Paying Taxes To The Pale King

Tax Day marks the release of Mockingbird icon David Foster Wallace's posthumous novel, The Pale King. Quotes forthcoming, but from the few reviews that have appeared already, it sounds predictably ripe... Italics mine.

Michiko Kakutani in The NY Times: [DFW's] posthumous unfinished novel, “The Pale King” — which is set largely in an I.R.S. office in the Midwest — depicts an America so plagued by tedium, monotony and meaningless bureaucratic rules and regulations that its citizens are in danger of dying of boredom.

Just as this lumpy but often stirring new novel emerges as a kind of bookend to “Infinite Jest,” so it demonstrates that being amused to death and bored to death are, in Wallace’s view, flip sides of the same coin. Perhaps, he writes, “dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there,” namely the existential knowledge “that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we’ve lost one more day that will never come back.” 

Happiness, Wallace suggests in a Kierkegaardian note at the end of this deeply sad, deeply philosophical book, is the ability to pay attention, to live in the present moment, to find “second-by-second joy + gratitude at the gift of being alive.”
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Garth Risk Hallberg in NY Magazine: The Pale King is, for great swaths, an astonishment, unfinished not in the way of splintery furniture but in the way of Kafka’s Castle or the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. And it reduces chatter about the provenance of its author’s late renown to background noise. The book demands our attention precisely because while we’re reading it, David Foster Wallace is again the most alive prose writer of our time—and the one who speaks most directly to our condition.
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Weds Morning Rock N Roll: Nick Lowe And Dave Edmunds Were Born Fighting

Last week's long-awaited reissue of Nick Lowe's classic 1979 Labour of Lust record brought to light a previously unseen documentary about its recording, "Born Fighters." At the time, Nick was a member of Rockpile, a group whose one album under their own name tells only a fraction of their story. In fact, the closest corollary one could find would probably be the Traveling Wilburys, in that their short-lived collaboration was incredibly fruitful, with the creative juice overflowing into a number of other successful ventures. Over the three year period from 1978 to 1980, Rockpile (Lowe, Dave Edumunds, Billy Bremner and Terry Williams) were responsible for Edmunds' hit albums Trax on Wax 4 and Repeat When Necessary, Lowe's Labour of Lust, their own Seconds Of Pleasure, as well as most of Micky Jupp's Juppanese and Carlene Carter aka Johnny Cash's stepdaughter's Musical Shapes. Plus, if you're keeping track, you know that Lowe also found time to produce Elvis Costello's Armed Forces and Get Happy!! during that stretch. The stuff was just pouring out of them! And oddly enough, it's ALL exceptional...

Whenever such artistic explosions occur, it's important to take notice. If the documentary is to be trusted, it would appear that fun (and mutual love of bar music) was the chief motivating factor. Go figure. You can watch the whole thing on youtube... in 12 parts. But it's definitely worth the time/hassle, especially if you enjoy no-frills rock n roll with a raised eyebrow and a New Wave edge. I was especially surprised by how well their music has dated, considering what else was popular at the time:



The Rockpile project produced many gems, particularly from the pen of Nick Lowe, but none greater than "When I Write The Book," a song about regret and failure (and human bondage) that is somehow as fun as it is bittersweet:
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Part X and the Death and Resurrection of Hollywood

Lots of interesting connections and disconnections to be found in the New Yorker profile of Barry Michels, therapist to the stars. Michels is an interesting conglomeration of Jungian psychoanalyst, self-help guru, and Alcoholic Anonymous-style breakdown-inducing tough love. You have to slog through a fair amount of nonsense, but the stuff about judgment as it relates to creativity is particularly relevant, not to mention Michels' insights at the end about death and rebirth. One can't help but wonder how much Michels picked up from close family friend Rod Serling?! ht RJH:

One recent afternoon, Michels put on his glasses, pulled out a file, and began to leaf through a pile of yellow legal-pad pages. It was a difficult case—a writer who had been blocked for two years. He was a type Michels sees frequently: someone vacillating between thinking he is God’s gift to mankind and thinking he is garbage. “Mmm, now this is interesting,” he said, looking at his notes. “That voice, the voice that says ‘I’m [crummy]’ or ‘I’m above this,’ is going to increase in volume the closer you get to actually doing the deed. You have to anticipate it, label it, and reject it every time it comes up.”

