« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 »

December 30, 2006

You Know My Name?

The other morning, when I was unsuccessfully resisting consciousness, I thought back on the two times I’ve seen the new James Bond movie. First reflection: the Chris Cornell theme music has grown on me. The first time I heard it I was unimpressed, but the second time I caught myself humming the theme for days afterward.

But (second reflection) the theme plays on the main character’s self-introduction and the scene in which he has broken into M’s apartment. “Your name is —” Judi Dench cuts him off and admonishes him not to utter her name.

Didn’t we just see her leaving a hearing with Parliamentary leaders who’ve been grilling her about Bond’s misadventure in the Nambutu embassy? What do they call her? Are there any governmental officials in the contemporary world whose names we don’t know?

M’s identity can’t be a secret.

---

Mark says:

M has a name. "M."

I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't at least one or two people who go by names that aren't their names, working in government.

[Well, sure, some people operate under pseudonyms at various times — but are we expected to suppose that Judi Dench’s character appeared before Parliament, and members addressed her as “M”? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were press coverage (she implies as much in the movie); Does the paper that reported “Bomber Killed By British Agent” (or whatever the headline said) go on in the lede to say, ‘According to MI-6 head “M,” the agent in question. . . .’? Daniel Craig’s healing capacities I can strain to believe; a CIA or MI-6 chief who goes by an initial, whose name and occupational history remain secret, I can’t believe.

Now, Mark knows a lot more about the inner workings of government agencies than I do, so he may be hinting that Michael Hayden is pretending to be head of the CIA, whereas some mysteriously initialed character really pulls the strings. I’ll bet that even the compliant Congress of recent years would evince some reluctance to abide by that arrangement. If they knew.]

Posted by AKMA at 12:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 29, 2006

Beautiful

Well, I finally got around to beginning the Beautiful Theology seminar blog. I’m using Blogger for this one, partly for convenience, partly because I was curious to see how Blogger is doing these days. I’ve post the first three frames of Magritte’s “Words and Images” essay; I think we’ll read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics next (and I’m enjoying Reinventing Comics again, so it’ll be hard to resist covering that too) and then work on some Edward Tufte.

Feel free to drop in and join the conversation. I strongly recommend reading the posts in sequence, from the beginning. (The main blog page is here, and the Atom feed is here, for newsreader users.)

Posted by AKMA at 12:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Running the Table

Nate came downstairs this morning and challenged me: “I see that your blog says nothing this morning about the other team running the table against yours at Bible Pictionary last night — contrary to what your t-shirt said.” Well, true. Nate and the younger generation (Si, Laura, Pippa) whupped Margaret, Jennifer, Mile and me in the first round of Pictionary, led by an intense sequence of successful clues drawn by Nate himself. Nate triumphed!

In the second round, maturity and experience prevailed, though the result might have been different if the youngsters had divined the answer to Pippa’s very difficult word:

You can click through to the Flickr page if you want clues and the answer. I thought she did a great job, and if her team had gotten this one, they might well have gone ahead to sweep the doubleheader.

Posted by AKMA at 12:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 28, 2006

Full House, Gloating

Jennifer and Mile arrived last night, so (for a couple of days) our family is super-sized: Pippa and AKMA, Margaret, Si (with Laura H. around much of the time), and Nate, Jennifer and Mile (the only one missing is Nate’s Laura). The dining room table is full, the bedrooms are overflowing, and schedules are intricate.

As to Christmas loot, I know it’s inappropriate to boast, but yesterday I was one of the elite few who wore an aoudad t-shirt, and today I have an “I’m blogging this” t-shirt on. I’ve been working on a present to send my mom (shhhhh, it’s almost finished, I just have to add the soundtrack). I’m running an errand over at Northwestern’s art library today, and sometime today we’re going to watch a digitized version of Flashfork’s Escape from Margaret’s parents (I’m lobbying to put it on YouTube, but the principals have resisted so far). Jeanne and Gail sent Pippa a Wobbler, which has provided near-constant entertainment.

I didn’t give anyone Fun Home for Christmas, because I had begun to feel like a fanatic about it — but I felt vindicated when Time chose Fun Home as the top book of 2006.

Posted by AKMA at 11:02 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 27, 2006

Trust and Mamet

David Weinberger’s post about David Mamet’s plays intrigued me for a variety of reasons: trivially, because I hadn’t noticed that Mamet wrote Ronin (which I evidently liked more than David did) and because I share David’s sense of overexposure to William Macy’s hinder parts. I mean, it’s good that movie directors are beginning to show some gender-inclusivity to their exploitation of nudity, but William Macy as pioneer? (I greatly admire Macy as an actor — just not so much as an object of sexual exploitation. Then again, my horizons in homosexual attraction are extraordinarily narrow, so maybe the set of all lustful-gazers-at-men’s-backsides detects something about Macy that I miss. Probably so.)

