight into Milton's craft. The trouble was the girl hadn't realized Milton was not an observer of some truth, but merely an assembler of inputs and physical stimuli. And only the inputs that the critic can easily see or clumsily (and with some bias) infer.

So I'll take back part of what I said. It's not merely applying psychology. It's relying on nature and nurture observations that were very tired before Skinner and Freud took the big sleep. It's dimly illuminating, and worse, casts shadows that mislead more than they guide. But perhaps as good postmodernist disciples, it's their intention.

And why the gloomy faces? Why must all modern authors have gloomy faces? Couldn't at least one of them be driven mad enough by their lugubrious perspectives to present some variety? Couldn't one of them dress like a hippopotamus? Their undeviating frowns and precisely furrowed brows and gently tousled hairs have more in common with the ubiquity of junior highschool cliques than independent thinkers on independent roads to truth. In every instance they seem desperate to say, "we are serious thinkers saying serious things you should listen to seriously."

Unless... despite their directly opposed philosophies and manners, they have somehow revealed a fundamental truth about their lives: their ideas aren't half as original, interesting, or honest as they would dearly like everyone to believe.

Yes, with a little bit of vocabulary, psychology can support any opinion under the sun. An aside: Cormac McCarthy gets props because he went on Oprah, and no one who takes himself too seriously can do that.

Belated Thanksgivings

A Miscellany:

-Coldness and warm places.

-Protracted struggles.

-Suffering and God's strength established.

-Health which recognizes excruciating suffering and seeks fervently to empathize and convalesce.

-Tea

-Coffee

-Good and responsibly consumed alcohol.

-Art

-The Lord of the Rings

-T. S. Eliot

-Charlie Brown

-Felix Mendelssohn and Bach.

-Christina Rossetti

-Courage

-Temptation and God's strength to overcome it.

-Second, third, fourth and fifth chances.

-Sci-Fi

-Old movies

-Football

-Baseball

-Evenings

-Fireplaces

-Structure

-Redemption

-Law

-Gospel

-Darkness and Lightness.

-Confusion and patience.

-Aches after a good work-out.

-Empathy, empathy, empathy.

-Family and its good and often ridiculous traditions.

-Christmas trees, ragamuffin cats, beautiful places in the world.

-Challenging people with challenging opinions and challenging thoughts.  

-My complete weakness, especially when it terrifies me.

-Realizing sometimes life sucks awfully bad, but understanding that the point of our relationship with God isn't a gee-whiz walk through the park, but an answer to the most pernicious shocks of life.

-Never, ever, ever being isolated from hope and God.  No matter what.  Not ever.

-Evidence of our own screw-ups and empathy for other's mistakes.

-Love.  Pure, technicolor, overwhelming, hard-working, conditionless, sympathetic, Holy, delicious, complicated, simple, antiseptic, soft, fuzzy, palpable, teemingly prolific, and incomprehensibly mighty love.

-God and His unending fountain of the aforementioned love.

On Holiday Jazz

Outside it's gray and meandering breezes tease the leafy hair of some crape myrtle's outside the coffeeshop.  It's hovering above 50° and the clouds drag a blanket of mist across the parking lot every little while.  

I love Christmas jazz.  Right now it's Vince Guarldi's unaccompanied "Christmas Time is Here."  I love it's slow, soft, warm cadence.  It's like those breezes outside, jaunting along in peaceful and easy steps.  It feels like walking in Manhattan in December with a scarf.  Outside is stimulating energy- over 8 million people headed over 8 million directions to accomplish over 8 million tasks at the same time. Inside your coat and scarf with an easy stride, there's an impregnable fortress of calm and unity of purpose.  

The myth of New York City always manages to charm me.  I've visited the city twice for a total of 3.5 days.  Safe to say, what I know of the place has only to do with its portrayal through what I've read and what I've seen on television and the movies.  There's a good chance I may never make it to the city, and a good chance it's better for me that I don't.  But it, among other places, whisper to me irresistibly.  I think it has little to do with going out and "experiencing the world."  That has generally run its course on me, by now.  If you aren't living your life where you are right now, you never will anywhere else.  Period.

