Forms, Frames and Fermata

When it comes to English poetry, Shakespeare is the best partially because he operated in a world of forms. Rhymes, rhythms, syntax, length...everything had to fit into this context, and within this framework he still expressed. His poems are musical because like music he has a finite number of notes, certain keys and definite line lengths. (Once you get beyond 16th notes in a music setting faster than a moderate tempo, you're basically asking people to fake it.)

I do not operate in that world of forms. I operate with free verse. (Shameless self-promotion:my poetry. Forms make me a better poet, but they are not my specialty.

It really takes more than mere practice, but the reason forms help so much is because they force you into wordplay, into understanding how you structure things, they teach you how to dance around words, to taste on your tongue the movement, feel the cadence as it drips by. It's not just sonnets. Sestinas, haiku, limericks...being given a box and transforming it. A canvas has edges, a finite space to create in. Master painters work within a frame. Master poets do the same.

A bedroom becomes your room when you express yourself within the confines of that room: a picture here, books there, stuffed animals...repaint the walls blue and gold or black and pink! But if you had no walls, no ceiling, you could not make it your own. It would merely stretch endlessly.

This is the service of forms to the free verse poet. It gives you a canvas, a space in which to operate and transform according to definitive rules. No matter what you do, blue and red will always make purple. Picasso may have been a cubist and rebelled against traditional rules of art, but he could not change this underlying rule. Neither can the poet change how language operates, and like Picasso, even the boldest among us must learn to operate on a canvas.

With that said, I want to talk about music for a second. Music operates in a world of rules beyond anything imaginable. Famed Briton Stephen Fry said he realized that words could be musical when he first heard Oscar Wilde's writings, and as a poet, I know how to love wordplay. Despite that, however, you cannot with words find a fermata over a note and simply pause on a sound. There are no crescendo and decrescendo. There are no moderate tempos and lively tempos, 70 beats per minute to 120 beats per minute, on the written page. It is merely according to the interpretation of the reader. A good writer might be able to structure his language accordingly, to imbue the pace of his writing with the excitement necessary to build to an exclamation point. (As an aside, this is why I love many of the romance languages in written form: the fact that a Spanish exclamation starts with an upside down exclamation point "¡" tells the reader how to read the sentence.)

But music--music!--operates in forms. It has keys in minors and majors and scales within keys, octaves and intervals, harmony and dischord, heterophony and homophony. Even non-Western music has forms in which to operate: the middle eastern makam, the Indian raga, Chinese pentatone (as you can imagine, five sounds, not our seven). And it is these forms that are such a clear reflection of our culture, of what we love.

Western music operates in triads, groupings of three notes that reflect medieval theology and the emergence of mass literacy recognizing the Trinity. During the Renaissance, you saw a move from heterophony and independent polyphony to homophony. Now, I love Renaissance music. Polyphony is gorgeous, but hard to follow. What we like and what we dislike are often matters of taste. One will like the meter-centric composition of hip hop, whereas others will love the soaring, flowing melodies of Andrew Lloyd Weber, and some will love the melodic intensity of Bach chorales.

What we can do, however, is judge music as better or worse cross-culturally. Music may not be a universal language (like language, it is defined according to its culture, constantly morphing--one who reads Western scales cannot necessarily read the Indian ragas, just as one who reads English cannot necessarily read Sanskrit), but it does have a universal function. Because music is built into a culture and finds its roots in that culture's philosophy, it follows that music is a reflection of a culture's understanding of truth.

Now, if we believe for a moment that the world has a certain order to it--and whether you're a theist or not, this is rather difficult to deny, given gravity and DNA and magnetism and the water cycle and heat dissipation and ionic bonds--then music which best reflects the order of things will be the best music. Gothic architecture is often philosophically praised because it is naturally elevating to the human spirit, draws the eyes upward to the heavens, regardless of its function as theology. I mean here to be talking of abstracts.

