Proselytized!

Haaken and I were playing with Duplo blocks this morning when the doorbell rang. I cringed when I walked into the living room and saw a couple standing at the door, probably in their sixties, dressed like it was still the fifties and they were arriving for Sunday dinner. Shit, I thought, I'm about to be proselytized. Against my better judgment I opened the door anyway. And sure enough, with rigid formality the man, dressed in a stiff gray suit (with stiffly combed-over hair to match) made a couple comments about the nice weather (at least we agree on something, I thought), and promptly launched into his message, which was every bit as adamant as his dress. Asking if I agreed that people don't take the Bible as seriously as they used to, he opened his own worn copy, read II Timothy 3:16 as if it were a incantation and this were an exorcism, and then pulled out his stack of Awake! magazines. The whole time, I'm trying to figure out how I should respond. Or rather, wrestling with how I wanted to respond and how I ought to respond. Because I wanted to be obnoxious. I kept trying not to smirk (somewhat successful), make a smartass comment on already having my ticket to heaven (successful), or cut to the chase and just say fuck off (successful--although some of the smirks that slipped onto my face came because the song playing on my speakers while the man was talking was Modest Mouse's Teeth Like God's Shoeshine, which musically and lyrically is essentially saying just that). Once he pulled out the magazines, though, I (politely enough) told him I wasn't interested (to which he responded "Just trying to do the work Jesus commands us to do"), and I suppressed another smirk as I shut my front door and effectively squelched my chances of becoming one of the 144,000.

I won't get into the valid reasons for my visceral response to this sort of "witnessing" and the brand of religion that brings it about. Rather, my thoughts after this incident returned to (surprise, surprise) the aforementioned essay I read last week in David James Duncan's God Laughs and Plays. Later on in "What Fundamentalists Need for Their Salvation," Duncan writes:

But to merely shun those trapped inside this ideology is also futile. Those who are not fundamentalists are too often satisfied with expressing derision, intellectual superiority, or revulsion toward them and calling it good. John of the Cross proposes a more difficult but promising course of action: "Have a great love for those who contradict and fail to love you, for in this way love is begotten in a heart that has no love. This is how God acts with us: He loves us that we might love by means of the very love He bears towards us." (49)

I am, as described above (and, I suppose, in the post below), fairly guilty of the derision, arrogance, and revulsion that Duncan cautions against. And in acting on these instincts, I find myself in a place that is not very different from those whom I am reacting against--thus missing that essence of Christianity, the "truly compassionate, self-abnegating, empathetic, forgiving, and enemy-loving" (45) imitation of Christ, which I claim to be trying so hard to find (and, ostensibly, live).

New Online Encyclopedia!

Sick of the liberal bias (and "silly gossip") of free online encyclopedia Wikipedia (where the "facts" are apparently obtained from sleazy sources such as NPR or the New York Times)? Just as Fox News has answered the call for an unbiased news source, Conservapedia is your new source of objective, just-the-facts, online knowledge. Just check out these refreshingly true (and thus unbiased!) definitions of Homosexuality, Global Warming, Atheism, and, my personal favorite, the origin of the kangaroo! The aroma of truthiness is in the air . . .

If in need of ethereality . . .

On November 20th Heima, a documentary about the magnificent Icelandic band Sigur Rós, will be released. The trailer, at least, would indicate that the tone of the movie (filmed in the summer of 2006 while Sigur Rós toured their native country) will be every bit as ethereal and breathtaking as the music. That said, check out the trailer, and if Sigur Rós ever plays in a town near you, see them (I was fortunate enough to do so a couple years ago, and the experience was sacredly surreal).

More of Mr. Duncan

This weekend I began a book of essays by David James Duncan (Montana flyfisherman, self-described Christian mystic, and author of two of my favorite works of fiction, The River Why and The Brothers K) entitled God Laughs and Plays. Like his two above-mentioned novels, this collection of "churchless sermons" masterfully combines Duncan's fine writing style with wise reflection, much humor, and an articulate appreciation for the natural world. Here's an extended quote from a chapter somewhat provocatively entitled "What Fundamentalists Need for Their Salvation:"

Most of the famed leaders of the new "Bible-based" American political alliances share a conviction that their causes and agendas are approved of, and directly inspired, by no less a being than God. This enviable conviction is less enviably arrived at by accepting on faith, hence as "higher-than-fact," that the Christian Bible pared down into American TV English is God's "word" to humankind, that this same Bible is His only word to humankind, and that the politicized apocalyptic fundamentalist's unprecedentedly selective slant on this Bible is the one true slant.