Instead, it's merely a magic in going to different places.  Seeing the eponym of so much of American culture in London was magical.  Taking a tea at Russell Square while visiting the British Museum was magical.  When I visited New York, I recall walking by buildings that were filming national news broadcasts through the window.  That centrality to American culture is magical.

This doesn't mean there isn't is as much, or more, American culture existing and being created outside of New York City.  Of course there is.  There is certainly more.  But much still happens in New York City, and that to me is magical. 

That's all.  It's not a survival imperative.  It's certainly not an unrequited lust.  It's simply an interest and a curiosity that I possess for many places.  New York City holds a lot of fascination. 

And it seems a good setting for Vince Guarldi, sometimes.

Christina Rossetti

"As froth on the face of the deep,

As foam on the crest of the sea,

As dreams at the waking of sleep,

As gourd of a day and a night,

As harvest that no man shall reap,

As vintage that never shall be,

Is hope if it cling not aright,

O my God, unto Thee."

Is Google's Empire Waning?

All the talk of the new Android 2.0 softward, their OS and whatever else Google is cooking up has certainly gripped the tech world.  However, I find myself increasingly frustrated by their search function.  I don't have a specific example off-hand, but I'll begin taking notes.  

I have had at least 3 or 4 experiences the last month or so, where I was thoroughly unable to find anything related to what I wanted using their engine.  I've never noticed this happening before.  

That Peculiar Fortitude

Survey successful people from any industry and you will find likeness.  Successful?  What is meant by that?  Well, having seen point A and wishing to reach it, they have done so.  Whether or not point A is ultimately a place they wish to be is another thing entirely.

What attributes?  Consistency.  Doing the same thing over and over.  There's a line in Fight Club that goes something like "We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.  But we won't.  And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

It's deeply ironic that this line is being uttered by the spiritual successor to Robert Redford to a room full of other movie stars in a large studio production that was adapted by a bestselling book by the bestselling and rich author, Chuck Palahniuk.  I guess the line is comforting if you have the wrong value system and have given up.  But the fact is, that line had nothing to do with anyone even tangentially involved with that movie.

And jealousy or hypocrisy has nothing to do with this observation. That movie was pretty savvy, and the conceit was almost certainly self-aware.  Anyway, the point is that becoming a millionaire, movie god, or a rock star is indeed attainable.  It is like any other thing in life: fairly simple but agonizingly tedious.  It's just running a race a few paces further than anyone else is willing to.  It's like a bell curve.  You only receive an A because the majority of people received a C.  Now whether or not you were able to outpace someone because of a dispositional advantage or inbred talent is up for debate.  

It's more illuminating to consider why we want to be millionaires, movie gods, or rock stars.  And also considering why we think that should come easily.  Tyler Durden calls us the middle children of history.  That's not very accurate.  We seem much more symptomatic of being spoilt. 

I'm not meaning to go pedantic.  Just trying to be accurate.  I, more than anyone I know, have an unsettling propensity to quit when I don't see the desired results.  I'd like to think it's because I'm called to something higher.  I'd like to think it's because someone will just hand me millionaire-hood, etc. etc.  I get pretty irritated when it doesn't just happen.

The reason I'm not meaning to be pedantic is because I don't think the answer is simply "work harder."  The question should stop being "how do I get everything I want" and start looking more like "Well, how do I work hard and do God-pleasing work- whatever that might look like."  If that means being a millionaire, great.  But if the only way to motivate yourself to that end is to constantly ponder how the leather wheel of a new Mercedes SLS might feel in your hands, then perhaps it's time to review Matthew 6:24.  In other words, money shouldn't be the end-all.  If you make it such, than you really can only have two results:  you get to point A and regret it forever, or quit along the way and go all Fight Club anarchy up on things.  Point A isn't fulfillment.  Worshiping it or throwing a fit at not getting it will not change that.

So what is that peculiar fortitude?  I'm 23 and don't know jack, but I'm staking it on doing God's work.  Being meek and content with what God hands you, whether that's Mogen David or Warre's Colheita 1986 port.  I referred to Matthew 6:24 before.  Read it in context.  Christ isn't anti-industry.  He's extremely concerned with priority, however.  My struggle is that I aim at money and justify it by promising, "I'll really help you out with it God!"  Instead, I should seek God and if he gives me money along the way, then it will be because God has a way to use it for his Kingdom.

