Aug 26, 2010
25 Comments »
Another day, another walk, and who knows what else. Peter looked down at his worn and muddied hiking boots, and wondered how many steps he had taken in them. He surveyed the diversity of the footwear of those who walked beside him.
Several pairs of tennis shoes. A pair of army looking boots. A bright blue pair of crocs. One girl was even wearing flip-flops with little daisies ornamenting her painted and muddy toenails. Some of these people were obviously rookies, but if they stayed, they’d learn soon enough. He and many others had forsaken fashion long ago.
He looked at his boots again. How long had it been since she gave them to him? Must have been a few years ago. The boots were really holding up well considering. How long had he been traveling with her? He really didn’t even know. A long time. A moment. It didn’t really matter. Since he started walking with her, he was always and only here. Just here. As the unlikely band of sojourners marched through the mud, he remembered that first day.
He could almost hear the frustrated voice of his boss again; the laughter of his co-workers.
“What do you mean you quit? For that girl?”
That girl.
He remembered the amused bewilderment that etched itself onto the face of his childhood friend as he explained to him that it really wasn’t a joke.
Peter tried to remember what he had felt at the time. Had he even considered the matter? He certainly hadn’t weighed the pros and cons, sought advice from others, or even slept on the matter.
He thought of her again, and remembered why he hadn’t needed to sleep on it. As soon as he met her, the choice had been made. Anything. Anywhere.
The word beautiful is thrown around a lot. But not all beauty is equal. There’s the paper bag floating in the wind beautiful and then there’s the sun rising over the Swiss Alps kind of beautiful, but then there was Zoe.
So when Zoe said to him, “follow me”, there was nothing to do but to follow her. When someone looks into the perfect and shocking blue of Zoe’s eyes, one does not worry about such trifling matters as one’s career. For Peter, just a glance from Zoe made things like food and shelter fade into afterthoughts.
He had just met her. She had said, “follow me.” He said “ok.”
She had started walking. He followed her. And they walked. They walked for a long time.
On that first walk, they just walked out of town in silence. They walked until Peter had no idea where they were anymore. He hadn’t even seen any people in what seemed like hours. On the side of the road, Peter noticed what looked like an old apple orchard. It appeared as though the orchard had been abandoned years ago. There a few old rotten apples scattered among the overgrown weeds, dead grass and stray highway litter that made up the ground of what once must have been a lovely orchard. Many of the trees were also dead now, and nothing in the orchard seemed to be growing any apples worth eating. Zoe apparently had noticed the orchard as well, as she had started walking off of the pavement into the tall grass of the ditch.
Peter followed her as she began pacing around the orchard. She seemed to just be taking it all in. The rot. The entropy. The carelessness. It was as though all that was wrong with the world was present in that orchard, and it broke Peter’s heart to watch her face as she took it in. Tears began to flow down her cheeks.
She reached into a small bag she had been carrying and pulled out two large plastic garbage bags. Apparently she had known they would be coming here. She handed one bag to Peter, and she bent down and picked up one of the old rotten apples and threw it in the bag. Peter joined her as they started picking up the rubbish scattered throughout the orchard. Then Peter noticed something strange. No, strange isn’t the right word. What he was seeing seemed to be some sort of magic trick or miracle.
As Zoe’s tears ran down her cheeks and wet the dry, dead soil, the ground seemed to change. He stared in bewilderment as dead brown grass suddenly became green, as the cold light grey bark of the apple trees began to blush with life again right before his eyes. His mouth hung open as old crackly and twisted branches began to sprout leaves, and then somehow there were apples where he hadn’t seen them before, big shiny red apples that looked like they belonged in one of those plastic fruit displays rather than in an old forgotten apple orchard.
But as strange as this all was, it somehow made sense. If you knew Zoe, you would understand. Everything about her was somehow both other-worldly but at the same time so incredibly earthy in the best sense of the word. She was the newness of Spring. She was the beauty of music. She was the passion of lovers and the companionship of best friends. She was life.
Why wouldn’t her tears heal the ground?
As Peter walked down the muddy road, he remembered those early days with a pang of sentimentality. It was all so new and mysterious and exciting. Peter never knew what was coming next. A forsaken apple orchard, a maximum-security prison, an urban free clinic, a creepy old mental institution. Zoe seemed to like going places that nobody else likes to go.
They would walk. They would stop now and then to eat or sleep or work. Peter didn’t really know how they were surviving. They didn’t have money, but somehow they always had exactly what they needed. He never had to worry about where they would sleep that night, or what was for lunch. When he was with Zoe, it just all seemed to work out. He never had to ask her where they were going or what the plan was. Where she walked, he walked. Where she stopped, he stopped. It was as simple as that.
Things were a little more complicated now. Over the years, there had been many others that had joined Zoe in her work, and Peter had become a leader of sorts in the group.
As they walked, Peter couldn’t help but overhear a conversation that was happening right behind him.
The voice of a young man complained, “Well, my parents are like zo-ite freaks. They actually worked for Constance for awhile.”