This position is remarkably self-insulating. Possessing little knowledge of or regard for the world's wealth of religious, literary, spiritual, and cultural traditions, fundamentalist leaders allow themselves no concept of love or compassion but their own. They can therefore honestly, even cheerfully, say that it is out of "Christian compassion" and a sort of "tough love" for others that they seek to impose on all others their tendentiously literalized God, Bible, and slant. But how tough can love be before it ceases to be love at all? Well-known variations on the theme include the various Inquisitions' murderously tough love for "heritics" who for centuries were defined as merely defiant of the Inquisition itself; . . . the missionaries' and U.S. calvary's genocidally tough love for land-rich indigenous peoples whose crime was merely to exist; and, today, the Bush team's murderously tough love for an oil-rich Muslim world as likely to convert to Texas neocon values as Bush himself is likely to convert to Islam.

Each of these crusader groups has seen itself as fighting to make its own or some other culture "more Christian" even as it tramples the teachings of Christ into a blood-soaked earth. The result, among millions of nonfundamentalists, has been a growing revulsion toward anything that chooses to call itself "Christian." But I see no more crucial tool for defusing fundamentalist aggression than the four books of the gospels, and can think of no more crucial question to keep asking self-righteous crusaders than whether there is anything truly imitative of Jesus--that is, anything compassionate, self-abnegating, emphatic, forgiving, and enemy-loving--in their assaults on religious and cultural diversity, ecosystem health, non-Christian religion, or anything else they have determined to be "evil."

For two thousand years the heart of Christianity has not been a self-pronounced "acceptance of Jesus as my personal lord and savior": the religion's heart has been the words, example, and Person of Jesus, coupled with the believer's unceasing attempt to speak, act, and live in accord with this sublime example. (44-46)

Stylin' T-Shirts

There is a big (devilish?) part of me that really,really wants one of these . . .

Muscle'n Flo

On Tuesday I went to see a band from Portland, Oregon called Menomena. I've been enjoying their album Friend and Foe all year, and seeing them live only augmented my appreciation for the band (as all concerts ought to, but too often don't). Menomena is a democratic band in that it consists of three guys who share songwriting responsibilities (assisted by a computer program called Deeler, which was designed by one of the band members), trade instruments during the show, and split the singing duties. They met at a Christian high school in Portland, where they played in a self-described “Christian Pearl Jam-sounding band.” Awesome. Although I suppose there are worse options with which one could fill the "Christian ----sounding band" blank (e.g. that CCM juggernaut of the 90's, dc Talk, which has been described--accurately, I might add--as a "Christian Color Me Badd-sounding band"). The guys from Menomena have clearly matured past that inclination towards such a blatantly derivative style, as their music sounds remarkably unlike any other band I've heard. And with that introduction, they also happen to have some thoughtful lyrics, such as these from Friend and Foe opener "Muscle'n Flo:"

Well here I stand
a broken man
If I could I would raise my hands
I come before you humbly
If I could I'd be on my knees

Come lay down your head upon my chest
feel my heart beat feel my unrest
If Jesus could only wash my feet
Then I'd get up strong and muscle on . . .

I can relate to this.

On a lighter note, here's a pretty amusing article from Pitchfork by Menomena drummer Danny Seim, entitled My Favorite Cassettes (I Was Allowed to Listen To), Age 7-15. You really ought to read this, particularly if you grew up listening to cheesy Christian music.

And finally, here is a video of Menomena playing "Muscle'n Flo" in some guy's basement:

Porn

Mmmmmm . . . this is good.

(K)

So here's one of my favorite book excerpts from the last year, because it sounds like a fine description of my life's trajectory:

