Peer Pressure Is Forever

Reality Distortion Field

2012-01-20T07:56:00.000-08:00

Machina ex deus. How else to explain their popularity despite the fact that they actually come from places that do not make us better people for owning them, the factories in China where more than a dozen young workers have committed suicide, some by jumping; where workers must now sign a pledge stating that they will not try to kill themselves but if they do, their families will not seek damages; where three people died and fifteen were injured when dust exploded; where 137 people exposed to a toxic chemical suffered nerve damage; where Apple offers injured workers no recompense; where workers, some as young as thirteen, according to an article in The New York Times, typically put in seventy-two-hour weeks, sometimes more, with minimal compensation, few breaks, and little food, to satisfy the overwhelming demand generated by the theatrics, the marketing, the packaging, the consummate engineering, and the herd instinct; and where, it goes without saying, the people who make all this cannot afford to buy it?
"Who Was Steve Jobs?" - Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books
Update: A glimmer of hope on the question of supply chain transparency here (w/ thanks to Geoff Lovett)

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

2011-12-19T05:52:00.000-08:00

Enchanted Hills
Camp for the Blind
1950
Wayne Miller

The mysteries don't scare me anymore. Someone once said that all silence is the recognition of a mystery, but I don't believe that anymore and I'm not sure I ever did. I think silence is many things (a sort of reading room or academy of mysteries, maybe), and many of them fine, but I don't think it's a recognition of a mystery. That's much too general. You might recognize a mystery in the loudest room or the most crowded street or in the face of a passing stranger or the furtive smile of someone you love.
When you do recognize a mystery, though --when you really recognize a mystery-- I believe you're compelled to address it, to try to speak its name and describe its features, to give it a face so that you will recognize and remember it until the end of your days. Because it's no small thing, the recognition of a mystery, even though it happens all the time and we may not even be properly aware of it. Still, I believe such recognition calls for some banging of pots and pans, some fireworks, some exultant noise.

Hold Out Hope: An Old Pep Talk
Brad Zellar

A few months ago, IV sat down with seasoned poet, musician, critic, and mystery describe-er, Joe Nolan, to talk religion. What follows is another beautifully described mystery. All who have ears, what do you think? Describe it in your way. Keep it essential, in the footsteps of Joe.

IV: Annie Dillard worded the sigh, "Who knows what God loves?" It messed me up for years. Now I hear it as a helpfully cathartic/poetic cry that holds a confession of deep love mixed evenly with complete and utter unknowing. Is faith even possible?

JN: There is a broken empty space where Christianity exists.

Embodied Particularity: An Introduction

2011-11-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

When Williams set down plainly his manifesto, "No ideas but in things," he was not being odd or silly or unintelligent, and what he said was not unprecedented. He was accepting a limit (for himself and his own work, first of all) that would protect things from the limitlessness of abstract ideas, abstract definitions, abstract rules and cases. Things--or, by implication, persons, places, and things--properly mark the limits of ideas. Things do not merely make manifest the general names and categories by which we describe them; they also impose a discipline on those generalities, so that the generalities do not become so general as to be unknown and unfelt in embodied particularity—so that they do not, so to speak, escape imagination and form. This is the divorce Williams speaks of early in Paterson: names and ideas becoming separate from the things they denote, so that “the language stutters." The tangible defines and disciplines the intangible. Concern for ideas in the absence of a concern for things, or at the expense of things, is capricious and dangerous both to things and to ideas.
--Wendell Berry, The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford

Outside the Common Run

2011-11-10T10:27:00.000-08:00

If you got something outside the common run that's got to be done and cant wait, dont waste your time on the menfolk; they works on what your uncle calls the rules and the cases. Put the womens and the children at it; they works on the circumstances.
"old Ephraim" to Chick Mallison in William Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

2011-09-27T20:15:00.000-07:00

Tuesday Evening, IV staffers were challenged by professional game-ers Stephen and Jude Mason to participate in the meaning-making sport known as Apples To Apples. As aspiring followers of high-stake-surrealism, we were ready to make non-sense one bite at a time. Of course, all this ridiculousness begs the question:

IV: What happens when one plays Apples to Apples?

SM: The not obvious becomes the obvious.

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

2011-09-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

In love we're all the same
We're walking down an empty street
Tonight and every night...
Let's go walking down this empty street
Let's walk in the cool evening light
Wrong or right
Be at my side
The Blue Nile, Downtown Lights

So tonight The Blue Nile is playing. Children are watching Eddie Murphy in some new movie that isn't as wonderful as Bowfinger. The cups are filled with box wine kicks. Author and stand-up wordsmith, David Dark, is washing dishes. The inner-view begins.

IV: Alright... as we are comically quotidian at the moment, let's talk about Romance. What do you make of it?

DD: I want everyone to have it. I think of Portia in The Merchant of Venice when she told Bassanio that his gaze divided her heart, giving one half to him and the other, if it's still hers, also his. I think too of the tale Dmitri told his brother Alyosha (in Brothers Karamazov) of the night Katerina Ivanovna came to him, thanking him for sparing her drunken father some form of debtor's indignity by offering him her body. He was so moved by her beauty and nobility that, contrary to his usual pattern, he refused her offer. After she left, he stood there amazed at himself, overwhelmed at their exchange and so doubtful that he would obtain such heights of ecstasy again that he drew his sword and, by his account, came close to impaling himself. I think of something like the desire to pour your own life into what you take to be the depths of another human being. This is what comes to my mind when I think of romance.

Live in The Along

2011-09-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward

Say to them,
Say to the down-keepers,
The sunslappers,
The self-soilers,
The harmony-hushers,
“even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night.”
You will be right.
For that is the hard home-run.

Live not for battles won.
Live not for the-end-of-the-song.
Live in the along.

Gwendolyn Brooks

The Inner-View. 5 Minutes. One Question.

2011-09-12T18:58:00.001-07:00

It was only a matter of time before IV resident artists Sam and Peter Dark were called upon to participate in The Inner-View's whimmy blog sport. It happened today. It should be noted that, as artists do, Sam and Peter expanded the boundary-ed playing field of the current system... and begged a second question.

IV: If you could live in any place, with any kind of people, where would it be?

Sam: I would live with the Vikings because they eat a lot of meat. I really want to be a guy who hunts for animals. I love them.

IV: Can you love them and kill them?

Sam: Isn't it like thanking them?

Peter: Like the old man who made a fire and the rabbit saw him starvin' and stuff. The rabbit jumped himself into the fire so the man could eat him.

Ah Forget It!

2011-09-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

Ah Forget It! (A response to Ted Hoagland's "Big Grab")

Are you kidding?
I'm negotiating with surrealism,
Trying to take it into me,
Trying to cuddle it,
Make it lovely,
Make it love me.

--Sarah Masen

The Ritual of Play

2011-09-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend concludes Sarah's tenure as Children's Education Director at DPC. You'll understand that the title conferred three years ago didn't mark the beginning of her devotion of energies in this direction anymore than handing it over to the wonderful and inspiring Lenae Chambers marks the end, but this is the conclusion of a season in which Sarah has worked tirelessly at showing, instructing, dreaming, and crying out loud within a certain gap ("Adults! Receive the poetic witness of our children! Hear and see and experience!" and "Children. Here's what we're trying to do around here. Or at least, here's what we think we're doing. What do you guys think?"). She has performed the work awesomely and intensely and will now doubtless have at it some more as she returns to other mediums and other spaces. Perhaps I can get her to reflect on it all on the blog at some point, but she's lately more committed to the recent innerview series. Typical.
I give you the description for Saturday's goings-on, and invite you to come on out:
Everyday Rituals, Everyday Materials, Everyday Play
The youth of Downtown Presbyterian Church are creating again for the sixth summer running. Directed by Sarah Dark and Lenae Chambers, and with the help of local artists –Beth Gilmore, Elizabeth Streight,and Todd Greene- this year the youth are exploring the rituals they practice at home and in church. They have explored the rituals Presbyterians practice, such as baptism and Eucharist, as well as the mundane ritual of teeth brushing and eating. The art show, dubbed The Ritual of Play, will display art based on repetition. Edward, 9, explained the process of ritual in these words: “you have to have the freedom to do it, and you have to do it to know it.” Interactive stations will allow all to participate in daily rituals such as washing, eating, and writing. All materials used to create this show are found, reclaimed, or reused items. Nothing was purchased this year. The show will open Saturday, September 3, 2011 in DPC’s fellowship hall at 6pm.

The Inner-View. 5 minutes. One question.

2011-09-01T19:32:00.000-07:00

Oh Mom, I wonder when I'll be waking
It's just that there's so much to do and
I'm tired of sleeping
Suzanne Vega, Tired of Sleeping

Suzanne Vega is played often in our house. "Tired of Sleeping" is a particular favorite of IV staff, Dorothy Dark, and on the surface fits her owl-like tendency to "get this party started" when the older staff are ready for "zzzz"s. Surface aside, I was moved to read that the song came from a dream Vega had in which "the kids are playing in pennies" line was actually "the kids are begging for God". Out of the mad jungle mass of music played in our house, "Tired of Sleeping" came to mind today when I found myself interviewed by new friend Maeve. Maeve is a 2 year old Socratic philosopher who has recently moved to Nashville from Chicago, IL. I think there is a connection between the song and her questions. Help me mine it out. Consider yourself interviewed.

Maeve: Are you, you? A grown up?

IV: Yes. Are you going to be a grown up?

Maeve: No. I am going to be a little girl.

The Inner-View. 5 minutes. One question.

2011-08-31T14:10:00.000-07:00

Today I interviewed David Dark, recent PhD graduate from Vanderbilt University. He also happens to be my husband. If you have an answer to this question, consider yourself interviewed and write in. Or better yet, ask someone nearby. Questions are the sunshine.
Sarah

"...a creative listener is not someone who simply allows me to say what I already want to say, but someone whose listening actually makes it possible for me to say what I never could have said, and thus to be a new kind of person, one I have never been before and could not have been before this directed listening."
James Carse The Silence of God

IV: Can you think of a time when someone listened to you with the kind of expectancy that helped you to become, as Carse suggests, "a new person"?

DD: Steve Stockman comes to mind. In 1992 he got to asking me questions in Northern Ireland and eventually asked me to "speak" to his group. His finding me interesting helped me want to be interesting. He brought the possibility in his questions that my voice might change him and that changed me.