A young girl responded, “Oh my God, my mom would break down at least once a week and basically beg me to just take the pledge.”
Peter felt a pang in his chest as he thought of Constance. She had been part of Zoe’s group for a little while. She had originally been quite a gift to the group with her magnetic personality and hard work. She had initially been drawn to Zoe because of the beauty of the group’s work, but Constance always had a desire for the spotlight. She liked being the center of attention. So when the news cameras started showing up to the work sites, Zoe would always decline interview or even disappear from the group entirely, but Constance was always right there to give them exactly what they wanted. It hadn’t taken long for the media to notice this little wandering group that seemed to exist for no reason except making the world a better place. The work they did was so pure. So odd. So wonderful. They had found an interesting story.
Peter thought of his initial confusion in those early days in why Zoe would just disappear like that. They were trying to do good in the world, why not just tell others about it? After all, maybe the exposure could help them get more resources and a larger work force to help.
He remembered the look in Zoe’s eyes. “Peter, it is with you that I will do my work. Others are certainly welcome to share in my work with you, but we can’t let others sully or change what we are doing. It’s too important.”
Peter still didn’t understand. Why would the cameras change what they were doing?
As those initial weeks and months rolled by, and the crowds got bigger. The reporters started coming in greater number and frequency, and Constance was sure to always talk to every single one of them.
In fact, she barely seemed to actually be helping in the work anymore. She did a lot of being seen and heard, but always managed to get through the day without smearing her makeup too much.
Constance continued to do more and more interviews, get more and more accolades from the press, and began to recruit more people to join their group. After awhile, she barely even seemed to notice Zoe anymore. But she certainly recognized the potential positive pr that would come her way by participating in Zoe’s work.
Soon the reporters stopped even asking about Zoe. The media had actually started referring to their group as the “Zo-ites” because of many of the workers passion for the “Zoe lifestyle”, but it was Constance who was the passionate spokesperson who was really responsible for the great success of the Zo-ites. It was her picture on the articles. By making the work of a couple of straggling hobos more public, Constance was able to organize the inception of a non-profit organization and raise large sums of money from donors. Soon the Zo-ites didn’t have to worry about things like where they were going to stay that night.
One night while Peter was sleeping, he woke to the sound of his name. It was Zoe. How he loved the sound of that voice. It was a shame how quiet of a girl Zoe was, he had thought. That voice.
She was standing in the hall and whispering his name into the dark room of the youth hostel they had been staying in.
“Peter?”
“Peter, wake up.”
“Hey Zoe, what’s the matter?” he asked sleepily, his brain still trying to catch up with his open eyes.
“Follow me.”
He’d heard that before.
“Ok, one second.”
Her silhouette disappeared from the light of the partially opened doorway.
He got up and threw on a pair of jeans, grabbed his bag and walked out of the crowded, snoring room.
He followed her as they left the hostel, and then the town.
Peter was surprised to see Constance on the news the next week. She was talking about the new direction for the organization. While they had started as a grassroots organization with her and her friend Zoe, who had taught her a new and better way to live, it was time to take things to the next level. They wanted to change the world, so they needed to organize. Constance was going to start a non-profit organization to embody the ideals that Zoe had taught her. Curiously, she had said nothing about the sudden absence of Zoe in their group.
It wasn’t too long after that Constance had announced her plans to run for governor. She had become a celebrity of sorts, and she was finally ready to make her big move into more political influence.
Months went by, and Peter and Zoe continued their work. Sometimes people would see them and join them in the work. Zoe always welcomed them gladly into what she was doing. But they remained fairly unrecognized by the rest of the world or the media. They were changing the world, but they were doing it one apple orchard at a time.
The Zo-ites however had become even more prominent. Governor Constance was a celebrity, and there were rumors of plans to run for president. The organization had quickly become a worldwide phenomenon. Constance had hired some of the best marketing minds in the world, and a grassroots organization had quickly turned into a movement.
They had started a very popular clothing line, and the Zo-ites were soon a household name. It was suddenly very “in” to be a Zo-ite. Books were written. They held massive recruiting rallies led by popular bands and motivational speakers as they amassed a membership list of millions of people. These members were tasked to bring in as many new recruits as possible, and were rewarded by the organization with public recognition, and even money.
The Zo-ites seemed to have it all. They had political power, social influence, money, and popularity.
“But they don’t have Zoe.” thought Peter.
For awhile, Peter had wondered why Zoe had separated from the Zo-ites. They had so much more money. So many more followers. But after awhile, Peter began to understand. The Zo-ites really had changed. The power had corrupted them. He had heard stories that he could hardly believe. Stories of greed, manipulation, and even violence. What was once a group of friends giving their lives to something greater than themselves had somehow become a political monster that seemed to exist simply for its own advancement.
Zoe had seen the danger of this immediately. This is why they had to leave. The path that Zoe was headed down was not the same one that those who had claimed her name wanted. Constance wanted recognition. She wanted power. She had it now.