K (kay) verb, K'ed, K'ing. 1. baseball: to strike out. 2. to fail, to flunk, to fuck up, to fizzle, or 3. to fall short, fall apart, fall flat, fall by the wayside, or on deaf ears, or hard times, or into disrepute or disrepair, or 4. to come unglued, come to grief, come to blows, come to nothing, or 5. go to the dogs, to through the roof, go home in a casket, go to hell in a hand basket, or 6. to blow your cover, blow your chances, blow your cool, blow your stack, shoot your wad, bitch the deal, buy the farm, bite the dust, only 7. to recollect an oddball notion you first heard as a crimeless and un-K'ed child but found so nonsensically paradoxical that you had to ignore it or defy it or betray it for decades before you could begin to believe that it might possibly be true, which is that 8. to lose your money, your virginity, your teeth, health or hair, 9. to lose your home, your innocence, your balance, your friends, 10. to lose your happiness, your hopes, your leisure, your looks, and, yea, even your memories, your vision, your mind, your way, 11. in short, (and as Jesus K. Rist once so uncompromisingly put it) to lose your very self, 12. for the sake of another, is 13. sweet irony, the only way you're every going to save it.
(David James Duncan, The Brothers K)

Over the past couple months I have become more acutely aware than ever before that so many of my struggles with faith and God are at the root a result of my misconceptions of how God is and what Christianity is rather than genuine struggles with God as such (an idea analogous, I suppose, to Kant's distinction between phenomena, or things as we perceive them, and noumena, or things as they in fact are). Which isn't to say that God and I (assuming He exists . . . ahemm) don't have it out frequently enough as well. But this life of (tenuous) faith seems to be about having my perspective on the gospel being continually reshaped by the harsh reality (and of course utter beauty) of life as it is. With that, if you haven't read either of Duncan's novels ("The River Why" or "The Brothers K"), do so soon.

Spent a Week in God's Country . . .

. . . and it was approximately 45 degrees cooler than it is in St. Louis. And it wasn't all that cold back in Montana. Rather, it was Autumn, which last I checked is supposed to happen in October. Anyhow, here are some photos, just to prove I was there.

(F)

As a prelude (or perhaps disclaimer) to future blog posts, a postscript to other (potentially) offensive posts, an excuse for my daily verbal shortcomings, and as a generally entertaining topic of discussion, I offer up this article from the British magazine Third Way:

Here is a mystery: a word that is in every sense common, which yet has retained its power to affront for over 500 years. The dictionaries, which from 1795 until 1965 generally declined to include it, can record its offensiveness but cannot explain it.

Its curious quality is apparent if you substitute for it any of the 32 literal synonyms listed in Roget’s Thesaurus. Tell someone to ‘copulate off’ and you will generate only amusement. Certainly, no one will get the hump.

Some of its impact, of course, is derived from its expressive combination of a short vowel between a fricative ‘f’ and a plosive ‘k’. A less percussive sound might never have achieved its pre-eminence as the most frowned-upon word in the world.

Then again, there are plenty of similar words, from ‘cack’ to ‘pig’, which have little or no such effect. Even sexual terms that are violent in meaning and not just in sound go off (one might say) with less of a bang.

So precise is the phonetic chemistry that Father Ted could say ‘feck’ as much as he liked and somehow never turn the air blue. And other nearly-but-not-quite phrases such as ‘hacked off’ or ‘muck up’ seem only innocent or (if the euphemism is detected) a bit limp.

The F word has become, in the proper sense of the term, a fetish: a construct in which we have chosen to invest some mystical energy. It isn’t the sound per se that delivers the charge, but the fact that our culture has declared it unspeakable. Its capacity to shock lies in our will to be shocked.

And not only the sound: the very combination of letters is similarly taboo. We can cope with the ellipses ‘f...’ and ‘f—’ on the page, though they represent unequivocally exactly the same word as the letters ‘fuck’. Yet even printed thus, without context or feeling, it has the power to provoke us.

Even an anagram can excite us, as French Connection UK famously found with its knowing acronym. Even an initial makes TFI Friday look cool.

Such status does this modern tetragrammaton enjoy that it has established an all but exclusive right to the term ‘four-letter word’, though most of the vocabulary we use every day is four letters long – including some of our best Anglo-Saxon, such as ‘life’, ‘love’ and ‘hope’.

Not that the F word is Anglo-Saxon at all. It was probably imported from Germany or Holland, from a loose group of words suggesting ‘to strike’ or ‘to thrust’. No use of it is recorded before 1475 – maybe because it was considered too rude in the Middle Ages to write down. No one knows why it should have been singled out for this special dishonour. Shakespeare toys with it in several plays, but never as boldly as the C word in Hamlet III.ii.

D H Lawrence attempted to reclaim it in 1928 as a good, earthy, impolite word for a good, earthy, impolite act, with limited success; but the edge it retained has since been dulled by over-use. Its residual force is exploited to diminishing effect by would-be rebels and comics and scriptwriters looking for a short cut to verité.