To Be Born Again

2011-08-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

The biblical expression for such existence is "eternal life." We can be easily misled by this term into thinking that what is being offered is an unchanging status of some sort, a blissful terminus to all our journeying in which nothing new can ever happen again; indeed, in which nothing at all can happen. It is useful to recall that the great medieval mystic Meister Eckhart preferred the term "eternal birth" as a way of indicating the dynamic element in the life of prayer. Eternal birth is something of a contradiction, of course, for it is difficult to imagine being born over and over again through an eternity. One often suspects, however, that persons who enthusiastically claim to be "born again" mean to be born into a state in which they will hold out against all further change, as though to be born again is a specifiable condition in which one may remain forever. To be born again under these terms is more like dying than living. Eckhart instructs us that we are not to be born again, but to be born again, and again, and again, and...
James P. Carse, The Silence of God: Meditations on Prayer

Meaning

2011-08-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

Meaning

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.

Czeslaw Milosz

Lost Bodies

2011-08-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

Hold your applause. It's...Well it's more of the different same. Todd Greene continues his journey under the tutelage of Bankei, and it's got him mashing up the 12 stations of the cross with Bankei's 12 stages of agitation; going all first-class animal being the first stage of being unborn. I find the above image helpfully reminiscent of any of the Seven Deadly Enemies one finds within the Rock of Eternity, the lair of the wizard Shazam of Captain Marvel fame.
The fortunate few who come out to the Twist this Saturday evening and onward will be privileged to behold the following:
Hungry Ghost, the Mealy-mouthed Swindler, Double Mind, Transmigrator, and Void of the Human. This last one draws from the collaborative volume b/w Aimé Césaire and Picasso called Lost Body which your reporter procured from a Detroit bookstore for Mr. Greene. There are elements that the terminology of warning would deem graphic.
"Why would I pass a Saturday evening exploring this sort of thing?" I can't answer this question for you, but I'll try. If the alternative to a weekend consisting of one soul-sucking vacuum after another vying for your attention, hijacking your equilibrium, disturbing your peace is an immersion in attempted mindfulness, what could be more worthwhile? It could enliven our relationships, make our hearts a little less manic. In any case, J. Todd Greene has another show going on exactly one room over from "First-Class Animal." Drawing upon James Carse's Finite and Infinite Games, there are two titles to choose from: "Unheard Silence" OR "Myths Are Like Magic Trees." Here's Carse: ”Myths are like magic trees in the garden of culture. They do not grow on but out of silent earth, of nature. The more we strip these trees of their fruit or prune them back to our favorite design, the more imposing and fecund they become.” I've only had it described to me so far, but I hope to have an image or two up for you today or tomorrow. I'm tempted to rattle on about Carse, but I should probably save it for another post. We've been reading him to one another around here all summer. Come on out and join the conversation. I leave you with more Carse. All evil might be an overstatement, but the line gives helpful pause as is:
“Evil is never intended as evil—Indeed the contradiction inherit in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil.”

Love & Theft

2011-07-22T06:05:00.000-07:00

When he claims to be solitary, the artist lulls himself in a perhaps fruitful illusion, but the privilege he grants himself is not real. When he thinks he is expressing himself spontaneously, creating an original work, he is answering other past or present, actual or potential creators. Whether he knows it or not, one never walks alone along the path of creativity.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Way of the Masks

Soundcloud of Unknowing

2011-07-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years, I've had the deep pleasure of stealing occasional time with Justin McRoberts, a lyrical wit with whom I have, in socialnetworkspeak, many a mutual. Alongside a shared fascination with Batman, Eugene Peterson, and David Bazan, we're both possessed by the conviction that raw, confessional candor (and the good humor that frequently follows) is often the greatest gift human beings can give each other.
With "C," the first installment of a project called CMY(K), it seems to me that Justin begins to blow the lid off something. The songs give voice to--without answering or solving--a meaning problem, a good number of them, and express a resolve to remain alive to contradictions, dwelling within them, instead of denying or sealing them over. If Paul Tillich has it right when he says that claiming to know with absolute certainty that God exists is even less appropriate to the Christian faith than claiming to know God doesn't, Justin clears a space for a sacred unknowing within which we say what we feel, not what we feel we ought to say. And as is especially evident in "Take One On the Chin," this work isn't a deal-breaker with (or an exit from) a meaningfully Christian life so much as it's a clear sign of its presence. Listen and be enriched.

Bank Eye or Dead Man's Breath

2011-06-02T14:10:00.001-07:00

The creative powers of Todd Greene keep right on giving. At long last, a recent Bulb offering is thine for the taking right here. And then there's the matter of Todd's recent fascination with Bankei which informs his show at the Bank Gallery this weekend.
According to Bankei's Unborn (fu-sho) Zen teaching--which Todd interpolates with the phrase "Fo sho"--everyone's born with an unborn Buddha mind. Bankei would begin his talks by asserting that everyone within shouting distance is already enlightened. Rivalry, resentment, fear, and the urge to justify ourselves has us transmogrifying our given Buddha mind into a hungry ghost, a fighting spirit, a deluded existence of our own making. "Don't side with yourself," Bankei warns. Stop trying to hurry up and matter. Let it go.
And here we have something deeply in sync with Todd's democratic sensibility when it comes to images, lyricism, and teaching. With 16 or so Bulb albums which he's prone to give away with a word of thanks to anyone who asks and work that stuns anyone who pays it heed even as Todd urges his audience to have a go at it themselves, he seems to have found himself a contemporary in Bankei. "You don't need to ask forgiveness at the Bank Gallery," reads the website. It's all there.
Oh and Dead Man's Breath. I was talking Bankei with Sarah at a swimming pool when Peter explained an underwater technique he'd been perfecting nearby. "Dead man's breath," he said. "You just have to not care about being dead." This we will file away with his 'chother teaching. That is all.

The Lion & The Baby

2011-05-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Most of what you need to know is on the poster. Bulb is essentially the soul of Nashville. You've seen them featured here before. There will be crafts and such. Sam will be manning a hotdog stand. We're encouraging folks to bring beverages to share. It's the SATURDAY of Memorial Weekend. If you need to think of it as a celebration of my recent entry into the cult of PhD-dom to get yourself out that evening, you are welcome to do so. My only demand for such a celebration is Bulb in performance mode. Y'all come.

"...a world...worlding"

2011-05-22T05:30:00.000-07:00

"Celebration ... is self-restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder -- the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know this."
- Martin Heidegger

"Get these commercials outta here!" Sam Dark overheard in the car while listening to the radio

2011-05-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

Maybe some North American ears have trouble with poetry because of the noise from an aggressively voiced ruling ethos—its terminology of war, success, national security, winning and losing, ownership, merchandising, canned information, canned laughter.
Adrienne Rich on Tonight No Poetry Will Serve

The Mind Is Its Own Place

2011-04-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

"The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n."
Satan attempting to make the best of a situation in John Milton's Paradise Lost

I'd like to register a degree of pleasure concerning the conversations I've personally witnessed as well as the ones I envision taking place as a direct result of the Rob Bell's new book, marketing campaign, and iPhone/iPad app (none of these easily extricated from one another). I spent about two seconds wondering if the text is well-served by having a hard copy at all, but quickly concluded that there has to be one if it's to go really viral. We like carrying these things around. Strangers in airports or coffeeshops might ask us a question or something.
I bring Tom Waits and Modest Mouse into the conversation (not that they weren't already there) with my own appreciative reading here.

"It'll be there forever, you just won't be able to see it."

2011-04-15T08:21:00.000-07:00

This is Todd Greene doing his thing at the airport. As I read/see/hear him, Todd is to Nashville what William Blake was to London. The image is the latest of those woefully infrequent moments a media outlet covers his doings. It, The Tennessean, does so here.
Attendees of our blog will recall the music he broadcasts via the Bulb moniker and the images he provides all manner of cool programming at Vanderbilt. The occasion for mentioning it all again is the fact that he's opening the vault on Saturday (that would be tomorrow) in a "Here's what I do. Would you like to purchase something?" free for all. It's 226 3rd Avenue North, Nashville. Also known as Won's Basement. "Stuff you didn't even know you didn't want," Todd asserts as he opens up his endlesly self-effacing, internal monologue. It's noon to six pm. E-mail me if you need another detail.
Oh. And the Robot Lifeguard prints (what few remain) are now available on Etsy. Right here.
That is all.
Actually it isn't. Spoiler alert for those who haven't yet reached the conclusion of The Wire. I wanted to transcribe the words Steve Earle's Justin carries around in his pocket. He shares them with Bubbles with a few minutes remaining. It's Kafka. And it's beautiful: "You can hold back from the suffering of the world. You have free permission to do so, and it is in accordance with your nature. But perhaps the holding back is the one suffering you could have avoided."
Peace out.

Acts of Attention

2011-03-14T12:48:00.000-07:00

In more ways than one, I kind of owe my weird thinking to the Image Journal. I picked up the very first issue for 50 pence in a "used books" crate at the Greenbelt Festival in 1992, and I read it over and over again while living in a pink hut in Northern Ireland. What got me in particular was a Frederick Buechner interview in which a casual reference (maybe a paraphrase or a mash-up) to John 1:3 and Colossians 1:17 made me stop worrying over and love the fact that Thomas Merton called Thich Nhat Hanh his brother. Slowly but surely, the film, the poem, the visual or the fact of history I couldn't yet get my head around became one more sign of sacred reality as opposed to a stumbling block. Having Image in mind and reading it like a madman whenever I procured a new copy kept me (and keeps me) rearranging my mental furniture (or having it rearranged) in view of who and what I'm hearing and seeing, redeeming transmissions I suspect I'm able to receive as redemptive thanks to Image. I think I saw Over the Rhine and Bruce Cockburn for the first time that weekend. Met Henri Nouwen too.
Anyway, the occasion that gives me an excuse to say all this is an event of which I'm deeply geeked to be a part.It's the Glen Workshop (Glen EAST to be specific). It runs from June 12-19 in South Hadley, MA, and I'll be there offering a seminar with a number of cooler people, most of whom I've come to follow via the journal. Art as "Acts of Attention" is the theme, and it looks to be wonderful. Registration details can be accessed here.