So while they held their huge festivals and rallies to spread the name of Zoe, Zoe and Peter read stories to children in cancer wards. While the Zo-ites made millions of dollars and built giant cultural centers and statues of Constance doing things like planting trees, Zoe and Peter planted trees. While the Zo-ites organized into a powerful political party, Zoe, with nothing but a backpack on her shoulders, wandered dusty streets with a handful of travelers who needed a shower, but everywhere they went, the earth was healing under their feet. One child. One mural. One garden. Sure they were small, but they really were changing the world.
Most of the travelers that walked by Peter’s side now were people that Zoe had helped in some way. They were there for the same reason Peter was. Zoe.
But now and then, others would just join because they saw what they were doing and just liked it. Zoe wasn’t the kind of girl that you would call an attention seeker. So sometimes people would be working with Zoe and her followers and not even know Zoe’s name.
So as Peter walked along the muddy road with the hundreds of rag tag Zoe followers, he couldn’t help but smile at the irony. This was the group that really should be called the “Zo-ites”, but some of them probably hadn’t even connected the dots that this was the Zoe that the Zo-ites talked about. The group that claimed to be Zoe’s, however, hadn’t even realized that they actually were working against Zoe sometimes.
The Zo-ites touted a message of reconciliation and hope, but showed obvious disdain for people who didn’t want to join their movement. If you weren’t for the Zo-ites, you were against them. They spoke about making the world better, but they didn’t actually seem to be doing anything anymore but trying to become bigger. They spoke about helping the environment, but were probably doing more damage than good.
The angry voice of the young man shook Peter back into the present.
“Well, I don’t remember what exactly the pledge says, but it has something to do with asking some old dead hippy lady into your life or something.” the young man fumed.
“Yeah, Zoe right? She apparently was Constance’s best friend or something. I guess she is the one who taught Constance about their way of life.” The girl replied.
Apparently neither of these young people knew that the real Zoe walked a few yards ahead of them.
“Yeah, that’s the one. It’s all b.s. if you ask me. They talk about this lofty lifestyle of love and harmony and all of that, but all they do is think that they are better than everybody else. If I ever become one of those Zoe freaks, please shoot me.”
Peter looked over at Zoe when the young man said that and they exchanged a silent smile.
Jul 27, 2010
35 Comments »
This last week, I found some extra time on my hands and decided to do a little music homework. As I’m sure is true for most of you as well, I generally listen to things that I like–things that inspire me or make me feel something. So this week I thought I might change things up a bit and listen to what most other people are listening to as an attempt to understand both culture and myself a little better. Since I don’t own very much pop in my music collection, I downloaded a bunch of the top selling songs on Itunes and put my learning cap on.
I knew the top pop songs would probably not be brilliant works of art… I knew that they probably wouldn’t be the masterpieces of our day. But I wasn’t fully prepared for what I’d find there. I found a formula that is very repeatable. Want to know how to write a pop song? Here you go, go make a million dollars:
- Find THE right synth patch on your Motif keyboard. It’s pretty much the exact same patch in every hit pop song. It’s also the same patch that they’ve been using since I was in 8th grade.
- Arrange this patch in a series of four chords at a tempo somewhere between 90-130 bpm. Preferably, two of the chords should be major, and two should be minor, but any four diatonic chords should do alright as long as you repeat these four chords over and over and over.
- Find a few effects on your Motif keyboard. You know, the reverse cymbal swell, the big whoosh, car horns…etc and place these sounds before the first of the four chords occasionally.
- On. The. Floor.
- Avoid electric guitars for the most part, but if you must use them, thin the tone out to the point where it sounds like a Motif keyboard patch.
- Come up with a few little catchy melodies. One for the chorus, which generally starts the song, then one for the verse if it’s not rapped, and one for the bridge, if you want to have a bridge. This part is really the only part that takes any creative initiative on your part, so you may want to spend at least 15 minutes on this section. Autotune these melodies.
- For lyrical content, try to keep it to one of the following categories: sex, clubs, buttocks, genitals, breaking up or alcohol. Also, clichés from about 5-10 years ago seem to do well, as do cheesy and obscure sexual innuendos that you know are sexual, but are not sure exactly what they might mean… i.e. “I’ll melt your popcicle.”
- Avoid using proper English whenever possible.
- Rapping on the verses or at least having someone occasionally speak a few semi-incoherent phrases lower in the mix is very helpful. This is called the “
hype track” I believe. If you are a white girl, it can be very helpful to have a black man repeat whatever you sing like one or two beats later.
10. Find attractive females to take their clothes off in your music video.
There you go!
For your further enlightenment, I have attached a minor textual analysis of the third verse of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls”, which is currently the 5th best selling song on all of Itunes right now. If you think about it, of all of the masterpieces ever recorded… Composers like Bach, Mozart and Beethoven… Artists like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bob Dylan, or the Beatles… No way. The genius. Katy Perry.
First of all, look at how she spells “California Gurls.” You might have expected the more common spelling of g-i-r-l-s. But that is so cliché. Why do you think the owners of the gas station chain “Kum and Go” decided to go with that spelling rather than a boring and typical “Come and Go”? Because it sounds the same! But it’s spelled differently?! Do you get it? This is very sophisticated stuff.