It's like James Bond.  He gets all these cool gadgets and cool suits and cool hotels and cool locations because he's a secret agent first.  The others are just tools for what he does.  James Bond would suck, or be an arch-villain, if he were seeking the goodies first and spy-work second.

Yeah, I think that's about right.

I've Told People About This Blog

And now I'm regretting it.  With a very slight exception, I'd prefer no one to read it.  I'll probably discontinue it.

Thanks.

A Note

I hate do-wap.  I hate it. 

It's like if hell were the four walls of some mirror-walled diner and all you could do was drink milkshakes and pose like a Norman Rockwell model leaning on globular gumball machines for all eternity.

Hm.  Maybe it's not so bad.

5 Albums for Your Consideration

It's the week of Thanksgiving which basically means Christmas season is in full swing.

Re: that, 5 albums that will make you feel hip, feel British, feel good, feel cozy, or are just frenetically ADD. Most importantly, they all sing of Christ's birth in a way worth celebrating.

Sufjan Stevens- Songs for Christmas:

The Indie wunderkind does Christmas. Don't buy it digitally, however. If you really want to indulge the kitsch Indie aesthetic, order the album via Amazon so you don't miss out on the stickers, fold out comic escapade, poster, and thoughtfully constructed essays by "Santa Sufjan." Mmm.. love me some metacognitive treacle for Christmas.

Sting- If on a Winter's Night...:

Sting is a blowhard. That's why he calls himself Sting, probably. Here he finds a lot of niche musicians of the old order, sits indian-style with them in a circle, and ruminates on the soul of a traditional British Christmas. It's really great, actually. He draws from a lot of olde poetry, creates fun sheets of sound-canvases from spooky to toe-tappin', and throws in a Klaus Nomi cover to boot. I think he chose a Klaus Nomi song because, you know, Santa Klaus. Ha.

The Vince Guarldi Trio- A Charlie Brown Christmas:

What needs to be said? The reformed boogie-woogie piano player complements Shultz' creation in a bizarre, arty kinda way. It completes the vision for a work that is misleadingly simple. The stuff Ol' Sparky did to manhandle the network into playing on his terms is John Wayne type stuff, and thank God for it. Among other things, Guaraldi is responsible for the steel-brush-snare, quasi-melancholy, sentimental, thoughtful, "Christmas Time Is Here."

Christmas time is here
We'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year...

Game, set, match.

Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra- The Glorious Sound of Christmas:

It's all the really good traditional standards. This is the stuff you turn on in the evening next to the fireplace with a mug of cocoa. It also has a rollicking rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."

Relient K- Deck the Halls (And Bruise Your Hand):

So I like this album a lot. Matt Thiessen hints at a depth, even while desecrating Handel's Hallelujah chorus with a sickly buzz of pinched distortion and hyperactive 20 year-olds singing through their nose. The album is fun. If you have a problem with it, then you probably also eat little children's dreams for breakfast.

A Poet Pastiche

"A reader who knows no Latin and so cannot read Vergil has lost a great deal, but it is Tennyson's triumph that any such reader can remedy the loss by reading Tennyson, who richly sustains the comparison."

"...My mariners, 

Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me-

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old."

Dead too.

"And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly."

Still reading Bloom.  And the Bible too, apparently.  He unnerved me at first; now he seems like a droopy-cheeked old man, well into his senectitude and a little tipsy on his favorite wines (Shakespeare, Keats, and a little Pope for dessert). I like him more, now.

His faint inebriation doesn't dull his laser-fine sensibilities however, and though sometimes inaccurate, he is rarely imprecise. High school chemistry anyone?

The time draws near the birth of Christ:

  The moon is hid; the night is still;

  The Christmas bells from hill to hill

Answer each other in the mist

....

This year I slept and woke with pain,

  I almost wished no more to wake,

  And that my hold on life would break

Before I heard those bells again:

...

Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,

  Draw forth the cheerful day from night:

  O Father, touch the east, and light

The light that shone when Hope was born.

Christmas is interesting and how Tennyson treats it is interesting.  It's a time of year that people generally feel they should feel happy.  People are more fickle than that, and so it creates a rich setting for an artist who wants to juxtapose on it.  Beauty is deeper, more vibrantly colorful; Pain and sadness is drawn more starkly.  