The Robot Lifeguard Electrocuted Everyone

2011-02-22T11:11:00.001-08:00

Here's the deal. The above is a four-color, hand-carved, linoleum print. Todd made 25 of them for what we shall call the FIRST RUN (note the numbers in the corner). Limited edition and all that. We'll do more should demand supply it, but that would be what collectors call a SECOND run. As you see I've done with this first one, I will write out the entire story by hand...huff, puff...on each one.
If you would like one, that'll be $75 which includes shipping and handling.
We also have a few two-color artist proofs, and you can have one of those for $40.
You want a t-shirt? OK....$25.
Shipping and handling included in those last two.
E-mail me at david dot dark at vanderbilt dot edu and I'll give you the mailing address for your check or money order.
Thanks everyone.
UPDATE: My goodness, you kind people are quick on the draw. One specification on the t-shirt, it'll be a pre-loved/pre-washed shirt so as to better accommodate the iron-on. We'll also sign it w/ a sharpie (unless you don't want us to).
Thanks again.

Write It Down!

2011-02-16T08:17:00.000-08:00

I was talking to an older, cooler guy about Talk Talk one time. I was in my twenties. I knew the “It’s My Life” single from having held tightly to whatever MTV offered me in my early teens, but I didn’t know how to respond when he spoke of Spirit of Eden as a work anyone who knew anything about music would revere. Needless to say, I got on board at the first available opportunity (found it used) and felt relief when I discovered it was something I could listen to with pleasure. I’m really getting into it! I probably exclaimed the next time I saw him. There wasn’t much in the way of decipherable lyrics, but it got through to me, deepened my take on all sorts of things—however it is these things work—and opened me up to receiving all manner of weirdness even when, perhaps especially when, I couldn’t quite say what all I thought it was saying. It helped me to not have to actually.
I’m in Talk Talk territory again with Aaron Roche’s Plainspeak. Plenty of songs with lyrics though. Lyrics which deepen, rather than halt, the get-fresh flow. What we’re getting, Plainspeak says to me anyway, is what we’re seeing (and vice-versa). There’s a liturgical groove going on, but liturgical in the sense that it’s the work to be done by the people, the work the music does even as it urges us to keep doing it. “Write it down!” is the most ecstatic vocal moment (on “Fiction”) and it comes to us as a kind of poetic-prophetic summons. Take the raw data of your experience, what you’re seeing, and deploy it creatively, creatively and therefore redemptively. This is the work there is to do. Get busy.
And with this sensibility concerning the earthbound “What we have is who we are to each other right about now” fact of the matter, there’s also a sad lamentation that is nevertheless strangely sweet. No more big deals or big splashes. Just people. Unless what we mean by big is the very good news of a few people getting through to each other, taking the edge off, the rare event of someone listening to someone else. It’s “A Weaker Vision” I’m talking about: “Fell the tree of the punk poetic….Someone important isn’t listening/We’re all the same around here.” And I haven’t even said anything about Tim Hinck’s wind and string arrangements yet, because I don’t know how to. It enriches. All of it. And it signals a different way of looking at each other and thinking about ourselves. I suppose this is what I’m looking for whenever I tune in to anything at all.
There’s so much more to say, and I might have put it out of order. Aaron’s in New York City now with his genius partner Whitni, but they remain part of a Nashville-ish collective I’ll always associate with Nathan Phillips of the Winston Jazz Routine & Choir at Your Door, Julie Lee, Action!, and—if I can take a deep breath and feel this cool—Sarah and myself. I now direct everyone who still participates in musical culture by performing the cultivating work of buying music to do so with Aaron's. And for those nearer (but not necessarily dearer) in the driving distance sense, let it be known that Aaron’s bringing the Plainspeak to Downtown Pres. this Sunday night at 7 in the pm. It will mightily rock. We know it will. Insert souls there.

It's Complicated

2011-02-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

"We must break our dependency upon foreign turmoil," announces one S. Colbert (thank you, Adam Ellis).
Sometimes a joke is the only way to break into a conversation (thank you, Kurt Vonnegut).
It's complicated, so complicated, and I don't know exactly what I'd do right now if I was a famous gov't employee whose job appears to require what is sometimes referred to as diplomatic posture, the skill of awaiting the right moment to speak and act decisively as nonviolent witnesses to the hope of peace, love, and understanding are imprisoned, beaten, and killed. But because this job isn't my job and because my mind keeps going back to Peter Gabriel's 1982 song, "Wallflower" ("I will do what I can do"), I've undertaken a couple of embarrassingly uncostly efforts in bearing witness. I held a sign with a few dozen Egyptians and their children yesterday. And I hereby post the up-to-the-minute latest from a very articulate, on-location blogger called Sandmonkey. As I write this, his blog remains suspended following his arrest, but he's been tweeting again and promises to return to his interrupted story soon. A recent recorded interview with the man is available here. Presuming an interest in the civil rights of human beings animates us (That's Brand America, right?) and we're moved by the politics of nonviolent engagement undertaken most famously by Jesus of Nazareth, I reckon the least we can do is pay attention. Here's Sandmonkey...

I don't know how to start writing this. I have been battling fatigue for not sleeping properly for the past 10 days, moving from one's friend house to another friend's house, almost never spending a night in my home, facing a very well funded and well organized ruthless regime that views me as nothing but an annoying bug that its time to squash will come. The situation here is bleak to say the least.

It didn't start out that way. On Tuesday Jan 25 it all started peacefully, and against all odds, we succeeded to gather hundreds of thousands and get them into Tahrir Square, despite being attacked by Anti-Riot Police who are using sticks, tear gas and rubber bullets against us. We managed to break all of their barricades and situated ourselves in Tahrir. The government responded by shutting down all cell communication in Tahrir square, a move which purpose was understood later when after midnight they went in with all of their might and attacked the protesters and evacuated the Square. The next day we were back at it again, and the day after. Then came Friday and we braved their communication blackout, their thugs, their tear gas and their bullets and we retook the square. We have been fighting to keep it ever since.

That night the government announced a military curfew, which kept getting shorter by the day, until it became from 8 am to 3 pm. People couldn't go to work, gas was running out quickly and so were essential goods and money, since the banks were not allowed to operate and people were not able to collect their salary. The internet continued to be blocked, which affected all businesses in Egypt and will cause an economic meltdown the moment they allow the banks to operate again. We were being collectively punished for daring to say that we deserve democracy and rights, and to keep it up, they withdrew the police, and then sent them out dressed as civilians to terrorize our neighborhoods. I was shot at twice that day, one of which with a semi-automatic by a dude in a car that we the people took joy in pummeling. The government announced that all prisons were breached, and that the prisoners somehow managed to get weapons and do nothing but randomly attack people. One day we had organized thugs in uniforms firing at us and the next day they disappeared and were replaced by organized thugs without uniforms firing at us. Somehow the people never made the connection.

Despite it all, we braved it. We believed we are doing what's right and were encouraged by all those around us who couldn't believe what was happening to their country. What he did galvanized the people, and on Tuesday, despite shutting down all major roads leading into Cairo, we managed to get over 2 million protesters in Cairo alone and 3 million all over Egypt to come out and demand Mubarak's departure. Those are people who stood up to the regime's ruthlessness and anger and declared that they were free, and were refusing to live in the Mubarak dictatorship for one more day. That night, he showed up on TV, and gave a very emotional speech about how he intends to step down at the end of his term and how he wants to die in Egypt, the country he loved and served. To me, and to everyone else at the protests this wasn't nearly enough, for we wanted him gone now. Others started asking that we give him a chance, and that change takes time and other such poppycock. Hell, some people and family members cried when they saw his speech. People felt sorry for him for failing to be our dictator for the rest of his life and inheriting us to his Son. It was an amalgam of Stockholm syndrome coupled with slave mentality in a malevolent combination that we never saw before. And the Regime capitalized on it today.

Today, they brought back the internet, and started having people calling on TV and writing on facebook on how they support Mubarak and his call for stability and peacefull change in 8 months. They hung on to the words of the newly appointed government would never harm the protesters, whom they believe to be good patriotic youth who have a few bad apples amongst them. We started getting calls asking people to stop protesting because "we got what we wanted" and "we need the country to start working again". People were complaining that they miss their lives. That they miss going out at night, and ordering Home Delivery. That they need us to stop so they can resume whatever existence they had before all of this. All was forgiven, the past week never happened and it's time for Unity under Mubarak's rule right now.

To all of those people I say: NEVER! I am sorry that your lives and businesses are disrupted, but this wasn't caused by the Protesters. The Protesters aren't the ones who shut down the internet that has paralyzed your businesses and banks: The government did. The Protesters weren't the ones who initiated the military curfew that limited your movement and allowed goods to disappear off market shelves and gas to disappear: The government did. The Protesters weren't the ones who ordered the police to withdraw and claimed the prisons were breached and unleashed thugs that terrorized your neighborhoods: The government did. The same government that you wish to give a second chance to, as if 30 years of dictatorship and utter failure in every sector of government wasn't enough for you. The Slaves were ready to forgive their master, and blame his cruelty on those who dared to defy him in order to ensure a better Egypt for all of its citizens and their children. After all, he gave us his word, and it's not like he ever broke his promises for reform before or anything.

Then Mubarak made his move and showed them what useful idiots they all were.

You watched on TV as "Pro-Mubarak Protesters" – thugs who were paid money by NDP members by admission of High NDP officials- started attacking the peaceful unarmed protesters in Tahrir square. They attacked them with sticks, threw stones at them, brought in men riding horses and camels- in what must be the most surreal scene ever shown on TV- and carrying whips to beat up the protesters. And then the Bullets started getting fired and Molotov cocktails started getting thrown at the Anti-Mubarak Protesters as the Army standing idly by, allowing it all to happen and not doing anything about it. Dozens were killed, hundreds injured, and there was no help sent by ambulances. The Police never showed up to stop those attacking because the ones who were captured by the Anti-mubarak people had police ID's on them. They were the police and they were there to shoot and kill people and even tried to set the Egyptian Museum on Fire. The Aim was clear: Use the clashes as pretext to ban such demonstrations under pretexts of concern for public safety and order, and to prevent disunity amongst the people of Egypt. But their plans ultimately failed, by those resilient brave souls who wouldn't give up the ground they freed of Egypt, no matter how many live bullets or firebombs were hurled at them. They know, like we all do, that this regime no longer cares to put on a moderate mask. That they have shown their true nature. That Mubarak will never step down, and that he would rather burn Egypt to the ground than even contemplate that possibility.

