Anthony Esolen, at Touchstone, after a brief discussion of epic religious movies, writes:
At all events, sentimentality -- which is but a parody of deep feeling -- is deadening. Nowadays, in mass entertainment, it comes in the really noxious form of easy, "sentimental" cynicism, when a banal remark with the form of a sniggering comback is supposed to elicit the cheap thrill of superiority, an easy confirmation of despair and meaninglessness, as of rich kids slumming in the precincts of hell. Yet I think there are connections to be drawn between that kind of sentimentality and the cloying, smothering sort that characterizes bad religous art, including the bad religious music we've discussed here before.
…
[Billy] Wilder is sharp, incisive, dogged; he wants the truth. But bad religious art, like bad art generally, flees from the truth. Wilder may not see what you'd like him to see, but he strives to see, and to show you what he sees. If he ever did a Biblical epic -- and I don't think he did -- it would be nothing but odd and angular theological reflection, the drama of sinful man encountering the Holy One of Israel. Bad religious art, like political correctness, falls back upon the vague, the automatic, the thoughtless, the manipulated and predictable response. It pastes a happy face upon the pew and calls it joy. Gather us in, the nice and the naughty.
This reminds me of what Robertson Davies said about Charles Dickens:
The vitality of Dickens’ work, I suggest, lay not in his indignation over long-dead abuses; there was plenty of indignation in Victorian England. It was in his extraordinary perception and illumination of the life that lay about him, inanimate as well as animate. He was not nearly so aroused about the incompetence and dishonesty of the hospital nurses of his time as he was fascinated by the incompetence and dishonesty of Sairey Gamp and her partner Betsey Prigg; he did not care so much about the grinding slowness of the Court of Chancery as he cared about Miss Flyte, whom it had driven mad, and the Jarndyce family, whom it impoverished. When he looked at the Lord Chancellor seated in his court, wigged and gowned and attended by all the splendor of precedent and ritual, he was not a lawyer who had reached the top of his profession, but Old Krook who sat in his nearby junkshop surrounded, like the Lord Chancellor, by the dusty evidence of ruined households and broken lives.
It is not originality that is the province of the true artist. Rather, it is what Davies calls intuition: a sense of the hidden possibilities of things (words, colors, sounds, materials) and, especially, human beings. Does God reveal Himself through his artists? I'm in no position to give a final answer on that one, but it certainly seems as if, from time to time, He finds someone with this intuitive sense (Dante, Bach, Tolkein) and gives to him a special gift.
Dear readers (all three of you), what do you think?
26 March 2008
Wednesday Poem: The Human Seasons
Keats could arrange words to such glorious and subtle effect. He died at twenty-five, and you have to wonder what Keats would have written had he not passed directly from Spring to Winter. Of course, all of his writing had a tinge of Autumn…
The Human Seasons
John Keats
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:—
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
The Human Seasons
John Keats
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:—
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring's honey'd cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
25 March 2008
Fantastic new word: POGONOTROPHY
(via Ben Myers)
There's a short new essay by David Bentley Hart, in which he explains how Rowan Williams is a theologian of the highest order. As usual, it's a beautiful read. But perhaps most important to me is his latest demonstration of his master of obscure formal English, as evidenced in the first paragraph:
No one who had – whatever reservations he or she might harbour as to the Archbishop’s wisdom, prudence or pogonotrophy – could possibly dismiss the man as a featherweight or a fraud.
Pogonotrophy is defined as “the growing of a beard.” For reasons which will be obvious to those who know me “in real life,” I love this word.
There's a short new essay by David Bentley Hart, in which he explains how Rowan Williams is a theologian of the highest order. As usual, it's a beautiful read. But perhaps most important to me is his latest demonstration of his master of obscure formal English, as evidenced in the first paragraph:
No one who had – whatever reservations he or she might harbour as to the Archbishop’s wisdom, prudence or pogonotrophy – could possibly dismiss the man as a featherweight or a fraud.
Pogonotrophy is defined as “the growing of a beard.” For reasons which will be obvious to those who know me “in real life,” I love this word.
Not going to lie…
I am excited about this.
However, a few thoughts:
Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan in a fantasy setting is a good idea.
Putting in a white guy and filming in English is a bad idea.
Oh well. Even if it's bad it will still be sort of awesome.
However, a few thoughts:
Jet Li vs. Jackie Chan in a fantasy setting is a good idea.
Putting in a white guy and filming in English is a bad idea.
Oh well. Even if it's bad it will still be sort of awesome.
19 March 2008
Wednesday Poem: That Holy Thing
Because it is Holy Week, I sought out a religious poem for today. I found one by George MacDonald. If only I could find my old copy of The Golden Key! I'd read the whole thing tonight. But anyway, here it is: short, simple, and probably deeper than you think. (Again via Bartleby!)
That Holy Thing
George MacDonald
They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
O Son of Man, to right my lot
Naught but Thy presence can avail;
Yet on the road Thy wheels are not,
Nor on the sea Thy sail!
My how or when Thou wilt not heed,
But come down Thine own secret stair,
That Thou mayst answer all my need—
Yea, every bygone prayer.
That Holy Thing
George MacDonald
They all were looking for a king
To slay their foes and lift them high:
Thou cam'st, a little baby thing
That made a woman cry.
O Son of Man, to right my lot
Naught but Thy presence can avail;
Yet on the road Thy wheels are not,
Nor on the sea Thy sail!
My how or when Thou wilt not heed,
But come down Thine own secret stair,
That Thou mayst answer all my need—
Yea, every bygone prayer.
18 March 2008
You are my favorite number.
Yesterday, the First Things website put up a speech by Michael Heller, this year's Templeton Prize winner. (The Templeton Prize is awarded for “discoveries and breakthroughs to expand human perceptions of divinity and to help in the acceleration of divine creativity,” and the list of previous prize winners includes Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, and Bill Bright, although it looks like it's been going to scholars for the last ten years or so.) Heller is a cosmologist and a priest, and right now he's working on, umm, “noncommutative geometry and groupoid theory in mathematics which attempts to remove the problem of an initial cosmological singularity at the origin of the universe.”
It's a wonderful little speech. Heller takes Gottfried Leibniz as his hero. He quotes Leibniz: “When God calculates and thinks things through, the world is made.” This thought is the starting point for Heller's own remarks.
“…the true mathematical thinking begins when one has to solve a real problem, that is to say, to identify a mathematical structure that would match the conditions of the problem, to understand principles of its functioning, to grasp connections with other mathematical structures, and to deduce the consequences implied by the logic of the problem. Such manipulations of structures are always immersed into various calculations, since calculations form a natural language of mathematical structures.
“It is more or less such an image that we should associate with Leibniz’s metaphor of calculating God. Things thought through by God should be identified with mathematical structures interpreted as structures of the world. Since for God to plan is the same as to implement the plan, when ‘God calculates and thinks things through,’ the world is created.”