There's a poem by Robert Southwell which was reworked into a song and re-arranged on Sting's new album "If on a Winter's Night..." which I think is worth reading.  Especially if Christmas isn't always the rosy stuff of Hallmark cards.

"Alas!" quoth He, 'but newly born

In fiery heats I fry,

Yet none approach to warm their hearts

Or feel my fire but I!

...

"For which, as now on fire I am

To work them to their good,

So will I melt into a bath,

To wash them in my blood."

With this He vanish'd out of sight

And swiftly shrunk away,

And straight I called unto mind

That it was Christmas Day.

Bloom, Tennyson, Beckett, Webern, and Ideas about Influence

On the friendship between Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Arthur Henry Hallam, our venerated critic, Harold Bloom writes, "The friendship between the two was the most important experience of Tennyson's life, and if it had a repres

cogito ergo Beckett (Solipsist, but no soul):

"That's how he speaks, this evening, how he has me speak, how he speaks to himself, how I speak, there is only me, this evening, here, on earth, and a voice that makes no sound because it goes towards none, and a head strewn with arms laid down and corpses fighting fresh, and a body, I nearly forgot...

...There's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening.  There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough."

Elsewhere, "...clear to me at last that the dark I have always struggled to keep under is in reality my most..."

"...precious ally."

An interesting conduit for exploring modernity.  Less > more. Neat perspective.

This post has very quickly become larger than I could control.

An Interesting Note on Dürer

Quite coincidentally, I recently discovered that Albrecht Dürer was strongly sympathetic to the Reformation.  It doesn't really matter; I certainly did not detect a "protestant ethic" when I was expressing my affection for his art in an earlier post.  

Just thought it was amusing.

What the Thunder Said

Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Ah, T. S. Eliot.

I thought this little snippet seemed apposite to the nearing premiere of "The Road".

I'm disinclined to really expound on the movie/book, because I hate it when people talk about plots. Well I don't hate it, but it seems irresponsible. Anyhow, I'll instead talk about the reasons I like it. If that reveals things, so be it.

It's no secret that the story takes place in some reality where all of civilization is inexplicably burned to ashes. McCarthy limits our perspective to the immediate present of the main protagonist, with only brief interludes. I don't know why, but I really, really enjoy apocalyptic scenarios.

A note: when I say apocalyptic, I only mean a scenario wherein civilization as we know it is obliterated. For some reason, I've never found this depressing. I think I'd be horribly depressed were I in that scenario, but as a literary device, I think the idiom is infinitely illuminating. I would also like to specify that I don't prefer the setting categorically. Plenty more authors do the subject poorly then do it well.

Though I've just taken the time to provide my own definition, I think the word apocalypse, properly defined, might well explain my preference for it. The "zombie apocalypse" has become a functional synonym for an unlikely and unrealistically terrible event. But the more etymological definition of apocalyptic is, "a prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil." This obviously originated from a Judeo-Christian context and found its fullest expression in works like the book of Revelation.

Thus my preference for the genre. It is evil's high-water mark. Done well, it convincingly illustrates just how awful reality can be. It illustrates how awful reality can only be. And then how much stronger the other side is.

That's it in a nutshell, I suppose. There are plenty other tributaries to my preference- some large, others smaller. There's a certain eeriness in inhabiting such a world. A kind of dreaded suspense and uneasy calm. A sinking solitude that's like being at the top of a roller coaster's first hill. But unlike a roller coaster, there isn't an inherent sense of security. In a good apocalyptic story, the author asks for your trust until eventually, they have the power to truly bruise your heart. It's more like skydiving. You really hope your chute opens.

Looking back, I can crudely chart my interest in apocalyptic literature. There are strains of it in hard-boiled noir, dark alleys, big cities, winter, sunsets, roadtrips, the west, German forests. Lord of the Rings does it better than anything else I've encountered.

I want to emphasize it's not necessarily my favorite type of literature. I've just described many things that are in no way part of the genre. But for the reasons above, it contains a good many criteria for a preferred literature. I've always liked T. S. Eliot, though on repeated readings, I'm still finding reasons why.