Here is the first stanza of the third verse of California Gurls:
Toned, tanned, Fit and ready
Turn it up ’cause it’s gettin’ heavy
Wild, wild Westcoast
These are the girls I love the most
I mean the ones, I mean like she’s the one
Kiss her, Touch her, Squeeze her buns
I’m not sure who wrote these lyrics, but certainly he or she is a lyrical genius. Did you notice the way that he or she rhymed “buns” with “the one.” It almost sounds like the same word, it’s such a good rhyme.
Also, did you notice the play on words in the line “wild, wild westcoast”? There is a phrase that normally is stated as “wild, wild west.” But the lyricist added the unexpected word “coast” at the end of the phrase. Katy Perry songs do with lyrics what Van Gough did with paint.
The girl’s a freak, She drives a Jeep
and lives on the beach
I’m okay, I won’t play
I love the Bay, Just like I love L.A.
Look at the rhymes! I for one cannot even think of any more words that rhyme with “okay”. I wonder if the author used a rhyme dictionary. How could one person know so many rhymes? I am not sure about the logical direction of the lyric here, but this is art and who needs logic when you have so many rhyming words?!
The third verse ends with a bang (double pun intended), and doesn’t even need my textual analysis!
All the boys Bangin’ out
All that ass Hangin’ out
Bikinis, zucchinis, martinis
No weenies Just the king
And the queen-ie
Katy my lady
(Yeah)
You’re lookin’here baby
(Uh huh)
I’m all up on you
Cause you represent me, California
(Ohhh yeahh)
Ok, I said it didn’t need my textual analysis, but I’ll offer just a quick word. Did you notice the clever double entendres? The lyricist was speaking about male genitals, but didn’t have to use the clumsy medical terms. Instead, by referring to phallic- shaped food items, he or she communicated tastefully and clearly.
Ok, back to my slightly less sarcastic tone of writing. What is wrong with people? I don’t understand it. Every human being that listens to these songs has this brilliant gift of a mind that can understand the complexity of music and language. Interpreting sounds into meaning and finding order in the notes and rhythms… This is a spectacular human ability that no other creatures on Earth have. But this is what is most popular among human beings?
What is wrong with us? Any ideas?
Jul 24, 2010
21 Comments »
I recently was perusing a bookshelf of a Christian friend of mine and came across an old book from the 80’s about faith and doubt. As I’ve written before, I have a tendency to be a bit of a chronic doubter, so I was immediately drawn to the book.
I picked it up and began to leaf through it. I found a chapter on how to deal with doubt and began reading. It basically described doubt as the enemy of faith and something to be avoided at all costs. The author gave pointers about how to choose not to doubt; how to cast away those evil doubts like all other sinful thoughts.
Conversely, I recently heard a quote from Anne Lamott that went something like “the opposite of faith is not doubt; it’s certainty.”
I don’t know if that’s true or not, but the postmodern side of me certainly likes the sound of that much better.
But isn’t it interesting how differently two people of faith can define so oppositely what it even means to have faith? For one person, faith is a certainty about the world on which to build everything else. For the other, faith is something that needs a leap. For her, faith doesn’t even start until the point where certainty runs out.
These are very different definitions of a word. How do you define faith? And do you feel like doubt is a healthy supplement to faith, something to purify it and let it grow? Or do you see doubt as the enemy of faith, something to be discarded and avoided?
Jun 21, 2010
7 Comments »
We got a new video camera, so we decided to stop in a park and play “The Earth is Yours” in the forest. Hope you enjoy it!
The Earth is Yours
May 15, 2010
43 Comments »
I grew up going to a small school, which was part of the small church that I was part of in our small town, which, you may not be surprised to discover, created kind of a small view of reality in my mind. The height of human artistic achievement was the town’s only movie theatre, Rogers Cinema, which may have had almost 4 screens! The pinnacle of exotic culinary delight was either the Perkins family diner or perhaps the China Chef restaurant that employed probably 90 percent of the non-white people of the town. And the story of the universe was about a six thousand year old earth that some big powerful guy that we called “God” made so that I could believe in a guy named Jesus and go to heaven when I died…
Sing it with me: It’s all about meeeeeee, Jesus/and all this is for meeeee…
Anyway, this guy named God had music that he liked, but it was only the kind of music that was sold in stores that also sold lots of Bibles and pictures of bearded white guys holding lambs around their necks. The other kinds of music… you know the kinds that most people listen to that say words like “baby” and “damn” that they sell in places like Best Buy… This guy named God didn’t like that music because for every minute that the music played, you couldn’t hear the word “Jesus”… well, any times! He needed a much higher J.P.M. (Jesus per minute) before he liked the song.
I know this sounds funny, and I wouldn’t have ever put it into those words, but that was basically the reality. I remember when the youth group burned all of our “secular” tapes. (didn’t the Nazis do something like that…) But I had a problem, because I didn’t really own any secular tapes, at least none with words like “baby” or “damn” in them. So I think I may have just found my tape with the least amount of J.P.M.-ness and tore it to pieces!