He moves on to address the role of chance in the universe:
“Mathematical structures that are parts of the composition determining the functioning of the universe are called laws of physics. It is a very subtle composition indeed. Like in any masterly symphony, elements of chance and necessity are interwoven with each other and together span the structure of the whole. Elements of necessity determine the pattern of possibilities and dynamical paths of becoming, but they leave enough room for chancy events to make this becoming rich and individual.
“Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories that ascribe a great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old Manichean error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God, what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.”
Again, we see the close ties between music and theology, and music itself grows out of rhythm and ratio, which is to say, math. I found a fine description of the semi-spiritual development of the mathematical sense at the Reactionary Epicurean.
One of my big search criteria for graduate school will be proximity to a decent math department. The mathematical insight into the structure of things is so grand, so important, that I sometimes have trouble understanding how people get by without it. I suspect that some people simply found the early stages of math to be tedious, and they took their undeveloped mathematical intuition into other fields. So let me call, again, for someone to fix math in the United States and free us to do better things than figure out our own personal methods of multiplication.
Oh, and, concerning “Galloping Gottfried” Leibniz… go to Dr. Boli for laffs.
It's a wonderful little speech. Heller takes Gottfried Leibniz as his hero. He quotes Leibniz: “When God calculates and thinks things through, the world is made.” This thought is the starting point for Heller's own remarks.
“…the true mathematical thinking begins when one has to solve a real problem, that is to say, to identify a mathematical structure that would match the conditions of the problem, to understand principles of its functioning, to grasp connections with other mathematical structures, and to deduce the consequences implied by the logic of the problem. Such manipulations of structures are always immersed into various calculations, since calculations form a natural language of mathematical structures.
“It is more or less such an image that we should associate with Leibniz’s metaphor of calculating God. Things thought through by God should be identified with mathematical structures interpreted as structures of the world. Since for God to plan is the same as to implement the plan, when ‘God calculates and thinks things through,’ the world is created.”
He moves on to address the role of chance in the universe:
“Mathematical structures that are parts of the composition determining the functioning of the universe are called laws of physics. It is a very subtle composition indeed. Like in any masterly symphony, elements of chance and necessity are interwoven with each other and together span the structure of the whole. Elements of necessity determine the pattern of possibilities and dynamical paths of becoming, but they leave enough room for chancy events to make this becoming rich and individual.
“Adherents of the so-called intelligent design ideology commit a grave theological error. They claim that scientific theories that ascribe a great role to chance and random events in the evolutionary processes should be replaced, or supplemented, by theories acknowledging the thread of intelligent design in the universe. Such views are theologically erroneous. They implicitly revive the old Manichean error postulating the existence of two forces acting against each other: God and an inert matter; in this case, chance and intelligent design. There is no opposition here. Within the all-comprising Mind of God, what we call chance and random events is well composed into the symphony of creation.”
Again, we see the close ties between music and theology, and music itself grows out of rhythm and ratio, which is to say, math. I found a fine description of the semi-spiritual development of the mathematical sense at the Reactionary Epicurean.
One of my big search criteria for graduate school will be proximity to a decent math department. The mathematical insight into the structure of things is so grand, so important, that I sometimes have trouble understanding how people get by without it. I suspect that some people simply found the early stages of math to be tedious, and they took their undeveloped mathematical intuition into other fields. So let me call, again, for someone to fix math in the United States and free us to do better things than figure out our own personal methods of multiplication.
Oh, and, concerning “Galloping Gottfried” Leibniz… go to Dr. Boli for laffs.
15 March 2008
Young Folks' Picture-History of Music
While I was rummaging around in the piano bench at my family's house here in Charlotte, I found an old family book, from 1925:
The book came with a few sheets of illustrations, and the child was instructed to cut them out and glue them into boxes on the pages. Here is the text of the “Note to Young Folks” at the beginning of the book:
Some day you may be very proud of the work you do in this book. Music is so lovely and the story of music so interesting that you should do your level best to cut out the pictures neatly and paste them in without smearing. The author hopes that you will have “all kinds of fun” doing this.
And my ancestor (paternal grandfather's sister, I think) did a really good job. After 80 years, the pictures are still in there.
There was blank staff paper in the last few pages, and in my family copy there are big, unsteady quarter-notes drawn in pencil: a child's first frustrating attempt at composition. On the final page of text, there is yet another reminder of how much the world has changed in just a few generations:
There is so much music in the world that everyone is expected to know a great deal about it these days. It is a kind of language among the most interesting people. If one does not have it a great many of the fine things of life are lost. This means that every moment you put upon practice will bring you hours of joy some day.
The book came with a few sheets of illustrations, and the child was instructed to cut them out and glue them into boxes on the pages. Here is the text of the “Note to Young Folks” at the beginning of the book:
Some day you may be very proud of the work you do in this book. Music is so lovely and the story of music so interesting that you should do your level best to cut out the pictures neatly and paste them in without smearing. The author hopes that you will have “all kinds of fun” doing this.
And my ancestor (paternal grandfather's sister, I think) did a really good job. After 80 years, the pictures are still in there.
There was blank staff paper in the last few pages, and in my family copy there are big, unsteady quarter-notes drawn in pencil: a child's first frustrating attempt at composition. On the final page of text, there is yet another reminder of how much the world has changed in just a few generations:
There is so much music in the world that everyone is expected to know a great deal about it these days. It is a kind of language among the most interesting people. If one does not have it a great many of the fine things of life are lost. This means that every moment you put upon practice will bring you hours of joy some day.
14 March 2008
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, the soul of man, and privatio boni.
The literary turn of William Writes continues with this excerpt from an article published in The London Times, in 1913, and available to you at Bartleby:
“…Dostoevsky needs no illusion of certainty. and gives none. He had a faith independent of happiness and even of the state of his own soul. Life indeed had poured unhappiness upon him, so that he knew the worst of it from his own experience; yet we can tell from his books that he knew also a peace of thought compared with which all his own miseries were unreal to him. In that he differs from Tolstoy, who saw this peace of thought in the distance and could not reach it. Tolstoy therefore conceived of life as an inevitable discord between will and conviction, and tried to impose the impossible on mankind as he tried to impose it upon himself, judging them with the severity of his self-judgments. His books are full of his own pursuit of certainty and his own half-failure and half-success. He still makes happiness the test, even though he feels that the noblest of men cannot attain to it; for his own happiness was caused by the conflict in his mind between will and conviction. But in Dostoevsky this conflict had ceased. He was not happy, but he was not born by the desire for happiness; nor did he test his own soul or the souls of others by their happiness or unhappiness. His faith in the soul was so great that he saw it independent of circumstance, and almost independent of its own manifestation in action. For in these manifestations there is always the alloy of circumstance, or the passions of the flesh, or of good or evil fortune; and he tried to see the soul free of this. He did not judge men by their diversities which outward things seemed to impose on them. For him the soul itself was more real than all these diversities, and they only interested him for their power of revealing or obscuring it. Therefore his object in his novels is to reveal the soul, not to pass any judgements upon men, nor to tell us how they fare in this world; and this object makes his peculiar method. He does not try to show us souls free from their bodies or free from circumstance, for to do that would be contrary to his own experience and his own faith. Rather he shows them tormented and mistranslated, even to themselves, but in such a way that we see the reality beyond the torments and the mistranslations.”