The voice belongs to what Stutz refers to as Part X, a deeply primitive dimension of the personality he identified after he began to work with show-business patients; its characteristics are petulance, rage, arrogance, hypersensitivity, a sense of victimization, and, above all, a resistance to process. Michels explains it by invoking the behavior of a two-year-old. “It’s the part that’s pounding on the table because nothing’s good enough,” he says. “They’re saying no to everything, even the color of the sippy cup—unacceptable. Most of us grow beyond the expectation that life will meet our needs in every instance. Some don’t. That’s the head of the studio, the head of the agency, or whatever, pounding his fist on a table and saying, ‘God damn it, somebody is going to pay for it!’ It’s the part of the ego that is so egotistical it believes it’s God, king of the universe. At every moment, the universe is telling him, ‘Sorry, bub, you’re not God,’ and he’s screaming, ‘No, you’re wrong and I’m going to prove it to you!’ ” [CONTINUE READING]

A Lenten Reflection on the Isenheim Altarpiece

Matthias Grunewald’s crucifixion, one of the panels of the Isenheim altarpiece, was commissioned for the church hospital of St. Anthony in Colmar France, which specialized in comforting those dying with skin diseases. Grunewald kept the background of this powerful piece of religious art intentionally dark to highlight the horrific scene: especially Christ’s smashed feet, his contorted arms, and twisted hands. The cross is bowed to demonstrate Jesus bearing the sins of the world. The most shocking part of the piece, however, is that Jesus also has a skin disease, and his loin cloth is the same as the wrappings worn by the hospital's patients. Completed in 1516, the altarpiece is a creation of such shocking intensity that many initially- and still today- find it offensive and are repulsed by it. Yet the graphic nature served masterfully to define and illustrate the Antonite brother’s powerful understanding of Christian ministry-a ministry defined by the theology of the cross. Apparently patients were brought before the piece in order to silently meditate on it as they died. Profoundly, the brothers were a quiet order, so there was no explanation given as the patient died. There was no awkward chatter and God was not piously left off the hook, “now remember, this is not God’s fault.” There was just silence.

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Death, Loneliness and Beauty - According to Charlie Chaplin (Simul Justus...)

'Will Durant, author and philosopher, was also in Hollywood lecturing at UCLA. He was an old friend and occasionally dined at our house. They were amusing evenings. Will, an enthusiast who needed no stimulant to intoxicate himself but life itself, once asked me: "What is your conception of beauty?" I said I thought it was an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels--an expression of it can be a dustbin with a shaft of sunlight across it, or it can be a rose in the gutter. El Greco saw it in our Saviour on the Cross.'

(Charlie Chaplin, My Autobiography. pp 458-9)

Another Week Ends: Facebook Blues, Freshman Blues, Bowling Blues, Val Kilmer and The Office

1. Libby Copeland at Slate asks the question "Is Facebook Making Us Sad?", unpacking some findings from a recent study at Stanford. Very relevant stuff:

"The researchers found that their subjects consistently underestimated how dejected others were–and likely wound up feeling more dejected as a result. Jordan got the idea for the inquiry after observing his friends' reactions to Facebook: He noticed that they seemed to feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging onto the site and scrolling through others' attractive photos, accomplished bios, and chipper status updates. 'They were convinced that everyone else was leading a perfect life,' he told me.

"...the notion that feeling alone in your day-to-day suffering might increase that suffering certainly makes intuitive sense. As does the idea that Facebook might aggravate this tendency. Facebook is, after all, characterized by the very public curation of one's assets in the form of friends, photos, biographical data, accomplishments, pithy observations, even the books we say we like. Look, we have baked beautiful cookies.

"Facebook is 'like being in a play. You make a character,' one teenager tells MIT professor Sherry Turkle in her new book on technology, Alone Together. Turkle writes about the exhaustion felt by teenagers as they constantly tweak their Facebook profiles for maximum cool. She calls this "presentation anxiety," and suggests that the site's element of constant performance makes people feel alienated from themselves."

2.  From The Chronicle of Higher Education, a further look at the correlation between ambition and emotional health, "College Freshmen Report Record-Low Levels of Emotional Health" (ht AZ):

This year's freshmen reported record-low levels of emotional health, according to the latest results of the University of California at Los Angeles's national survey of first-year undergraduates. At the same time, more students gave themselves high marks for ambition to achieve. College counselors say the two are clearly related, as students put more pressure on themselves to excel.