If Christianity is true, then the artistic offspring of its core philosophy will be more beautiful than lesser attempts at seeking the truth. For all my cynicism, I do believe that people, no matter how evil, are ultimately questing after what is true. People who do despicable acts do so out of a sincere interest or belief in their own righteousness. Hitler was an evil man, and deserves whatever punishment he finds in eternity. But I do believe that he honestly felt that the Aryan race was the ultimate realization of evolution, that the extermination of political and philosophical opponents (as well as the eugenics programs) was for the good of the German people, and that claiming a European sphere of influence dominated by Germany was a noble goal, albeit a selfish one for his own ends. I merely speak here about what Hitler believed, no matter how flawed he was.

So my great faith in humanity comes down to comparing cultural philosophies. C.S. Lewis observed that all religions share elements of the truth. Of course, he went on to argue that Christianity was the fullest realization of all these little truths into the one True Myth while discarding the wrong, but my point here is that cultural philosophies all have their merits. The fact that certain Indian ragas cannot be used except during funerals, and some cannot be used in the summer, is a recognition that "there is a time to every purpose under Heaven." Every cultural institution has its values. This is why it's more than okay to like various musical disciplines. Michael loves traditional Japanese music despite it not being Western music.

Can we judge the value of art? Absolutely. Working within a framework is the natural consequence of an ordered world. That which is closest to the truth is the most beautiful to the human soul, for we seek truth. Is Western music the best in the world? I don't know the answer to that question. It's a broad thing to say "Western" music because that includes so much--the joy of the Celts, the somber liturgies of the Slavs, the romanticism of the Germans. What I do know is that mere enjoyment is not criteria for judgment. I do know that there is an order to the world, that humans quest after what is true, and that God is a god of order, a god of divine logic (Greek: logos, i.e. The Word, that is Christ). To see his reflection in music is to see as in a mirror darkly. But there is the darkness of midnight and the darkness of the clouded noon-day sun. Would that the daylight is what we judge and deign to choose.

Perhaps this is why Beethoven's 5th symphony is the most widely performed and most frequently recorded piece of music in the world--in all cultures where it has been disseminated, it has taken hold for something within it, within the order of intervals and the key changes and the orchestration of various instrumental voices--because there is something true and good in the music of Beethoven. This is why Bach wrote laus deo (or was it Mozart?). Music can and should be enjoyed. It also can and should be judged according to its benefit for our souls, the truth it reveals.

Every art has a form. God, the ultimate artist, has imbued the world with laws. His own infiniteness has spawned a measurable universe. God, who could have worked his majesty across an endless canvas, has crafted rules in which to operate. This is the function forms. This is why poetry cannot be music, though it can be musical. And this is why even I, the free verse poet, will always come back to forms, will always search through music.

A general PS:
This does not just apply to music, poetry and visual art. Every artistic presentation has a canvas, limitations. An actor must utilize the body he is given, the capabilities of his voice, to express. He does so within the confines of a camera's range of vision (for film acting) or within the stage. Every art form has limitations, and our job is to fill to the edges--or to successfully leave certain parts unfilled, negative space, to preserve the beauty of what is there. (This is done a lot with Chinese art scrolls.) The vocal musician also has a certain range, and of course has all the rules of his musical discipline to follow.

The Pen, the Sword and Canada

Some posts brought back from writing Facebook notes.

This is dated December 2, 2008

In October, Canadians participated their 40th parliamentary election and the Conservatives won 143 parliamentary seats, a clear majority. To wit, the two primary opposition parties (Liberals, New Democrats) combined for only 114 seats. Ergo, the Conservative Party is the majority party and party leader Stephen Harper is a re-elected Prime Minister.