First, wouldn't it be amazing if newspapers still published things like this?
I was having a little chat with a friend today about evil as a privation of good, and I think this description of Dostoevsky's approach captures something about it. The characters aren't good in their present state; they are “mistranslated.” Yet there was goodness in the original language, in the original word by which the universe was spoken into being. Like Tolkien's original melody, married by dissonant notes, there is something old and true in all people that we can, by grace, discern.
“…Dostoevsky needs no illusion of certainty. and gives none. He had a faith independent of happiness and even of the state of his own soul. Life indeed had poured unhappiness upon him, so that he knew the worst of it from his own experience; yet we can tell from his books that he knew also a peace of thought compared with which all his own miseries were unreal to him. In that he differs from Tolstoy, who saw this peace of thought in the distance and could not reach it. Tolstoy therefore conceived of life as an inevitable discord between will and conviction, and tried to impose the impossible on mankind as he tried to impose it upon himself, judging them with the severity of his self-judgments. His books are full of his own pursuit of certainty and his own half-failure and half-success. He still makes happiness the test, even though he feels that the noblest of men cannot attain to it; for his own happiness was caused by the conflict in his mind between will and conviction. But in Dostoevsky this conflict had ceased. He was not happy, but he was not born by the desire for happiness; nor did he test his own soul or the souls of others by their happiness or unhappiness. His faith in the soul was so great that he saw it independent of circumstance, and almost independent of its own manifestation in action. For in these manifestations there is always the alloy of circumstance, or the passions of the flesh, or of good or evil fortune; and he tried to see the soul free of this. He did not judge men by their diversities which outward things seemed to impose on them. For him the soul itself was more real than all these diversities, and they only interested him for their power of revealing or obscuring it. Therefore his object in his novels is to reveal the soul, not to pass any judgements upon men, nor to tell us how they fare in this world; and this object makes his peculiar method. He does not try to show us souls free from their bodies or free from circumstance, for to do that would be contrary to his own experience and his own faith. Rather he shows them tormented and mistranslated, even to themselves, but in such a way that we see the reality beyond the torments and the mistranslations.”
First, wouldn't it be amazing if newspapers still published things like this?
I was having a little chat with a friend today about evil as a privation of good, and I think this description of Dostoevsky's approach captures something about it. The characters aren't good in their present state; they are “mistranslated.” Yet there was goodness in the original language, in the original word by which the universe was spoken into being. Like Tolkien's original melody, married by dissonant notes, there is something old and true in all people that we can, by grace, discern.
13 March 2008
Babies… having BABIES.
Wednesday's post on First Things is about a very strange controversy: Europe and the Demographic Winter. A reporter named Kathryn Joyce wrote an article for The Nation about the right-wing groups behind the pro-family movement. Her first interview subject was Steven Mosher, the author of the First Things post. He's upset about how her article turned out.
What is demographic winter, anyway? The basic idea is that when people in Europe don't have enough babies, there will be fewer and fewer Europeans, and that this is bad news for European civilization, particularly since new people are moving in, and some of these new people don't hold liberal democratic values in high regard. Or so the argument goes.
To Joyce, this is in essence racist, nativist, anti-feminist, and fascist:
“Europe is failing to produce enough babies--the right babies--to replace its old and dying. It's ‘the baby bust,’ ‘the birth dearth,’ ‘the graying of the continent’: modern euphemisms for old-fashioned race panic as low fertility among white ‘Western’ couples coincides with an increasingly visible immigrant population across Europe.”
…
“And this, of course, is the (largely unacknowledged) rub with the profamily movement's focus on procreation: it requires a world of women to dedicate their lives and wombs to demographic battle. ‘The shadow of Fascism still hovers over demographic science,’ Krause tells me, and lends a chilling factor to ‘moralizing’ language that pathologizes the childless as sick or, in Italy, as anorexics refusing to eat. Indeed, when Pope John Paul II raised his demographic concerns to the Italian Parliament, it was unprecedented since Fascist years, evoking a painful social memory of Mussolini's fertility project, which attacked bachelors, rewarded mothers of many children, criminalized abortion and banned contraception.”
To which Mosher says, basically, that it's all about the numbers, and NOT ABOUT RACE:
“Discussions of the demographic winter start with Europe not because of race (is it really necessary to say?) but because the barren world of tomorrow is already evident in the Europe of today. As nearly everyone knows by now, all of Europe, from Ireland in the West to Russia in the East, is aging and dying.”
He rehearses the evidence again in his article, and convincingly argues that he's worried about everyone, not just Europeans, so he's certainly not racist. Of course, he is anti-feminist, if we mean feminists in the modern sense. Mosher doesn't really care what The Nation and its readers do, because his people are going to out-breed them anyway.
The mathematician in me finds the statistical argument convincing, but who am I to tell people that they ought to have more kids? I hate to say it, but Joyce does have one very good point. If these childless progressives can find a way to turn the children of their enemies to their own causes, then they can get huge amounts of work done and not have to worry about replacing themselves. For example, she says that “what unifies a population is often a deliberate decision to welcome and integrate new elements into society rather than clinging to ever-shifting notions of ‘true’ European heritage and race.” If you can convince enough people to make this deliberate decision, to take on a multicultural liberalism, then you've got yourself an open society.
What is more fundamental than the raw number of children, I think, is the will to pass on one's own culture, whether it is inherited or chosen.
What is demographic winter, anyway? The basic idea is that when people in Europe don't have enough babies, there will be fewer and fewer Europeans, and that this is bad news for European civilization, particularly since new people are moving in, and some of these new people don't hold liberal democratic values in high regard. Or so the argument goes.
To Joyce, this is in essence racist, nativist, anti-feminist, and fascist:
“Europe is failing to produce enough babies--the right babies--to replace its old and dying. It's ‘the baby bust,’ ‘the birth dearth,’ ‘the graying of the continent’: modern euphemisms for old-fashioned race panic as low fertility among white ‘Western’ couples coincides with an increasingly visible immigrant population across Europe.”
…
“And this, of course, is the (largely unacknowledged) rub with the profamily movement's focus on procreation: it requires a world of women to dedicate their lives and wombs to demographic battle. ‘The shadow of Fascism still hovers over demographic science,’ Krause tells me, and lends a chilling factor to ‘moralizing’ language that pathologizes the childless as sick or, in Italy, as anorexics refusing to eat. Indeed, when Pope John Paul II raised his demographic concerns to the Italian Parliament, it was unprecedented since Fascist years, evoking a painful social memory of Mussolini's fertility project, which attacked bachelors, rewarded mothers of many children, criminalized abortion and banned contraception.”