In a postmodern culture, such a monolithic taboo is anyway hard to sustain. In different circles, the F word has very different values. For many, it is hardly more than a mild intensifier, though little boys still consider it daring. Billy Connolly uses it merely as sonic punctuation.

For some, it remains an ‘obscenity’, a source of more outrage than the arms trade or Third World debt. But small transgressions were always a useful distraction from bigger ones. One wonders, to be honest, whether God gives a fig.

(Huw Spanner, "The F Word" Third Way Magazine, November 2000)

My view on cussing is, in brief, as follows. 1. Cussing is a cultural issue rather than an ethical issue 2. Cussing is entirely appropriate under the right circumstances and to make certain points that would otherwise be less readily made without the use of said cuss words 3. As noted in the final paragraph of Mr. Spanner's essay, it is a reflection of more serious theological and ethical misdirection that Christian culture takes cussing seriously, in that by focusing on something as superficial as "foul language," focus can be taken off of more difficult and problematic (yet certainly more pressing) ethical issues.

God and Earth

In response to both some of the discussion that occurred over the Iceland post and in regard to my endless preoccupation with the geographical place where I currently reside (and its stark contrast to the place where I am from), I re-picked up one of my favorite essay collections, Wendell Berry's What are People For?. This short volume has much to say that is helpful about how we ought to live in relationship to the earth as well as the concept of having a sense-of-place (a love for and connection to the place/environment/land where one is from). With that in mind, here are a few nice Berry quotes:

The subject of Christianity and ecology is endlessly, perhaps infinitely, fascinating. . . . (It) is politically fascinating to those of us who are devoted both to biblical tradition and to the the defense of the earth, because we are always hankering for the support of the churches, which seems to us to belong, properly and logically, to our cause. This latter fascination, though not the most difficult and fearful, is certainly the most frustrating, for the fact simply is that the churches, which claim to honor God as the "maker of heaven and earth," have lately shown little inclination to honor the earth or to protect it from those who would dishonor it. (95)

Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on "the economy"; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of a building fund, the organized church will elect--indeed, has already elected--to save the building fund. The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as the creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences. (96)

The industrial nations are now divided, almost entirely, into a professional or executive class that has not the least intention of working in truth, beauty, and righteousness, as God's servants, or to the benefit of their fellow men, and an underclass that has no choice in the matter. Truth, beauty, and righteousness now have, and can have, nothing to do with the economic life of most people. This alone, I think, is sufficient to account for the orientation of most churches to religious feeling, increasingly feckless, as opposed to religious thought or religious behavior. . . . "There is . . . a price to be paid," Philip Sherrard says, "for fabricating around us a society which is as artificial and as mechanized as our own, and this is that we can exist in it only on condition that we adapt ourselves to it. This is our punishment." We all, obviously, are to some extent guilty of this damnable adaptation. We are all undergoing this punishment. But as Philip Sherrard well knows, it is a punishment that we can set our hearts against, an adaptation that we can try with all our might to undo. We can ally ourselves with those things that are worthy: light, air, water, earth; plants and animals; human families and communities; the traditions of decent life, good work, and responsible thought; the religious traditions; the essential stories and songs. (101-102)

There is more I had intended to include, but if I do so the end result will likely be that nobody will actually read any of it. But the above selections, taken from the essay God and Country, more or less summarizes the way I have thought about the intersection between my faith and the land, as well as hints at my hopes for my family's future lifestyle. The photo, by the way, was taken from the home where I was fortunate enough to grow up. It is probably superfluous to say that it was not difficult to cultivate a love for that place.

Maybe we'll move to Iceland

For one, nobody would think Haaken's name was odd (not only is Haaken a common name there, but hey, it's hard to be shocking in a country where people are really named Björk Guðmundsdóttir). For two, theirs is the only language to use a rune in their alphabet (the thorn, Þ). For three, they spawned Sigur Rós. And fourthly (the actual inspiration for this post), the Icelandic government is actually dealing sensibly with global warming and oil shortages. I also hear the climbing is good, and the summers tend to be cooler than Missouri's . . .

Addendum: a few more things in favor of Iceland: plentiful fresh(ish) cod, turf houses, president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson (ahhh . . . just rolls off the tongue), active volcanoes, and churches that appear as if they were built to transport you to heaven themselves . . . what's not to like?