In an expanded quote of Dante from the end of Eliot's "Wasteland" he sums up my thesis for this post well:

Ara vos prec per aquella valor

'que vos guida al som de l'escalina,

'sovegna vos a temp de ma dolor.'

Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina.

Love it.

Concerning The High Church

Along the lines of my last post, I wanted to spend a short time simply describing one experience I had with what might be considered High Church.  

While I was in London on an internship, I attended an Anglo-Catholic (Anglican) church named St. Augustine of Canterbury.  The details are murky, but I think St. Augustine (note: of Canterbury, not Hippo) was an early missionary to Britain in the Middle Ages.  Anyhow, it was a church on the same block as my flat and exceptionally beautiful.  Constructed in the 1860's, it doesn't qualify as old by London standards.  

My feelings on the experience are mixed.  The pathetic attendance barely filled the first two rows and over half the attendees were very old.  One of the sermons preached on what I can only assume was the acceptability of homosexual clergy.  I can only assume because the church body was so innocuous that I couldn't determine any meaningful theological position.  None at all.  But for the very traditional liturgy, I could just as reasonably conclude it was some wild space cult as it was a Christian people.  Perhaps I was witnessing a museum-exhibit perform with live actors who, but for the utterly confused prattle of their off-script improvisation, might actually have passed for the real thing.  Anyhow, whatever theology I could discern from the sermon, I disagreed with.

I have strayed from my point.  I am not familiar with traditional sanctuary architecture.  I recall the floor-plan is typically shaped as a cross, but I suppose that depends on the time period.  This was not shaped that way.  It was more rectangular, though it did have a chancel and a few other traditional features.  

To be honest, the only thing I care to recount was one brief scene with three features.  The features were a Book of Common Prayer (the only way I could be positive it was Anglican), Incense, and the small but professional choir.  I mean professional because they literally hired people who likely have no religious affiliation whatsoever to come sing for them.

The building is built at an angle that it streams the morning sunlight through high windows which illuminate various biblical scenes on the wall opposite.  I didn't notice it at first.  I came in, sat in a pew, and began reading the Book of Common Prayer.  It's a pretty little red book filled with verses and hymns and prayers that, at a glance, seemed appropriate.  I don't know the history of the work, but I know it's old.  

As I sat there reading it, a fellow in all sorts of robes and raiments began to walk in from the back holding that incense ball and chain, swooshing it back and forth.  I had only seen this on tv before and hadn't expected to see it here.  I got pretty excited.  As he walked slowly forward the smoke spilled out like a streamer that, instead of whipping back, just hung suspended in the air.  Tight like smoke near a chimney it would then expand, wafting apart.  I guess swinging it fanned its embers because as he walked along, the thing started belching the stuff out like a smokestack.  I thought the kid must have been new, because by the time he finall got to the front, I could hardly see the altar. 

Had I come late, which I do too often, I would have been very impressed by the old British stoicism and their piety, seeing a room of stalwart Brits dutifully attending service while their building (and them inside!) were consumed by a fire a' la 1666.  But slowly, it formed a cloud above our heads. 

Then it looked gorgeous.  With the incense you could see these columns of diagonal gold morning-light pour through the smoke.  The sweet, delicious smell of the incense mingled with the sight of the light, so that you imagined you were smelling dawn.

Oh, I also forgot to mention that during this whole process, the very excellent choir was singing some beautiful old-sounding music.  I'm sad to call it "old-sounding" but I'm too ignorant to know any better.

Anyhow, it was beautiful.  And no matter how distorted their theology, there was a grain of God's love and beauty in that scene.  Sad theology though.  Sad, sad congregation.

"We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan to be carried about"

-Emerson

It isn't accurate.  Nonetheless, I think it's a beautiful expression of the Holy Spirit, should you replace "we were" with "He is."  

By the way, here are links to pictures of St. Augustine of Canterbury:

An old picture that I think better captures the feel of the place- its oldness.

And a link to modern pictures of the sanctuary that the congregation posted from their pathetically bad website.  I should warn you that the pictures are horribly taken.  Like they took them while jogging. also the site is slow.