I look back at those days with a mixture of embarrassment and fondness. I liked how simple the world was when it was so small and understandable. But, small-mindedness doesn’t always have the greatest effect of good in the world…
I guess it was a gradual thing, but over the years, as I walked with God, I realized I had made idols and silly images of him in my head. He wasn’t a guy “up there”. In fact, God wasn’t really a “He” at all, that was just a metaphor. Then I went to college and learned that there’s pretty good evidence that the earth is older than 6,000 years old, and that the universe is bigger than I thought it was, as I learned that there are a lot of things that people don’t know…it all humbled me a bit. I began to realize that all creativity and goodness and beauty comes from this infinite creative source that is responsible for the universe’s existence. This God that holds all things together and is the source of all life and love is also responsible for any beautiful thing that human beings ever do, no matter what they believe about Jesus or God or how old the earth is or whatever. All beauty belongs to God.
Then I got signed by a “Christian” label, and started learning about the “Christian music industry”, and realized that many people in the industry aren’t really Christians. In fact, sometimes the Christian music industry has shadier things going on then people in the mainstream market. I realized that a lot of these people that called themselves Christians said things that they didn’t really actually seem to live out or believe.
Then I realized that things like labels or CD’s can’t be “Christian”, only people can be “Christian.” Christian means being a follower of Jesus. Music can’t follow Jesus. Only people can. That means there is actually no such thing as Christian music. That would be like saying that a house is agnostic because an agnostic built it. A house is a house. Words are words. Music is music. This also means there is no such thing as “secular” music. It’s all just music.
I think this idea of secular music being evil is probably not as prevalent as it was in the 90’s. But I’m not actually sure it’s for the best reasons… Let me explain:
I’m not sure that the American Church hasn’t just faded into the culture more. A lot of us used to be “not in the world” in our attempt to be “not of the world”, and now a lot of us are both “in the world” and “of the world.” Scriptures teach us that we are to be “in the world, but not of the world.”
So, I’m not sure that our reasons for being in the world, listening to their music, watching their shows…etc are really rooted in anything deeper most of the time than that we do not care that much anymore. I don’t think that’s healthy either.
Ideally, I think Christians should seek to maintain a purity of mind and heart that is “not of this world.” We should be aware of what we drink in and how it affects us. For me, I have realized that if I listen to too much Christian radio, I end up getting cynical and angry. So I don’t listen to it. If I read too many books that are really anti-faith, I tend towards the same line, so I limit my intake of that stuff as well. But I also try to open my mind and heart to the potential voice and beauty of God that is all around me and very present even within the unexpected places in our culture.
For example, I personally have seen and experienced FAR more of the beauty of God in the films of the master filmmakers of our culture than in the movies labeled as Christian. There are films and plays and pieces of literature and art and music that are drenched with the creativity and majesty of the Creator that are made by artists who would call themselves “atheists.” They can’t help where they got that creativity from, even if they’d like to try.
On the other side of the coin, for those who may be cynical towards the “Christian” markets, we must remind ourselves that even in things labeled “Christian”, the beauty of God can be found. Perhaps we can even find the beauty of God reflected in music of hypocrites and Pharisees. Perhaps even on Christian radio.
This constant tension of trying to live in the world but not of it is a tricky one, and it’s easy to get the two ideas mixed up. There’s nothing wrong with singing songs about Jesus, and trying to sell it to Christians. At least I hope not, because that’s what my job is… And, believe it or not, I do love a lot of Christian music actually. But my hope for myself and the Church today is that we could learn how to recognize and be formed by the true, the good, the beautiful that is reflective of the presence and voice of God in the world around us, both inside and outside of the church. And secondly, that we would recognize the pollution of the world that is present in much of the human art as well, both inside and outside of the church, and learn how to keep ourselves from being polluted by the world.
Apr 20, 2010
50 Comments »
I’m pretty sure that when Jesus talked about the kingdom of God that was at hand, he had more in mind than a pending Christian sub-culture that could sell its own t-shirts and make its own music and movies.
After a quick google search I was able to see such shirts as “Abreadcrumb & Fish”. A Reeses peanut butter cup looking shirt that says “Jesus” rather than “Reeses” who is our “sweet savior.” As well as one that so aptly and lovingly reminds us that “stop, drop, and roll will not work in hell.”
With all my heart, I would love to see the Christian sub-culture in this country dry up and blow away to be replaced by a group (small if necessary) of people who take Jesus far more seriously than Christendom.
I say that because I think the Christian sub-culture is so freaking distracting. It’s counterfeit. It makes following Jesus harder to do for those of us that actually want to do it, because it perverts and poisons the language.
When “Jesus” becomes the “sweet savior” who likes his name substituted for a candy bar, or the bastard who warns people on a t-shirt that you can’t stop, drop and roll in hell…it’s understandable why people wouldn’t take that Jesus very seriously.
