Now King David was old, advanced in age; and they covered him with clothes, but he could not keep warm.

I have been tinkering loosely & somewhat carelessly recently with poetry.  It seems to me to be one of those things in which one starts out confident, important to himself, & with a kind of unabashed fearlessness of the “actual” world of poetry — the one of money, jobs, day-to-day.  Inspired at first by Dr. Harding’s Performance Studies class last spring, my dealings have been minimal and mostly performative (not of my own, but in watching others do what they do best), and I will not try to posture like I know much more about performed poetry than names like Saul Williams, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and the figureheads of HBO’s Def Poetry.

Having slowly immersed myself in this recently, I was delighted to hear that slam poet Beau Sia was going to perform at Mary Washington last Tuesday, arriving to an empty room 15 minutes before the actual performance.  Watching him perform his poetry, though, was certainly something far beyond even what I was expecting — it was personal, direct, emotional, shivering, uproarious, and completely LIVE.  You can watch Sia speak on every season of Def Poetry as much as you want, but until you are close enough for his words to physically shake your ears & you can feel his breath from 2 rows back, the living poetry is still just words on a page.  I would recommend the experience to anyone and everyone.

Which brings me to a post that in a sense has been a long time coming.  Because you see, the absolutely fascinating thing for me about poetry is the method in which it is presented to the reader.  A typed series of stanzas plastered between bound covers has its physical establishment in our hands, & as an English major I cannot deny that a large part of me really prizes that occupation of concrete space.  But the performative reading is something so much more alive, enables the receiver of the poem to react with immediacy and directly to the author’s face — the space of the white page becomes an interactive space of bodies communicating, & at this point in my life there is little more that I treasure than that occupied, physical, human space.

The students of Intro to Creative Writing every year are invited to perform a piece or two at the Thursday Poems series at the end of the semester, & this means next week I have a chance to experience the role of performing poet for one of the first substantial times.  It is unnerving, exciting, & a complete experiment in putting onself out there without pretensions or fears.  It is reactive & human for both the performer & the audience, & I am greatly looking forward to being on the side of the former this time.

Because I have been watching Def Poetry with a certain level of intenseness the past month or two, I have come across several performances that have resonated incredibly deeply with me.  So I guess this is where I share them:

Taylor Mali –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87w…

Rives –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbtVepS53…

Suheir Hammad (weep worthy!) –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fhWX2F6G…

Beau Sia –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-reUpC85b…

Geoff Trenchard –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1oQSXUza…

Steve Coleman –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3bbpj2hX…

Gina Loring –

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmCxC0Rnz…

Am I jealous of the talent?  Unabashedly!  Do I still love it with all my passion?  Absolutely.

My dear friend Katie Jabro shared this with me, & because I do not know a lot about technological scienctific procedures, the biology of it confounds me to no end.  All I know is that this man is undergoing brain surgery WHILE playing the banjo — I believe how it works is this: surgeons tweak different sensory areas in one’s brain in order to determine the best spot for “deep brain stimulation,” a way to treat essential tremor (which is not Parkinson’s, & is in fact much more dangerous and severe).  Thus, in order to find which pulses in the brain are best suited for this “stimulation,” the surgeons require the patient to stay awake during the surgery and do something requiring their motor skills so that they can tell when the motor skills themselves have been affected.

This man is a world-class banjo player, & thus the only logical activity for him to be doing during surgery (OPEN HEAD SURGERY, mind you!) is to play the banjo.  I am amazed by this technology, comforted by its accuracy, terrified by its implications.  Is this or is this not the coolest video you are likely to see for a very long time??

Link —-> Man Plays Banjo During Brain Surgery

Lucio Battisti “Un’avventura,” 1969.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbquSeHA...[/youtube]

Give it to 2:38.  Stax, eat your heart out.

With school in full rampant glory going strong and plowing ahead right now, life has become subjected to little more than the day-to-day, routine serving only as a frame for changing attitudes, emotions, ideas, & my mind has been occupied with such.  There is a quote from Breton’s “First Surrealist Manifesto” that has had my brain working overtime to deconstruct, figure out, and the parallels between his words and my own worldly view stick out like ornery splinters in a sore thumb –

The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever happens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led. Events will not tolerate deferment. You have no name. Everything is inestimably easy.

Everything is inestimably easy.  Everything.  is inestimably easy.

I see these words & I grin foolishly and resplendently when I take walks in fading October evenings.  These are such American times in which we live, such days of excess & worry and complete unbridled debate & competition.  Presidencies, lapel pins, “that one”s…where are we going with this?  Politics are a bore & I long daily for a good hike to take or a nice lawn on which to lay my back and laugh and swear loudly.

I have absolutely no seque for what I am about to launch into, & everything I have just written has only been a feeble silly attempt to get at it, but now I’m stuck.  So I will just get on with it: African-tinged musical delicacies, or songs straight from the world’s most sadly forgotten continent.  For so much controversy, taboo, and confusion surrounding the nations of Africa, there is just as much culture, background, terror, & uncultivated undiscovered art/beauty/art.  I have been entrenched in Paul Simon’s Graceland & Rhythm of the Saints projects, & have been meaning to share these songs that split themselves between cheesy 80’s musicianship & Zimbabwean grace, for they are true examples of neo-colonialized performance.  And whether or not you think the idea is a good one or a bad one, more dangerous & silly than actually beneficial, to deny the attractiveness of these songs is foolish, is…well…stupid.

So, Listen.

Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes.  [The percussion free for all at the end is of especial interest...& Ladysmith...don't even get me started]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OafqYNCzq...[/youtube]

The Obvious Child.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZGiD8vXV...[/youtube]

Under African Skies.  [fe/male harmonies.  Wonderful so wonderful.]

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjMQ-5rDu...[/youtube]

Okay I won’t beat it to death, BUT I will add these songs at the end as an addendum, & these are perhaps more important to my purpose.  Songs from Nigerian Special, a 2-disc set of Nigerian jams from the 1970s, each one worthy of 300 listens at the very least.  See the culture, see the idealism, see the romanticized beauty, the language of a mysterious tongue!  See the way the guitar sounds absolutely jangly & mystified.  I can’t describe what this does for me.  Major major props to my good friend Miss Ruby for introducing me to all of this, take it for what it is, dance to it if you can.

Leo Fadaka & the Heroes: “Blak Sound”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxIA-4G0w...[/youtube]

Mono Mono: “Ema Kowa Iasa Ile Wa”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qe3wS2c4...[/youtube]

The Semi Colon: “Nekwaha Semi Colon”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o9d_8fX7...[/youtube]

Godwin Ezike and the Ambassadors: “Torri Wowo”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTNABbQAn...[/youtube]

So.  Good.  See you all soon probably.

Every now & again everyone has that moment where they come across something that fits so perfectly into themselves that they wonder why they hadn’t discovered it sooner — it almost makes you question chance, question karma or dharma or whichever one applies here, almost makes you question your own spiritual inclinations, stand up & say, “Right!  Right! Why now!  Goodness.”  Today has got to be one of those days, this afternoon has got me singin’ “Oh Lawdy yes!”

Because I started out my day folded knock-kneed on my front porch steps picking my ukulele with the crack along the back & humming “I Want to Sing that Rock N Roll” & because I have slipped this disc into my computer & I don’t even need an entire first listen to make me grin, make me shake & make me love.  Because this woman, this Gillian Welch, her absence has been felt unconciously I’m sure, & this is it for me.  This is where it fits, this is where my days should be heading.  This woman, this singer songwriter banjo picker six string strummer muted cap-slapper, it begins & ends with this music right here.  So forgive me while I wax bloggingly & share with you these tunes of my recent months.  Do not pray for affectation, it slips in un-noticed.

You do not need to be a Welch fan prematurely or with immediacy, you just need your attention re-tuned and your patience drawn out and flexed.  Take a seat, take a listen.  Take a mug, take a sip, ‘lectrify your soul.

“Red Clay Halo”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7knB3VtA...[/youtube]

“I Want to Sing that Rock N Roll”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AchmYEqzt...[/youtube]

“Caleb Meyer” (for the headbangers?)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nugXkgd_-...[/youtube]

“Time (the Revelator)” (what an interview!)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo-xdqz4r...[/youtube]

“Annabelle” (if educational powerpoints are your thing)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceDxO50GV...[/youtube]

Nothing more to say, I am impressed beyond my ages, beyond my vocabulary.  Instant timeless.

Just cos I can.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgUJK0cwB...[/youtube]

& it’s like they say: give the people what they want (assuming the people want Superman & Spider-woman dancing spastically!).

This space has been vacant, has been temporarily & unjustly abandoned, & for this I apologize.  BUT!  I offer insubstantial reasoning & lame excuses.  I spent some time in Arizona after my job ended, then spent some time packing for school, then came to school.  So here I’ve been, for a week now, & that’s where the excuses stop because I have none.  I suppose I have been readjusting, moving in, etc., & now that I have moved into a real live house, things feel slower, more homey, more comfortable.  Perhaps the best way to write is to make yourself as uncomfortable as possible (could this be why I wrote so much over the summer?  Egads, I bet!).

Anyway, I have a small handful of ideas brewing for posts, but for now I can only offer music — because, after all, what better way is there to dip into my brain & take a spoonful than to see what I’ve been listening to on repeat?  This first one is an old classic, covered by a group of the most compelling musicians on the scene today.  Watch as Gillian Welch, everybody’s favorite faux-mountain-mama, invites the Old Crow Medicine Show boys onstage for a heart-rendering rendition of “The Weight“  If you aren’t crying by the fiddle solo before the 4th verse, I don’t know you.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXf-SuBbJ...[/youtube]

& also, to a lesser extent, these boys really have sparked something special.  It’s Americana like only young blood can do it, & a raw, impromptu performance to showcase the movement & style of it all.  This has been my jam for perhaps the past 5 or 6 weeks now, turn up that volume & let it flow out.  The Felice Brothers — Her Eyes Dart Round (easy to play yourself, too!  Just pick up the guitar, strum it out, croon to your maiden!).

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BZQ6iuJ2...[/youtube]

Okay.  So.  I’ll be back soon.

In an unexpected, unprecedented move, I just now found myself on a celebrity gossip blog site, attracted by the words “Whatever happened” & “DJ Tanner” occurring together in the same sentence. I should be reading because really this book is just starting to get good, but I am easily distracted & somehow I wound my way to a Full House child star. So, to take the long way to my point once again, a quick catch-up with Candace Cameron, TV’s oldest Tanner daughter: she is 32, happily married with 3 young children, runs a wine label with her husband, & here’s the kicker — she’s Christian.

Now, I have several bones to pick with the state of pop culture & youthful spiritual engagement, so let me begin with the most blatant. In this blog post, this quick internet rundown of the last ten years of a child star’s life, how can it possibly be important to note that she is an Evangelical Christian? Well, the way the story is laid out, a paragraph opens everything up by stating where just about every other major actor from Full House has gone wrong — Michelle is (are) a druggy (druggies) & hounded by the media, Stephanie did meth, Uncle Jesse had a public meltdown, etc. etc. DJ, though, DJ seems very happy. She is married & does not do drugs, nor does she appear spontaneously on Celeb-reality shows, nor does she do filthy-minded stand-up routines. Already, I’m sure you can see the celebrity gossip’s gears turning — what can we pin on her, what can we snidely poke at?

& thus, the inept sarcasm evident in one woman’s dedication to her religious affiliation. To go further: at first I was a little confused why the article insisted on referring to a diety directly, writing that Ms. Cameron is dedicated to “the Lord.” Then I realized that to understand this medium, just as one would understand a newspaper story, one must read between the lines & grasp blindly at the writer’s own sense of biased scorn. They write that she is dedicated to the Lord because it uses a phrase that she would use (& has used on her personal website) - The Lord - in order to scrape it apart with an unnecessary literate roll of the eyes. The language is akin to the writer, were s/he speaking aloud, doing air-quotes & scoffing when telling his/her friends, “Yea, she’s dedicated to ‘the Lord’.”

At first, I know, I sound a little too suspicious & a little too skeptical of the media, but the reaction I expected this story to be brought out in the reader was pinpointed perfectly in the comments section. Here are actual comments written by real people on this story:

She’s a little creepy with the religion and I am surprised at the wine thing, but as an investment you can’t beat it.

I’m not at all for the religion thing, but hey if it works for her and her family, well, good for them. I would actually watch her on DWTS. I wonder how much of the religion thing is from her brother Kirk?

& then the comments, they spiral out into dangerously meta-cognitive waters, completely outstretching the arms of DJ Tanner & embracing topics like homeschooling & freedom of religion. But it brought me back with sudden clarity & shock to my thoughts from last week, when I sat here thinking about the sorry state of religion in the mind of my generation. Let me elaborate.

A lot of this blog tends to deal with Christianity & spirituality, as is sometimes a little self-evident. I do this because my fascination with Christianity in America is a very big part of the way I view media of all kinds. As someone who is often completely floored at the idea of adhering to any one specific religious doctrine for an entire lifetime, I am fascinated more than anything else by this generation of mine & its separation into the extremes of faith. It seems to me that we have two clearly divided sides pitted against one another: those who are devoted to their God to the point of hatred & sometimes even violence, & those who see this side & associate it with the entirety of Christianity’s long long long history & immediately denounce spirituality of any kind.

What worries me is that there is no strong middle ground evident in this debate, no one to stop things & say, “Hey, guys. I’ve got a question. Is there a reason this matters?” There seems to be nothing stopping these two sides from continuing in their efforts against each other into a blank & dangerous infinity, & this is why I often feel it is so important to come at religion, & I suppose Christianity more specifically, from a neutralized base. I offer many posts up in this blog as a way to say, “Isn’t this interesting, the way this is all connected by a history of the faith of other people & the art they make as an expression of this faith? Wouldn’t it be fun to enjoy this music, this book, this movie, this sandwich, regardless of the spiritual motivation of whomever made it?” My point is that everything you read or see or listen to does not need to be commented upon with a disclaimer if it is unnecessary. If one reads somewhere that DJ Tanner is Christian, one does not need to react by immediately proclaiming that one agrees or disagrees, no one is going to judge one’s life choices by the comments one makes on a celebrity gossip blog site (no one with half a mind, at least). That is, unless one does display ignorance of other people, feeling one may need to start a sentence with, “I’m no Christian, but…” or “I don’t agree with the religion, but…”.

I’m afraid for my generation sometimes, afraid that so many of us are drifting into extremes & falling into the pitfalls of polar oppositions, rather than making judgments based on loose criterion & willing to combine ideas into something entirely new. I’m afraid of labels & coined phrases, afraid we compare things too much for the sake of placing everything into neat piles. I’m afraid because it is the separation into sides that drives people against one another rather than into conversation & debate, it creates a need for conversion or confession - “You have to believe I am right, or I have failed everything I believe in! If I am not strong enough in my convictions to change your mind, than my convictions are not strong enough, & this means I myself am too weak” - & this, this is far too dangerous. Why can’t someone say, “Here is a very good song by a Christian artist” without fear of being framed a zealot or “religious freak” by an opposing side? This worries me a great deal.

What worries me even a greater deal, though, is that I somehow found myself reading about DJ Tanner in the first place. School needs to start again, please. & now.

I saw a quote on a co-worker’s desk today:

“When the game is over, the pawn & the king go back into the same box.”

Ah yes, but while the game is still being played, the pawn & the king sit on the same board, as well.  What does placement have to do with anything?

I think it is fair to say that very few things have such an eternal & unbreakable connection with all things spiritual than music.  At its most rooted, basic moments, music was the fruit of the religious womb, so to say.  It began in the steeples, with songs of devotion & praise & mourning.  The dawn of man is itself very deeply entrenched in religion, & truly it does not surprise me in the least that music would follow in that route quite closely.  Thus, for me to say that I am going to devote one blog post to the historical connection of the spiritual & the musical…that is just too ludicrous for me to think about.  Instead, this post - part 2 in the 3-part series of religion’s influences & structures in three separate media - is going to focus on the current spaces that religion occupies in the musical world.  Touching for just a little while on an old devotional/spiritual number (& that is only because I love it & you deserve to hear it), this is mostly going to be about modern Christian-influenced artists & song structures.

The idea behind this, I also want to point out quickly, is not to play around with WOW Worship artists.  That is boring even to ponder, & not even I would want to read about it (much less write about it).  Everyone knows that “Awesome God” & “Lord I Lift Your Name On High” are covered by 30 different pop-Christian artists each year, there is no point in touching upon that here.  This post, then, is dedicated to people who are taking the CCM musical aesthetic & completely re-thinking everything it used to stand for.  This post is to prove that there is good Christian-influenced music out there.  & if you think I am wrong, if you think I cannot possibly be telling the truth, just stick with me, please.

Also, one more thing before I just shut up with the foreplay & begin.  I realize this is not entirely consistent with my own original idea for this trio of posts.  I realize this does not deal with spirituality as a whole, & is just focusing on Christian influences.  I realize all this.  I do not mind, really, that it is turning out this way.  You shouldn’t either.

I want to kick things off with the spiritual number I mentioned earlier in passing.  The song “There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down” was one that I first heard on the Goodbye, Babylon boxset - a cedar box with pieces of cotton stuffed inside & a booklet as thick as a Stephen King novel, five discs of incredibly uplifting & thought provoking gospel music & one disc of blood-thumping sermons.  Buy this boxset, buy it now.  Regardless: the song in question was written & originally performed by Brother Claude Ely from Lee County, Virginia (down home boy!).  He was a Pentecostal preacher with a very strong sense of revival & a grip on what it takes to rattle the congregation’s emotions.  “There Ain’t No Grave” was recorded in an Appalachian Kentucky church, & it is one of the most tense songs you are likely to hear concerning the Christian belief system.  It is loud, chaotic, completely erratic, & simply amazing.  The final verse especially, stick it out to the final verse…the shouting, the clapping, the “yessuh!”s.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubTAaw1Qk...[/youtube]

Shoot ahead fifty years, & the revivalist idea is still ever-present in modern music today.  The idea behind this style of music in the spiritual sense is the same idea Jonathan Edwards was using when he delivered “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to the puritan mass.  To insert a sermon with strong emotional conviction into a song is to incite the listener to experience such an onslaught of direction & commandment that he is hastened to rethink the way he lives without realizing.  It is almost as if the musician is performing the opposite of the subliminal message, “Revolution 9” played backwards & all that: the idea is to be so forward, so direct, that the listener is trapped into action.  On that note, the Danielson Famile is a band formed by Daniel Smith’s senior thesis project at Rutgers.  It involves Daniel playing with his brothers & sisters, & eventually, as the band progressed, his wife & daughter & his brothers’ & sisters’ husbands & wives.  The music is like a carnival show of Biblical intrusions & reprimands, Daniel himself squealing  directives to the audience in an attempt to both convert everyone involved & provide severe entertainment with his chorus of handclaps & girlish echoes.  Here: “Btwn. the Lines of the Scout Sign.”  You will understand -

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J55czzC_e...[/youtube]

(I apologize, it gets cut off right at the end for some reason.  Whatever, you get the point.)

Danielson Famile, for me, is the perfect portrait of what the Christian music scene should sound like.  It is honest, completely estranged from the rest of the musical world, & works toward a sound so unique that it draws in a huge fanbase of underground indie kids without alienating too many just because of the lyrics.  The concept works because it is so grassroots: it is one college kid who roped his family into playing his songs with him.  None of them really knew what they were doing, or really how to play their instruments, but they did it because they were family & they had nothing much better to do.  & when you make music with as little pretensions as this (by now the band has kind of moved way past the original concept & is making overblown music with very little of the original DIY feel or purely, oddly divine lyrical know-how), it is bound to be full of the artist’s soul.  I can write a whole blog post about this band.  Maybe I will.  If you want to really learn about the family, I suggest Danielson: A Family Movie.  Okay, moving on now.

On the opposite end of the CCM spectrum sits music that is made with the intent of pleasing the artist, with very little pretensions to conversion of the audience.  The best example I can think to give of this is Anathallo’s earlier work.  The music is relatively epic & progressive, oftentimes building in layers to represent in some way, some form of the Christian experience.  The message is spiritual in the sense that it is devoted to an artistic analysis of Biblical scripture.  The similarities between Danielson Famile & Anathallo lie in the coalescing of a large group of people into a studio to form a concrete sound.  Anathallo as a band has grown & grown over the years, adding a French horn player here, a glockenspielest there, & the songs tend to rise & fall & rise & fall again, much like sea sickness.  From their album Sparrows, here is “A Song for Christine.”  (More handclaps!  What is it with alternative Christian artists & handclaps?  Must be something divinely possessed.)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlkP-Xi2f...[/youtube]

For those obsessed with the music’s message: the lyrics.

Finally, because I fear for this post going on forever, I present Half-handed Cloud, a solo multi-instrumentalist who makes some of the most literate Biblical music out there.  The album Thy is a Word & Feet Need Lamps especially is a collection of songs stripping stories from the Old Testament as if there were no tomorrow.  Each tale requires you to open your Bible & investigate the characters & the plotlines, like a running mystery novel.  Most of the songs run no longer than a minute, & are meant to educate or elucidate rather than simply show praise or strength of conversion.  & to uncover a mystery of my own, I will tell you that the inspiration for this entire blog comes from “Jael Peg Caper,” a 60 second song based on the story of Jael from the Book of Judges.  You may recognize a steadfast saying of my own in the lyrics there…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P0o1dUFj...[/youtube]

There is so much more I could give you here, so much more light to be shed on the Christian music scene (& so little that I have uncovered, or even want to uncover).  But for now, this is what you receive.  Music & religion, they have a history unlike any other, & the strength of the current scene both popular & independent of the 200,000 crowd WOW Worship concerts is evident of its refusal to go away.  For better or for worse.