All Saint's Day

I am a Lutheran and so, denominationally, possess the antagonism of a five century rivalry with the Catholic church. That rivalry partly stems from an insistence on substance over the form. Inherent in all strains of protestantism is the deep suspicion of anything that could threaten the freeness of mercy in exchange for a mysticism or earned salvation. That suspicion is especially vital in the Lutheran church. I am happy for that and strongly support it.

That preamble is to absolve myself of everything else I am about to say in this post.

The art at the beginning of this post is Albrecht Dürer's, All Saint's Day and is an example of all the different ways that I am absolutely in love with "High Church". For the purposes of this discussion I am using high church to mean ornate liturgy with a strong emphasis on the aesthetic. Also before continuing, I'd make a note that I am restraining this discussion to art, rather than doctrine or the doctrine of art.

I think all art is instructive, though perhaps not always teaching us good things. If we define value as society's preference for a thing, then there can be no dispute that gradual consensus ultimately measures the value of art. That may not be very accurate, but it is convenient and for our purposes, functional. The only way art survives time is if a society values it. And its proliferation roughly gauges the level of value assigned to it. Conversely, if a society values art and values it highly, it will be highly popular for a very long time.

These two variables are a fairly reliable criterion: time and popularity. Many things may be very popular for a little while, and some things may linger for a long while. Very few things can be very populare for a long while.

The reason for that rabbit trail is that the only things that can meet these criteria are things that instruct. Whether they instruct us as to the fundamental and nuanced realities of life or of the equally essential realities of our souls; good art is always a very effective teacher. Perhaps another way to state this is that art expresses. How well it expresses, either through medium or content, determines its longevity. Note that I have deliberately not assigned a moral value in this discussion. I strongly believe some great art is poison. But that's not relevant yet.

If art teaches, then the friction between "low church" and "high church" has only to do with what effect that art tends to have on the heart. What matters isn't art, but what it teaches us. Many of the protestant reformers felt legitimate ire at how the high church had become a spectacle rather than sacred. But they would be fools to think honest affection for aesthetic quality- aesthetic quality with which God has richly lavished on the natural world- was what led people astray. Pagans always end up worshiping nature. I have never heard anyone recommend bulldozing a mountain to maintain moral purity. Besides, With the advent of minimalist themes in 20th and 21st century art, one might question if some of the sparsely decorated churches of the south might have more in common with high church than a floridly ornamented sanctuary.

The trouble with assigning a moral value to shapes and symbols is that it assigns moral values to them. A swastika meant something very different till the Nazi's gave it a decidedly negative value. Moreover, a swastika doesn't make someone a Nazi. It can be a rallying point for Nazi's- a call to arms. But it can't indoctrinate someone. Symbols have tremendous power. And a good argument against high church is many of the values that informed its traditions (the sacred art, etc.) were indeed sacrilege.

Perhaps a greater concern of high church or the larger discussion of art isn't its existence, but rather its very tremendous power. The now redundant "great-power, great-responsibility" seems destined to become a classic aphorism, and it certainly applies here. Doing away with high church is a classic bait and switch. Thinking we can obviate legalism by our actions ensures it a very cozy home in our hearts.

The reason I like the above painting by Albrecht Dürer is, among many things, its central primacy of Christ and its observation of what makes us all saints. I think that is not immoral.

Snowglobes

Many thoughts are coming to mind and I don't have any category for them. A sentiment I find intolerable is that of feeling- even seeing- many things and being wholly unable to express them.

What I mean is like being in a snowglobe. A snowglobe filled with flakes of beauty, ugliness, sadness and joy; all sorts of imaginations and fact hopelessly unsettled and unorganized. It's frustrating because, without their categorizations, the whole experience looks very much like having no thoughts at all. That is wildly inaccurate and thus, intolerable.

Merely listing the flakes as they randomly flutter into view is no good either. It feels better to state the tributaries, chart the rivers, and precisely map the geography. I remember without context, C. S. Lewis describing a fondness for creating maps as a child. I have no idea why. I never made up maps of fantasy lands when I was younger, but it does strike me as a very enjoyable thing. There is a deep-seated need to create order, even order in our wildest imaginations. Indeed, within the realm of words, passionate bouts of free-verse lose their edge if not tempered with the wider context of structured expression.