To which Mosher says, basically, that it's all about the numbers, and NOT ABOUT RACE:
“Discussions of the demographic winter start with Europe not because of race (is it really necessary to say?) but because the barren world of tomorrow is already evident in the Europe of today. As nearly everyone knows by now, all of Europe, from Ireland in the West to Russia in the East, is aging and dying.”
He rehearses the evidence again in his article, and convincingly argues that he's worried about everyone, not just Europeans, so he's certainly not racist. Of course, he is anti-feminist, if we mean feminists in the modern sense. Mosher doesn't really care what The Nation and its readers do, because his people are going to out-breed them anyway.
The mathematician in me finds the statistical argument convincing, but who am I to tell people that they ought to have more kids? I hate to say it, but Joyce does have one very good point. If these childless progressives can find a way to turn the children of their enemies to their own causes, then they can get huge amounts of work done and not have to worry about replacing themselves. For example, she says that “what unifies a population is often a deliberate decision to welcome and integrate new elements into society rather than clinging to ever-shifting notions of ‘true’ European heritage and race.” If you can convince enough people to make this deliberate decision, to take on a multicultural liberalism, then you've got yourself an open society.
What is more fundamental than the raw number of children, I think, is the will to pass on one's own culture, whether it is inherited or chosen.
12 March 2008
Wednesday Poem: Meeting at Night; Parting at Morning
I went to a friend's literary event tonight, and it got me to thinking about Keats and negative capability. And I was thinking about writing something on that tonight, but I want to put a little bit more thought into it before I type it up. Everyone needs a little bit of poetry, right? So I'm going to try to post some short, public domain works once a week or so.
Why not start with Browning? He's one of the very best, after all. There isn't much that I want to say about these two brief poems, except that they are beautiful, and that the “him” in “Parting at Morning” seems to be the sun. (Both poems can be found at Bartleby.com.)
Meeting at Night
Robert Browning
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon long and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, a quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Parting at Morning
Robert Browning
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
Why not start with Browning? He's one of the very best, after all. There isn't much that I want to say about these two brief poems, except that they are beautiful, and that the “him” in “Parting at Morning” seems to be the sun. (Both poems can be found at Bartleby.com.)
Meeting at Night
Robert Browning
The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon long and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, a quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, thro' its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Parting at Morning
Robert Browning
Round the cape of a sudden came the sea
And the sun looked over the mountain's rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,
And the need of a world of men for me.
11 March 2008
Rough crash after TMG week…
School wants some papers from me this week, so things will be sparse around here until next week, when I make a journey back to North Carolina and enjoy some free time.
08 March 2008
“Michael Myers Resplendent” (Mountain Goats Week part VI)
“When I wrote this I didn't know that they were remaking Halloween. I have a real love for slasher films, probably because when they were a new phenomenon I was so terrified just by the newspaper ads that I avoided the hell out of them. As a child I was pretty easily frightened. The world seemed like a place where all sorts of random devilment could just pop out from the woodwork at any second. This song is like Sax Rohmer #1 if the narrator had given up on ever actually getting home…”
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Sax Rohmer #1, of course, contains this triumphant refrain: “And I am coming home to you / with my own blood in my mouth! / And I am coming home to you / if it's the last thing that I do!” (The music video is pretty sweet, too.) If things have gotten so rough that you're spitting blood, it might be a little much to hope that you're going to make it home, but you do need that kind of hope if you're going to get anywhere at all.
And so we come to “Michael Myers Resplendent,” the last featured song of Mountain Goats Week '08. There is no doubt in my mind that John Darnielle does not endorse the sort of violence that Michael Myers visits upon the poor teenagers of Haddonfield. Rather, he's all about that one flash of humanity we get towards the end of the movie, and the joy with which the audience inevitably greets the killer's demise:
But when the house goes up in flames,
no one emerges triumphantly from it.
When the scum begins to circle the drain...
Everybody loves a winner.
The narrator—not a “winner”—knows that the world doesn't love him, and that there will be no triumph for anyone like him. You see the movies, you know that Michael is a messed up guy. Dr. Loomis tells us that he's pretty much pure evil. (I can't help thinking of the locked treatment facility for adolescent boys from All Hail West Texas.) This character is too far gone, and he knows it. Yet again, we have a case of extreme role acceptance, a readiness for the close-up shot preceding doom, a sort of internal nobility that looks, from the outside, like insanity. This is resplendence, this is desperation, this is heretic pride.
And that's really it for the series on Mountain Goats songs. In a few months, I will probably realize that I have missed huge elements of these songs, and I'll want to write about them all over again. But I will try to hold back until the next album comes out, at which time you can be ready for another round of fumbling, fawning, sub-essays on the wild world that has been given to us by that singular lyricist, John Darnielle.
(Heavens, I hope he never reads this…)
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Sax Rohmer #1, of course, contains this triumphant refrain: “And I am coming home to you / with my own blood in my mouth! / And I am coming home to you / if it's the last thing that I do!” (The music video is pretty sweet, too.) If things have gotten so rough that you're spitting blood, it might be a little much to hope that you're going to make it home, but you do need that kind of hope if you're going to get anywhere at all.
And so we come to “Michael Myers Resplendent,” the last featured song of Mountain Goats Week '08. There is no doubt in my mind that John Darnielle does not endorse the sort of violence that Michael Myers visits upon the poor teenagers of Haddonfield. Rather, he's all about that one flash of humanity we get towards the end of the movie, and the joy with which the audience inevitably greets the killer's demise:
But when the house goes up in flames,
no one emerges triumphantly from it.
When the scum begins to circle the drain...
Everybody loves a winner.
The narrator—not a “winner”—knows that the world doesn't love him, and that there will be no triumph for anyone like him. You see the movies, you know that Michael is a messed up guy. Dr. Loomis tells us that he's pretty much pure evil. (I can't help thinking of the locked treatment facility for adolescent boys from All Hail West Texas.) This character is too far gone, and he knows it. Yet again, we have a case of extreme role acceptance, a readiness for the close-up shot preceding doom, a sort of internal nobility that looks, from the outside, like insanity. This is resplendence, this is desperation, this is heretic pride.
And that's really it for the series on Mountain Goats songs. In a few months, I will probably realize that I have missed huge elements of these songs, and I'll want to write about them all over again. But I will try to hold back until the next album comes out, at which time you can be ready for another round of fumbling, fawning, sub-essays on the wild world that has been given to us by that singular lyricist, John Darnielle.
(Heavens, I hope he never reads this…)
“Any life you make up is not a life you will want to live.”
Stanley Hauerwas begins a wonderful lecture in this manner:
“I lecture and write often, but I am not sure how to write to those our society identifies as the young or adolescents. I do not know who you are and I am a bit frightened by that unknown. The last band I knew was U2 and I only knew them because they were the last group introduced to me by my son before he ‘grew up.’ I do not know what you read or what movies you see. So I do not know how to ‘connect’ with you.