3. Two sports-related stories of interest: First, a touching study of failure in professional bowler Tom Daugherty's refreshingly light-hearted response to rolling the worst game ever televised by the PBA. And second, the telling bafflement at Royals' pitcher Gil Meche's decision, following a serious shoulder injury, to refuse the remaining $12 million in his contract and retire. Evidently, doing the "right thing," i.e. not accepting money that you didn't earn, is not the norm in the major leagues.

4. From The Onion, in case you needed an amusing reminder of how the world hears most theodicy, there's "God Almost Forgot To Kill Dave Elfman of Boulder, CO Today".

5. The perennial question of the relation of the Law to the Gospel in the life of the Christian is frequently in the air when the message is presented pastorally. Our friends at the White Horse Inn, Michael Horton to be exact, have posted a helpful take on the current discussion around this issue. Dane Ortlund of The Gospel Coalition also weighed in with a piece that is very much worth reading.
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Rick Rubin and Tom Petty on Inspiration and Creativity

Rounding out our music-centered day, a few soundbites from Peter Bogdanovich's excellent documentary about Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Runnin' Down a Dream. Having never been much of a Petty fan (outside of The Wilburys, of course), I was floored by how good the film is; it's as well-crafted as any of Petty's best songs, but also filled with real drama and remarkable thoughtfulness and candor. Here are a couple of interesting quotes from producer Rick Rubin and one from Petty himself about the ineffable dynamics of inspiration (ht NM):

Rubin: "[Tom Petty is], of anyone I've worked with, the most a craftsman. He can write a song and then know how to take that song and make it into the best record that it could be. But he's also got the inspiration where the songs come through him. I've sat down with him where he'll play a song that's written in five minutes, complicated story, and I'll ask him afterwards, 'what's that about?' or, 'what's the inspiration?,' and he'll say he has no idea; he doesn't know what it's about at all. He'll just kinda... it just comes through him. So he can channel material in a pretty strong way, and I've seen him do it."

Petty: "It's so hard to understand. I don't really understand it, but I do know that it seems that the best ones often just appear, like you're sitting there with your guitar, or the piano, and bang, there it is. It just falls out of the sky. I hesitate to even try to understand it, for fear that it might make it go away.  It's a spiritual thing."

Rubin: "It doesn't seem like if you were to force it, it would happen. It just has to be the right time.  He's just playing around on the guitar and all of a sudden the song starts, and it doesn't stop.  and it just keeps going for the whole thing."

GuestList: Top Ten Pieces of Culture (That Impacted My Life in 2010)

Another treat to tide you over until we shift back into full-speed next week, a guest year-end list from Carl Laamanen of the excellent Losing Sight of Land blog. 

Human beings, especially those that really like popular culture, must love lists. This is the only explanation for the hundreds of year-end “best of” lists that begin to pervade the internet at the onset of December. This is also the only reason I can provide for why I find them so fascinating. Heck, Popmatters had two weeks of music lists alone, leading up to their top 70 albums of the year, and I probably read at least half of them. Instead of a top ten of the best music or film of this year, I wanted to give you all a glimpse into all of the above: the films, music and books that have had the biggest impact on my life this year. These works of art have challenged and encouraged me, and while they aren’t all from this past year, they are deserving of being remembered and treasured in any year.

The Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens

The Age of Adz is utterly befuddling and entirely exhilarating. That is the only way to describe this conglomeration of electronic sounds, soaring vocals and personal ruminations. Make no mistake, this is Sufjan’s most personal album yet, and from these contemplative lyrics come some truly remarkable insights. I see myself and all my insecurities reflected in Vesuvius and I Want to be Well, and my spirits are buoyed by the title track and Too Much. But it is the album closer, Impossible Soul, traversing the ups and downs of life, which reassures us that a fearful life is not worth living, instead celebrating both the incredible potential and sometimes painful reality of human relationships. In fact, the whole album seems to be an exploration of the tension between celebration and sorrow and as such, offers both catharsis and counsel on how to live with it.