Now, the Canadian Parliament seats 308 Ministers of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons. The 143 seats controlled by the Conservative party is only 46%, not a percentage majority of 50%+1. Therefore, the New Dems and the Liberals have signed onto a formal coalition soliciting the Governor General (an appointed representative of the Queen, and as the Queen is the supreme monarch of the Commonwealth, a figurehead with immense ceremonial power, though it is often never used) to fire Prime Minister Harper. This is technically licit, as Harper and the Conservatives do not hold percentage majority, and the Governor General can in fact overturn his position in the absence of Parliamentary majority.

However, it is clear that the Coalition is in the minority--with only 114 seats to the Conservatives 143. And those seats are conglomerated of individual parties which the Canadian people did not, in fact, vote for. In other words, Canadians as a majority rejected the New Democrat platform and the Liberal platform in favor of the Conservative platform. Likewise, those who did vote for the Liberals did not vote for New Democrats, and those who voted for New Democrats did not vote for Liberals. This is a cynical ploy by parties leadership to subvert their constituency in favor of power--the Liberals become New Democrats, the New Democrats become Liberals, in rejection of their voters clearly stated preference.

Add to the mix the Quebecois Bloc party with 49 seats, and the three "minority" parties combine for a grand total of 163 seats. This is a majority number--but it's comprised of three parties! The Quebecois have promised their support for the coalition to oust Harper and the Conservatives.

Can you say coup? Except there are no tanks; it's all on pretty letterhead. Truly the pen is mightier than the sword--especially in the hands of sore losers.

And you thought American politics were bad.

Here's hoping that Governor General Michelle Jean doesn't succumb to the ridiculous pressure and upholds the vote of the Canadian people for Harper and the Conservatives.

New Orleans

Hey! If anybody's out there in blog-land, I should have sent you here earlier.

I went to New Orleans a few weeks ago as part of a mission trip. You can read our teams' adventures (or not) by going to the blog. Click here! We split up writing duties to the team: I wrote day one, Greta wrote day 2, Tom wrote day 3, Katherine wrote day 4, Jaye wrote day 5 and Heather wrote day 6. Chris, being lazy, didn't write anything.

Knowing God

...or, "Why You Should Study Theology"

When I was four years old, I met my best friend. I didn't know at the time that he would become my best friend; he just the kid who sat two tables over in preschool. That was almost seventeen years ago.

I met God the same way. I wasn't four; I was 44 days old and I was baptized on a Sunday morning in front of my congregation. So I suppose God entered my life then, for baptism is the washing of sins (Greek baptizo="to wash") and the gift of God, that is, His Holy Spirit. I was hardly cognizant of that fact, let alone anything else—few infants are. I attended preschool at St. Luke’s, where I’m sure there was prayer, and most definitely sure there was singing; singing seems awfully important for preschoolers. Somewhere in all that, I learned the mantra “Jesus died for me” because I was “sinful”—and it was obvious that I was sinful, because everyone is sinful, whatever that means, because the teachers told me so, and teachers do not lie.

I fell into a realtionship with God by degrees, just as I did my best friend. Not only can I tell you my best friend's name and God's name, but I can tell you facts about my best friend: his birthday, what his favorite color is, his blood condition. If I didn't know any of these things, he would be the same person and I would love him immensely. But can you imagine someone turning to you and asking "What's your best friend's birthday" and you answered "I'm not sure." Gasp! What a terrible best friend! You don't know that and you're best friends!?

So why do we accept that from people who get into God? I can tell you His name, but I can't tell you anything else about Him--His nature, His habits. I know facts about my best friend that are way more inane that what his birthday is, but this is a mark of our friendship.

I can't tell you when I learned that he talks in his sleep or when I learned he had claustrophobia. This is knowledge I stumbled into; a relationship I fell into by degrees--but I pursue that relationship. We go bowling together, we go to the movies, we just sit and talk. I learn new things about his life as, though we are best friends, our relationship becomes stronger and stronger the more love, trust and time we invest in it.