Two Videos for Thought

Modern World (courtesy of Montreal band Wolf Parade, from their album Apologies to the Queen Mary)


I always thought this was one of the more inspiring scenes of modern history . . . and now available with a bit of editing and some good music (Boards of Canada, I think)

The Crucified God

I picked up Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God this morning, and read this in the introduction: "Jesus died crying out to God, 'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' All Christian theology and all Christian life is basically an answer to the question which Jesus asked as he died. The atheism of protests and of metaphysical rebellions against God are also answers to this question. Either Jesus who was abandoned by God is the end of all theology or he is the beginning of a specifically Christian, and therefore critical and liberating, theology and life. The more the 'cross of reality' is taken seriously, the more the crucified Christ becomes the general criterion of theology." In the context my existential attempts at some sort of personally satisfying theodicy, this concept of a God who suffers with us is a fascinating and potentially helpful one. While I am not so pretentious as to think it likely I will end up wading through Moltmann's entire book, and am fully aware that in the odd chance that I do find the fortitude to do so I am far from equipped to understand the wider theological context that Moltmann wrote from, I hope that even a cursory reading of and meditation on this subject will be helpful in my struggling attempts to understand and reconcile God with the reality of life on earth.

And you call on God, and God is dead.*

Deus Absconditus. God, unknowable by the human mind. Annie Dillard wrote the following in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: "In the Koran, Allah asks, 'The heaven and earth and all in between, thinkest thou I made them in jest?' It's a good question. What do we think of the created universe, spanning an unthinkable void with an unthinkable profusion of forms? Or what do we think of nothingness, those sickening reaches of time in either direction? . . . Pascal uses a nice term to describe the notion of the creator's, once having called forth the universe, turning his back to it: Deus Absconditus. Is this what we think happened? Was the sense of it there, and God absconded with it, ate it, like a wolf who disappears around the edge of the house with the Thanksgiving turkey?" The trajectory of my life of late has kept these questions at the fore of my mind. On July 30th a good friend of mind was killed in Northern Iraq. Wrestling with Jason's death, the meaning of his life, and the impact all of this has on those who loved him has exacerbated my thoughts about God's relationship (or lack thereof) to human experience. Jason grew up with the same faith that I did, and went on to reject it for many of the reasons I continue to wrestle with it. I think I always assumed (i.e., had hope) that at some point Jason would come to some sense of peace with God, that his present crisis would be resolved in the future. But now there is no future for Jason. He will not go on to figure things out, to at the very least come to some sort of tenuous ceasefire with God in the battle of assigning responsibility for pain and suffering. Instead he died at age 29, fighting a meaningless war in a (seemingly) meaningless universe. Is God really in charge of all of this? These are the sorts of questions that I know would get me prematurely sent to hell in a handbasket by many in the evangelical Christian world, and yet I cannot help but think that God, assuming he does exist and care, would want me to think these thoughts, to wrestle with this reality. It is difficult to go to church these days, and today the sermon was from the book of Ecclesiastes. For the living know that they will die; But the dead know nothing, And they have no more reward, For the memory of them is forgotten . . . While church did nothing to dispel the dark cloud around me (rather, I sulked around morosely all afternoon, listened to melancholy music, laying on the couch thinking dark thoughts, and wishing I were drinking), it did remind me that perhaps the current shallowness of my belief in God is not perhaps so heretical as some would make it out to be. Dillard continues in Pilgrim: "'God is subtle,' Einstein said, 'but not malicious.' Again, Einstein said that 'nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning.' It could be that God has not absconded but spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand and subtle, so powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem. In making the thick darkness a swaddling band for the sea, God 'set bars and doors' and said, 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.' But have we come even that far? Have we rowed out to the thick darkness, or are we all playing pinochle in the bottom of the boat?"
*Bonnie "Prince" Billy: "Love Comes to Me" (from The Letting Go)

Apples

I was sitting on the porch tonight, eating an apple and reading David James Duncan's "The Brothers K" by candlelight. The cicadas droned on, and I paused for a second to take another bite and notice the fireflies. As I chewed, I realized that I had gotten a piece of the apple skin that was too close to the stem, leaving a slightly bitter taste in my mouth. I find it odd how memories are often brought to mind by the most innocuous of actions. With this bite of apple I was suddenly reminded of being much younger, when I used to eat most of the apple core, and in particular, for some reason, of being out in the mountains back home in Montana on a sunny, crisp, autumn day. And with this one thought, the simplicity of that time in my life flooded back as well. What would it be like to be 12 again, and eating an apple, and reveling in just being in the mountains, and having a whole future of hopes and dreams ahead?