In the meantime, State-owned and affiliated TV channels were showing coverage of Peaceful Mubarak Protests all over Egypt and showing recorded footage of Tahrir Square protest from the night before and claiming it's the situation there at the moment. Hundreds of calls by public figures and actors started calling the channels saying that they are with Mubarak, and that he is our Father and we should support him on the road to democracy. A veiled girl with a blurred face went on Mehwer TV claiming to have received funding by Americans to go to the US and took courses on how to bring down the Egyptian government through protests which were taught by Jews. She claimed that AlJazeera is lying, and that the only people in Tahrir square now were Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. State TV started issuing statements on how the people arrested Israelis all over Cairo engaged in creating mayhem and causing chaos. For those of you who are counting this is an American-Israeli-Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood-Iranian-Hamas conspiracy. Imagine that. And MANY PEOPLE BOUGHT IT. I recall telling a friend of mine that the only good thing about what happened today was that it made clear to us who were the idiots amongst our friends. Now we know.

Now, just in case this isn't clear: This protest is not one made or sustained by the Muslim Brotherhood, it's one that had people from all social classes and religious background in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood only showed up on Tuesday, and even then they were not the majority of people there by a long shot. We tolerated them there since we won't say no to fellow Egyptians who wanted to stand with us, but neither the Muslims Brotherhood not any of the Opposition leaders have the ability to turn out one tenth of the numbers of Protesters that were in Tahrir on Tuesday. This is a revolution without leaders. Three Million individuals choosing hope instead of fear and braving death on hourly basis to keep their dream of freedom alive. Imagine that.

The End is near. I have no illusions about this regime or its leader, and how he will pluck us and hunt us down one by one till we are over and done with and 8 months from now will pay people to stage fake protests urging him not to leave power, and he will stay "because he has to acquiesce to the voice of the people". This is a losing battle and they have all the weapons, but we will continue fighting until we can't. I am heading to Tahrir right now with supplies for the hundreds injured, knowing that today the attacks will intensify, because they can't allow us to stay there come Friday, which is supposed to be the game changer. We are bringing everybody out, and we will refuse to be anything else than peaceful. If you are in Egypt, I am calling on all of you to head down to Tahrir today and Friday. It is imperative to show them that the battle for the soul of Egypt isn't over and done with. I am calling you to bring your friends, to bring medical supplies, to go and see what Mubarak's gurantees look like in real life. Egypt needs you. Be Heroes.

"I would rather die than hate you."

2011-01-17T07:11:00.000-08:00

To commemorate America's most explicitly--though not exclusively--Christian holiday, I'd like to share a few selections I couldn't fit into the space of a tweet. First, a little something from the always-magnificent Ray Waddle in yesterday's Tennessean.
This from the New York Review of Books. The most helpful account of life in China I've read in a long time.
And I Have No Enemies. Liu Xiaobo's witness strikes me as deeply in sync with King's, and his posture's been a very helpful point of contemplation in light of events (and talk about the events) in Tucson.
We are a beginning.

Boney King of Nowhere

2011-01-07T07:37:00.000-08:00

"Nothing which is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand within the world functions as that in the face of which anxiety is anxious."
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time

Redemption Songs

2011-01-05T09:10:00.000-08:00

Here's the deal. We have an amazing and outrageously redemptive phenomenon happening in Nashville these days with The Contributor. And to my deep delight, the operation is housed at DPC. Anyway, the poster broadcasts the fact of a fundraising event this weekend, but it doesn't say diddly concerning the music on offer that evening. I'll fill you in. There's Julie Lee officiating and performing. Robby Hecht, Lex Price, Elizabeth Foster, Nathan Phillips of the Winston Jazz Routine and the Choir At Your Door, Odessa Jorgensen of Bearfoot, Angel Snow, Jason Goforth, SARAH MASEN, STEPHEN MASON of Jars of Clay, Harvey Gerard of HOBOTRON, DAVE PERKINS of Chagall Guevara and everything cool EVER, Anita Smith, and Sierra Hull.
All this and the monthly Art Crawl too. Come round and be enriched.
UPDATE
It now appears that TaRee J. Avery and ACTION! are also set to bring their powers to bear on the evening.
Too. Much. Love.

Camus on Morality

2010-11-27T12:00:00.000-08:00

If someone told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine of them would be blank. On the last page I would write, "I recognize only one duty and that is to love." And as far as everything else is concerned, I say no.
Albert Camus, Notebooks

Jigsaw Jazz

2010-11-04T10:57:00.000-07:00

This is young Peter (age 6) illustrating a couple of categories. I'll be drawing the visual into our Eliot/Joyce/Kafka discussion today. It occurs to me that I might bring Kafka's words on Picasso in as well. Is Picasso a "wilful distortionist?" someone asked him. Kafka: “I do not think so...He only registers the deformities which have not yet penetrated our consciousness. Art is a mirror, which goes 'fast,' like a watch--sometimes.”

The Robot LifeGuard Electrocuted Everyone.

2010-10-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is my first foray into composing science fiction. Wait, that's not entirely true. In high school, I took the legend of Frosty the Snowman down a distinctly sci-fi path which I might choose to share more broadly some day soon. In the glorious meantime, I give you my shortest story: The Robot lifeguard electrocuted everyone. Feel free to commit it to memory and share it with others. You can place it alongside Hemingway's attempt at shortness which I reprint here without permission: "For sale: baby shoes. Never worn." Mine, let the record show, is shorter (word-wise), and will also serve as the title of an upcoming work of fiction.
Friend, doppelgänger, and lead singer of Bulb, Todd Greene, was kind enough to give me the above illustration. Enjoy.
That is all.
UPDATE: The above illustration is available as a print (signed by the illustrator and the author), a t-shirt, AND (should the perceived need arise) a refrigerator magnet. For details, contact david dot dark at vanderbilt dot edu

"With the Oven Mitts of Science Fiction We Can Grasp The Red Hot Casserole of the Now"

2010-10-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

Concerning the Fall

2010-09-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

Dear Humans from Earth...
I take this opportunity to address the issue of a few appearances.
A couple of local goings-on. The Tokens Show, for instance, is a local happening, viewable and downloadable, conjured into existence and hosted by one Lee Camp, writer, teacher, activist, song & dance man. I'll be joining him onstage Tuesday of next week with many a talented friend. Details here. I'm also joining Richard Goode for a conversation at the Southern Festival of Books. I believe we'll be in the Old Supreme Court Room on October 8th at 1:00.
Sarah and I will both hit Waco, Texas for David Crowder's Fantastical Church Music Conference the weekend of October 1st.
And on November 17th, I'll be doing an evening talk/conversation at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. No Internet-ish publicity for this just yet, but I'll give you details if you ask for them.
Oh and Gloria Gaither did an incredibly gracious radio interview that was mostly about the Sacredness of Questioning Everything. I offer her my thanks. It can be unearthed once you scroll down a little right (# 21)...here.
UPDATE! And lettuce now add unto the mix Tuesday October 5th. I'll be sharing words with Trevecca students. All are welcome. The details.
This it for now. But I wouldn't want to miss the opportunity to drop into your laps a recent poem that draws heavily upon Carolyn Forché, an Ubuntu saying (via John Mbiti), and Robert Palmer. I think we'll call it Come On In.

We're going to have to find ourselves beautiful
It will involve libraries
Of Country Music
Not as a genre
But a possibility,
A matter of opening
Again and again
The Book of what happened
Of learning to to savor the sighs
The incomplete sentences
Of other people,
To view with imagination and deep affection
Our addiction
To love
Our only hope
(We might as well face it)
And with impossible-feeling
Dysfunction
Drawn into the circle of song
Dragged into
The space of the talkaboutable,
The plainspeak,
The ancient candow
That knows (always knew)
There are no unrelated people.
I am because we are.

I Believe That Children Are Our Future

2010-09-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

It won't be a spectator-kind of situation exactly. It's immersive. It's what Sarah's been up to with the children of our congregation and artist friends who've been kind enough to get in on the act. It's...a chapel transformed into a human body. You walk into it. There are kids inside to show you what to do and see and how to get the drift of what's going on. It's called Consuming Catastrophe: The Comedy of the Heart; A Play in Ate Parts, and it might go some distance in undoing the damaging image/experience of church as a place where young people are taken to learn to hate and fear their own bodies.
Sarah's "Sunday School" space is equal parts storytelling and intelligence gathering. She begins with story (Jesus' parable of the mustard seed, for instance), and then they go from there w/ drawing, playing, singing, asking questions, attempting analogies, and producing images of their own. Their money quotes ("I am art," "There's a virtual, galactic battle going on in my head," "The future is where we go to remember") have generated the installation, even as we note that they refuse, wonderfully, to regurgitate these gems on command. So anyway, they'll be there. Anyone within reasonable driving distance of Nashville would do well to be there too. And I imagine it'll be the most strange, blessed, and inspiring thing going on in our beloved town. It's a going public, we might say, with what our Sunday mornings look like. One more crack at togetherness, as H. Simpson puts it, or, in Sarah's words, another go at putting skin and bones on the mystery of God. Be there and be square. It'll be good for everyone. The opening is this Saturday, September 4th in DPC’s chapel at 6:00. Food and drink will be available as a part of the Artluck’s 1st Saturday Art Crawl. Write me if you're at all confused. More info and a visual clue or three of what some of it will look like can be found right....here.

I Like How They Kept My Pregnant Pause

2010-09-01T09:58:00.000-07:00

Here I am in conversation w/ a very kind woman in Toronto. If, upon viewing this, Lynch or the Coens or either Anderson decide they'd like to employ my gifts in an upcoming film, please inform them that I can be reached via the Facebook platform. That is all.

Eat, Pray, Sam

2010-08-17T17:53:00.000-07:00

He cut the flowers, picked the basil, oregano, and parsley, praised the health of the heirloom tomatoes and basically rocked my world with culinary Zenship. Sam loves food and his love grows our love.

Pasta Sam:

1pkg. delicious egg noodles

Heirloom tomatoes

Kenny's Farmhouse Cheese (aged gouda)

backyard basil, oregano, parsley

affordable olive oil

cook noodles, drain, add above ingredients, toss, eat, pray, Sam.