“Moreover, I think it is disgusting for an older guy to try to show he can be ‘with it.’ I do not want to be ‘with it.’ I quit teaching freshmen when I taught at the University of Notre Dame. I did so because I simply found it demeaning to try to convince eighteen-year-olds that they ought to take God seriously. Eighteen-year-old people in our society simply lack the resources to take God seriously—by a resource I mean having noticed that before you know it, you are going to be dead.
“Alasdair MacIntyre, a philosopher, has suggested to me that one of the worst things our society does to the young is to tell them that they ought to be happy. MacIntyre thinks if you are happy, particularly when you are young, you are deeply self-deceived. Your appropriate stance is to be miserable. What a terrible time to be young. Shorn of any clear account of what it means to grow up, you are forced to make up your own lives. But you know that any life you make up is not a life you will want to live.”
The lecture is a very nice glimpse of the foothills of the realm of theology as high adventure. If you've never read Hauerwas before, you ought to check this one out.
“I lecture and write often, but I am not sure how to write to those our society identifies as the young or adolescents. I do not know who you are and I am a bit frightened by that unknown. The last band I knew was U2 and I only knew them because they were the last group introduced to me by my son before he ‘grew up.’ I do not know what you read or what movies you see. So I do not know how to ‘connect’ with you.
“Moreover, I think it is disgusting for an older guy to try to show he can be ‘with it.’ I do not want to be ‘with it.’ I quit teaching freshmen when I taught at the University of Notre Dame. I did so because I simply found it demeaning to try to convince eighteen-year-olds that they ought to take God seriously. Eighteen-year-old people in our society simply lack the resources to take God seriously—by a resource I mean having noticed that before you know it, you are going to be dead.
“Alasdair MacIntyre, a philosopher, has suggested to me that one of the worst things our society does to the young is to tell them that they ought to be happy. MacIntyre thinks if you are happy, particularly when you are young, you are deeply self-deceived. Your appropriate stance is to be miserable. What a terrible time to be young. Shorn of any clear account of what it means to grow up, you are forced to make up your own lives. But you know that any life you make up is not a life you will want to live.”
The lecture is a very nice glimpse of the foothills of the realm of theology as high adventure. If you've never read Hauerwas before, you ought to check this one out.
07 March 2008
“Autoclave” (Mountain Goats Week part V)
“I was in Alaska when I read about the discovery of a life-form that can not only survive an autoclave (the instrument used for sterilizing surgical equipment; it's supposed to kill any and all bacteria on the tools), but which seems to really enjoy the whole autoclave scene: at temperatures fatal to all other life forms, this bacteria would begin to breed. Naturally, this got me thinking about people whose hearts involuntarily pulverize any good feeling that comes within a city block of them.”
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
After last night's big personal Lovecraft love-fest, I'm going to back off and say that my only personal connection to the song “Autoclave” is that sometimes I too feel like a “great, unstable mass of blood and foam.” What I am concerned with today is really just one verse of the song, in which the narrator deploys an overwrought vision of himself as king of Hell, and then winds things up with a reference to Cheers:
I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human souls,
on a cliff above the ocean: howling wind and shrieking seagulls.
And the dream went on forever, one single static frame.
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
Clunky mistake or clever ironic juxtaposition? Returning once again to the Village Voice review (the review is on point, what can I say?), we find Mike Powell arguing that John Darnielle is “the only lyricist I can think of with a sense of empathy wry enough and deep enough to liken a teenager's vision of hell to Cheers.” But plenty of unkind reviewers have pointed to it as an example of a clunker, and I have to admit that the clunker theory was my first reaction.
But after repeated listens, I realize that there is more than a touch of irony in the music as well. The rhythm is straight four-four, and the chords and melody are almost nothing but repetition. It's not a very emotional style, but, of course, the narrator tells us that “no emotion that's worth having can make my heart its home.” Considering, in addition, how careful John Darnielle is in his lyrics, I'm going to go with the irony theory. Hell is where this kid thinks that he'll find kindred spirits, and he'll probably be happier there anyway.
The point, I suppose, is that if you buy this album on my recommendation and then find that this one line about Cheers seems a little out of place, just turn to Irony, your trusty friend and adviser.
I'm going to wind things up tomorrow with “Michael Myers Resplendent.” If you can't afford the album but want to get a jump on things, you can get the demo mp3 in the archives of the Mountain Goats' official website.
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
After last night's big personal Lovecraft love-fest, I'm going to back off and say that my only personal connection to the song “Autoclave” is that sometimes I too feel like a “great, unstable mass of blood and foam.” What I am concerned with today is really just one verse of the song, in which the narrator deploys an overwrought vision of himself as king of Hell, and then winds things up with a reference to Cheers:
I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human souls,
on a cliff above the ocean: howling wind and shrieking seagulls.
And the dream went on forever, one single static frame.
Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.
Clunky mistake or clever ironic juxtaposition? Returning once again to the Village Voice review (the review is on point, what can I say?), we find Mike Powell arguing that John Darnielle is “the only lyricist I can think of with a sense of empathy wry enough and deep enough to liken a teenager's vision of hell to Cheers.” But plenty of unkind reviewers have pointed to it as an example of a clunker, and I have to admit that the clunker theory was my first reaction.
But after repeated listens, I realize that there is more than a touch of irony in the music as well. The rhythm is straight four-four, and the chords and melody are almost nothing but repetition. It's not a very emotional style, but, of course, the narrator tells us that “no emotion that's worth having can make my heart its home.” Considering, in addition, how careful John Darnielle is in his lyrics, I'm going to go with the irony theory. Hell is where this kid thinks that he'll find kindred spirits, and he'll probably be happier there anyway.
The point, I suppose, is that if you buy this album on my recommendation and then find that this one line about Cheers seems a little out of place, just turn to Irony, your trusty friend and adviser.
I'm going to wind things up tomorrow with “Michael Myers Resplendent.” If you can't afford the album but want to get a jump on things, you can get the demo mp3 in the archives of the Mountain Goats' official website.
06 March 2008
“Lovecraft in Brooklyn” (Mountain Goats Week part IV)
“American horror icon H.P. Lovecraft moved to Red Hook, Brooklyn to be with the woman he loved. He had never really seen any people who were not white folks from Massachusetts. Immigrants were spilling into Brooklyn from the four corners of the globe. Lovecraft's xenophobia during his time in Brooklyn resulted in some of the weirdest, darkest images in all American literature. One must condemn Lovecraft's ugly racism, of course, but his not-unrelated inclination toward anything that's alive is pretty fertile ground.”
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Way back in high school, I flipped through a Stephen King collection that I found in a library. (I hadn't really had much exposure to anything in the horror genre, having shunned it since I was nearly traumatized by a particularly frightening episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was in elementary school… no joke.) King's short story “Jerusalem's Lot” threw me for a loop. It was about a man slowly confronting an ancient evil, and going mad in the process. I know now that this was King's tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. I remembered it as the weirdest horror story I had ever read. The weirdest, that is, until I found H.P. Lovecraft.