Some Reasons Why Montana is a Pretty Nice Place

Jackson Creek


The Bridgers


The Ridge (Bridger Bowl)


Me and Gregg and Hidden Gully (Bridger Bowl)


The Tobacco Roots

The Kid and the Mountains

Haaken takes his first ski trip with Dad.
Behind his grandparents' house.

Another Freakin' List!

My access to the internet has been somewhat curtailed for the last month as a result of our (relatively) rustic (and temporary) living situation in the mountains of Northern California. Hence the apparent abandonment of this blog since December. And hence the belatedness of this best-noise-of-2006 list.

I've begun with my favorite albums that were actually released this year. I was going to take the more dramatic approach of ranking them in order of their (at least perceived) merit, but, after a brief attempt at doing so decided against it due to my inability to actually form such permanent qualitative distinctions (i.e., I've found my opinion as to which album, uh, beats the most ass tends to change rather frequently). All that said, here's some of the more pleasant music of 2006, in alphabetical order. Please enjoy.


Bonnie "Prince" Billy: The Letting Go. This is melancholy and melodic indie folk that is guaranteed to put its listener in a pensive, sentimental mood. While beautiful, it is not good workout music. Rather, it is better as a soundtrack for a rainy day, or a sad evening, or just an hour of introspection.





Band of Horses: Everything All the Time. This debut album is reminiscent of The Shins (but, I think, better). Full of cascading guitars and echoing vocals, Everything . . . is beautiful pop music of a shimmering, ethereal quality that is particularly fitting for road trips (among other things).






Califone: Roots and Crowns. Roots and Crowns consists of bluesy- folksy- rootsy- experimentally music that rewards repeated listening.









This is a quirky album whose artisic merits I concede, but whose sound I admittedly have yet to fall in love with completely. Perhaps this is at least in part due to the fact that I picked it up in the middle of an unbearably hot, interminably long St. Louis summer during which I was studying for the debacle that was the National Board Exam, and its sound is still evocative of that memory. I still enjoy Ships, however, and am holding out that it will be one of those albums that I someday connect with a bit more viscerally.




The Decemberists: The Crane Wife. Any fears that Colin Meloy et al. would compromise the quality of their literary, narrative-driven indie folk pop by signing to Capitol Records have been dispelled by this release (although I suppose by definition they have compromised the descriptor "indie" by signing to a major label). With the exception of "The Perfect Crime #2," (whose unending chorus I find insufferable), this is their best release yet.




Destroyer: Detroyer's Rubies. Already wrote about it (see November 13th post). I still like these Rubies.










Joanna Newsom: Ys. Yes, I still like this quite a bit as well (see December 8th post).










The Mountain Goats: Get Lonely. John Darnielle writes lots of really good, quiet, music with a minimalist aesthetic (though not so minimalist as when he used to record his albums with a tape player). Get Lonely is no exception to The Mountain Goat pattern (of really good, quiet, music, etc.). Put it on the playlist with Bonnie "Prince" Billy, however. As is intimated by the title, it is a bit sad in nature, and is not well-suited to either dance parties or working out.




Finally (in contrast to the above-listed albums), some rock and roll. If I ran on treadmills, I would do it while listening to these Norwegians. Heavy, driving beats are contrasted with (and complemented by) more melodic guitar lines and understated vocals. If the music sometimes degenerates into chaos, it always resolves into something beautiful (thus making the beauty all the more noticeable). In that sense, Serena Maneesh is sort of like life.



Tapes n' Tapes: The Loon. Nothing too innovative here, but what Tapes n' Tapes do, which is to create fun, indie pop-rock, they do well. "Insistor," in particular, makes me happy.









Thom Yorke: The Eraser. If it was suspected that Radiohead's genius was driven completely by Mr. Yorke, such suspicions prove unfounded with this solo debut. And yet, even if The Eraser does lack the epic, classic status of each of the last four Radiohead albums, this album of pensive, electronic music is nonetheless quite solid (and better, I think, than most reviews gave it credit for being). The final song on The Eraser, the haunting "Cymbal Rush," has been one of my favorites this year.