Sigh No More - Mumford and Sons
There is no doubt that Mumford and Sons make fantastic, grace-filled music. Their earnest lyrics manage to look the evil of the world (and the evil within us) in the eye and not back down, trusting that love and grace will ultimately defeat it. Roll Away Your Stone speaks to the very heart of the Gospel with its exploration of the darkness and fragility of the human condition that culminates in an impassioned cry for a new, refreshed soul. In one of my favorite lyrics of the year Awake My Soul reminds us of our humanity and responsibility, “In these bodies we live and in these bodies we will die, where you invest your love is where you invest your life.” Album closer, After the Storm, speaks quite frankly about human limitations, pointing to a day where love and grace will make us whole. This year, Mumford and Sons provided a much-needed dose of grace in the face of widespread cynicism, crafting an album that does not diminish this life’s hardships but makes clear that love has the final word.

How I Got Over - The Roots
While it may not be the cheeriest album of 2010, How I Got Over eloquently explores how to live in a fallen world. The album undergoes an evolution from pessimism and despair to a measured optimism that seems content with looking for the best in this broken world and thanking God for the good things that we do have. Black Thought cogently weaves philosophy, politics and theology through his carefully rapped words, never shying away from the reality of evil and pain, but also never letting it defeat him. By the time the album hits its second half, it has transformed, musically and lyrically, from a sober look at life’s problems to an emphatic statement of perseverance and pursuit of excellence as we see in The Fire. Amidst the depression and problems of the world The Roots find hope in everyday circumstances; How I Got Over inspires me to do the same.

High Violet - The National
There’s just something about the music of The National makes that forces me to confront the ever-present ache within my soul, a reminder that we will never be completely fulfilled in this age. Their music strips away the veneer of self-sufficiency, trading the façade for a deep, painful look into the insecure human psyche. All their albums are full of authenticity, and High Violet is no different. Afraid of Everyone serves double duty as a condemnation of the American tendency to be afraid of the unknown and an uneasy questioning of the pursuit of safety. The album’s last three songs, a veritable casebook on the fragmented postmodern individual, leave a devastating mark that is both depressingly realistic and surprisingly hopeful.

I and Love and You - The Avett Brothers
I’m not sure why I didn’t start listening to The Avett Brothers until this year, but I am certainly glad that I did, as I and Love and You has been a constant companion. The Perfect Space is one of those songs that expose the inner workings of a misunderstood mind in exquisite detail. The brief album-ending Incomplete and Insecure closes the record with an honest realization of our limited powers and the need for someone or something greater to spur us on and lift us up. Add to these insights hopeful songs like the title track and Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, and some stirring insights on love like Kick Drum Heart and Tin Man, and you have an album capable of speaking to the soul at any point in time.
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Best of 2010: Favorite Documentaries of SD

A week ago, DZ posted a sweet roundup of the documentaries he's seen and loved this year. Here are a few more from me.

5. I Knew It Was You: Rediscovering John Cazale. John Cazale was one of the great actors of the 70s -- perhaps of all time. You may know him from playing Fredo in The Godfather (the title of this documentary is a famous line between Al Pacino and John Cazale.)

I Knew It Was You is a touching look at this gifted artist, who's stunning performances in The Godfather, The Godfather II, The Conversation, The Deer Hunter, and Dog Day Afternoon affected the lives of so many people, and which were rooted in part in his extraordinary connectedness to his own past and suffering. It's also a story about how the man himself could be so deeply loved by some of the greatest names in the acting world, who's interviews form much of the movie.

John Cazale was a "patient of great significance" for those of us growing up in the 70s and 80s.

4. Forbidden Lie$. Stunning true story about deception, justification by works, and the bound will. Alternately gripping and hilarious.

3. Sound and Fury. "Josh Aronson's documentary takes an unexpected approach to the "medical miracle" film by examining the political and emotional turmoil that erupts between brothers over the cochlear implant that might allow their deaf children to hear." (Netflix)

A penetrating look at how the same "word" can be heard as Law (judgment, condemnation, attack) or Gospel (promise, good news) depending on who is hearing it. Fascinating window into the world of deaf people and a universal study in how judgment and love play out in families.

2. Winnebago Man. See DZ's commentary on this. Not to be missed.

1. Exit Through The Gift Shop. Only just released on NetFlix, it is making the Top 10 lists of movie critics all over the country. It starts out slow, and gets better, and better, and by the end I was alternatively on the edge of my seat and laughing harder than I had in months. A wonderful story about the street art movement of the last decade (and the late 90s), but even more about obsession, friendship, and charity gone awry.

The Secret History of William Axl Rose, Pt 3: Left So Far Out From The Shore

[Concluding our three-part series on Axl Rose. Read part one and part two.]