There was a point in my life when I spent most of my time alone in small room. It was the perfect time to discover H.P. Lovecraft. I don't know what put me on to him in the first place, but I can confirm that The Shadow Out of Time, read well after midnight on the weird gray light of a computer screen, stirred up a deep, deep unease. I also played through the entire Lovecraftian “interactive fiction” (i.e., text-based game) Anchorhead. It was a strange, nerdy, couple of weeks.
And one time on the streets of Lower Manhattan, at a certain time of night, the looming windowless AT&T Long Lines building took on such a sinister aspect that I could hardly breathe. At the time, I couldn't come up with any good explanation for why a building so tall wouldn't have openings to the outside, so everything that came to mind was unaccountably disturbing. I bet that H.P. Lovecraft lived like this all the time. John Darnielle certainly writes about him (or, rather, a character who identifies with Lovecraft) that way and, unlike me, he's read the biography.
If you've ever felt like you were becoming progressively detached from the rest of humanity, this song will get to you somewhere. You should bury this feeling, and hope it stays buried, but you will remember it in occasional spare moments. (The song's author says, “There’s this understanding that you have when you listen to a song that you’re going to somehow relate to the singer, but I’m not sure the narrator here is really a guy you’d want to be relating to too hard.”)
As a side note, Stephen King often takes the extreme opposite view of the universe. For Lovecraft, there is an evil somewhere out there in space, biding its time, far beyond our comprehension, and far too big to hate us as individuals. In King's world, there is a God somewhere out there in heaven, biding his time, far beyond our comprehension, and far too big to love us as individuals.
But I'll let you judge Darnielle's Lovecraft stand-in for yourself. Here's the third verse, in all its eldritch horror:
Woke up afraid of my own shadow,
like, genuinely afraid.
Headed for the pawnshop
to buy myself a switchblade.
Someday something's coming
from way out beyond the stars
to kill us while we stand here.
It'll store our brains in mason jars.
And then the girl behind the counter,
she asks me how I feel today.
I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Way back in high school, I flipped through a Stephen King collection that I found in a library. (I hadn't really had much exposure to anything in the horror genre, having shunned it since I was nearly traumatized by a particularly frightening episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was in elementary school… no joke.) King's short story “Jerusalem's Lot” threw me for a loop. It was about a man slowly confronting an ancient evil, and going mad in the process. I know now that this was King's tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. I remembered it as the weirdest horror story I had ever read. The weirdest, that is, until I found H.P. Lovecraft.
There was a point in my life when I spent most of my time alone in small room. It was the perfect time to discover H.P. Lovecraft. I don't know what put me on to him in the first place, but I can confirm that The Shadow Out of Time, read well after midnight on the weird gray light of a computer screen, stirred up a deep, deep unease. I also played through the entire Lovecraftian “interactive fiction” (i.e., text-based game) Anchorhead. It was a strange, nerdy, couple of weeks.
And one time on the streets of Lower Manhattan, at a certain time of night, the looming windowless AT&T Long Lines building took on such a sinister aspect that I could hardly breathe. At the time, I couldn't come up with any good explanation for why a building so tall wouldn't have openings to the outside, so everything that came to mind was unaccountably disturbing. I bet that H.P. Lovecraft lived like this all the time. John Darnielle certainly writes about him (or, rather, a character who identifies with Lovecraft) that way and, unlike me, he's read the biography.
If you've ever felt like you were becoming progressively detached from the rest of humanity, this song will get to you somewhere. You should bury this feeling, and hope it stays buried, but you will remember it in occasional spare moments. (The song's author says, “There’s this understanding that you have when you listen to a song that you’re going to somehow relate to the singer, but I’m not sure the narrator here is really a guy you’d want to be relating to too hard.”)
As a side note, Stephen King often takes the extreme opposite view of the universe. For Lovecraft, there is an evil somewhere out there in space, biding its time, far beyond our comprehension, and far too big to hate us as individuals. In King's world, there is a God somewhere out there in heaven, biding his time, far beyond our comprehension, and far too big to love us as individuals.
But I'll let you judge Darnielle's Lovecraft stand-in for yourself. Here's the third verse, in all its eldritch horror:
Woke up afraid of my own shadow,
like, genuinely afraid.
Headed for the pawnshop
to buy myself a switchblade.
Someday something's coming
from way out beyond the stars
to kill us while we stand here.
It'll store our brains in mason jars.
And then the girl behind the counter,
she asks me how I feel today.
I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!
05 March 2008
“Tianchi Lake” (Mountain Goats Week part III)
“Depending on whether you believe or not, this is a true story, sort of: there's a lake monster in China. People see it all the time. The Mountain Goats consider themselves friends to all lake and river monsters everywhere, whether they exist or not.”
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Today's post is mostly an apology. When I said yesterday that Prince Far I and the San Bernadino kids were the purest characters in Heretic Pride, I didn't mention the poor Tianchi Lake Monster. I hadn't listened to the lyrics very carefully, but the melody and arrangement were so soothing that I assumed the monster just had to be eating children or something. This is, of course, the kind of anti-monster bias that probably keeps Nessie hidden and afraid for her life. But it seems like the Tianchi Monster just wants to swim around and daydream, which seems pure enough to me.
The song itself is a lovely little ode to mysteries and imagination. And let's leave it at that.
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Today's post is mostly an apology. When I said yesterday that Prince Far I and the San Bernadino kids were the purest characters in Heretic Pride, I didn't mention the poor Tianchi Lake Monster. I hadn't listened to the lyrics very carefully, but the melody and arrangement were so soothing that I assumed the monster just had to be eating children or something. This is, of course, the kind of anti-monster bias that probably keeps Nessie hidden and afraid for her life. But it seems like the Tianchi Monster just wants to swim around and daydream, which seems pure enough to me.
The song itself is a lovely little ode to mysteries and imagination. And let's leave it at that.
04 March 2008
"Sept 15 1983" (Mountain Goats Week part II)
“This is about the death of Prince Far I, one of the most unusual and awesome figures to arise from the reggae explosion of the seventies. He was murdered in his home by unknown assailants on the date which gives this song its title. Far I was by all accounts a good guy, and his songs are loving, almost paternal urgings to the listener. Early in his career, he was called ‘King Cry Cry,’ owing to his tendency to burst into tears while singing. I'm not that emo yet but one almost wishes for that kind of sincerity, you know?”
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Prince Far I is arguably the purest character on Heretic Pride—only the kids in “San Bernardino” seem to come close—and he ends up getting shot. (“Try, try your whole life / to be righteous and be good; / wind up on your own floor / choking on blood.”) The intelligent review over at the Village Voice has this to say:
“If villains find a home on earth, heroes only suffer displacement… The only fault on Heretic Pride turns out to be having faith. Prince Far I, shot thanks to causes totally out of his control, bleeds to death on a floor and still dreams of Israel, the home God has promised for him. The meth addicts on We Shall All Be Healed were every bit as delusional, but at least they were on drugs. Here, it's hard to tell whether Prince Far I's convictions are being pitied or celebrated—actually, they're both.”