We should treat our Creator, our Lord, our Savior the same way. We should spend time learning about Him. We should ask Him His greatest fear, whether He talks in His sleep. What is the nature of God? He is loving, yes, but how does that affect church doctrine? Why is baptism designed a certain way? If God is Truth, and we pursue Truth, we are then pursuing God. I want to know God like I know my best friend. I want to know facts about Him as much as I know Him. His hair color, the way He smiles.

A phonecall doesn't do that. Studying Him does. Committing His nature to memory, knowing His history of interacting with people does.

That's why you should study theology--to know God more perfectly, you must know about Him all the more. You don't know God's birthday!? What kind of best friend are you?

Modern Times

Wrote this piece a while ago for a film studies class. It's a thematic look at Charlie Chaplin's quintessential Little Tramp film Modern Times. Enjoy.

The Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton once remarked that the problems of the world could be condensed into two root issues: the recognition of man as an animal and the rejection of such a fact. The opening act of Modern Times hews closely to the former issue. The Little Tramp's employment in a factor assembly line is closely linked to the efficiency ideals of Andrew Carnegie, a social Darwinist. As a sight gag, the continuously accelerating production belt, upon which Chaplin's character endlessly and evermore hopelessly tightens bolts to widgets intended for God-knows-what provides humor at the expense of human ineptitude. However, as the indignities increase, including a pre-Orwellian (and yet undeniably Big Brother-esque) video screen upon which an apparent superior appears to chastise and fire the Little Tramp, the viewer is asked to participate in his sorrows—sorrows created by an impersonal, demanding job.

At present, it is difficult to imagine a person in the job market with no prospects. In our highly mobile society, experience and education lead to prospects across the country. It is easy to forget that no more than, and quite reasonably less than, 50 years ago, people still tended to remain in a regional job market. The melancholy of Chaplin's character is easier to understand with this in mind. Absentmindedly getting caught up in a communist political protest, the Tramp is arrested by the local police. In an era when people were looking so much for an alternative to the dog-eat-dog capitalism, the hold on capital by the upper echelon insured likewise social enforcement by said echelon. It is sad to see the Tramp imprisoned for what is an honest mistake, and sadder still to see his naïveté also be the reason for his release.

Chaplin's interaction with the street waif (apparently named Ellen, cf. IMDb) throughout the movie is a demonstration of the inability to initiate and maintain upward mobility in the early 20th century. When Ellen introduces the Tramp to a shackwork home on an empty lot, she dismisses it as "not Buckingham Palace," and yet it suffices for them as a home. Chaplin subtextually requests that the viewer be satisfied with this happy home established after so much hardship, but, this story is a tragicomedy, and of course it cannot last. The Dust Bowl displaced hundreds of Midwest farmers, and bank foreclosures put many families out on the street during the era. These long-established simple family homes were of course replaced with the commercialized megafarm. Thematically, it is little wonder that Modern Times relates to its contemporary audience.

Finally, as an indictment of capitalism, there is little else to point to than the Tramp's employment at a department store. Though trusted with responsibility, Chaplin has his signature character freely open the store to his fellow riffraff. The distribution of goods to the general populace is the definition of the proletariat revolution. We are to take this act of subversion as an act of altruism, and our sympathy for the Little Tramp is only meant to increase when he is once again arrested and fired from a job. And for what? Being compassionate? And so Chaplin's character, perhaps acknowledging that it was his final film, walks off into the sunset, but in so doing he is leaving behind the town that has brought him nothing but trouble and indignities in a social Darwinist work model. Of course, he is not alone: the heroic prince gets his pauper beauty—Ellen, of course, goes with him.

War is Peace

I took up writing web devotions for my church. My first batch isn't due up 'til the week of June 22nd, but since I'm here, and like to imagine that my writing is fairly clever, I decided I'll be sharing them with you. The title here is the title to the devotion for June 22nd. This devotional is on the passage of Jeremiah 28:5-9. Read the text, and proceed:

It’s easy to predict trouble. We tell children “life isn’t fair” and “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” These phrases assume that we encounter unfairness and that hurtful words are spoken to us. Jesus Himself told His disciples: “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33a). But what he said after that is more important. He uttered this command: “Take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:34b).