"The name [Guns n Roses] helped the music [on Chinese Democracy] more than you could ever know, and I'm not talking in regards to studios and budgets. I mean it as in being pushed by something, and having to get the music to a place where I can find my peace regardless of what anyone says." - Axl Rose, 2009

We come now to the third act, or what some might call the epilogue of the story. With the original band having gone up in smoke sometime in the mid-90s, Axl forged ahead. Or at least, announced that he was forging ahead. But then, silence. There were "wars and rumors of wars" for a while, but after the forgettable Spaghetti Incident and a pretty atrocious cover of "Sympathy for the Devil" the greatest (and globally most popular) American band of the late 80s/early 90s faded from view. Completely. The turnaround was dramatic - all of a sudden it was 2000 and an Axl-sized hole was gaping.

Axl claims that his absurdly prolonged absence wasn't a matter of perfectionism. He refers instead to an unrelenting barrage of woes, both artistic and letigious in nature, that kept him from finishing the new album. The revolving door of personnel and management seemed to tell a different tale: that of an erratic artist getting more erratic.

In the story of Axl Rose, we've seen how the Law (the "oughts" of the Bible and the world) provokes intense rebellion, how its converse fosters creativity and collaboration, and how the pressure of success turns in on itself, killing conviviality. We've also seen how when standards are met, by say, producing the best-selling debut album of all time, self-righteousness and greed soon follow. In this final chapter, we see how the Law paralyzes. In fact, the 14-years-in-the-making Chinese Democracy has already come to function as a shorthand for creative paralysis. I mean, five years would have been a long time! But Axl needed to prove himself sans Slash, to demonstrate conclusively that he was the driving force behind the band all along, that the critics had been wrong about him, and of course, that the music in his head was worth the wait/struggle (and worth recording, period). And as the years went by, the standards naturally rose... and rose... and rose. Axl rationalized the process this way:
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Ira Glass on Wrongness, Failure and Creativity

A major recent find is The Wrong Stuff blog over at Slate, in which author Kathryn Schultz (of the forthcoming Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error) interviews people about, well, being wrong about things. In October, for example, she interviewed Chuck Colson (of Watergate and Prison Fellowship fame) and found more than her fair share of great soundbites. It's really worth reading. Then in June she spoke with Ira Glass, the host of NPR's This American Life. Glass offers some characteristically interesting thoughts on hermeneutics, creativity and failure. Shades of a theology of the cross? (ht AZ)

Why is there such a big payoff for the listener in stories about wrongness? What makes it so pleasurable?

Well, if the story works, you become the character, right? You agree with their early point of view, and then when it gets shattered, you are shattered with it. So in the storytelling, you want to manipulate the evidence and the feelings so that the audience is right there agreeing with the person who's about to be proven wrong. When that happens, if it's done right, you as the audience get flipped upside down.

The experience of being wrong can be so emotional—it can involve feeling humiliated or confused or losing an organizing principle of our life in a way that can sometimes be devastating. What's it like as an interviewer to bring people through that kind of experience all over again?

[He thinks a long time.] I'm not sure what to say. If any story is going to be good, whichever one of us is working on it, we have to go through the feelings of the story ourselves. Nobody's going to feel it if we don't feel. It's honestly not worth making a story if you're not going to have strong feelings about it, if it's not going to create empathy. I walk the person through "What did you feel at each stage of this?" and if somebody's telling you about some moment of incredible vulnerability and emotion, if you're normal, your heart goes out to them. So if it's going well, that's what happens. But it doesn't go well every time. We kill half of the stories we try, because not everything can live up to that.
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Luther didn't start the fire, but he's the reason it's still burning.

We are beggars; this is true.

. . . last written words of Dr. Martin Luther, (10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546)

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God's Controller

Courtesy of Russian artist Vadim Fiskin, via Gizmodo:

Fight the Power

In case you missed it. From the LATimes: The artist known as Banksy is famous for his stealth graffiti projects that mix social commentary and subversive street art. In keeping with his rebel persona, Banksy's guest "appearance" on "The Simpsons" on Sunday night [Oct. 10] was an unpredictable affair that mixed the anarchically humorous and the deadly serious. Banksy helped to design the opening credits for Sunday evening's episode. . .Banksy created an extended sequence that took viewers on a hellish tour of sweatshop labor in Asia. Workers are shown toiling away on animation cels and merchandise tie-ins for the hit Fox series. (It just so happens that "The Simpsons" outsources much of its animation to South Korea.)The final image shows the Twentieth Century Fox logo standing big brother-like over a militarized police zone.