When Jesus is thought of as the cause of all of this bad music and silly movies….when you hear the name “Jesus” chanted over and over by the Christian TV host who seems to believe that Christians don’t have brains or genitals, it’s easy to understand why Christendom is dying in our country.
Words like “faith, salvation, Savior, Christianity…etc” have been so tainted by this weird Christian sub-culture that it’s hard to use them without conjuring up all of the other things associated with it. Think of the phrase “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Does that actually mean anything anymore? Ask a gay person how that cute little phrase makes them feel. Bet you they don’t like it very much. Those words don’t actually mean anything good because of how often they have been used by homophobic bigots.
Think of trying to get through life if your name was “Hitler.” You’d have a rough time of it. Your name would have been severely defined already, and you’d have a hard time getting people to hear “you” when they hear your name rather than you know…that other guy.
Imagine a world where “worship” wasn’t thought of as a genre of music but a state of the heart. Imagine a world where Jesus was thought of as the Jesus that we find in the Gospels rather than the Jesus found in today’s religious sub-culture. Man, that would be nice.
Mar 30, 2010
26 Comments »
We had this song that we used to do at a big youth rally. I’m not going to tell you the name of the rally, but I guess it’s kind of a big hint that we wrote a song called Battle Cry for it…
People really liked it. We used to wave our hands and play loud electric guitars to it and it ended with a giant drum solo. People like drum solos.
So some people kept chanting for us to do it at our concert last night, and while I normally try to please my crowds the best I can, I respectfully declined. I tweeted about it, and I guess some people still really like that song. So I thought I’d explain why I retired that ol’ gal.
Large Christian rallies that use militaristic language kind of scare me a little. No offense to that rally.. There are some great people there, and we had some amazing years with them. But Christians waving flags and talking about conquering the world has had some pretty bad history with it. You know… holy wars, the crusades, stuff like that.
Not to mention that my tenure ended with the aforenotmentioned rally because I had refused to sing Village People’s YMCA in a moment of the rally where I felt it was very derogatory towards gay people. They didn’t mean it to be that way, but it’s how I felt about it, and sadly, it ended with us parting ways.
So for now, I’m just staying away from overly militaristic language for awhile. I guess we’ll just have to try to find another place to insert a giant drum solo.
Mar 22, 2010
17 Comments »
Making a record really just comes down to making a bunch of decisions. Everything from the big questions like “what do I want to say with this album?” to “what do I want it to sound like?” to “can I get more of that 12th electric guitar in the mix?” eventually comes down to decisions. Eighths on the hi-hat or sixteenths? Acoustic guitar or banjo? Is it too inappropriate to rhyme “Pat Robertson” with the word “lesbian”? So many decisions.
I imagine that all the psychology of what goes into making these decisions is pretty complicated. Ego, desires, experiences, repressed memories of previous records… All I know is that I seem to be making different decisions these days, and the decisions seem to be a little bit more risky.
People told me that the first record I ever made was going to be a Christian hit. They told me one of the songs would be a hit on Christian radio. It wasn’t. Then I made a band album, and people thought that there were several songs that would be hits on Christian radio. They weren’t. So then we were ready to make another record, and I decided to not care if Christian radio liked it or not, and just make the record that we wanted to make.
It’s kind of weird record. There’s a classical guitar intro that eventually crescendos to a bunch of electric guitars wailing under the highest note that I’ve ever screamed on a record. There are banjos and harmonicas and four part harmonies, and yes there is also a random single blues guitar solo.
We also decided to change the name of the band. We used to be the Michael Gungor Band. Have you ever heard of a little worship band called the David Crowder Band? If you haven’t noticed, the worship world isn’t very big. So trying to be a fairly progressive worship band with the name “the someone band” felt kind of like being named “Deleterious?” Or maybe “Mountainsong Unity”.
I started making other decisions about this record that felt a little risky. I decided to produce it myself. I decided to go rent a house in the mountains and make the record there rather than at a studio. We decided to put flowers on the cover that were made up things like skulls and bombs.
But I think the biggest shift in my decisions for this record as compared to other records were that I took the art side of it every bit as seriously s the “message” side of it. I’ll explain…
In Genesis, we see that the work of human beings in the world is to be co-rulers and co-creators with God. The work of our hands is sacred. It’s part of the Kingdom of God coming into the world. Art is sacred not only so far in what it contains in a message, but it can also be valuable as an end within itself. I saw this most clearly when we were in Africa last year. We spent some time painting some murals for an orphanage where everything else in the village was brown. I saw with my eyes how the color and intentionality of the art felt like Heaven breaking into earth. We wanted to treat our record with that kind of sacred approach.
I’ve heard that a common question in the “Christian music industry” is “what’s more important, the message or the art?” And the implied answer is supposed to be “the message”. In other words, we should compromise the art in order to get the message across more clearly. And that’s what any effective propaganda does.
But I didn’t want to make propaganda. I had been learning about the Kingdom of God and how all beauty belongs to God. If it it’s good and beautiful, it came from Him. So I wanted to make a record that was beautiful, and epic, and honest.