The aspect of David’s remarks that interests me more involves the opening comment, “Good lord I’m tired of David Mamet” in the context of David’s other criticisms. I second David’s frustration with the tortured dialogue Mamet imposes on characters who seem otherwise to be normal citizens, though I enjoy the twists and surprises Mamet springs (David’s “mechanisms” parragraph).

As I read along, though, it occurred to me that “tired,” no, “exhausted” captures my primary response to Mamet dramas. And I suspect that Mamet exhausts me because the one theme he hits relentlessly (in his “I’m David Mamet and this is my movie” mode) is duplicity. Once you catch on to Mamet’s fixation on duplicity, you as viewer know that any attention you vest in any of the characters may be turned against you. So you either withhold your emotional response to the film (boring), or go ahead and invest in some characters who then betray you (tiring and frustrating), or keep vigilant attention to who might be lying to whom (exhausting and often self-defeating, since Mamet has made his trademark by devising characters who lie to you in ways you won’t anticipate).

Mamet hits this theme so insistently that I’m inclined to infer that he thinks it’s cosmically significant (as David notes, Mamet assigns his leading character “his existential (= inexplicable) crisis”). Yes, but. Duplicity and betrayal carry their valence of importance not for their own sake, but as corrosive parasites on the more fundamental importance of trust, and of our need to trust one another. Mamet toys with, and aggravates, the American illusion of the self-determining individual by showing us a world divided into exploiters and suckers; his art invites us to escape being a sucker by joining the world of those whose self-awareness and caution would enable them to exploit, if only they weren’t too honorable. Or maybe they only exploit a little bit, because after all, everyone does, except maybe the suckers.

That sort of world horrifies me. My horror may derive from my theology, from my deep aversion to betrayal, from my resistance to binary divisions, from my Victorian sense of honor, or maybe from just being a minimally decent human being (not to overrate myself). Still, I wonder whether David’s weariness connect with his oft-stated enthusiasm for the generosity of the internet, for the intersubjectivity that helps makes us wiser than we would be on our own. Maybe Mamet gives some of us the gift of seeing more clearly how despicable the world would be if Mamet were telling us the truth — and how tremendous is our obligation to work toward sustaining durable, non-manipulative, trusting relationships that may help us, and others, make their way past the ingenious exploiters and those who parasitically romanticize exploitation.

Posted by AKMA at 08:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 26, 2006

Spasmodic Death Throes

Does anyone think that the record industry’s tactic of repackaging albums with newly-added material signals anything other than short-sighted desperation? Perhaps the idea will come into sharper focus if we peer into an executive’s imagination: “Let’s see, some consumers still reliably buy their recordings on physical media, despite all the drawbacks attendant upon that mode of production and transmission. If fewer and fewer people still buy our product, what shall we do? I know! Render physical-album releases obsolescent even faster! That’ll build the market, increase consumer goodwill, and stave off the digital media revolution!”

Nate and I have talked before about the demise of the “album” as an intelligible unit of artistic expression; doesn’t this development underline and accelerate that decline? What sense does it make for The Artist to say, “Tasty Dog Biscuits belongs together as an integrated song cycle, reflecting our lyrical expression of the superiority of liberal democracy over planned economies,” when six months later the record label rereleases Biscuits with six other tracks, a supplementary video, and two mash-ups and remixes of The Artist’s big hit [single] from the album? Where did the integrated artistic whole go?

Posted by AKMA at 09:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 25, 2006

Query Answered

We’ve had a lovely relaxing Christmas day (no gifts, for the time being, since Si has been spending the day with Laura’s family), watching Love Actually, A Day At the Races, playing Scrabble (dark horse Nate trounced the family on the strength of a 50- or 60-point word), and generally enjoying ourselves.

But we’d still be fretting and gnashing our teeth if so many people hadn’t answered our plea with copious helpful advice and even several recordings of the service in question. What a great Web! Thanks to everyone who answered the last post, plus Suw too!

Posted by AKMA at 06:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 24, 2006

Another Business Opportunity

Margaret wonders why people don't pay for personalized snow-making. Wouldn’t the same people who pay thousands of dollars for lighting displays, pay for a dusting of snow (especially for snow that the neighbors don’t have)?

Posted by AKMA at 09:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 22, 2006

Query

Margaret is determined — and I mean that in the nicest possible way — to listen to the King’s College Chapel service of Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, broadcast on Radio Three. The problem would be matching up that event with our family (who will be in church from about 9 to 12 Central Time). I can buy the Pro version of Wiretap, if necessary, though I’d be a shade uneasy about trying it for the first time on a one-time digital broadcast. Any other clever ideas?