You can see it all here. The discussions resulting from the airing of this opening sequence have almost exclusively centered on the question as to how Fox would allow (much less fund) such a disparaging portrayal of itself. Well, with coverage here, here and here, the cynics of the “any publicity is good publicity” school certainly have their answer, but so do advocates/fans of what is known as “culture jamming.” Whatever the case, I think that anytime a Unicorn gets taken down a few notches, it’s fine with me:)

From our perspective, stay with me here, the freedom that was given to Banksy and the willingness Fox showed is the same as that afforded Christians towards the church by the Doctrine of Justification by Grace through Faith alone. Part of Fox's freedom, no doubt, came from their confidence that many of the critiques were unwarranted; however, there was something deeply Protestant about the whole pre-episode episode.

As the vestiges of Christendom continue to fall away and (as if we needed a survey to tell us that), many people--uncomfortable with the lack of controls (read: Law) placed upon those to whom the Gospel is proclaimed---have beaten a hasty retreat into the arms of external authorities. These authorities--like circumcision did in Galatia--seem to provide safe-haven from the storms of post-modernity, pluralism, and Ru Paul's Drag Race. Fifty years ago, Gerhard Ebeling, also observing this sort of weakness, commented that it manifested in a variety of ways: “a new theological dogmatism and traditionalistic confessionalism, high-church clericalism and sacramentalism, an over-simplification through insistence on pietistic edification or else through catchword theology, radicalism, confessional rhetoric, etc.” Not much has changed.

Far from championing some sort of neo-Gnostic Huffington Post type “spirituality of hugging” on one hand, or a moralized “follower of Jesus” on the other, this emphasis on Justification by Faith Alone and, in particular, the proper distinction between Law and Gospel, provides courage to proclaim the death and resurrection of Christ in the face of a world that is chained to unbelief masquerading as pious religiosity, to a world that is enslaved to the Law. That we would be unable to afford God His due without recourse to if/then purpose-driven eudamenism, formulaic religious structures, or baptized sociological dogma is a curse of the Fall. BUT, that people abuse and turn the Gospel into vague sentimentality, hedonistic license or empty, self-serving platitudes is not as bad as turning it into a Law. Misused freedom is a problem; the absence of freedom is a tragedy.

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Lennon/McCartney: Creativity, Competition and Collaboration

Successful collaborations are so rare that exploring their mechanics is always worthwhile. The dazzling 3-part series Two of Us by Joshua Wolf Shenk over at Slate does so brilliantly, dissecting the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership and touching on a number of our favorite themes: the fruit of giving up control, the inherently selfless spirit of creativity (evidenced in their willingness to share credit), the way people serve as "walking judgments" to one another, the thirst for glory, both artistic and financial, and the poisonous effect that has on creativity - it's all there. Emphasis on the material itself, rather than the response to it, on the process rather than the result, seems to be a key ingredient in these partnerships.

Although there's certainly an element of their relationship starting out as pure Gospel - a collaboration fueled by love and respect almost to the point of mutual imputation - and only souring into Law after their success, unfortunately it can't be reduced to those categories alone; clearly they functioned as both to one another throughout. So Mick Jagger is right to point out that it couldn't last. The push-and-pull power dynamic was just too exhausting. Competition kills, after all, especially in the long run. And who wants to be considered only in relation/comparison to someone else? Talk about Judgment...

That said, the post-break-up installment is probably the most interesting, both in terms of the way they continued to measure themselves against one another, and the how clearly the self-justification impulse asserted itself in their tug of war over songwriting credits. 

I find the author's insights about their collaboration persisting far after their eyeball-to-eyeball phase ended to be particularly convincing. That is, John and Paul occupied such considerable headspace in each other's minds that their work could legitimately be attributed to"Lennon/McCartney" even if it wasn't incorporating both of their musical and lyrical ideas directly. Excerpts after the jump (ht JS):
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Weds Afternoon Rock N Roll: Belle & Sebastian Go To Church

The party line with Belle & Sebastian is that they peaked early with If You're Feeling Sinister ("Go off and see a minister"). That record may be tad monotonous but it's still utterly charming and very much deserving of its stature as a modern classic. Yet I feel that their true masterpiece is 2006's The Life Pursuit - also one of the top-ten albums of the last decade, period. The songwriting is uniformly inspired, the production downright exciting, without jettisoning any of the lyrical bite that we've all come to love so much. More importantly, for our purposes, it is an ultra-rare example of Christianity successfully integrated into indie pop-art.