TV on the Radio: Return to Cookie Mountain. In contrast to The Eraser, I've found that most people who listen to this album like it more than I do. It is however, a fine bunch of songs, and I whole-heartedly recommend playing "Wolf Like Me" when in need of being pumped up (i.e., for a boxing match, or a NASCAR, uh, event).





Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass. This album would make my list solely on the strength of its title. But the music is very nice as well. . . . I Will Beat Your Ass is an eclectic album, with everything from driving garage rock to bouncy 60's vintage pop. Listen especially to song number one, "Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind."




Next, some found sound--a few more albums that weren't new this year, but were new to me. No helpful descriptions here (I grow tired of writing), just a hearty recommendation that you listen to them.

Andrew Bird: Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!
Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Lift Your Skinny Fists, Like Antennas to Heaven
The National: Alligator
Silver Jews: American Water
Songs:Ohia: Magnolia Electric Co.


Alright, there it is. If anybody is reading this, and they care, and are perhaps interested, a compact disc with a nice selection of the above-mentioned artists is available for their listening pleasure. Just send an e-mail my way.

A Psalm (or, I see a Darkness, or, Bono vs. Thom)

The other night Jess asked me when I wanted to sit down and talk about our New Year's Resolutions. I mumbled something about this weekend, and hoped she would forget about the subject. Before we went to bed an hour later she asked me why I had seemed bothered by her question, and reminded me that I had been the one to suggest we have such a discussion just last week. I had forgotten.

I perceive life through bipolar eyes. Thus far it has been a mountainous journey, with its optimistic summits characterized by intense motivation to change, to live up to my ideals, to improve myself and to contribute to the good in this world, to find Bono inspiring rather than hopelessly delusional. These periods of optimism have always been violently ripped apart by the reality of the deep, sunless valleys between. After the summit there is always the steadily increasing sense of hopelessness that inexorably marches my psyche into a deep depression (the sort that inevitably arises from such a precipitous loss of hope). Perhaps this is a needed reality check, with the reality being that mountain peaks just allow for a deceptively peaceful panorama of the world beneath. Maybe the problem isn't so much the depression but the preceding high.

Are you such a dreamer?
To put the world to rights?
I'll stay home forever
Where two & two always
makes up five

During such intervening times I am overwhelmed by the sense that most of my goals are as empty and unreachable as George W. Bush's vision for Iraq (or, a desert mirage). The reality seems to be that I never really change. That for all my ideals and hopes, the very core of my being appears to be essentially immutable. That no matter how badly I want two and two to add up to five, the reality is that it is always just four. This despair is more than just some existential personal battle. It is not just me being down on myself. It emerges every bit as much from my observation of the world around me. It is not just me that doesn't change. People don't change. Or when they do, it's the exception, on offense to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And of course, the whole pattern of our existence is indelibly marked not just by personal failures, but by the overarching travesties of war, poverty, disease, environmental destruction, etc.

What will grow crooked
You can't make straight
It's the price that you've
got to pay
. . .

People get crushed like
biscuit crumbs
And laid down in the bitumen
You have tried your best
to please everyone
But it just isn't happening

And that is fucked up
this is fucked up

You cannot kickstart
a dead horse
You just cross yourself
and walk away

And yet this pervading despondence is antithetical to the faith that I claim, which is steeped in the concept of hope and revels in the possibility of change. While it by no means denies the reality of what it is like to be human (e.g., what I have written of above), at its very core Christianity is about God intervening in the world and creating the possibility of renewal. It is about God "kick-starting" a dead horse. Somehow, despite all I have written above, I believe this. Some days it feels as if I have no choice but to believe, like I've been somehow hardwired to think in terms of this faith. Others (perhaps most), it feels like a very deliberate decision that I must make, so that every morning I must wake up and choose to believe that God is at work in me and in the world around me. Because a lot of days it just doesn't seem true.

Take these hands
Teach them what to carry
Take these hands
Don't make a fist

Take this mouth
So quick to criticize
Take this mouth
Give it a kiss

Yahweh
All this pain before the child is born
Yahweh
Still I'm waiting for the dawn
(the sun is coming up . . . )
Yahweh
Tell me now
Why the dark before the dawn?

Lyrical credits to (respectively) 1.) Radiohead "2 + 2 = 5 (The Lukewarm)" (Hail to the Thief) 2.) Thom Yorke, "Black Swan" (The Eraser) 3.) U2 "Yahweh" (How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb)