Judges 5:27

It happened in the middle of the night that the man was startled and bent forward; and behold, a woman was lying at his feet.

Just cos I can.

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

Will You perform wonders for the dead?
Will the departed spirits rise and praise You?

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.

& 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!).

Okay.  So.  I’ll be back soon.

I will not execute My fierce anger;
I will not destroy Ephraim again.
For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst,
And I will not come in wrath.

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.

Now therefore, O kings, show discernment;
Take warning, O judges of the earth.

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?

Oh that you were like a brother to me
Who nursed at my mother’s breasts.
If I found you outdoors, I would kiss you;
No one would despise me, either.

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.

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 –

(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.)

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…

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.

Then I charged your judges at that time, saying, ‘Hear the cases between your fellow countrymen, and judge righteously between a man and his fellow countryman, or the alien who is with him.

I have a feeling posts like this are getting a little tiresome, but I wanted to get this one over with because it’s been sitting on my chest like a pointless cadaver for too long now.

A little while ago, back around when I was starting up Judges again (maybe April-ish), I started doing posts where I tracked cover songs & included the originals & their cover versions. I only did two of these posts before I realized the task was taking up my webspace & they weren’t all too interesting. But I still have a load of amazing covers that redefine the idea of a cover itself, & I might as well share them all with you in one big Youtube-laden post & just get it done. This music is all some of my favorite, but I understand if it does not appeal to everyone (that would be pointless & ridiculous, I think. [But secretly awesome]).

& before I begin, I wanted to write a little about the cover song, which I think is incredibly fascinating taking into account the discussion sparked by J. Groom’s post on the film Prom Night. If one thinks about the way music (& art in general) moves in an odd never-ending reciprocation of one or two very basic ideas or formats, then the cover song is an equally odd meta-musical moment, isn’t it? When an artist covers a song by another artist, it is almost as if they have recognized the inescapable way that a song is like a synonym, & have decided to take that idea & go beyond it all at once. (A sidenote: a song is like a synonym in the way it is only another way of sounding like something else, much as a synonym is just another way for one word to sound like another. In this way, the rootless history of music is just a thesaurus.) In this case, a cover song is perhaps the same as the film Scream, no matter what form it takes, as it recognizes its influences & uses the basic strands of these same influences (the strands being the same lyrics, or something resembling them, usually) to create something new. Yes, a cover song is a new song. But is it? (You see! No song is a new song!)

So, now that that’s done with, let’s let the music play.

“Dead Leaves & the Dirty Ground,” a White Stripes tune that is good on its own, if you’re into the blues-punk revival sort of thing. I was in 9th grade, & listening to it again, the song still holds up.

Having said that, Chris Thile‘s bluegrass-ified version is twenty times more rawkus. Less pigeonholed, more soulful. If you only listen to one song on this post, make it Thile’s “Dead Leaves” cover.

A song that was never officially released, but was recorded & written for Bob Dylan‘s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid album/soundtrack, “Rock Me Mama” mostly consists of a brilliant chorus & mumbled half-lyrics for the verses.

In 2004, the song was covered & released by Old Crow Medicine Show as “Wagon Wheel,” with newly written verses & a bigger sound. I can’t get enough of this song, & I bought a guit-jo a couple days pretty much for the sole purpose of learning to play it.

“Roses of Picardy” was penned in 1916 & has been recorded by dozens upon dozens (maybe hundreds — okay, maybe not) of artists.  I believe it was a post-World War I song, though I cannot say for sure.  Regardless, here is how the original goes, or something close to it, as sung by Richard Tauber.

& the version I prefer, as performed by Dreamland Faces, an accordion/musical saw duo who make music for silent films.

Oh gosh, & another one I just remembered is “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” which is my favorite hymn of all time.  It was written in 1757 by a 22-year old, & is absolutely rapturous.  I don’t know which direction to point you to for an “original” version, other than your local church.  As for my absolute favorite popularly recorded version of it, however, I turn to Sufjan Stevens.  This banjo-&-chorus-laden style is one I adore beyond adoration.  Just ignore the cheesy pictures of animals:

On their album Loaded, the Velvet Underground have a song called “I Found a Reason.”  It is slow & reverbed, a classic Lou Reed sleeper that I never grew accustomed to or liked much.

Cat Power‘s version, which I have mentioned a couple times before on this blog space, is one of my favorite songs of all time.  Okay, I will admit that it is probably my favorite song ever, flat & simple.  If it does not break your heart, you might be a future-man/robot.

Yes, that’s a House fan video, no I didn’t make it.  Never even seen that show.  Just don’t watch the screen, let the music play.  (I love using Youtube to share music!  How strange of a method!)

I turn you now to a hit by the Rolling Stones: “Start Me Up.”  You have got to recognize this song, it is classic early 80’s banter.

But this version by A Mighty Wind‘s The Folksmen (a fake band that plays real music, & plays it very well) is much more to my liking.  Warning: lyrics.

Okay, only one more, I promise.  & I have saved the best for last.  In fact, the original version needs no introduction.

But the cover — oh my, this cover version is out of control.  ODB & british accents?  & saxophones all over the place.  Did I mention ODB??  ODB!  Warning: lyrics (Duh!! ODB!) — ignore the video, just listen to the music.

That pretty much spent me for the evening, I believe.  But there is some amazing music in there, if you can sift through it all.  Once more, a big head nod to Youtube.  & a big head nod to anyone out there who’s jamming out to their own versions of their favorite songs (I think I might just play some “Wagon Wheel” on my banjo right now!).

I said, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest.”

As an addendum to my post on concerts, I would like to announce here that I managed to catch none other than the Squirrel Nut Zippers as they played a free show on the New Haven green last night. I found out about the show a couple weeks ago on the New Haven website, & it was a part of the city’s attempt at boosting their economy & improving the area in general. New Haven, you see, is a lot like DC – a couple incredibly nice areas surrounded by pockets of destitution & murder & places where you don’t want to step outside at night. (I, in fact, have followed this rule just a couple nights ago, when I realized I should go to CVS on the corner to buy some sugar, but thought harder about it & decided to just wait until morning. Silly of me? Hard to say unless you live here as well.)

Anyway, the Zippers went through an incredibly messy break-up about 10 years ago, managing to release one more album in 2000. Members sued the band for various rights & money & the joint-lead-singers Katharine Whalen & Jimbo Mathus went through a bad divorce when Jimbo left her for another woman. The band, apparently, is still in pretty bad debt, despite Jimbo’s solo efforts (of which, Songs for Rosetta is definitely worth picking up). Thus, they announced they were going to tour again last summer. So the band is a bit different this time around, but Jimbo & Katharine were still there, along with the original trumpeter & I believe the drummer as well. & even though this isn’t the ideal way to see a band – when they’re on a reunion tour to pay off their debts – it was a free show & it was a band I have been waiting more than half my life to see live. Needless to say, I was there on the lawn ninety minutes early, front & center.

I will spare you every detail about the show, because reading about concerts is not fun unless you were there as well. But the band was very good, playing solidly for an hour & a half, & they still got it, no doubt. Whalen’s voice is a little deeper, much older, but whatever that’s what age does. Highlights: Whalen played the electric ukulele (one of my instruments of choice) on many songs, & Jimbo picked up a trombone out of nowhere for “Suits are Picking Up the Bill.” Weird atmosphere, though; free lawn show, so it was a lot of moms & dads with lawn chairs just kind of sitting there drinking beer. I was one of the few people who was there for the band, not just the music (there is a difference! free shows attract people who just want something to do on a saturday night, & I do not blame them or squawk at them in any them. I myself have been in their position several times in my life. Oh, those many many days of Cajun festivals at Deer Trap with my mother…some good memories there). Anyway!

The show ended with the band, in place of an encore, picking up various percussion instruments & Jimbo with a trombone & parading through the New Haven green, trudging through the crowd to a steady Sousa-like march. It was glorious, & made for some awesome pictures. Here, maybe I will try to include a couple.

I mostly just wanted to make this post, though, because I have just found a video of the Zippers on Sesame Street, from who knows when. I suppose it must have been ’96-ish, when “Put a Lid On It” was released as a single.

Regardless, it’s a particularly amazing time capsule moment for anyone who was swept up in the nineties swing revival. Re-live, rejoice! Dance!:

What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him?

If I may, I would like to paint a cinematic portrait for you, faceless nameless regardless Reader. I have just finished watching for the umpteenth time one of my favorite films, & there is a great scene you must know in order to understand this post fully. Okay. So:

Near the end of Sister Act, Deloris Van Cartier (played by Whoopi Goldberg, of course) is tied to a chair, her wrists wrapped tightly to the arms of the decor by thick white ropes. She has witnessed a murder at the hands of her married lover (married not to her), who has ordered his two cronies, Joey & Willy, to “get rid of her.” So here she sits, tied to a chair, with two guns pointed right at her chest. But Joey & Willy, they cannot do it, they cannot pull the triggers, they cannot do what they have been ordered to do. One small thing stands in their way, one little obstacle that is saving Deloris’ life: Deloris is wearing a habit.

“We can’t do it, Vince,” they say. “What if while she was hiding in the convent, she converted or something, you know?” (granted, this is not the actual dialogue, but it is more or less what they mean to say.) These thugs, these men who have been presented to the audience as ruthless killers unafraid to get messy just to get paid, to get even, to get whatever they want – these men just can’t do it. They just can’t kill a nun. Deloris knows this, she knows that while she was hiding in a convent waiting for her lover to be brought to trial, her perceived social status has changed rather substantially. & even though no, she has not converted, she knows the power she holds over these men who think she may be a nun.

Anyway. Joey & Willy, they untie Deloris-dressed-as-nun. They have a solution to their dilemma. “Strip,” one of them says (they are, after all, nameless as individuals, simply movie villains with a purpose & no identity). The logic behind this command, of course, is that if Deloris does not look like a nun, she will be easier to kill. Instead, though, she drops to her knees & throws her hands together & her head up. “What’s she doing?” one of them asks. “She’s praying!” the other replies. They lower their guns & turn reverent quickly. Praying, after all, is no laughing matter.

But Deloris has another trick up her large, black, habit sleeve. “Forgive these men,” she commands of God, “for they know not what they do.” It is classic Biblical stuff, all very jokingly symbolic & tongue in cheek pseudo-spiritual. She throws in some more stuff to make the thugs feel guilty, tosses a dash of fake Latin words in at the end (like “tutu”) & a quick “Amen.” Joey & Willy cross themselves, heads bowed. & before anyone can blink, can even consider what is to come next, with both men standing behind Deloris, still on her knees, one man on each side of her — she performs a kung fu double backwards punch to each of their groins, & runs away.

I present this scene as an introduction to my post for a number of reasons (partly because Sister Act is an awesome movie, partly because I like the names Joey & Willy as villain caricatures), but mostly because it represents perfectly a fascination I have adopted with the portrayal of the spiritual in the artistic media. This excludes “art” art unfortunately, as I have nothing to say about a good painting rather than, “Hey, that’s a good painting. Right?” At which point all the Art History majors hang their heads & shake them sullenly, disappointed at my lack of understanding that this painting is an utter wreck. I’ll try to make this a three-post thing then, I think, to create for you a buff list of movies to watch, music to hear, & books to read. So those are the categories I’m dealing with too, by the way: the film, the album/band, the book. It will be loosely structured, probably poorly organized, & generally all over the place. But you will love it!

So let’s get going: The Spiritual in Film.

In my limited experience with film & the time-honored tradition, it seems religion wears many masks, all of them equally odd. There is, of course, the comical representation, as seen in movies like Sister Act (& Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, which is even better! If you can believe it!). These are generally mixed bags of jabs at God & a reverence for those with a spiritual presence in their lives. The basic idea behind this mask is that religion is serious…but not so serious that it can’t be funny! In Keeping the Faith (okay, not necessarily a movie I recommend, but if you like Ben Stiller…), for example, a rabbi & a priest fight for the same girl’s affection. Do you see the humor here, the way the spiritual establishment as figurehead (i.e. church, synagogue, white collar, yarmulke) is proven to be fallible & yet at the same time, in being fallible, more human? It is a way to strengthen the ties between humanity & God by signaling that in some way, humor is the key to a better understanding of God’s own laughter, of God’s own big toothy grin. It is a priest. & a rabbi. Fighting for a girl. Do you see the humor, the irony?

Also in this category of a movie God being an easy-going, weightless God are countless animated & live-action children’s films, hidden in little nuances or lyrics. I point your attention here to Disney’s Newsies, one of my childhood favorites & one that we watched every year in high school journalism class & one that stands the test of time (Christian Bale said about the box-office bomb that it was, however: “Time healed those wounds. But it took a while.”). Anyway. In the opening song, the newsboys are running through the streets acting like hoodlums & selling their papes & generally having a ball being destitute. It’s the wonderful Disney dream – no parents, no rules, just hawking newspapers & running from the police! But in the opening song, right there in the middle, the boys run into a group of nuns, & their comedy, their joie de vivre, turns rather stoic. They remove their hats. They accept cups of hot liquid & pieces of bread. God has given them this gift of song, of dance, of freedom, but still we are reminded that God keeps them at an arm’s length. Here is your bread, your hot liquid. But remember, you are “lost & depraved.” It is, after all, a beautiful moment of film’s magical dichotomies.

Here is the first 9 minutes of the film. The fun starts around minute 3. The moment I am talking about specifically, if you really just want to cut to the chase without succumbing to my nostalgia, is right at 5:33.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KelP211VomY

(Note the lyrics here: “Papers is all I got/Sure hope the headline’s hot.” Even Disney can’t just let religion into their films without saying, “Okay here it is, here is your God. But wait! Nobody really wants God, they just want the bread & the hot liquid! Papers, after all, is all they got! Where is room for God?”)

(Also as an aside: I secretly model my life after this movie. Go see it please. Please.)

But it’s not all funny ha-ha spiritual nonsense, of course. The spiritual presence in films takes another, perhaps more common form, as well. We see this form in movies that attempt to explain or define spirituality by means of philosophical arguments or strikingly confusing drawn out shots or iconic imagery. To get a better sense of what I mean, the movie Pi can be used as a perfect example. In this movie by Darren Aronofsky (okay wait, I’ve just realized that my other example for this kind of film is another Aronofsky movie. Ah whatever), a mathematician dedicates his life to figuring out numerical patterns in nature, ultimately searching for predictability in the stock market. The man is accosted by a Hasidic who wants to use the numerical patterns to unlock patterns within the Torah & in doing so, discover the true name of God.

I use this film as an example because it touches on a branch of the spiritual in film that really intrigues me, in that the idea behind the film itself is not to create characters whose faith is pertinent to the story, but create a problem whose answer is pertinent to You. You the audience, You the watcher, You the believer, who sits & wants to know: “Really? This is God? Is this film, or is this really it?” This kind of stuff is absolutely brash in its methods, other worldly in scale. This kind of film might even make Dante weep (& I don’t mean for its beauty or truth; I just mean that it touches on something so beyond the lens, beyond the lighting or acting. It touches on Man’s own willingness to believe, Man’s own faith!).

In a slightly different direction, Aronofsky’s The Fountain is much in the same vein. Besides every amazing thing I could say about the grandeur & scope of this film, how it needs to be seen 20 times to appreciate (still I have only seen it three times!), the basics are that it is the story of the love of two people that spans a millennium. Two characters, three time periods. Anyway, the point in me bringing it up is that it is also founded somewhat firmly in the story of the Tree of Life, that which was written in Genesis 3:24 to be protected by a “flaming sword” after Adam & Eve were banished from the garden of Eden. The placement of spirituality in this film is incredibly bold, not in the way that means brave, but in the way that means thick or heavy. It is essentially the story of one man’s search for life after it has been stripped from him by God. There is a very poignant part in the film, wherein our hero, our protagonist, says, “Death is a disease, like any other. And I will find the cure.” It is a battle, but it is not a battle against God necessarily, only against that which God has stripped from Man. It begs the question, “Are we really to be punished for the Original Sin forever? Because forever is such a very, very long time!”

(I want to quickly point out here that I rewatched No Country for Old Men recently & have a lot ruminating in my head about those two trees under which Lewellyn finds the satchel full of money. Biblical allusions, anyone? Anyone?)

I want to move on quickly & begin to wrap this whole mess up now. But before I do, I believe that there should be definite mention of the placement of religion in the horror film. Obviously, this has an incredibly long history attached to it, so I’m going to purposely steer clear of a lot of it for now. But I do want to point out a couple moments that can maybe shed some light.

In Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, one of the most notorious scenes has a Catholic priest fighting the undead in a church graveyard. If you haven’t seen this movie yet, then you haven’t been reading this blog, because I have been praising it again & again (ceaselessly!). This particular scene is important because it presents us with one of two very classic horror movie/religion binary scenarios. It deals with the death of God in the presence of the priest, the only religious figure in the entire film. There is not much to it, so I will let the video clip speak for itself. Revel in one of the most classic horror movie lines of all times (see if you can guess which one it is):

The other example I want to bring up is perhaps the most obvious: The Exorcist. The interesting thing I find about this film, in the end, is that there are so many misconceptions about the focus of the movie. The film is not meant to be about a girl who is possessed. It is not called The Possessed Girl. It is called The Exorcist, & its focus is thus. The film is so triumphant in many ways because it revels in the triumph of God itself, applauds what one might consider the strength of God’s purpose through the hands of man. It is after all a rather celebratory film!

Despite all this rambling & referencing, the end of the story always goes that God is very often given something of an unfair rap in film. Not being a completely convinced believer myself, I tend to take the view of the outsider, relegated to watching again & again as movies present God & then either allow the image they have presented to dwindle into humor, confusion, or a very untimely death. Hollywood, it seems, has a very potent fear of raising spirituality up & just letting it sit. Not fester or crumble, but just sit. After all, what is Hollywood so afraid of? Deloris ain’t really a nun.

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

So I apologize for what my old friend Math calls the “blogdormancy” around here as of late.  My job has been sucking all sweat & energy from me, for better or for worse.  I only pop my head in now to direct your attention to my latest creation, one that has been keeping me very busy both mentally & with my little fingers across the keys of the keyboard.

I present the narrative/memoir/documentary novel stylings of:

In A Burning Building.

I have been writing like nobody’s business (when I am not sleeping/working/sleeping again), so let’s really get this show on the road.  Separate blog created to not create confusion between Judges posts & this continuing fact-plot.  Keep me updated with thoughts, ideas, whatever if you feel so motivated/inspired, that would be very rewarding.  & I promise, Judges will be back quite soon, I have several posts ruminating like a good Crock Pot will do.

He said to me, “Son of man, now dig through the wall.” So I dug through the wall, and behold, an entrance.

Upstairs, in the living room with wide windows overlooking the overgrown weeping beech, William tells me about Japanese crickets. If there would be someone right now, this summer, at this minute, to mention Japanese crickets under their breath & without mind, it would be William. William has Shirley Temple curls & a receding hairline, & his glasses automatically tint in the sunlight. When he is listening to someone speak, he uses three methods to show attention:

1. The Hands Clasped Loosely Across His Stomach, Smiling Method.

2. The Hands Clasped Tightly Behind His Back, Smiling Method.

3. The Hands On His Hips, Eyebrows Raised, Lips Pursed, Quizzical Method.

William & I, we are putting an air conditioner into one of the wide windows. It is the end of the day, & it has been a long day. We are being rough with the air conditioner, sealing everything around it with duct tape & saying things like, “Good enough” & “Whatever.” There is a cardinal on the weeping beech, pointed crest & dark red. I do not remember what the males & females look like, but at the time I am not thinking about that. William whistles at the cardinal, feigning bird noises to garner attention. The bird’s attention or my attention, I am not sure. But attention nonetheless.

“Hey, I think it hears you.”

“Yeh. Like the Japanese & their crickets.”

“Ha. What?”

“You don’t know about the Japanese & their crickets?”

This is the kind of question William always asks when I say “What.” It is the kind of question that is able to both make me feel stupid & make me curious at the same exact second. In a way, it is an ingenious question.

“In Japan, they keep a cricket in a box by their front door. If the cricket stops making noise, it means someone’s come into their house. It’s like a watchdog.”

Oh, I get it. It is like a watchdog. I make a mental note to put a cricket by my door tonight. I will not, but I make a mental note to write down that I have made the mental note to do so anyway, because that will add to the story.

William has lived in this area his whole life, & he says words like “warsh” & “idear.” There was a day last week when William & I drove fifteen minutes away in the pick-up to load a refrigerator into the hatch & deliver it back to work because someone was donating it. It had not been an overly difficult task, but we both acted like it had been. William treated us to breakfast at a local coffee shop in his town. There were flamingos everywhere. There were flamingos hanging from the ceiling, inflated, & there were stuffed flamingos sitting on stools in the corners. I had not understood the theme. I had not asked. It was a free breakfast. William swore to the blueberry pancakes, he had said they were the most amazing blueberry pancakes on the east coast. We ate two each, & bacon & coffee, & we drove the refrigerator back to work. He had been right, the pancakes had been unbelievable. I could not believe those pancakes, at the time. I do not know if food is a very interesting thing to read about, but if you go to The Coffee Break in Clinton, Connecticut then you will understand.

At work, because this is a retreat center for old women seeking the spiritual, everyone is in slow motion in the hallways. Because I am too young for this job, far too young & far too remarkably spry, this slow motion does not work. The women wear their hair in one of two very distinct, old styles. There is the proud hairsprayed puff & the sad, lonely mat. In the first of these two hairstyle choices, the hair is injected with hairspray & it responds by puffing out like cotton candy. This could involve tight curls or loose curls. The second of these two choices involves not bothering with one’s hair after one wakes up. This insures a very sad look for the old woman, whose hair remains matted to her scalp. In this case, the hair is usually kept very short. These women most times look like they are dying, & to them I must be like the New Years Eve Baby. Out with the old, in with the new, & all that.

I learn to walk through the hallways quietly when the summer season kicks into full gear. The summer season kicking into full gear means that the week-long silent retreats have started, programs in which women rounding life’s final bend take a vow of silence & probably cry alone in their rooms at night. Maybe I am unfairly guessing about that. In any case, they give the appearance of women who would fear death & in fearing death, cry alone in their rooms at night. My heart is strong, though, my veins prominent but not in the way varicose veins are. They are the veins of someone who will never see Social Security or the eight-track tape coming back in style. They pump the blood of someone with an over-abundance of healthy blood to pump. I may not do everything with ideal thought given to my health, but I do not cry alone in my room most nights. The old women want to be me, & I would let them have their wish at the drop of a hat. I would let them be me if it would mean I would not have to silently nod at them in the hallways, silent because they are silent, despairing because I can read the despair in their eyes.

Marina is not at work today. William says her uncle died apparently, only he puts “apparently” first & says it as if it is a question.

“Apparently, now her uncle died?”

“Jesus. I can’t believe her luck.”

“Yeh. Either that, or some people just like to make drama.”

I will write down that he said this not because I want to exploit it, but because I am not sure whether he is right or wrong.

~~

Tonight there are fireworks. Independence Day is one day away, but tonight there will be fireworks regardless. Work sits along one thousand feet of private beach, the Long Island Sound restless & silent, the water no different than bathwater, were one to enjoy cold baths. On the eastern end of the one thousand feet there is a chain link fence stuck firmly into a collection of large rocks placed there by Man’s hands. On the western end, there is the same thing. Directly in front, the Sound spills into a sky that changes daily, blue to gray to blue to gray. On blue days, I watch Long Island’s interminable skyline. I watch Faulkner’s Island & I wonder if the lighthouse there is still being used. I make a mental note to buy the lighthouse & live there one day. On gray days, the Sound never ends. For all I know, on gray days Long Island & its inhabitants don’t exist. Long Island has never existed. When the Sound never ends, its Island never began. I think about how meaningless this all is, how poetic it will all sound. I think about why things sound poetic even if they are written down, unspoken. Perhaps this will read poetic. This will read poetic until it is spoken. Then it will sound poetic.

~~

But tonight there are fireworks. They are scheduled to begin at nine o’clock, & William has said that from the beach at work, if you are facing southeast, you can watch them. The sound will be off, the explosions slightly delayed due to distance. But they are fireworks regardless.

At ten minutes to nine, I stop writing & I put on a clean shirt. I walk out of my room & down the hall, through the courtyard & out the other end, behind the building where the pointed white gazebo sits. From the top of the steps that lead to the beach, I can see William walking on the sand, holding hands with a woman who I assume to be his Sicilian girlfriend. His daughter is thirteen & is going to be good looking when she gets older, & she is walking twenty paces ahead of her father with a friend of hers. As I watch, the two girls wander farther up the beach until they reach the next set of stairs over from mine. As they wander up them, I look towards the sky. It is starting to get darker out, & if I stand perfectly still for too long the insects think I am perhaps a tree to burrow into. I am never still for long.

I am not certain if they live in a tree on our property, but I have seen a flock of lime green birds flying overheard during the day. Before flight, if I am rearranging the wicker furniture under the gazebo’s pointed top or combing the beach for litter, I can hear them. There is a shrieking noise, collectively rising & falling in a syncopated avian rhythm, & they take sudden flight at an unlikely speed. It is almost beautiful to watch, but nothing that lasts as quickly as their flight is beautiful to me. Perhaps instead it is only striking. A bright green streak, wings tilting to allow the sun to glance sharply off of, then noise & disappearance. I do not know where they come from, & how they came to live in Connecticut is too much for me to think about.

William’s daughter Molly calls out to me from a distance, & I shield my eyes with my hand even though it is getting to be dark out. This must have become the universal sign for “I can’t see you” somewhere along the way, rather than “The sun is in my eyes.”

“You got a new hat!”

“What?”

“Your hat!”

“Oh yea, this is just another one I have. I still have the other one, too.”

“I like the other one better.”

“Heh. Yea, well. Fair enough.”

In ten minutes’ time, I will leave before the fireworks have started. The bugs will become too much for me to stand. In my room, I can hear the blasts as if they are happening directly over my head. After about an hour, there is a series of shorter explosions, brightly colored & accented sharply. There are soaring crescendos, a dive-bomb denouement. The finale. A Laurie Anderson song comes into my head without me noticing, its lyrics disgustingly poignant:

I.

I feel.

Feel like.

I am.

In a burning building.

& I gotta go.

~~

On Friday, on July Fourth, I am asked to play housekeeper. Marina does not come to work, & because Fridays are the days each guest room is cleaned & each bed re-made, & because without Marina there are only two housekeepers, reinforcements are called in. Reinforcements, I discover, are me.

~~

A short & unexpected series of anecdotes concerning the housekeepers:

(a.) At the annual picnic for staff & board members, in which the rain & thunder has driven everyone inside except for William & Gail & myself, the three of us sit under the gazebo’s pointed roof grilling hamburgers & something called “red hots.” When I bite into one, I learn that a red hot is essentially a very spicy hot dog. Gail is the head housekeeper, & although she has only had one or two plastic cups of white wine, she is teetering very close at the edge of tipsy, ready to fall into drunk. Gail has hair the unnatural red of a very pigmented rose, scarlet & full. She wears glasses & complains loudly about how slow the retreatants walk through the hallways. At the grill, under the gazebo, Gail sits on a wicker rocking chair with her legs crossed, both hands all bone & taut skin gripping her cup with the grip of a vice. She turns to me, sitting in a chair next to her, & tells me that she was not always a housekeeper. She tells me she has been to college, was once a twentysomething, once had passions & interests beyond a dust rag.

“I have a degree in education, you know. And I have a Masters in art. I had my own business once, did you know that? Yeah, I created & ran my own business. I have two degrees & I’ve lived my life, & I decided that really what I want to do, is I want to clean toilets for a living. All I want to do after all these years is clean up other peoples’ shit!”

(b.) Georgeta is Romanian, & is blonde with bangs, a waif in the same way Audrey Hepburn was described as a waif. Her voice is deep & it stretches wide when she speaks, her syllables sometimes rolling into each other clumsily. Georgeta is, I think, thirty years old, the permanent worker who is closest to my own age here. At thirty, she has just escaped her twenties. I have known countless people who are thirtysomething. I can relate to Georgeta, maybe she & I will know something of the same generation, can speak of the same topics. But she is Romanian, does not know very much of this historical culture, does not always understand references, pop culture, or the like. In the break room one morning, we are eating crackers with peanut butter & drinking coffee & Georgeta is talking about her dreams. Her English is understandable, but comically incorrect, the tenses mixed & the ends of sentences sometimes rising, as if she were asking a question. “Last night I dream I was in Romania? And I was running in the street where I used to live before I move to America, & there is a house on my street that is on fire. I mean, it is a very big, big fire. And there are people in the street, everywhere they are screaming. And I am stand in front of the house? And I know that I am about to run inside, but then just before I do, I am waking up. Will told me I am shouting in my sleep.” We all laugh a little because we do not know really how to respond to a story like that. But we are eating & we have the day ahead of us & so we laugh a little bit.

(c.) There is also the time Gail was showing me where all the freshly washed linens go, & we exchanged medical horror stories. We had not known each other very well, but as we walked she described breaking her wrist on the job. Her story is non-descript, & she is walking to a steady, incredibly quick beat that no one else hears but her. The way she tells it, the hardest thing to do as a housekeeper with a broken wrist is put a pillow inside a pillowcase. You have to stuff the pillow inside & shake it down all with one hand, is what Gail tells me. She is able to laugh at it now, but I doubt she was able to laugh so readily then. Naturally, I describe in detail for the one millionth time in the past fourteen months the way my left lung spontaneously shrunk in on itself my freshman year of college. I describe the hospital room, the color & weight I lost, the way my mother had had to scrub my knotted & scabbed head in the bathroom sink. I describe the way it feels to have your lung collapse two times in two weeks with no rhyme or reason. Right when I am telling Gail the part about the staples inside my body & the incisions & the scars & how it feels to spend Valentine’s Day in a hospital bed, I think that maybe Gail is wishing she had told a better story. I consider giving her a second chance, but by then we are finished walking & we go our separate ways.

~~

Playing housekeeper yields no great obstacles or triumphs. I clean the rooms better & quicker than even I was expecting, but it is a one-day deal & at lunch Gail tells me I might as well finish the room I am doing & head home early. I do not finish my lunch I am so pleased by this idea of Gail’s.

~~

Quickly, a side road to provide balance to my story & introduce possible new themes:

Some days I discover a self-satisfying tendency to slip into the bedroom they keep for me here just to listen to a song that has been stuck in my head all day. Some days I discover this song is something I can stand just singing to myself as I work without having to listen to the actual song itself, but some days I discover my work suffers to an unnecessary degree unless I just listen to the damn thing once & get it over with. Most days I discover this song is either “Carrying the Banner” from the musical Newsies or “Three to Get Ready” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which is kind of funny because the latter is a jazz song. The way this one usually works is that the opening piano line, the one the rest of the song plays off of in alternating improvisations & linear patterns, is one that I whistle everywhere I go, at all times.

In May, almost two months ago, I had volunteered for a week at Mar-Lu-Ridge, a summer camp in Maryland, where I had been employed as a photographer last year & where one of my equally newest & closest friends Andrew works as Associate Director. Each day I would do various jobs of mid-level physical labor. These jobs included but were in no way limited to mowing the grass, edging the grass, & blowing leaves off of the grass. At night, Andrew & I would meet up & go out on the town to partake in various activities of low-level importance or energy. These nights included but were in no way limited to going to a church barbecue for “young families & singles,” eating Mexican food on Cinco de Mayo, & playing an exhausting, giddy game of tag with the Executive Director, his wife, & his two young daughters.

Because Andrew is twenty-four & not in his forties, fifties, or sixties, & because he watches movies & is good at video games & has a cat named Tom Clancy & eagerly swaps music with me, he is a breath of fresh air even in memory. Andrew’s beard is full but patchy, his house is a mess, & his iPod plays “It Was a Good Day” at top volume. For all these reasons, I know that Andrew’s generation is the generation I belong to, the generation of smilers & laughers & book readers & thinkers thinking thoughts besides those of skirts or what is underneath them.

During the week when I worked at camp last May, there is a night Andrew & I go to a minor league baseball game. The game is supposed to be a sure thing, & the home team is so confident that tonight is their night that they assure their audience that each ticket can be re-used at a later date if at the end of the night they have not won. Whether or not they win (they do not) does not matter so much as the game I play with Andrew as we watch the baseball fly here & there with only half interest. The game goes like this:

“DA. Da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da…dadadadada.”

“AC/DC – ‘Back in Black!’”

“Yea! Nice. Okay, your turn.”

“Duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh DUH.”

“Wait wait…shit I know this one. Um…wait, shit. Iron Butterfly is the band. Um…Oh duh. ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’”

“You got it you got it.”

“Okay wait these are too easy. Try this one: deh deh deh deh DUH duh duh deh deh duh deh duh duh da.”

“Those were too easy? Dude. ‘Superstition,’ Stevie Wonder.”

We then proceed to play air drums & sing the song at top volume, intoning the trumpet parts where necessary, our hands splayed out in front of our faces in full air trumpet formation. This is our game & though it is not too hard we are still champions. Until:

“Wait, what’s that really famous Brubeck song?”

“‘Take Five.’”

“Yea right right right. How does that go again? Shit.”

We both think about it, riding the same wavelength with the same song one half of a centimeter off of the tips of our tongues. We know there is a long drum solo. We know it starts with the piano, then the clarinet comes in. We know how it goes. We just have no clue how it goes. You would think if you saw us, me with my hands over my face, pushing the heels into my eyes & Andrew stroking his full patchy beard, eyebrows dipping low in the middle, you would think we were fascinated by the ball game. But if you know how a song goes, but have no clue how it really goes, could not remember how it really goes if someone had a gun to your head, then you know what it is like.

After the baseball game we go to Wal-Mart because I have already stopped caring about the trend to boycott Wal-Mart & am in desperate need of Hot Pockets for tomorrow’s lunch, & the next day’s. Andrew disappears somewhere while I peruse possible potato chip options. In the check-out line, my food is being scanned by the blip-blip-blip machine, & Andrew re-appears from behind the row of candy bars, in the adjoining lane.

“Da da, da da, da da. Da da, da da, da da.”

“YES! Aaaaah, yessss.”

I come in with the clarinet part, resisting the urge to put my hands down by my ribcage in full air clarinet position. Soon enough, Andrew & I are basking in the glory of remembering a single song as if it were a long-winded memory of a childhood we never shared. Andrew & I, we are young & lively, we are twentysomethings in a Wal-Mart check-out lane reenacting, to the extreme awe of anyone & everyone around, the entire Dave Brubeck Quartet. Between the two of us, we are far too much for the world to take, & oh my God don’t we know it.