The chorus seems to be Far I's last thoughts as he drifts away to somewhere else: “The heat drifts across the land. / If I forget Israel, let me forget my right hand.” The song is full of conflicting imagery: the smell of onions from the dinner party is still in the air as the ambulance arrives, and the paramedic is both Gabriel and a man in a postal-blue uniform. Even the killers are cast in religious terms, as servants of the Pharaoh. In Darnielle's story, Far I can give his life and death meaning even as he slips further away from them. The tale of persecuted Israel, of the righteous and the wicked, provides sense for a seemingly (truly?) senseless event.
Here's Darnielle, in Paste, on religion:
“I've always envied zealots. The depth of their faith, the imagery. I find most mystical explanations of things more interesting and appealing than the true ones. I'm always interested in hearing the lie. I've always been interested in that, and cults and heresy. As a Catholic by birth, the notion of learning something is true all of the days of your life and then one day going, ‘I don't agree with that’…”
So, yes, poor Prince Far I believes the lie, but it seems that the purity of his belief more than redeems its object.
But, words aside, this is one of the nicer melodies on the album, and is another example of a song where a violent story plays out over calming music.
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
Prince Far I is arguably the purest character on Heretic Pride—only the kids in “San Bernardino” seem to come close—and he ends up getting shot. (“Try, try your whole life / to be righteous and be good; / wind up on your own floor / choking on blood.”) The intelligent review over at the Village Voice has this to say:
“If villains find a home on earth, heroes only suffer displacement… The only fault on Heretic Pride turns out to be having faith. Prince Far I, shot thanks to causes totally out of his control, bleeds to death on a floor and still dreams of Israel, the home God has promised for him. The meth addicts on We Shall All Be Healed were every bit as delusional, but at least they were on drugs. Here, it's hard to tell whether Prince Far I's convictions are being pitied or celebrated—actually, they're both.”
The chorus seems to be Far I's last thoughts as he drifts away to somewhere else: “The heat drifts across the land. / If I forget Israel, let me forget my right hand.” The song is full of conflicting imagery: the smell of onions from the dinner party is still in the air as the ambulance arrives, and the paramedic is both Gabriel and a man in a postal-blue uniform. Even the killers are cast in religious terms, as servants of the Pharaoh. In Darnielle's story, Far I can give his life and death meaning even as he slips further away from them. The tale of persecuted Israel, of the righteous and the wicked, provides sense for a seemingly (truly?) senseless event.
Here's Darnielle, in Paste, on religion:
“I've always envied zealots. The depth of their faith, the imagery. I find most mystical explanations of things more interesting and appealing than the true ones. I'm always interested in hearing the lie. I've always been interested in that, and cults and heresy. As a Catholic by birth, the notion of learning something is true all of the days of your life and then one day going, ‘I don't agree with that’…”
So, yes, poor Prince Far I believes the lie, but it seems that the purity of his belief more than redeems its object.
But, words aside, this is one of the nicer melodies on the album, and is another example of a song where a violent story plays out over calming music.
Post-what?
post- (prefix): after in time or order
“Postmodern” is a neat word, in that it has an actual meaning in a few specific contexts (architecture, philosophy), but otherwise it just describes something that you like, or maybe that you don't like, depending on who you are. But even if the usage signifies little, the intent of the word is usually plain: something new, something that comes after what is modern.
The word “postliberal” is even less problematic. It signifies a willingness to let go of or strongly modify the major philosophical concepts of Enlightenment liberalism, such as universal reason and natural rights, or, in the theological sense, to move past the liberal theology. Liberalism, generally, is more defined than modernism, and so we have a better meaning. If you tell me that a theologian is postliberal, I will have a very good idea of what you mean.
But now I am perturbed to find that some theologians are trying to use the word “postconservative”:
“Postconservatives ‘try to move beyond the limitations of conservative theology,’ Olson writes, ‘without rejecting everything about it.’ They still center theology on the Bible, conversion, the Cross, and transformation. But whereas conservatives show ‘slavish adherence’ to an ‘incorrigible’ tradition, postconservative evangelicals say they defer to tradition and orthodox doctrine critically and constructively.”
Just because conservative theologians have banded together doesn't mean that the word conservative should signify a particular set of positions. Perhaps “postorthodox” is the word they are seeking, but are afraid to use. If they aren't trying to move beyond orthodoxy, then they should come up with a better word to positively denote their theologies.
Here's the real problem with “conservative” and “postconserative”: what the authors actually mean by the former is “traditionalist,” and what they mean by the latter is “conservative, properly understood.” Conservatism conserves a tradition in the face of change, and is thus necessarily self-conscious. This has been said better elsewhere (see the quotation at the top of the linked page).
This is all further evidence that, for many people, the prefix “post-” means the same thing as the word “cool.”
(Mountain Goats week will continue tonight.)
“Postmodern” is a neat word, in that it has an actual meaning in a few specific contexts (architecture, philosophy), but otherwise it just describes something that you like, or maybe that you don't like, depending on who you are. But even if the usage signifies little, the intent of the word is usually plain: something new, something that comes after what is modern.
The word “postliberal” is even less problematic. It signifies a willingness to let go of or strongly modify the major philosophical concepts of Enlightenment liberalism, such as universal reason and natural rights, or, in the theological sense, to move past the liberal theology. Liberalism, generally, is more defined than modernism, and so we have a better meaning. If you tell me that a theologian is postliberal, I will have a very good idea of what you mean.
But now I am perturbed to find that some theologians are trying to use the word “postconservative”:
“Postconservatives ‘try to move beyond the limitations of conservative theology,’ Olson writes, ‘without rejecting everything about it.’ They still center theology on the Bible, conversion, the Cross, and transformation. But whereas conservatives show ‘slavish adherence’ to an ‘incorrigible’ tradition, postconservative evangelicals say they defer to tradition and orthodox doctrine critically and constructively.”
Just because conservative theologians have banded together doesn't mean that the word conservative should signify a particular set of positions. Perhaps “postorthodox” is the word they are seeking, but are afraid to use. If they aren't trying to move beyond orthodoxy, then they should come up with a better word to positively denote their theologies.
Here's the real problem with “conservative” and “postconserative”: what the authors actually mean by the former is “traditionalist,” and what they mean by the latter is “conservative, properly understood.” Conservatism conserves a tradition in the face of change, and is thus necessarily self-conscious. This has been said better elsewhere (see the quotation at the top of the linked page).
This is all further evidence that, for many people, the prefix “post-” means the same thing as the word “cool.”
(Mountain Goats week will continue tonight.)