My nearest correlation, and one that I think fits, is found in videogames. As a kid, the games that were finally able to allow 3 dimensional exploration firmly grasped my imagination. The primitive and polygonal worlds the developers created seemed irresistibly mysterious with their invisible boundaries and inaccessible regions that were never meant to be seen but for the accidental breach of a glitch. It was one of the few remaining ways a child of my generation could daily go out and do something that felt like exploration. And perhaps the joy of exploration is similar to making maps of fantasy worlds. It's subduing.

And that, whether subduing the unknown, or the chaotic flakes of the snowglobe, is deeply burned into our humanity. An impulse that once accomplished, craves more. Not in the sense of psychological addiction, but in the natural context of humanity. Just as it is not an addiction to eat dinner after you earlier had lunch.

At any rate, I have been reading and that gives me the feeling of falling when I'm sitting down, like vertigo. Without an original aim, I'm glad that I have let some of my thoughts at least congeal. My prose needs refinement and focus.

Or a snowblower.

Christmas

As a kid there were three major holidays (other than my birthday, of course): Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving. And each holiday had its best time of day. Thanksgiving had the best mornings, waking up to the parade, family, friends and later, food. Easter's magic was in its afternoons; after service and a nap there was candy and the quiet recognition of Christ's resurrection and completed atonement.

Christmas had nights.

Nights were the sky for the constellation of lights on houses; the cold blanket that made all the fires and candles so cozy; and the counterpoint to every colored bulb on the tree. It was the shadow in the tree's boughs, foreshadowing the one who "bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness."

Maybe I liked nights so much because they seemed so mysterious, and that fit with Christmas somehow. The season of Christmas is filled with mysteries: winter days are hidden in their longer nights; people are hidden in their warmer clothes; and gifts are hidden in wrapping-paper.

Gifts like an infant swaddled in cloth. A swaddle is a strip of cloth to wrap or bandage and its most famous reference is undoubtedly in the Bible. That God would wrap himself as a bandage to mankind on Christmas morning is indeed mysterious.

Christmas had nights because Christmas was a night mysteriously broken by the glow of the Christ child- not the blinding light of judgement. The mystery of the Christ child who "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts" and which the angels brightly proclaimed.

When we are wrapped in the mystery of unwrapping our gifts this Christmas, let us recall that they are shadows of the mysteries of God's love made complete in His gift of our salvation. The nights are great, but only because they symbolize the mystery of a night "whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

That's the best mystery to unwrap.

Yerba Mate

I'm at work and taking a few moments aside to discuss my beverage- Yerba Mate.

It's delicious! I remember some of my international students drinking it when I was working at ISM. They were from the southern tip of Brazil near Sao Paolo. Apparently this beverage is popular in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil.

Anyway, my friend up here at work was an international studies major and took a semester abroad in Argentina, developing a love for Mate while there. He told me about it and said he'd bring some to work one day and lo! He brought some today that he had purchased at an Argentine store somewhere on the Beltway.

It's a lot like tea but more delicate, a little sweeter and has a grassy, almost dusty aftertaste. He recommended a little sugar which would actually be wonderful. Anyway, I like it. I love things like this.

Hopefully my mom will bring back my camera charger from CS when they visit today. I would love to go around Houston and take some pictures. I saw some really fascinating things yesterday.

Alright, I'm done.

I was going to respond to someone's comments on digg.com

Not so much their comment as much as their spelling.

Then I realized I was taking the time to correct someone with the username, "slothanus."

Whoa. That was a close call.

Everlasting Everything.

Today was fine.


It's a fine thing to watch the common man confront the immeasurable. We're all commonfolk.

I like the idea of hay and hedges with cobblestone walks and wooly sheep with damp fur beneath gray skies and drizzly cold.

And the pale yellow lanterns glow, "Come home! Come home! Here it is cozy and out there it is cold and the air drips, drips, frigid water."

So stumbling we all turn toward the lanterns and plod toward them. Muck cakes strata of dry, brown leaves. Leaves like a carpet for the red-purple-yellow wood and leafy boughs. Tirelessly we walk through the growing mist, wrapped, swaddled like infants in a forgotten dream. And ever the lanterns before us.

I like the idea of pale yellow lanterns glowing in fog and autumn forests. It is a fine thing to watch. A fine thing.

Totus Tuus.