Tactics, Creations, Initiatives

2010-08-06T06:28:00.000-07:00

I suspect one of the phenomenona that'll put Nashville on the cosmic map is the fact that it played a role in facilitating (and was itself facilitated by) the personality of Todd Greene. You'd have to cast your eyes upon ALL the work (hard to do given his self-publicity allergy), but the dude can be meaningfully described as America's Richard Hamilton just as much as, depending on the stage we have in mind, we could find ourselves associating him with Howard Finster or Jasper Johns.

Anyway, he's doing his thing at the Twist Gallery on Saturday evening. Details here. But it doesn't mention anything about his band performing as well. They're called Bulb. They include one Sarah Masen. And they're on their...14th album, I think. Here's their video. I dare you to not be moved by it.

And while I'm describing the Nashville scene as I understand it this weekend. Everyone should know about Blackbird Theater. It's not everyday one can bear witness to the public debut of a local theater company and the world premiere of an original play. They appear to be, in the most profound and helpful sense, crazy. If you're like me, you've always wanted Edgar Allan Poe and Nietzsche and Annie Oakley and Rasputin and Mark Twain and Mary Baker Eddy and H.G. Wells to have a little hoedown together. With this evening's premiere of Twilight of the Gods, such madness shall be realized. We are Nashville.

Hanna-Barbera Theology

2010-07-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

I’d like to share a serendipitous slip of the tongue vouchsafed unto me via the testimony of a five-year-old concerning an image many might recognize, a definitive image within the Hanna-Barbera tradition. Having spied a certain pattern from tale to tale, the child described the standard operating procedure whereby the figures of Scooby and Shaggy would respond to duress (a man in a monster costume, for instance) by leaping into one another’s arms and quivering together. They hold each other, we might say, but the child put it better: “They hold their ‘chothers.” And with the enunciation of this concept, that of the ‘chother, I believe we’re sitting squarely within the glow of a religious insight. Drawing on the Buddhist principle of anatta (no-self), Harold Oliver once proffered the following paradox: “There is no-self, and it is the relational self.” According to this wisdom, the idea that any of us can have meaning alone or be the authors of our own significance or have joy for which we only have ourselves to thank is a death-dealing delusion, a psycho covenant that implies that a strong, successful few of us might somehow gain our lives without losing them. But if we hold to the ‘chother principle, our sustenance comes to us via the fact of relatedness or not at all. I am because we are. Whatever self I can be said to have is the gift of self I receive from my relation to others, the groundless ground (think of the way Shag and Scoob almost levitate) of the ‘chother. When we’re confronted with crisis, when we join together in song, or when we experience (or receive) a vision of soul, the question of where one person starts and another stops begins to dissolve; individualism takes on an unreal and unseemly quality. In such moments, we’re summoned not so much to act as if the road to life, loveliness, salvation and—possibly--sanity can only be entered into where two or more are gathered but rather to proceed in recognition of this sweet, scandalous, embarrassing fact. We have to find, hold on, and let go within the circle of our ‘chothers. It’s the only life available. Within it, we live.

The Gift

2010-05-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

There are those who do not survive change. It is as if human beings were like that subclass of insect, the Metabola, which must undergo complete metamorphosis from egg, through larva and pulpa, to imago. In some way the fluidity of gift exchange assures the successful metamorphosis. Woody Allen used to tell a joke at the end of his stand-up routine: he would take a watch from his pocket, check the time, and then say, “It’s an old family heirloom [Pause] My grandfather sold it to me on his deathbed.” The joke works because market exchange will always seem inappropriate on the threshold. There is a discrete range of conditions that will assure the emergence of the imago. A man who would buy and sell at a moment of change is one who cannot or will not give up, and if the passage is inevitable, he will be torn apart. He will become one of the done-for dead who truly die. Threshold gifts protect us from such death.
--Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property

Bulb's "Undersea"

2010-05-15T16:17:00.000-07:00

This changes...everything.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bulb.

He doth prattle on and on...

2010-04-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

David Dark at Downtown Presbyterian (April 25, 2010) from Geoff Little on Vimeo.

Evolving Church

2010-04-04T13:08:00.000-07:00

Re-member Humanity

2010-03-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

We have been trying to remember humanity; to re-member humanity in the rigorous liturgical sense--to exercise anamnesis, the heart of the Eucharistic command and privilege: When you do this, remember me. Which is to say, Stay with history, Make something of it, by falling within its main line of action, the breaking of bread, the sharing of wine. Make a community whose life will also be available to history.
--Daniel Berrigan, America Is Hard to Find

"Please cease destruction of self and others."

2010-02-16T14:11:00.000-08:00

A person who believes, as she did, that things fit: that there is a whole of which one is a part, and that in being a part one is whole: such a person has no desire whatever, at any time, to play God. Only those who have denied their being yearn to play at it...
The huge metallic arm came up again. "We are attempting to make peaceful arrival,” the elbow said all on one note. “Please inform others that this is peaceful arrival. We do not have any weapons. Great self-destruction follows from unfounded fear. Please cease destruction of self and others. We do not have any weapons. We are nonaggressive unfighting species.”
Ursula K. Le Guin, Lathe of Heaven

The New Vision

2010-01-23T07:25:00.000-08:00

What do I want? Well, I want the new vision (I would use this word only to myself),--the new vision fastened in the material world by style. the vision must be of the strength, variety, validity of life, implying the ethically good
--Thom Gunn, 1964
I do believe in poetry as an activity reflective of one's life at its fullest--not only reflective, but it actually can be one's life at its fullest.
--Thom Gunn, 1980
w/ thanks to Colm Tóibín for his review of At the Barriers: On the Poetry of Thom Gunn

A Way to be Witnessed

2010-01-18T15:11:00.000-08:00

“Christianity is something to do, not a philosophical puzzle. It comes about not when someone affirms a creedal proposition, but when someone does something. It is a way to be witnessed, not a proposition to be proven.”
John D. Caputo, How to Read Kierkegaard

"Everything is capable of renewal."

2010-01-16T11:42:00.000-08:00

Christian faith in salvation and liberation is based on a fundamental conviction that nothing in the world is simply fated to be. there is nothing in the universe that simply cannot be helped. No evil is so impregnable as to be absolutely irremediable. Everything is capable of renewal, and the world is destined to realize the utopia of the reign of God.
--Leonardo Boff
w/ thanks to Don Beisswenger

Don't-tell-me-you-believe-all-that-junk Literature

2010-01-06T12:15:00.000-08:00

I've been checking out Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions anthology from the library over and over again for years, and I'm about halfway through it. I check it out today and see where some sweet, geek-kindred soul has affixed the above description to this durable old copy. Just wanted to record the blessed fact. The world feels richer already.
Published in 1967, it features Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, Samuel R. Delaney, and numerous others (Ellison calls them all soothsayers). Isaac Asimov's foreword reminisces concerning those bygone days when science fiction was "don't-tell-me-you-believe-that-junk literature...don't-fill-your-mind-with-all-that-mush literature." It's as if they're all running a victory lap. Ellison's intro: "What you hold in your hands is more than a book. If we are lucky, it is a revolution." Color me now and forever a glad sucker for this kind of thing.
I'll look to lay down a review at some point.

Leonard Cohen on the State of Christianity

2010-01-03T12:01:00.000-08:00

From an online chat...
Seth: You have such vivid Christian imagery in many of your songs,
and much of it is contrasted with the selfishness of the "modern"
individual. I was wondering what's your take on the state of
Christianity today?

Leonard Cohen: Dear Seth, I don't really have a 'take on the state
of Christianity.' But when I read your question, this answer came to
mind: As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ
comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort. Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.

Ever So Slightly Behind Some Curve

2009-12-29T12:26:00.000-08:00

So...I write a really cool piece on The Mountain Goats for Killing the Buddha, I tweet it, and hardly anyone pays me any mind. Then I tweet an only mildly funny word of despair concerning Smashmouth's cover of "Under Pressure" and myriad peoples take note. I remain unsure as to how to best broadcast these things. The Mountain goats deliciousness can be found here. I believe it speaks to all manner of interestingness. And I love how the album cover of The Life of the World to Come evokes (to my mind) the artwork on the final albums of Rich Mullins.
And perhaps now is as good a time as any to share a Paul Muldoon poem I copied out of a magazine. The last stanza helps me to just say No when I'm tempted to google myself. Enjoy.

A Second Hummingbird

Yet another money-man
With a finger in the till
At Flavor & Fragrance, my own
Not standing still

no less a stance
than his, the only grounds
for his existence
now being to make such rounds

and roundelays as mine, to touch
what I’ve come to see
as the raw nerve

in each of us, each
doomed to think himself ever so
slightly behind some curve.

--Paul Muldoon

That Popular Feeling

2009-12-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

You arrived as I was leaving
You were filled with that popular feeling
I could tell by the walk
I have heard about the walk
"Injured Bird"

Like the Invisible Man directing traffic
I'd be ineffective no matter how enthusiastic
"It Is What It Is"

I post the lyrics in the hope it will drive folks to access the songs and consider the life. He left us yesterday in Athens, Georgia under a rising tide of over $70,000 in medical bills. He's one for the ages. I'm reminded that we'd all do well to celebrate, champion, and lift up the voices of the geniuses we're given to discern while they're still with us.
Kristin Hersh remembers him here.
Some especially good conversations with the man are here and here.

History of Lights & Shadows

2009-12-22T11:35:00.000-08:00

It's yours beginning with a click to the right. It's awfully good. It makes sense. Music feels a little like tapwater these days but it still does its business. Here's what you would have printed somewhere within the package if you were one of those people who procured or bought what they call "hard copy":
A History of Lights and Shadows
All songs written and performed by Sarah Masen 2007 except track 5, music by bulb words by sarah dark2007
All songs recorded by todd greene and tony doling at I’m going to kill you studios. Additional guitars and programming also by the mad duo. look these lovers up @ www.bulbmusic.com
one exception: track 6 was recorded by jon foreman at everybody to the limit studios in san diego, CA. the impossibly hopeful vocal arrangements were also jon’s masterful doing. I give him the Buddha bow.
It’s been years since I’ve done this. I have many people to thank. AHoLaS would not have happened without the kind and encouraging time of Todd and Rusti Greene and Anthony Doling. I would also like to thank David for all the time he gave me to get away on Monday nights and plenty of afternoons to stare into oblivion a little. This little project is dedicated to you. Thank you for loving me so well.
Much of the content of this ep came from reading George Eliot’s, Middlemarch.
track 1 TRY
But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.
track 2 LET’S KILL HIM
Some people did what their neighbors did so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.
track 3 PLOUGHMAN
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.
track 4 SPEAK
Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot?
track 5 SO LONG SO LONG
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?
track 6 THE RIVER
I would not creep along the coast but steer out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars.

Everything In Its Right Place THIS CHRISTMAS

2009-12-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

I trust everyone understands that, from where I'm sitting, the way to go THIS Christmas when it comes to that relative/friend/associate with whom you want to take things to the next level conversationwise is toward this little fellow right here. There are of course some companion volumes with which one could complete the set. And if you're an absolute completist when it comes to the author's work and feel a little off kilter until you have everything, you'll want to spy his contribution in a fine volume called Radiohead and Philosophy: Fitter Happier More Deductive. It serves as an introduction to all manner of deliciousness philosophical and cultural and all that. My bit primarily treats Thom Yorke's Eraser project ("Start Making Sense: Witnessing to the Possibility of Witness"). One quasi-disclaimer. If you're someone who finds it difficult to give your attention to an argument, an image, or another person's voice once an expletive's been dropped, I will encourage you away from this volume, for now, and urge you to consider applying your offendedness more broadly (toward needless death, destruction, and hatefulness for instance...not that the deployment of blue language is never hateful). I have a number of items and scenes I'll mean to blog about in the next few days. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I give you this poem I can't seem to get enough of:
Religion Comes

Religion comes from our pity for humans

They are too weak to live without divine protection.

Too weak to listen to the screeching noise of the turning of infernal wheels.

Who among us would accept a universe in which there was not one voice

Of compassion, pity, understanding?

To be human is to be completely alien amid the galaxies.

Which is sufficient reason for erecting, together with others, the temples of an unimaginable mercy.

--Czeslaw Milosz

Description is Revelation

2009-11-29T05:49:00.000-08:00

Description is revelation. It is not
The thing described, nor false facsimile.

It is an artificial thing that exists,
In its own seeming, plainly visible,

Yet not too closely the double of our lives,
Intenser than any actual life could be,

A text we should be born that we might read,
More explicit than the experience of sun

And moon, the book of reconciliation,
Book of a concept only possible

In description, canon central in itself,
The thesis of the plentifullest John.

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, from "Description Without Place"

Everything Is Broken

2009-10-08T07:38:00.000-07:00

This was an extraordinarily good time that I only recently recalled is available as a recording online FOR FREE as people put it sometimes. It's all in the context of John McClure's course last Fall, Popular Music and Religious Identity. It's where Czeslaw Milosz and Jars of Clay and Paul Simon meet. It's me, Sarah, Cary Gibson, Stephen Mason, Charlie Lowell, Brian Ritchey, Katie Herzig, Matthew Perryman Jones, and sweet people a-plenty. A conversation that could've kept going and might yet and probably always is.
Anyhoo, for your edification, it's riiiiiiiight....here.

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

2009-09-29T11:33:00.000-07:00

Jesus is God’s ‘revelation’ in a decisive sense not because he makes a dimly apprehended God clear to us, but because he challenges and queries an unusually clear sense of God: not because he makes things plainer—on the ‘veil-lifting’ model of revelation—but because he makes things darker.
Rowan Williams (appropriated from Chris K. Huebner)

No such tales are told

2009-09-28T12:42:00.000-07:00

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its
people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged
to hate themselves.... It is in fact a crime for an
American to be poor, even though America is a nation
of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men
who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and
therefore more estimable than anyone with power and
gold. No such tales are told by American poor. They
mock themselves and glorify their betters.
- Kurt Vonnegut

There Is A Place Beyond Ambition

2009-09-22T10:47:00.001-07:00

There is a Place Beyond Ambition

When the flute players couldn’t think of what to say next

they laid down their pipes,

then they lay down themselves

beside the river

and just listened.

Some of them, after a while,

jumped up

and disappeared back inside the busy town.

But the rest—

so quiet, not even thoughtful—

are still there,

still listening.

- Mary Oliver

Here Goes Everything

2009-09-08T19:44:00.001-07:00

God Bless...

2009-09-01T20:40:00.001-07:00

Bless This Mess by David Bazan

god bless the man who stumbles
god bless the man who falls
god bless the man who yields to temptation
god bless the woman who suffers
god bless the woman who weeps
god bless the children trying her patience

trouble getting over it is what you’re in for so pour yourself another
it’ll take a steady pair of hands
holy or unholy ghost well now i can’t tell but either way you cut it
you should get some distance if you plan to take a stand

god bless the house divided
god bless the weeds in the wheat
god bless the lamp lit under a bushel

i discovered hell to be the poison in the well
so i tried to warn the others of the curse
then my body turned on me i dreamt that for eternity
my family would burn then i awoke
with a wicked thirst

by my baby’s yellow bed i kissed her forehead and rubbed her little tummy
wondering if she’d soon despise the smell
of the booze on my breath like her mom
through a darkened mirror i have seen my own reflection
and it makes me want to be a better man
after another drink

god bless the man at the crossroads
god bless the woman who still can’t sleep
god bless the history that doesn’t repeat

Notes on a Revolution

2009-08-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

Not sure where to begin in broadcasting my enthusiasm for the subversive, life-giving text displayed above. Let's start with samples: "There is absolutely no reason that you, with your flute-rocking skills, cannot be the Ian Anderson of tomorrow,""Every musician since the beginning of time was, at one point, a beginner," "Your voice can be one of the most powerful instruments you ever own (if you choose to use it). And it’s free!," "A lot of things sound good with distortion on them; personally, I believe distortion is the salt of sound effects—it makes everything better." Amid an arsenal of accessibly technical tips on how to get your own act going (helpful even to a 39-year-old male), Jessica Hopper delivers these good news tidings to her growing and determined public. As a musician, a critic, and the music consultant for This American Life, she knows what she's talking about, AND she's coming to GRIMEY's THIS WEDNESDAY at 6:00 in the PM. Have you heard tell of Sister Rosetta Tharpe “the original shredder?” Did you know that Big Mama Thornton wrote "Hound Dog" or that Carol Kaye played bass on the whole of Pet Sounds? Come on out and hear what all's afoot. I'll be there with my ladies and my boys. I end with more Jessica: "You’ve got all the time in the world to edit and/or drive yourself crazy over the details; attempting to get it perfect on the first try (or second or third for that matter) will only trip you up. Self-doubt is something all artists struggle with, but being self-critical while you’re writing may stunt your growth as a lyricist, and you want to be full-size…You don’t have to try to achieve in a system that excludes you/your band. You can make your own system, whatever you want it to be like."

Thanks to Jeff Jones design guru and Rilian Torode artist sage, we will have prints to raise funds for the DPC summer arts program. Check it.

2009-08-24T20:05:00.000-07:00

You can buy one riiiiiiiiiiiiiight HERE.

More art show images. The show will include ceramics and a variety of other mixed media.

2009-08-23T06:27:00.000-07:00

The Divine Within: Documenting the Secrets of Childhood

2009-08-22T19:46:00.000-07:00

You are cordially invited to the 4th annual children's art show at the Downtown Presbyterian Church featuring the collaborative work of well known Nashville theologians under the age of 12.

Below is a copy of the press release. If any of you know anyone who wants to do a story on it... there is definitely one here. Hope to see you there.

THE DIVINE WITHIN:

Documenting the Secrets of Childhood

At our most artful and receptive moments--Sarah Masen suspects—we all understand that paying close attention to the creative wisdom of a child is every bit as enriching as meditating, reading sacred text, or taking in a good French film. For Masen, the Director of Children’s Education at Downtown Presbyterian Church, moving out of comfort zones and past an easy sentimentality in our openness to what children would show us is probably our best—our only—hope for emotional development. Opening September 5th in collaboration with the first Saturday Art Crawl, The Downtown Presbyterian Church presents: “The Divine Within: Documenting the Secrets of Childhood”.

This years children’s art show features works of collaboration which tweak the conventional mentor/mentored model. The guiding vision places a child-artist in the role of instructor and a collaborating adult as the recipient of theological instruction afforded by the child. This partnering flips the script on curriculums often associated with churches (Point #1 “You’re a sinner”) and presumes, from the outset, what Masen frequently cites as “the already holy spirit” of the child. Prepare your hearts for illumination. Opening begins at 6:00pm. Light fare will be provided for small and grown wayfarers.

***

If you would like more information about this show, the participants and origins, or to schedule an interview with Sarah Masen, please call her at (248)505.1476 or email her at sdarkdpc@gmail.com

Wheresoever

2009-08-20T11:31:00.000-07:00

Biblically, the Holy Spirit names the faithfulness of God to his own creation. Biblically, the Holy Spirit means the militant presence of the Word of God inhering in the life of the whole of creation. Biblically the Holy Spirit is the Word of God at work both historically and existentially, acting incessantly and pervasively to renew the integrity of life in this world. By virtue of this…affirmation of the biblical witness, the false notion—nourished in my childhood in the Episcopal Church—that the Holy Spirit is, somehow, possessed by and enshrined within the sanctuary of the church was at last refuted, and I was freed from it…It was—it is—the biblical sage of the Word of God as Agitator, as the Holy Spirit, that assures me that wheresoever human conscience is alive and active, that is a sign of the saving vitality of the Word of God in history, here and now.

--William Stringfellow, The Politics of Spirituality

2009-08-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

"Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will strive to maintain it. They will use whatever means are convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise. Nevertheless there are possibilities of increasing social justice through the development of mind and reason.”

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society

Due Reverence

2009-08-18T09:47:00.000-07:00

“An irrational society accepts injustice because it does not analyze the pretensions made by the powerful and privileged groups of society. Even that portion of society which suffers most from injustice may hold the power, responsible for it, in reverence.” Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society

God Bless the History that Doesn't Repeat

2009-08-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

It'll take more time than I have before me right now to make a start at saying what I want to say about Dave Bazan's latest. I'll begin by asking everyone to pay heed to "Bless This Mess" which looks to be the first single (and a magnificent intro to the sensibility of the whole album). Then mosey on over to "The Passion of David Bazan" which, for my money, (and at the risk of putting it oddly) bears witness to his witness better than anything I've read (not just because its author was kind enough to quote me profusely). The author, Jessica Hopper, will be praised at length in a future post noting her upcoming Nashville appearance at Grimey's to promote THIS. In the meantime, consider the song. I believe it's an instance of cosmic plainspeak which, as ever, expands the sphere of sanity little by little.

Piety ought to be inseparable from critical thinking

2009-07-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

Here's the teacher making plain:

We have to pay debt to the sources to the sources of our being. That includes mom and dad. That includes the community that shaped you. That includes the nation that both protects you as well as gives you some sense of possibility. And for religious folk, of course, it includes God. Now, the problem is there has to be some Socratic energy in one's piety. Piety ought to be inseparable from critical thinking.

--Cornel West in conversation with Eduardo Mendieta

People Have the Power

2009-07-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

"The tactics are unorganized, largely leaderless and only just beginning," says Robin Wright.

And this just in from the BBC.

There was a muddy centre before we breathed.

There was a myth before the myth began,

Venerable and articulate and complete.

From this the poem springs: that we live in a place

That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves

And hard it is in spire of blazoned days.

We are the mimics.Clouds are pedagogues.

The air is not a mirror but bare board,

Coulisse bright-dark, tragic chiaroscuro

And comic color of the rose, in which

Abysmal instruments make sounds like pips

Of the sweeping meanings that we add to them.

from Wallace Stevens' "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"

Prophetic Alignments

2009-07-23T07:45:00.003-07:00

This is the comprehensive wit of Hortense Spillers. One of my favorite people in the world. I'm not sure how to adequately recommend her beyond urging people to google away and pay heed to the care and subtlety and subversiveness with which she puts things.
I here paste one text she draws out and places along a certain continuum (a "prophetic alignment" she calls it). It's Thomas Jefferson on the slave economy in which he lived and moved and upon which he had his material being:
"Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of the situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."
Think about it.

2009-07-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

To begin, the image is the work of Jaap Scheeren, a recent fascination of mine. And what follows is something I wrote the morning after our relationship with Noisetrade had begun. Here tis:

“I made $10.95!” Sarah exclaimed from behind a laptop this morning. She went to bed, woke up, and witnessed the appearance of nearly eleven dollars worth of public affirmation of her song-craft which braved the oceans of Internet while she slept. All manner of things made well.

I wish I was more the lyrical wit, but I’m the one in this relationship who types out the largest number of straightforward sentences (My books, let me say it again, are footnotes for her lyrics). It befalls me to offer the following report.

A little over two years ago, Sarah had a couple of performance appointments closely aligned, Calvin’s Festival of Faith and Music (Emmylou, Neko, Sufjan) and the Greenbelt Festival (Billy Bragg, Over the Rhine), and she suspected it would be impolite to show up without what the young people call product. With the help of Todd Greene and Tony Doling of Bulb, Chris Leonard and Brad Ritter of the Contemporary Music Center, and Brother Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, she’d long accumulated three EP’s worth of material and now saw fit to put together individual, everyone different, stenciled artworks (Like snowflakes I tell you!) to house the plastic. They sold, we might say, like hotcakes, but the demand, mail-order-paypal-wise, was a little more than we could comfortably manage. She ended the online dealio, but often sent them out for free (her anxious partner noticed) to e-mailers whose demands dribbled in via the mostly quiet but still glowing website.

So, just last night, we’re having dinner with Mark and Molly Nicholas at our home. Inquiries concerning one another’s projects leads to Mark’s casual mention of Noisetrade goings-on. We begin to suspect this is what ancient texts refer to as The Shape of Things to Come. So many of our friends and neighbors have climbed aboard. Why not? Joe Kirk and Derek Webb strike us as upstanding citizens. Wouldn’t it be cool it being a gift economy we’re in and all? Molly types away, images are shared, and after they’ve gone home we get an e-mail pronouncing it a done deal. We’ll have the other EP’s up over the next few months.

I think it’s an excellent fit. People who extol Sarah’s music have always been potential friends and co-conspirators rather than--what do they call them?—fans? Share away, my friendlies. Publicize as you see fit. Blog if you want to. Blog around the world. Consider yourselves deputized. Enjoy.

Speaking is resurrection

2009-07-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed this. Think you all will too.
Sarah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co-c5gPWfiM

A Blessed Interdependence Day To Everyone

2009-07-04T20:43:00.001-07:00

So, as Kevin's response indicates, this entry initially contained something completely different image-wise: Pat Benatar video-performing that amazing song, "We Belong to the Light," which fit with something Rich King said to me ("Happy In(ter)dependence Day"). The embedding was regrettably disabled.
I now give you this wondrous image kindly lent to me by my friend, Derek, of the Most Everybody Loves Their Lives blog. You can imagine how agreeably geeked it leaves me.
I hope everyone's had a redemptive-feeling weekend.

I am not yours

2009-07-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

You Whose Name

You whose name is aggressor and devourer.
Putrid and sultry, in fermentation.
You mash into pulp sages and prophets,
Criminals and heroes, indifferently.
My vocativus is useless.
You do not hear me, though I address you,
Yet I want to speak, for I am against you.
So what if you gulp me, I am not yours.
You overcome me with exhaustion and fever.
You blur my thought, which protests,
You roll over me, dull unconscious power.
The one who will overcome you is swift, armed:
Mind, spirit, maker, renewer.
He jousts with you in depths and on high,
Equestrian, winged, lofty, silver-scaled.
I have served him in the investiture of forms.
It’s not my concern what he will do with me.

A retinue advances in the sunlight by the lakes.
From white villages Easter bells resound.

--Czeslaw Milosz

A word of advice

2009-06-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

With thanks to Alli Steen Magee

Democracy to Come

2009-06-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to think that the possibility of following the likes of Persiankiwi (whose view of her/his own links is blocked by his/her govt'), Tehranbureau, and their equivalents around the sweet old world is reason enough for people to sign up for twitter. Other media outlets do not (cannot) cut it on a day like today.

Paying Attention

2009-06-14T21:12:00.001-07:00

A telephone plea from Mir Hossein Mousavi:
I AM UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE TO ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE SHAM ELECTION. THEY HAVE CUT ME OFF FROM ANY COMMUNICATION WITH PEOPLE AND AM UNDER SURVEILLANCE. I ASK THE PEOPLE TO STAY IN THE STREETS BUT AVOID VIOLENCE

The Just Shall Know That They Only Live By Faith

2009-06-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

Faith means through a mirror dimly or “through a glass darkly.” It’s what we do. I leave the rest to Caputo whose On Religion and What Would Jesus Deconstruct? are worth looking into. Sans, incidentally, means without:
“Through a glass darkly…means sans apocalypse. Even the Apocalypse is sans apocalypse. That means that the believers in that book should temper their claims about The Revelation they (believe they) have received, since it is their interpretation that they have received a revelation, while not everyone else agrees. A revelation is an interpretation that the believers believe is a revelation, which means that it is one more competing entry in the conflict of interpretations.” John Caputo, On Religion
Interpret away, my friendlies.

What good would it be to them?

2009-05-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

Why Some People Do Not Read Poetry

Because they already know that it means
stopping and without stopping they know that
beyond stopping it will mean listening
listening without hearing and maybe
then hearing without hearing and what would
they hear then what good would it be to them
like some small animal crossing the road
suddenly there but not seeming to move
at night and they are late and may be on
the wrong road over the mountain with all
the others asleep and not hitting it
that time as though forgetting it again

--W.S. Merwin

There is many a small betrayal in the mind

2009-05-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

This one gets cut and pasted all over the place, but it felt like a redeeming act to put it up in yet another corner. My favorite poem lately. Ladies and gentlemen, William Stafford...

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

May The Tradition Be Enriched This Weekend

2009-05-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

Kirk: "You're not a fish, Spock."
Spock: "Nor am I a man."

If You're In The Area...

2009-05-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

This Thursday (May 7th) at 11:30AM, I'll be joining the sweet people of the Nashville Cohort at the Flying Saucer (affixed lovingly to the back half of Union Station) for food and conversation. All are welcome. You're advised to call the place sometime beforehand if you're wanting to order a dish.
Not a whole lot to report upon here other than gratefulness for the good vibrations consistently sent my way from people who are reading the book. The "book launch" consisted of people who'd gathered at Portland Brew and it went on for maybe three hours. Sarah thanked everyone for coming. I expressed my desire that everyone would introduce themselves to someone they didn't know, and then we just yakked away. Every fifteen minutes or so I'd invite people to share a quote, a line from a song or a poem, or anything they had in their heads that seemed fitting. Lots of Willy Wonka gems, some Gerard Manley Hopkins, and even one instance where Tony Doling and Joe Nolan saw fit to re-enact a scene from Oliver Stone's Wall Street. It occurred to many of us that this sort of thing is probably what we're hoping for when we "go out" to a cafe or a bar or a party, and facilitating the now-people-share-words moment(s) seems to do the trick. I suspect we'll do it again.
One quote I didn't share but which seems to speak to what went well that night (and to what probably happens whenever we rightly say that anything at all goes well) is this: “Love is the perception of individuals. Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”
Iris Murdoch, “The Sublime and the Good”
Hope this finds everyone feeling (or nearing) well.

Magic At Its Deepest

2009-04-28T12:59:00.000-07:00

Sarah here.
Just reading Harry Potter book 3 and came across this line, "When one wizard saves another wizard's life, it creates a certain bond between them." This had me remembering an exchange I had with David yesterday that I wanted to share.

A friend a long time ago said that you become what you are afraid of. Paralyzed by the truth of that thought yesterday (my list of things I am afraid of is impossibly, "I can't believe I still exist", gods help me, long), David and I had a suspended silence sit-down. Amid the recondite, thickening clouds, the voice we hear when we think "David Dark" cut clear as day with this line:

We become what we love.

Hope that one rings through when anyone out there finds themselves caught in the fear storm.

There's Nothing I Can Do

2009-04-19T11:53:00.001-07:00

This isn't a tee-hee, "Remember the 80's?!?!?" post. I was tempted to only offer the audio as way of avoiding this impression but got to thinking the video might afford at least a little illumination. I'm a sucker for what I take to be neglected significance within popular expression generally regarded as disposable. And I think Peter Godwin dropped something rather deep, subversive, and McLuhanesque upon the public with "Images Of Heaven" (see text below). I think he's chronicling what he thinks is happening to him in his relationship to images. Dude doesn't like what's going on in his own head and he's saying so. Think Charley Patton's "Lord, I'm Disturbed" or Elvis Costello's "Psycho." The fellow isn't kidding around. Eighties earnestness formed (and forms) me, I admit. I don't think of it as prudish or obvious or overwrought. I file it as a sort of religio-poetic meditation/confession on the topic of what Blake calls mind-forged manacles and what William Burroughs has in mind when he tells us to look hard at the Naked Lunch at the end of the long, newspaper spoon. How do we characterize our relationship to the objects of our mediatized contemplation? What is the nature of the proselytization we're undergoing? What are we building up on our karmic accounts? I don't have a title for the mix I have i mind, but Godwin's jam will lead it all off, followed by Arcade Fire's "(Antichrist Television Blues)" and PJ Harvey's "This Mess We're In." Other suggestions are welcome. And don't we think The Killers would be very pleased if they reproduced the sound of this one in the studio? Isn't it what many of us are going in for? And doesn't it sound like John Taylor's bass?
Lettuce know your thoughts.
"Images of Heaven" P. Godwin (my attempted transcription)

Nothing is sacred
So, give me your soul, my love
Nothing is wasted
On someone like you

Somebody killed me
Then tore out my heart, my love
Somebody thrilled me
With photos of you

And there's nothing I can do
The media made you
There's nothing I can do
'cause you don't exist
you don't exist

Just images of heaven
that take me to hell
Images of heaven
Of something to sell
Images of heaven
Images of heaven

Something possessed me
An image of you, my love
Video visions
That play on my mind

Nobody blessed me
With power to reach, my love

One cheap illusion
Can still be divine

And nobody believes
In this new religion
Yeah nobody believes
'cause nobody sees
nobody sees

These Images of heaven
That take me to hell
Images of heaven
of something for sale
Images of heaven
Images of heaven

Images of heaven
Images of heaven

And there's nothing I can do
The camera made you
There's nothing I can do
'cause you don't exist
You don't exist

Just images of heaven
that take me to hell
Images of heaven
Or something to sell
Images of heaven
Images of heaven

2009-04-13T11:47:00.000-07:00

Sarah brings us the following from Dorothee Soelle:
The insight that the way to God in Jewish thought leads via the
neighbor, that is to say, via the woman next door who gets on my
nerves and always listens to the wrong music, is one of Judaism’s
greatest gifts to humanity. I believe in that but also with the desire
that my neighbor who reads nothing but the tabloids will someday also
enter the way to God...
Radical humanism has its own language difficulties. It
cannot pray and cannot wish for more than what seems possible. But we
all need the “more” we call transcendence. We need a guarantor of the
rights of the poor, the superfluous and disabled, a guarantor that is
greater than our reckoning. In that sense, we are all incurable,
“religious.” It is an illness we cannot get rid of in the life of
industriousness.

Calm (down) Sunday

2009-04-04T06:34:00.000-07:00

Sarah Here.
Just noticed while Jesus weeps for J-town he wails, "if you only recognized what makes for peace". And wanting to get in line with this "Some of all people...". Happy Palm Sunday everyone. "Save us".

Word has arrived that
peace will brim up, will come
"like a river and the
glory...like a flowing stream."
So.
Some of all people will
wondering wait
until this very stone
utters.

-Margaret Avison

Face Rank

2009-04-01T08:46:00.001-07:00

I commemorate today's release of THE SACREDNESS OF QUESTIONING EVERYTHING with the most compelling photograph of my own face I could find. I'm also including some especially good blurbs as I have yet to figure out (or find a friend to hire or help me to figure out) how to put them on an opening splash page. Here're a few:
"David Dark serves up a unique blend of pop culture and high culture, generously seasoned with religious texts. The result is an immensely readable, profoundly subversive, and deeply prophetic book." — Andrew Bacevich, Author, The Limits of Power
"David Dark is my favorite critic of the people’s culture of America and the Christian faith. He brings a deep sense of reverence to every book he reads, every song he hears, every movie he sees, but it is a discerning reverence—attentive to truth and Jesus wherever he comes on them. He is also a reliable lie detector. And not a dull sentence in the book." — Eugene Peterson, translator of The Message
"Brilliant and charming and insightful as always, Dark comforts both my soul and my mind with this synthesis, part memoir and part essay, of the culture around us and the culture within us." — Phyllis Tickle, Author, The Great Emergence
"David Dark is one of our wisest authors, and I plan to read everything he writes. The Sacredness of Questioning Everything will comfort questioners, doubters, and skeptics with assurance that their questions can be faithful, and it will challenge the complacent with an ethical summons to wonder. It invites everything to give life—and faith—a second thought, and did I mention that it’s beautifully written?" — Brian McLaren, Author, Everything Must Change
On the prospect of helping the thing go gangbusters...
Be seen in public reading it as often as possible.
Spread word.
Place it on the top of whatever stack of books you have in whatever place your sitting.
Review it for Amazon.
Ask your library to order a copy.
Tell people who bring in people to talk to other people that I'm a...um...silver bullet or something.
Start a discussion group.
Figure out how to create/facilitate the circumstances that lead to me sitting at a table in front of a camera talking to Stephen Colbert.
Testify.
We're having a thing tonight at the Portland Brew at Twelve South (7:00). I'm hoping it'll be the beginning of a bunch of people I like coming to like other bunches of people I like...the beginning of a bunch of beautiful relationships...Maybe someone(s) will fall in love. We'll have more things like this in the weeks to come.
"Face Rank" is a reference to Scott Westerfeld's Orwellian, McLuhanesque mash-up of Sales Rank and Facebook in his tag on to the Uglies trilogy: Extras. It was a good, prophetic word delivered unto me today by one Sarah Masen.
I hope my book enriches lots of people. Lemme know what you make of it if you have the chance.

Trust Issues

2009-03-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

As not so many of you may know, that deeply controversial activist for all things human, Sarah Masen, my partner in crime and matrimony, has taken to attempting the education of children at the place called Downtown Presbyterian. Needless to say, she's amazing everyone. And I couldn't resist the temptation to post something she sent out to our congregants. There's so much here. So much that reads (as you'd've imagined) like a song. Enjoy:
Two weeks ago I attended a seminar on children's religious education at Trevecca University. We walked through Godly Play, a regimen similar to our Sunday school program. It focuses on story-telling and reflection using manipulatives (story-specific figures and props) and meditation techniques. I met a number of other area education directors from different congregations and traditions and enjoyed hearing about the successes and failures of their teaching adventures.
During a group discussion at the end of the day, a question arose concerning the pressure we often feel (be it illusory or otherwise) with regards to making sure the children are “learning the right things”. I suppose you could call it a trust issue. Letting a child hear a story from the Bible and giving them the space and means to reflect on it is something we are not inclined to do. My instinct is to tell them what I think the moral, the climax, the conflict, or resolution of the story is in my expert (somebody gag me) opinion. Simply telling them the story and getting out of the way isn’t the model I was given growing up in church. This may be one of the reasons I had little trust in my own ability to make good decisions as I got older. These days, however, I think of the church and children’s Sunday school as a place for discernment rehearsal. It is all we really do when we say we “study” the bible. We are grasping at the wonders and complexities (the mystery) of the bible as a healthy part of our psychological development. Maybe you are already there, but I was struck afresh with the enormity of leading a class full of children through the beginning stages of their spiritual journeys. I want to encourage them to trust their already-holy spirits that have them discerning (and sometimes saying) all manner of amazing things week after week.
I want to make sure you know that the opportunity to join me in this enormous endeavor is available to you. You will learn so much, and all that is required is a listening ear and a desire to be hospitable. I at least ask for you to pray about your potential involvement in the children’s programming. Write me if you want to sit in on a class with these little theologians. I guarantee if you are open, you will be sitting at the feet of great teachers (and I am SO not talking about myself).
That's it.
Hope this finds everybody well.

Class Act

2009-03-09T07:00:00.001-07:00

We Are Each Other's Business

2009-03-03T06:36:00.000-08:00

Paul Robeson
BY GWENDOLYN BROOKS

That time
cool and clear,
cutting across the hot grit of the day.
The major Voice.
The adult Voice
forgoing Rolling River,
forgoing tearful tale of bale and barge
and other symptoms of an old despond.
Warning, in music-words
devout and large,
that we are each other's
harvest:
we are each other's
business:
we are each other's
magnitude and bond.

Watch and Learn

2009-02-18T17:17:00.001-08:00

Color me chastened.
Be inspired.

For the record

2009-02-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

"If you don't use your own imagination, somebody else is going to use it for you."
Ron Sukenick

Redeeming Transmissions

2009-02-04T12:57:00.001-08:00

Don't know how many PPIF congregants are familiar with the prophetic witness of Bill Hicks. Radiohead dedicated THE BENDS to his memory (I think I mention as much in Everyday Apocalypse). One of his quotes opens the final chapter of GATA. It's from his album, Rant in E-Minor: "Lift me up out of this illusion, Lord. Heal my perception, so that I may know only reality." Anyway, I find him crucial. Here's David Letterman repentantly relating a sad account of Hick's appearance on his show and undertaking an inspiringly awkward and deeply redemptive conversation with Bill's mother. You'll have to follow Youtube's directions to parts 2 and 3. I have the ever-loving, always-inspiring attentiveness of one Joe Nolan to thank for the heads-up concerning this excellent smidgin of television.

World Without End

2009-02-02T07:46:00.000-08:00

...it was equally certainly a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here Comes Everybody. An imposing everybody he always indeed looked, constantly the same as and equal to himself and magnificently well worthy of any and all such universalisation…from good start to happy finish the truly catholic assemblage gathered together…

"Superman exists. And he's American."

2009-01-26T17:13:00.001-08:00

According to the Testimony of the Poets

2009-01-10T12:11:00.000-08:00

The Song of Songs tells us that love is as strong as death, but immediately adds that jealousy is as cruel as the grave, and sexual relations in themselves appear to be inseparable, according to the testimony of the poets, from the tension of egos, the sense of ownership and possession, the panics of status.
Northrop Frye, Words With Power
image by Marc Chagall

Putting People in Faceless Categories

2009-01-10T09:33:00.001-08:00

Come together...Right now.