Hananiah was a false prophet who came to the Jews in exile claiming that God was going to “break the yoke of the king of Babylon” (Jeremiah 29:4). It sounds familiar. Politicians tell us that they will fix our lives, end our wars and stabilize our economy. They’re going to free us from all the troubles of the world. And this is what we love to hear—that someone, be it God or Congress—will make life easier.

Jeremiah’s responses to Hananiah were probably some of the most heartbreaking the Jews ever heard. He went back soon after this reading to relay a message from God: “I will put an iron yoke on the necks of all these nations to make them serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and they will serve him” (Jeremiah 28:13, 14). God promised Israel a life of struggle and of hardship. Hananiah promised the Israelites another life of struggle and of hardship. How did he think the rule of Babylon would be broken, because Nebuchadnezzar grew fond of daisy-picking?

When something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The Christian life is full of the hardships that the prophets and Jesus talk about, as Jeremiah reminds us. But the prophet who prophesied peace has come. And we should take heart, for He has overcome the world.

Prayer:

Dear God, This life is full of hardships. Sometimes it’s easy to put my hope in the promises of people. Help me to remember that Jesus has overcome the world, and that the life of peace has come. Amen.

White People, Terrorism...

...and what it is

Engadget.com has a nice little news story about some Malaysian telecom company linking mosques together with a 224Mbps Internet connection at the low, low price of $1.57 (US) per month. Of course, someone was quick to observe "terrorists" at Muslim mosques, which prompted another commenter to ask why "white people" call other people terrorists. I had no idea terrorism was a race thing. I also had no idea that Islam was a racial group. I was pretty sure it was a religion.

I consider a lot of tactics employed by the IRA to be "terrorist" in nature. They're white folks. Timothy McVeigh? Terrorist. Ted Kazynski? Terrorist. White folks can be terrorists, too. And this white guy ain't afraid to say so.

But let's be straight for a minute. "Ethnic cleansing" genocides are markedly different from terrorism. Morally disgusting, straight-up wrong, reprehensible? Yes, but not the same. "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" is a tired, tired cliche, and more importantly, a patently ignorant one at that. "Terrorism" describes tactics--the use of violence against a civilian populace in order to inflict fear (or "terror," if you will) and therefore coerce a governmental power to acquiesce to a set of wishes. A freedom fighter is one who fights for freedom, and his tactics need not be terrorist in nature. A freedom fighter can be a politician, a soldier in a regular militia or, yes, even a terrorist. But one man's freedom fighter can also be his terrorist, because it's about tactics, not ends.

Do genocides inflict terror? Absolutely. But the goal of genocide is rarely to inflict terror. NAZI germany looked to "purify" themselves. Absolutely wrong, and their leaders and followers deserve whatever punishment is due such despicable actions in Hell. Communist Russia looked to remove political enemies and establish a stronger central government. The establishment rarely, rarely seeks to inflict terror as an end in and of itself. I see your 6 million Jews, and I raise you one million Chinese. QED.

Why do we call others terrorists? I call it like I see it. Call me when American churches network and encourage suicide bombings in Egypt. I don't think I'll ever get that call. The simple fact is not every Muslim is a terrorist, but in terms of a percentage of the group, Islam is far and away a more violent religion than any other in the world.

What!? But Islam means peace! Actually, no it doesn't. It means "submission." It is etymologically linked to a Semitic word meaning peace ("Salem"), but the idea of Islam is to bring peace by bringing all the world under the hegemony of Allah, represented on earth by his political caliphate. They want us to submit. Their idea of religious freedom is the jizya, a tax all non-Muslims must pay while living in a Muslim country. I have to pay to be a Christian? I'll pass, thanks.

Finally, dear God, can we stop being political? This post was about the tech, as its engadget, not "en-politic." I want 224Mbps broadband, please.