Stuart Murdoch, the band's primary singer and songwriter, has made no secret of his churchgoing ways (he even teaches Sunday school in a Protestant parish), yet nowhere has he incorporated that fact into his band's music as seamlessly as he does on The Life Pursuit. True, a couple of the early B&S songs prominently feature clergy ("The State That I'm In" etc), and 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress even boasts a slice of proto-Christian pop in "If You Find Yourself Caught in Love." But those references carried an undeniable shock-value component - church imagery reinforcing the whole quaint Scottish twee-thing. On The Life Pursuit, Murdoch treats church almost as a matter of course - yes, he goes to church, doesn't everybody?! The references are simply there; they don't attract attention themselves. Christianity (and church) is portrayed as an almost unspoken factor in the everyday lives of real people, one that is in turns pathetic and profound, but a factor nonetheless. In other words, his references ring true. Take for instance the lead-off track, "Act Of The Apostle":
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MATM: Universality, Sympathy, and Synecdoche, New York

This comes to us from Mockingbird contributor Ron Flowers:

syn·ec·do·che
: A figure of speech in which (among others) a part is used for the whole.

Galatians 3:28 - There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Synecdoche, New York

The film was Charlie Kaufmann's (writer of Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind among others) answer to Sony's request that he direct a horror film. I'm guessing that the result was not what Sony had in mind, but I think I get the point. SNY traces reality through the life of Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) from his late 30s to his elderly years. As the film begins, Caden is overseeing final rehearsals for his portrayal of Death of a Salesman using only young actors, because, as he addresses his lead actor:

Try to keep in mind that a young

person playing Willy Loman thinks

he's only pretending to be at the

end of a life full of despair. But

the tragedy is that we know that

you, the young actor, will end up

in this very place of desolation.

Caden has been there. He spends his time fretting over news stories and real and imagined ailments, preoccupied by death, while his wife (Catherine Keener), after revealing she fantasized about Caden dying and starting over again guilt free, abandons him with their four-year old daughter to pursue her art career in Germany.

Death of a Salesman earns Caden a MacArthur Genius Grant. In reaction to his wife's and father's criticism that he was wasting his time staging others' work, Caden explains to his therapist his vision for his next project:
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Updike at 19

From the fascinating article "John Updike At Work" in this past Monday's NY Times, the late great author writing to his parents at age 19 (ht CWZ):

"We do not need men like Proust or Joyce; men like this are a luxury, an added fillip that an abundant culture can produce only after the more basic literary need has been filled. This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment of glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who love their environments with such vitality that they can produce an epic out of the Protestant ethic."

Amen! (But it'd be nice to have both).

Count It All Joy!

Thursday Morning Rock N Roll: Sting and Advancement

In his seminal (and admittedly half-serious) article "On Advancement", Chuck Klosterman defines "Advancement" as: 

"A cultural condition where an Advanced Individual - i.e. a true genius - creates a piece of art that 99 percent of the population perceives as bad. However, this perception is not because the work itself is flawed; this perception is because most consumers are not Advanced."

"Now, do not make the mistake of inferring that this means that everything terrible is actually awesome, or vice versa; that kind of contrarianism has no place in Advancement Theory. The key to Advancement is that Advanced artists (a) do not do what is expected of them, but also (b) do not do the opposite of what is expected of them. If an artist simply does the direct opposite of what is anticipated, they are classified as "overt"... The bottom line is this: when a legitimate genius does something that seems crazy, it does not mean they suddenly suck; what it means is that they are doing something you cannot understand, because they have Advanced beyond you."

Later in the essay, Klosterman quotes one of the two so-called Advancement Theory founders, Jason Hartley: "I find Sting unlistenable. But I know that Sting is Advanced. He must be super-Advanced, and I just don't understand him. It's kind of like when Einstein came up with the Theory of Relativity - there were still parts of that theory that even Einstein could not understand. Those concepts were left for future generations."

Well, say what you will about Advancement, but here's my favorite Sting song, the overtly religious (and skeptical) "All This Time". I believe he wrote it right after the death of his father:
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