03 March 2008
"Heretic Pride" (Mountain Goats Week part I)
“You could call this song a persecution fantasy, but really, who can say the word ‘fantasy’ without flinching? Not me, and I have a stronger stomach than most. SPOILER ALERT: The main character will not live long after he gets done lauding his imminent demise.”
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
OK, so I'm declaring this week to be Mountain Goats week here at William Writes. I don't have a well-developed plan, but I will probably pick five songs from the new album and write about them, from now until Friday. You don't like it? Too bad. It's my blog. I get confrontational when I listen to the Mountain Goats.
“Heretic Pride,” as the Pitchfork review pointed out, bears a remarkable similarity to the song “If You See Light,” from Get Lonely. You can't quite call it a sequel, as the narrator of “If You See Light” may have been imagining his persecution (“Waiting for the front door to splinter, / waiting all winter”), whereas the narrator of “Heretic Pride” is being buried alive by the end of the song. But in both songs, you have one man against the hostile villagers.
These two songs tells you all you need to know about the difference between Get Lonely and Heretic Pride. If you listened to Get Lonely, you know that it was something like the Distilled Essence of Post-Breakup Existential Drifting Ending in Suicide, and took you to some weird headspace. Get Lonely's protagonist was at a place where, completely drained of hope, he recoiled from all human contact:
When the villagers come to my door
I'll be all tucked away with my face to the floor
and my eyes closed.
And no one knows how to keep secrets 'round here.
They tell everyone everything, soon as they know.
And then where is there left for poor sinners to go?
But the characters in Heretic Pride have recovered that not-entirely-sane conviction common to so many of John Darnielle's best songs. Remember Cyrus and Jeff from All Hail West Texas? Or “Going to Georgia”? Or “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me!”? Well, here's the narrator of “Heretic Pride”:
Well they come and pull me from my house,
and they drag my body through the streets.
And the sun's so hot I think I'll catch fire
and burn up in the summer air so moist and sweet.
And the people all come out to cheer.
Rocks in the pathway break my skin.
And there's honeysuckle on the faint breeze today
with every breath I'm drawing in.
I want to cry out, but I don't scream and I don't shout.
And I feel so proud to be alive.
And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives!
Crowds grow denser by the second
as we near the center of the town.
And they dig a trench right in the main square right there,
and they pick me up and throw me down.
But I start laughing like a child
and I mark their faces one by one.
Transfiguration's gonna come for me at last
and I will burn hotter than the sun.
I waited so long, and now I taste jasmine on my tongue.
And I feel so proud to be alive.
And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives!
Yes! This is the first song that has ever made me want to espouse some terrible belief for the sole purpose of getting myself executed. Sure, the impartial observer might see this guy as a pathetic, wriggling sociopath, but that doesn't make any difference to the martyr. There is something fascinating, even noble, about the truly independent heretic. (Heresy loses all luster when it gains a large following.) Is this radical individualism? Glorification of mere non-conformity? Well, I suppose that for a fuller consideration of the issue, it might be better to know the particular heresy at stake, as well as the nature of the society that he finds so objectionable. But in the abstract, this is one of the better apologies against orthodoxy that I've seen. Take that, Chesterton.
edit: Evidently I didn't take the line about a “reckoning” quite seriously enough. According to John Darnielle, this character may be embracing his own guilt.
-John Darnielle, Heretic Pride press release
OK, so I'm declaring this week to be Mountain Goats week here at William Writes. I don't have a well-developed plan, but I will probably pick five songs from the new album and write about them, from now until Friday. You don't like it? Too bad. It's my blog. I get confrontational when I listen to the Mountain Goats.
“Heretic Pride,” as the Pitchfork review pointed out, bears a remarkable similarity to the song “If You See Light,” from Get Lonely. You can't quite call it a sequel, as the narrator of “If You See Light” may have been imagining his persecution (“Waiting for the front door to splinter, / waiting all winter”), whereas the narrator of “Heretic Pride” is being buried alive by the end of the song. But in both songs, you have one man against the hostile villagers.
These two songs tells you all you need to know about the difference between Get Lonely and Heretic Pride. If you listened to Get Lonely, you know that it was something like the Distilled Essence of Post-Breakup Existential Drifting Ending in Suicide, and took you to some weird headspace. Get Lonely's protagonist was at a place where, completely drained of hope, he recoiled from all human contact:
When the villagers come to my door
I'll be all tucked away with my face to the floor
and my eyes closed.
And no one knows how to keep secrets 'round here.
They tell everyone everything, soon as they know.
And then where is there left for poor sinners to go?
But the characters in Heretic Pride have recovered that not-entirely-sane conviction common to so many of John Darnielle's best songs. Remember Cyrus and Jeff from All Hail West Texas? Or “Going to Georgia”? Or “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me!”? Well, here's the narrator of “Heretic Pride”:
Well they come and pull me from my house,
and they drag my body through the streets.
And the sun's so hot I think I'll catch fire
and burn up in the summer air so moist and sweet.
And the people all come out to cheer.
Rocks in the pathway break my skin.
And there's honeysuckle on the faint breeze today
with every breath I'm drawing in.
I want to cry out, but I don't scream and I don't shout.
And I feel so proud to be alive.
And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives!
Crowds grow denser by the second
as we near the center of the town.
And they dig a trench right in the main square right there,
and they pick me up and throw me down.
But I start laughing like a child
and I mark their faces one by one.
Transfiguration's gonna come for me at last
and I will burn hotter than the sun.
I waited so long, and now I taste jasmine on my tongue.
And I feel so proud to be alive.
And I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives!
Yes! This is the first song that has ever made me want to espouse some terrible belief for the sole purpose of getting myself executed. Sure, the impartial observer might see this guy as a pathetic, wriggling sociopath, but that doesn't make any difference to the martyr. There is something fascinating, even noble, about the truly independent heretic. (Heresy loses all luster when it gains a large following.) Is this radical individualism? Glorification of mere non-conformity? Well, I suppose that for a fuller consideration of the issue, it might be better to know the particular heresy at stake, as well as the nature of the society that he finds so objectionable. But in the abstract, this is one of the better apologies against orthodoxy that I've seen. Take that, Chesterton.
edit: Evidently I didn't take the line about a “reckoning” quite seriously enough. According to John Darnielle, this character may be embracing his own guilt.
01 March 2008
“I feel so proud when the reckoning arrives!”
Today I picked up Heretic Pride, the latest offering from the Mountain Goats. And I have to say that I needed this. I wouldn't dream of trying to review John Darnielle's songwriting; I listen to it because it reviews me. There will be more writing about this album as I absorb it, but one thought occurs on the first spin:
Jon Wurster flippin' gets it. I love these drums. It's kind of like the stuff he did on the Superchunk song “So Convinced”: urgent, tricky, steady. I want him to be in this band forever.
Jon Wurster flippin' gets it. I love these drums. It's kind of like the stuff he did on the Superchunk song “So Convinced”: urgent, tricky, steady. I want him to be in this band forever.
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