---

Response to our plea was rapid, farflung, and generous. Simon, Maggi, Rick, and Tom pointed us to Radio Four’s “Listen Again” feature (very sneaky, those English — it’s on Radio Four today, rebroadcast on Radio Three tomorrow).

Mark pointed us to the useful application Radiotastic, and Steve endorsed RadioHijack (and used it to record the service in case we couldn’t catch it online — not only a captivating author, but a sweetie!).

In the end, we tuned in at this address and satisfied Margaret’s near-biological need to hear a treble soloist sing “Once in Royal David’s City” this afternoon. Many heartfelt thanks to all who extended themselves on our behalf.

---

J. Alva added a small mountain of helpful advice:

I've collected some Mac-specific audio freeware links which may be
useful to you. They come with the same caveat you posted, though I use
them all regularly without any trouble.

There's also this marvelous Free Software portal at Wikipedia, which
is a good place for people to start hunting for other platforms and
other types of applications.

Here's the Mac stuff. The blurbs are taken from the developers' pages.

Max is an application for creating high-quality audio files in various formats, from compact discs or files.

When extracting audio from compact discs, Max offers the maximum in
flexibility to ensure the true sound of your CD is faithfully
extracted. For pristine discs, Max offers a high-speed ripper with no
error correction. For damaged discs, Max can either use its built-in
comparison ripper (for drives that cache audio) or the
error-correcting power of cdparanoia.

Once the audio is extracted, Max can generate audio in over 20 compressed and uncompressed formats including MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, AAC, Apple Lossless, Monkey's Audio, WavPack, Speex, AIFF, and WAVE.

[And another:]

xACT is a Mac OS X GUI front end for the unix applications Shorten, shntool, monkey's audio compressor, flac and cdda2wav with paranoia and much more.

[And:]

iPodDisk isn't a tool that copies songs from iPods; instead, it enables other applications to do so by emulating an iDisk drive. After it starts, iPodDisk automatically opens a Finder window.

You can browse, drag from, or even play music directly on the drive.
From a user's perspective, there's no difference between the emulated
drive and regular local folders, with the exception that iPodDisk
drive is read-only.

J. Alva’s intercession won an angel its wings. Zuzu would be proud.

Posted by AKMA at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Entertainment Today

Margaret wandered down to Peets to study, Nate went for a haircut, and Pippa and Si and I have been having a YouTube morning — checking out music videos (Si: “Oh my Lord, he has 80’s hair!”), bits from Saturday Night Live, the Dead Parrot sketch, and Rutland Weekend Television (“Gibberish” FTW!). We conclude this Family Update with a seasonally-appropriate excerpt from George Harrison’s appearance on Rutland Weekend Televsion as “Pirate Bob”:

Posted by AKMA at 12:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 21, 2006

Add to Checklist

Strike from checklist: grade papers for Gospel Mission course; sermon

Add to checklist: Order a copy of Brevity & Echo, the new Steve Himmer anthology (with a lot of filler by a bunch of people I don’t know)

Posted by AKMA at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

His List Counts

Nate came home from his studies at U Mich yesterday, and brought with him a list of last year’s best releases in response to my own. Since he actually knows what he’s talking about when it comes to music — his area of specialization is a kind of music criticism that I hadn’t even heard of before he tried patiently to explain it before my glassy eyes — with his permission, I append his analysis of the last year’s best music releases.

---

I didn't listen to nearly enough new records this year to fairly say what the "best" releases were, but I can say what I enjoyed listening to the most of the records that were released in the past 12 months. I couldn't make myself rank them specifically, but here they, roughly in the order of "most impressed with" to "not quite as impressed with:"

Matthew Herbert - Scale
Herbert is more than a DJ, more than an electronic musician, more than an arranger; he's a songwriter, a really really good songwriter. All of the pieces on this album are not only notable for the creative use of sounds, but for their perfect structure. They're great songs. They sound amazing. The opening track, "Something Isn't Right," is probably my favorite song of the whole year. It's catchy, the vocals are gorgeous, the texture is full and rich and complex, and even though the key is in constant flux, the melody seamlessly holds everything together. Track 3, "Moving Like A Train," is Luciano Berio on ecstasy.

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife
I knew that at the least I'd be able to say that 2006's Decemberists release would be my favorite album of the year by a band that uses big words and sings sea chanties, but I was certainly not expecting it would be one of the best albums of the year, and I really think it is. If you were previously unimpressed by the Decemberists, then listen to this anyway, because it's so much more mature than their older work that it almost sounds like a different band; but only different in that it's grown, not changed its core. While older songs tended to be on the rougher side, each track on this album is tightly constructed and polished, but still just as original and sincere. "The Island" is my other favorite song of the year, it sounds like everything prog-rock should sound like: epic and exciting and interesting without being too esoteric or conceited or proud of its own sophistication. And even though it gets all E.L.P. in the middle, it concludes with one of the most beautiful lullabies Meloy has yet written. Also notable on the album are "Yankee Bayonet," "O Valencia," and "The Perfect Crime 2," all of which characteristically manage to be both poppy and far too unique to be mainstream.

TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain
I was really excited to hear this after getting really into 2004's Desperate Youth Bloodthirsty Babes, but unfortunately I couldn’t get my hands on it until relatively recently. I'm not even sure yet if I like it as much as DYBB, partly just cause I haven't gotten to listen to it much yet, but even so it is easily one of my favorite albums of the year. They just sound terrific. But more importantly, behind their novel sound is real, evident, engaging musicianship. Which brings me to a different topic: what is the DEAL with the hype around Joanna Newsom? I mean.. yeah, it's different, it's even kind of cool, but I am straight up baffled by all the people who think Ys is one of the best records of the year. Granted I haven't listened to it much, but I didn't think there was really anything that stimulating about it, nothing that made me WANT to listen to it again, or that made me think it was at all more significant than any other release. In other words, it's special because it's different, but besides that, it's nothing that special. Unlike (to get back on track) TV On The Radio, which is different AND special.

Electric President - Electric President
I really like this album. There is something so charming and comforting about it. The affect is all so subdued that I'd expect it to get tedious, but creative use of electronic sounds and acoustic instruments, supporting the almost whispered vocals, really draws me in. The songs are folky, but post-modern. I bet it would sound amazing if they covered some Pink Floyd songs. They really remind me of Pink Floyd, actually; just a little bit more cheerful. Favorite track: "Farewell." They lull you into a false sense of security, then...

Islands - Return To The Sea
How could you not be crazy about this?? The Unicorns died, but this is what rose from the ashes. Jamie might have already left, but Nick -promises- that Islands are forever. If you're a fraction as into Canadian indie rock as I am you need this record, and even if you're not, you should listen to it.

John Legend - Once Again
John Legend is an amazing musician. He has a great voice and more talent than he's figured out what to do with yet. I truly believe he should become the next great soul music superstar, and although he is not yet, his 2006 album is certainly progress. 2004's Get Lifted was good, but Once Again is better, and shows off a pretty wide spectrum of styles, from the somewhat generic R&B of his debut album to alternative rock to Cole Porter-style jazz, and back to Motown. He practically channels Marvin Gaye on a couple songs. And all of it manages to stay solid and original.

The Roots - Game Theory
Best hip-hop record of the year, I think. I just love The Roots, and their "arty" aesthetics. And Game Theory is a good Roots record, not just a good hip-hop record.

Sidenote: other 2006 hip-hop (etc.) albums
Ghostface's Fishscale got all the hype... I like it a lot, definitely, I just didn't find it as engaging as Game Theory, and not quite top-ten material. Certainly honorable mention, though. Rhymefest's Blue Collar was another one of my favorites, but after a few listens I thought it was a little formulaic or something. That said, I loved the sound ("Dynomite" is another favorite song of the year), and I'm pretty confident his future work will only get stronger. I haven't heard Lupe Fiasco's record yet, but apparently it's really good. k-os's Atlantis probably deserves its own paragraph, but I just got it and don't have enough to say about it yet. I love k-os though, and so far this sounds even better than Joyful Rebellion. Of course, I don't know if he's strictly "hip-hop," if he's a genre it's more like "whatever-genre-Lauryn-Hill-is." This record is beautiful and catchy and fun and original and strong.

The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldier
Definitely didn't expect to love this. But I do. The songs are all just good, accessible but smart. The opener is ridiculously catchy. "Hands" could be a b-side from Revolver, with its close harmonies and adept navigation of poppy powerchord progressions. A couple later tracks sound like Zeppelin. Basically, this is more than just a side-project supergroup, they really figured out how to be a band, and a really good band, in the legacy of classic rock and roll bands. Hopefully they can keep it up, but if not, this is still a great record on its own.

Two records that might or might not be good enough to be included here if not for the fact that they were by two of my favorite artists:

The Flaming Lips - At War With The Mystics
It's kind of hard to judge any Lips album that isn't Soft Bulletin; this isn't Soft Bulletin, but it's different, not bad. More guitar-oriented rock songs than their recent work, but still characteristically balloons-and-confetti-dreamy. And it's just fun to listen to, whether or not it's as great as Soft Bulletin.

Beck - The Information
I'm still not sure what to think about it. It doesn't seem nearly as cohesive as any of his previous albums, or as accessible, but there are some terrific songs on it too. I recommend it automatically because it's Beck, and he has yet to do anything to dissapoint me artistically.