Don’t get me wrong, Beautiful Things has a message that we are trying to communicate as well. But we see the art as “the message” as well. The art of this record is just as important, if not more important, to me as the lyrical themes, which generally have to do with God making beautiful things out of ugly things.
Beautiful Things is a record that recognizes the pain of the world. In fact, many of the songs were written during painful times for us. Songs like “Please be My Strength” and “You Have Me” were directly written out of times of disappointment, doubt and disillusionment. But there is also a thread of hope that is found throughout all of these songs. Because while we recognize the pain and messiness of this world, we also recognize a certain beauty to it all.
Like other followers of Jesus from the last 2000 years, we hold onto the hope that Jesus will eventually make everything new. We hold onto the story that our God is the Creator and that He is still creating. He is able to take what looks dead and chaotic, and somehow turn it to good. This is true to us from both an intimate, personal level and at a grand universal kind of level. He is able to make beautiful things out of the dust.
All of this is what was going into the decisions of what kind of record Beautiful Things was going to become. And I must say, I like how it turned out. I hope you will too.
Mar 01, 2010
15 Comments »
Atheism is very in vogue right now. This is kind of wild to me. Being somewhat of a chronic doubter myself sometimes, I can understand agnosticism, but to me, straight up atheism seems like a pretty depressing faith choice. Call me old fashioned.
It’s cool to be the tortured artist who doesn’t believe in anything but her work. But the problem is, you really can’t escape faith. You have to believe in something. To say that you believe in nothing is a self-contradicting statement.
Kind of like this statement: “This sentence is false.”
Ready for a riveting and frustrating example? A word of caution here to the easily annoyed reader, it may behoove you to skip the next frustrating paragraph altogether.
The sentence, “this sentence is false” is neither true nor false since it doesn’t claim anything other than its own falseness, and this makes the sentence devoid of any actual meaning. This means that saying “this sentence is false” is “false” because the statement “this sentence is false” is actually not true or false. So the sentence “this sentence is false” is a false sentence. However, this then makes the statement true because the statement “this sentence is false” actually is false. But then if the statement is true, then it is not false after all, and the statement “this sentence is false” is actually true…which means that it is false… and around and around we go.
The point? There are some ideas that simply contradict themselves. There seems to be an idea that many people have that separates people into people with faith and people without faith. Believers and skeptics. The problem with this is that to not believe in one thing is still a form of belief. I don’t believe in Santa Clause. That means that I BELIEVE that Santa Clause does not exist. I have faith in the laws of science that limit fat men’s ability to fly to every house on earth in one night and slide down their chimneys.
Negative belief is belief as well. So you can’t escape believing in something. You can’t escape faith. You have it whether you like it or not.
The problem with that is that with belief comes a certain amount of closed-mindedness. This bothers me because I try to be an open-minded person. But there is nobody in this world that can continually be open-minded about every single thing that happens throughout the day.
For instance, if I were truly open-minded about everything, the next time I get a hankering for something tasty, and I need to drive to the store to get some tastiness, I would have to take seriously the possibility that someone has placed a car bomb in my car. If I were truly being open-minded about it, I would have to consider it as a real possibility that I might blow up if I start my car. The problem is that if I actually try to weigh that in as a serious possibility every time I sit in the driver’s seat, I will end up wasting a lot of time and energy worrying and searching my car for car bombs. So most of the time, I choose to ignore that possibility. I don’t really think about it. It doesn’t seem reasonable to me, so I close my mind to the possibility of it, and just walk to my car and start it up without a second thought.
If someone I’m with says something like “hey, do you think we should check your car for car bombs before we go?” I would probably say something like “no, that’s okay.”
So I’m blind to the possibility of car bombs. I’m also blind to the possibility that my dog might be an alien. There is a possibility that my dog Oliver Charles Bronson Gungor is in fact a highly intelligent and gifted actor from another planet. There is a possibility that he understands everything that I say and do in a deeper way than I do myself. It is a real possibility because I can’t prove that he is not. But I don’t spend much time keeping an open mind about that possibility.
Well I must admit, I used to have this dog named Gus who was exceptionally smart, and this thought that perhaps animals are smarter than they let on and that we are a part of some elaborate scheme has crossed my mind before. I remember one quiet fall day in Michigan a few years ago where Gus and I were alone together in our house. I was casually playing around with Gus in the kitchen when suddenly I remembered the diabolical animal conspiracy that had dawned in my consciousness before.
It certainly was such a silly thought, but what do I really understand about the universe? What do I really know about reality outside of my few years of life experience, and how much of that can even be trusted? It certainly seemed improbable that my Gus Gus Gungor was a part of some sinister universal plot to spy on human beings, but I had never investigated that possibility. How would I ever actually know with absolute certainty? After all, I had never even asked Gus about it and given him the chance to come clean. What if he really was part of a scheme, but he had grown so fond of me that he was ready to open up? Perhaps he had just been waiting to reveal himself to me, but didn’t know how to broach the awkward subject.
We were all alone, and I never planned on writing a book to tell the world about that moment, so I thought “what the heck?”