Finally,
Sufjan Stevens - Songs for Christmas
I think he's one of the greatest songwriters of the decade, if not generation. His creativity is limitless, and like every brilliant composer he just makes things work, and sound good. This collection isn't a real "album," it's a box set of the EP's of christmas carols he's put together for his friends over the past few years. But each EP still has more ingenuity and musicianship than the average regular release by an established artist, even though the content is christmas music. I hate christmas music—that is, I hate the commercial christmas music you hear on the radio, not traditional carols—but between Stevens' ingenuity and sincerity and the fact that most of the material he uses is more on the hymnal side of christmas carols than the easy listening side, and the inclusion of several original compositions, this set is a truly great song-cycle, in spite of its narrow holiday theme. And the original "It's Christmas Time!" with its rocking Hey Jude chorus is my new favorite anthemic christmas song.

---

I’m going to offer Nate webspace for music reviews any time he wants to send them to me — maybe it’ll save effort at the end of the year (it took me ages to paste in links for all those albums).

Posted by AKMA at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 20, 2006

Not So Much

Micah (Micah Jackson, the homiletician, not Micah Wright Kaufmann, the chorister whom I mentioned the other day) calls my attention to this article in The Economist, which argues that recent tactics in marketing correspond to the philosophies of postmodern theorists such as Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida.

Hmmmmm.

To the extent that the article implies that late capitalism has adapted to the characteristics of culture that these theorists were describing, it should be no news. Indeed, the quotation from Lyotard with which the article tries to drive its first rhetorical stake comes from a passage in which Lyotard was describing the effects of global capitalism. So if the article wants to suggest that there’s something ironic or self-defeating about Lyotard’s position, I’d riposte is that the only irony lies in the journalist’s misconstruing Lyotard’s essay.

The article glibly asserts that its subjects “wanted to destroy capitalism and bourgeois society” (what did they do in their spare time?). Yes, in varying degrees at varying times, they devoted their energies to exposing the brutal effects of global capitalism. At the same time, I doubt they’d have signed on to the destruction of capitalism as the goal of their work; they were a good deal more subtle than that.

In the hands of a careful reader, the essay might have explored the ways that marketers used postmodern diagnoses (which, to be true, did usually involve a principled resistance to the hegemony of liberal capitalism) as an occasion for furthering the goals of market capitalism. The author might then have considered the role that diversity and polymorphous pleasure played in specific intellectuals’ thought, concluding with estimates of what those thinkers might have made of the ways that these styles of sales and advertising tactics made use of their ideas. That would have been a different essay, more provocative and illuminating.

This essay, however, falls into the “oh, these pomos (‘as they are affectionately known to adherents’ — really? which adherents are those?), look at their silliness!” bin of oversimplification and obfuscation. C- or D, I’d say.

Posted by AKMA at 02:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 19, 2006

Ni Rituel Ni Oraison

I just caught Church and Postmodern Culture’s notice of Derrida’s last words. Rather than simply reproducing here the translation that Jamie Smith offers, I’ll note that the translation obscures at least one pun; oraison does indeed mean “oration,” and Derrida knew well the difficult obligation of composing a eulogy (in his last years he wrote funerary tributes to numerous luminaries from his generation of French intellectuals). The word “oraison” also, though, means “prayer” (especially, I’d say, in parallel with “rituel”).

I doubt I will ever come to the end of my own thinking and talking about Derrida, but these last words bespeak a heart of grace and an attentive respect for the truths to which “religions” attend harmonious with his remarks on prayer at the SBL/AAR meeting a few years back (1, 2, 3).

Posted by AKMA at 09:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 18, 2006

IANAMB

I am not a music blogger, but since music surrounds and suffuses my daily activities, and inasmuch as all the cool kids are posting their “Top Albums of the Year” (woe to the December release that doesn’t garner enough attention to be “top,” and then doesn’t qualify in the next year), I too decided, after having examined some of the top ten lists carefully, to write an orderly account of the year’s releases, just as they have been handed down to us by those who were on top of the music scene from the beginning.

My list below includes some material I haven’t heard, and some I know pretty well. It doesn’t add up to a round number, and it mingles single cuts with albums, and it includes music I don’t like that much along with music I greatly admire. Since I am not a music blogger, I can do whatever I want (even the whole “of the year” premise seems arbitrary to me, so I’m likely to deviate from that criterion as well).

I don’t get to listen to as much new music as real music bloggers, since I treasure long-term favorites and am not extensively patient with listening to haphazard novelties when I could be listening to consistently marvelous past performances.

I was not as impressed with this year’s Bob Dylan album, Modern Times, as I was with Love and Theft. When I heard Love and Theft, I heard a new chapter in Dylan’s work, and I delighted what I took to be his perfect accomplishment. He laid claim to the folk tradition’s continual re-employment of its own history toward new performances that still bespeak the old; on Modern Times, I hear him say, “Oh, yeah, and another thing. . . .” I’ll keep it around and I’m prepared for it to surprise me (what would be more typical of Dylan?) on relistening, but it doesn’t make a “top” anything list for me.

The Hold Steady’s Boys and Girls in America does make my list. I still prefer Separation Sunday — it’s tough to beat an album whose centerpiece tells “How a Resurrection Really Feels” — and Almost Killed Me, but Boys and Girls sustains the band’s repertoire without falling into repetition. Many critics invoked Bruce Springsteen comparisons when the album came out, but I hear echoes of the Boomtown Rats’ better work, transplanted to U.S. turf. Job well done. (Speaking of Springsteen, I admired the Seeger tribute, but it didn’t win over my listening time.)

I did not take to twee pop quickly; I liked some odds and sorts of Belle and Sebastian (“If You’re Feeling Sinister,” “She’s Losing It”), but didn’t listen long enough, carefully enough, to take them up enthusiastically. Over the past year I gathered more of their work and they’ve won me over. During the summer, Margaret heard a fair amount of The Life Pursuit at our church-day coffee haunt, the Brothers K and intrigued her. I respect the band’s willingness to extend themselves, and their success in sustaining a distinct style as they move out from the secure base they built over their earlier albums. Another top recording.

While I’m talking twee, I can’t say much about Camera Obscura except that their single, “Lloyd, I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken” (from Let’s Get Out of This Country) captivated me. If you don’t already know Lloyd Cole’s “Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?” (with the Commotions, from Rattlesnakes, itself an estimable track), you can size up the blithely appealing lead vocal and the smooth arrangement — but if you can make the connection back to the Commotions, the wit of Camera Obscura’s response is irresistible.

The Indigo Girls’ new album Despite Our Differences didn’t knock me out; good, not outstanding. On the other hand, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins’ Rabbit Fur Coat knocked me out (pre-album live performance available for download here). Lewis’s voice and her musical sensibilities already sttod out from Rilo Kiley albums, but the this album distills many of the qualities I admired before into a more intense, tighter focus.

Margaret pointed me to the Wood Brothers’ Ways Not To Fail, a sort of bluegrass-meets-blues endeavor that works. That reminds me (not sure why) of the Raconteurs Broken Boy Soldiers, which I enjoyed (though not as much as last year’s White Stripes album, Get Behind Me Satan). I like M Ward, haven’t soaked up Post War yet.

My patterns of taste suggest that I might like the critical favorite TV On The Radio’s Return to Cookie Mountain, but I haven’t heard enough to form a judgment. The Beatles’ Love album sounds all right, but I haven’t quite passed the “acceptable novelty” feeling about it. I just haven’t heard Gnarls Barkley much, though I’d anticipate liking at least “Crazy” (I’ve got it, will listen right away as soon as Camera Obscura is finished). I deliberately neglected the Arctic Monkeys — I may be small-minded, but I got a flash-in-the-pan vibe from their internet buzz. I’ll repent if they show staying power.

I’m getting acquainted with Ghostface’s Fishscale album. I’m still not cool enough (or whatever) to take to hiphop as certified tasteful critical listeners, but Fishscale is this year’s tentative step into hiphop.

Speaking of not cool enough, I also fail the Joanna Newsom test. I can admire Ys in a distant, unconvinced way, but right now it will never be on a playlist I make for myself. I’m not quite sure where all the enthusiasm is coming from; I have a hunch that if this were still the material-artefact era, there’d be a lot of used Joanna Newsom CDs and LPs on the market in a year or two.

Oh, I discovered Laura Cantrell this year — if you haven’t yet, you might want to try the material she’s offered on her downloads page.

As always, I’m sure I’ve forgotten good stuff, and I’d love to be convinced that I misjudged something. The more enjoyment of music, the better; I’m not doctrinaire about any of this. Use the “email” button to send me comments, and we can continue the conversation in the “extended” version of the post. I’ll finish adding links as I can; right now I have papers to mark.

Oh, don’t forget Jonathan Coulton’s Thing a Week project, especially “Code Monkey,” though I preferred his performance of it on NPR the other week.

Three other music notes: Geoffrey Pullum posts an appreciative commemorative reminiscence of Ahmet Ertegun, and Tim Bray nails it with his 5-star review of “Better Git Hit In Your Soul.” And Michael Iafrate has released a Christmas EP, The Rebel Jesus, freely downloadable here.

Posted by AKMA at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Of The Two. . . .

I vote for Eye of a Cat (linked from Liz) over Concurring Opinions (linked from Mark).

Posted by AKMA at 08:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 17, 2006

Mission. . . Oh, Never Mind

The sermon went off this morning, with a generously positive reception. I have a fair number of reservations about the way I finally realized the composition; another day of gestation might have served the sermon well — but I did meet the challenge of (a) incorporating the metaphors from the “O Antiphons” in to the sermon, (b) accommodating my inuitive assoication of the present moment with Candide, and (c) infiltrating an online gaming phrase that my buddies demanded to hear/see in the online text. I did not mention Micah, Kaethe, and Pippa by name, as Micah had suggested, but Pippa and the Wright Kaufmann young’uns appear as a non-specific next generation, which they would probably be more comfortable with.

I will note that I had assumed (without checking, shame on me) that we would be singing “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” on this Third Sunday of Advent. I shoulda checked, but the week was pretty stressful, and I put it off.

(Audio downloadable courtesy of St Luke’s website.)

I can’t name the precise moment when the backdrops shifted, when the costumes changed; I don’t know the exact incident that triggered the thought, but sometime in the past week I was overtaken by the powerful sense that the world around us had shuddered and quivered and turned a corner, so that we found ourselves living as by-standers, as theatrical extras, crowd scenes in a real-life version of Voltaire’s Candide, in which Candide and his beloved Cunegonde, Dr. Pangloss and a retinue of long-suffering characters witness — and participate in — murder, massacre, rape, mutilation, theft, disease, and various other afflictions, which experiences convince them to abandon Dr. Pangloss’ belief that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. Instead, Candide decides, we should just stay home and tend our own gardens.

My vision that real life had been transformed into Voltairean satire may have come after hearing about one of the convulsive charades that characterize modern politics, or the harrowing spiral of destruction in the Mid-East. Under the influence of some bleak news of torture or plague, of starvation or terrorism, of deaths closer to home, or religious oppression, or all of these, I flashed back to the years long ago when I first read Candide’s Epicurean ideal of insular happiness in a well-groomed garden. Back then in the tumultuous 1960s, Candide’s perspective seemed self-evidently true to me. In what sense can you call a world “good” when so much suffering and horror, so much cruelty, greed, and venality jostle for our attention day after day?

Candide’s reasoning bespeaks an honest worldly wisdom; it acknowledges no lord but nature, the annual sprouting-forth of a green world, the key to life determined by not asking for unrealistic goals. From the rising of the sun to its setting, women labor, men toil, children hunger, all things prosper, wither and die. The kings of the nations make war, and the promise of Emmanuel strikes jaded ears as callow optimism. Candide spurns hopeful hearts with the plain premise that with hard work, and diminished expectations, we can carve out for ourselves modest pockets of comfort and beauty if we tend to our own gardens.

It’s simple, and sensible, and it would clarify so much for us, except that Candide misses, indeed conceals the vital meaning of our lives and efforts, of our joys and our hopes. Candide buys plausibility by accepting the terms that plain common sense offers us. Misery, greed, hatred, disease, and death won’t go away, Candide supposes, but he and his friends can make a congenial enclave where their companionship and hard work make bearable the stresses of a wearisome world, a world that falsifies the grandeur that their imagination stirs up in them.

Then onto the stage of our real-life satiric drama — well, not onto the stage, since I’ve already stipulated that this morning’s programming takes place in the actual world we inhabit — down by the Potomac, or the Chicago River, onto the scene of escalating war, religious intolerance, and public corruption strides a hairy prophet, a stern moralist who preaches to everyone who’ll listen to him. John fits right into Candide’s world, from his outlandish diet to his furious social criticism. John steps into Candide’s world and denounces the powers that cause such devastating havoc: “You snakes! Thieves, and exortionists! This is the beginning of the end!” And where John preaches, where John offers the world a clean start in the name of the God of life, there the pragmatic obviousness of worldly enlightenment itself pales and falters. Candide’s sensible garden fades to a sepia-toned unreality and a stronger, deeper, more ancient Garden blossoms into view.

The deep saturated hues of that ancient garden tell the truth about God’s wisdom that Voltaire’s version of the garden misses. Where Candide urges us to content ourselves with shades of gray, that true Garden splashes vivid crimson, purple, lime green, gold, across leaf and lawn. That ancient Wisdom unfolds with intensity in startling saturation, entering even into the most grievous suffering so that no plague, no cruelty can escape the presence of God’s grace; Wisdom comes into the world Wisdom wrought, and it endures our spoliation of beauty, our denial of redemptive hope. Wisdom accompanies us as we err in our own headstrong destructiveness, ever offering us the hope of wisdom greater than our own, a Garden more fruitful that that which we cultivate.

John’s Garden points us beyond Nature’s endless cycles of death and birth, of big bang and heat death, of heartless necessity. Where Nature impartially presides over a succession of temporary beauties that fade, blur, decay in the futility of mortal strife, John’s Garden praises a Lord in whose sight no loveliness perishes, no generosity exhausts, no corrosion afflicts. We perceive John’s garden in our confession that death does not speak the final word, that God has raised up Jesus Christ — and us, as members of Christ’s Body — in a victory over merely natural forces of pain, desire, decay. The laws by which John’s Garden thrives are the manifold blessings of the One Lord: trusting, and loving, and hoping.