“Gus, do you understand me?”, I inquired.
I look down into his little brown cocked face but don’t see any signs of recognition as I pose the question to him. He simply stares at me with those beady black eyes. I adjust and try a more wily approach.
“Gus, I know that you can understand me.”
He continued to look at me, but there was still no recognizable response. So I continue to goad him with my wiles.
“Come on, you can give up the act now. You can talk to me. I’ll keep it a secret.”
I wish I could tell you that at some point, I finally got the better of Gus and that he broke down confessed everything.
“Michael! How did you figure it out?”
But there was no such breakdown. There was no climactic scene where he lets me in on a sinister alien experiment. No, our match of wits ended with no such extravagant results. He simply got bored with me and let his attention wander away. The truly open minded person might suggest that perhaps I just hadn’t goaded long or hard enough.
I am not that open minded however. I don’t tend to spend a lot of time conversing with my dog like that. I don’t spend hours of my day plotting on how to trick Oliver into giving away his identity as a member of a super-intelligent alien species that is keeping tabs on Lisa and I. The reason that I don’t is because I don’t really believe that it is true.
Outside of my conversation with Gus a few years ago, I’m a pretty closed-minded individual about the possibility of super-intelligent alien canines. So I close my mind to the idea, and don’t always kick Oliver out of the room when my wife and I have married time.
So I’m closed minded about Car Bombs and Alien Dogs. What I am risking in my closed-mindedness is that I could possibly be blown up by car bomb someday, or find out that there are pornos of my wife and I circulating on alien planets. But I’m willing to take that risk, and in return I get to live in my cozy little house in Denver rather than in an institution.
Oh, how we’ve wandered. But back to the point we go. Why bother with faith? Why bother with doctrine and religion? Because we all have it. It’s impossible to escape. Either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn’t. What you believe about that issue changes everything. Not just about doctrine but about life. If Jesus rose from the dead, than perhaps there is more going on in this world than what I see, more than what science can slice up, melt down, and put in a beaker. That’s a story worth believing for me.
Feb 21, 2010
6 Comments »
Imagine if someone could get every person on earth to combine his or her efforts to do something spectacular together. There are 6 billion of us on this planet. Imagine what we could do if every single one of us dedicated our entire lives towards one common purpose. Now imagine if you had ten thousand worlds like ours, and every person on every planet decided to join this singular purpose.
Try to imagine the scope of a mission like that. It seems impossible to imagine trillions of individuals all acting for the good of some other thing, but this is very similar to what is constantly happening in our own bodies.
In your body right now, there are about 50 to 100 TRILLION cells that are working to keep you alive. In his book A Short History of Nearly Everything, William Bryson compares the cells in our body to a country of trillions of citizens who are:
“…each devoted in some intensively specific way to your overall well-being. There isn’t a thing they don’t do for you. They let you feel pleasure and form thoughts. They enable you to stand and stretch and caper. When you eat, they extract the nutrients, distribute the energy, and carry off the wastes—all those things you learned about in junior high school biology—but they also remember to make you hungry in the first place and reward you with a feeling of well-being afterward so that you won’t forget to eat again. They keep your hair growing, your ears waxed, your brain quietly purring. They manage every corner of your being. They will jump to your defense the instant you are threatened. They will unhesitatingly die for you—billions of them do so daily.”
Right now those trillions of citizens are extremely busy. Whether you’ve realized it or not, they have been enabling your brain to engage in the billions of calculations that it takes to stay alive and read a book. All of these words that you quickly scan through represent countless neurons that are firing and processing and calculating. As you read this, your eyes are taking in about ten one million point images every second. That’s a lot of information to handle, but you don’t need to worry about it because your cells have got you covered without you even having to think about it.
Right now, your body is recreating itself. You get an entirely new set of skin every month. You get an entirely new skeleton every three months.
Your brain has an entire pharmacy in it and is producing the chemicals that you need to go on. Your heart is pumping the nutrients and oxygen that you need to every part of your body. It takes a lot of pumping to do that. About 75 gallons of blood an hour. That is about 1800 gallons a day or 657 thousand gallons a year.
That blood is being pumped through a complex network of arteries, veins, and blood vessels. If you took all of blood vessels in your body and stretched them from end to end, they would be long enough to wrap around the earth about three times.
In your body.
In a moment, do yourself a favor and take a good look at your hands. Wiggle your fingers. Look at the skin that covers the intricate system of bone, muscles, tendons, and blood vessels. On just one square inch of that skin, you have about 4 yards of nerve fibers, 1300 nerve cells, 100 sweat glands, 3 million cells, and 3 yards of blood vessels.
Look at the artwork on your fingertips. That is the only one like it in the history of the world. Even though, that skin has been shed and re-grown countless times, it keeps coming back, and it keeps coming back as you.
There are trillions and trillions of atoms that make up your body, but you aren’t just atoms because those atoms change all of the time. The building blocks that make you up keep changing, but they continually keep building that one specific, unique thing that has never existed in the history of the universe until you were born.
And so we like the Psalmist say, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”
Archives