The Root of that Garden reaches deeper than potting soil, deeper than rich loamy topsoil, deeper than any earth itself, into the stuff of being’s origins. Truth’s roots reach back through generations of saints and prophets, of sisters and brothers who will not let go of their forebears nor abandon their children. Our Root extends across ages and binds us together despite our wishes, holding us in a single net with hypocrites and haters, holy women and helpful men, reaching further and holding more securely than our garden fences, stakes, arbors, ties and trellises. The Root of the Garden reaches beyond time, and in it our hopes will blossom.

All these signs of the Garden gesture for our attention from behind the plainness by which common sense tries to lock out disappointment, grief, sorrow, weariness. Candide’s garden closes its door on the greater world, and hides the Key. Perhaps if we can’t smell the pungent blooms of John’s Garden, we might be content in Candide’s; perhaps if we never see the intense hues of the true Garden, we won’t notice how domestication has muted the tones of the world. Candide offers us bland security to protect us from sorrow, but John points to the Key by which we may free ourselves from gloomy fear and death. The Key of the Garden releases us from the defensive walls that enclose our aspirations, and sends us out into a limitless glory wherein we will suffer loss, we will know disappointment, but we will always freely partake of the truth that no pain, no loss can lock down.

Even now, that truth dawns among us. We hear it in the resonance of harmonious choirs, summoning us into the courts of angels and archangels, and all the company of heaven. We see the Dawn radiant in our children’s openhearted, loving beauty. We smell the dawn in the scent of home cooking, of our loved one’s hair, of great books and gorgeous bowers, we recognize the Dawn with every sense and indeed with faculties yet unnamed, for that Dawn rises in our hearts and understanding and in our outstretched hands, with joy in building, touching, healing in God’s name.

Dawn comes to the Garden brilliant in amazing grace, and draws all open hearts to its light, illumining the basest and the best, inviting the brokers of temporal power to lay aside their crowns and scepters. Those insignias of coercion exhaust their charity, trammel their liberty, weigh down their brows with cares that obscure the open majesty of the Garden and its gentle King. In the Garden to which John points us, no will can coerce, no violence compel, for love’s perfect liberty alone rules here; in this Garden, the King sets us free to rejoice.

To rejoice — or, if you prefer, maybe not so much. A smaller garden, with smaller expectations, would (after all) be more realistic, and safer. We could control for most variables, weed out most tares, spray the bugs, write off the losses, and come out with a modest profit. Prepare for the inevitable, and wait for the projected outcomes of your best practices. Candide’s garden offers a reasonable expectation of netting a reasonable yield of happiness. Live, make the best of things, and die. Join Candide and his friends, get a gig on a reality TV show, sound off about economic policy, cultivate your own turf. The grass withers, the flower fades and your fate shall be the same.

Beyond the borders of Candide’s garden, though, the vibrant sound of loud, festival singing shimmers in the morning sun. We know about death here, we’ve seen the devastation that evil and wickedness can inflict — we know them, but more truly and more finally we know their limits, and in the Garden beyond the limits of want and death we draw water from the springs of salvation and say, no, we sing the praises of the Lord who has done great things, we ring out our joy. Our King is in our very midst, the Dawn shines, the Key turns, the Root blossoms, the Lord reigns, and Wisdom gathers her children from among all the peoples of the earth to sing together, “Come, thou long-expected Jesus; Come, O come Emmanuel!”

Posted by AKMA at 04:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 16, 2006

Useful Things I Didn't Know

For some reason, the existence of a tag for small caps (〈small〉) had escaped my attention.

---

Mark said:

Small caps?

[Small caps, the upper-case letters set to the x-height of lower case. You probably see this most often when your Bible translates the Hebrew Tetragrammaton with the circumlocution “Lord,” where the “o-r-d” letters are smaller than the “L.”

Posted by AKMA at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Trompe Les Visiteurs

Our friend John Utz had long felt uneasy about having a mantelpiece without a fireplace — so he set about taking direct action against an underornamented room:

Don’t tell Amy Laura, Rachel, or Emily, though; it’s a surprise. (You can probably tell Emily, since if she relayed it to Amy Laura and Rachel they wouldn’t believe her.)

Posted by AKMA at 09:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Too Late or Nine Days

OK, so I forgot to mention this in time for Hanukkah, but I think you can still order David Weinberger’s My Hundred Million Dollar Secret in time for Christmas (and there’s always the tradition of gift-giving on the Twelfth Night of Christmas, and Purim is right around the corner). (The website that accompanies the book seems to be down this morning, so you can’t preview the book just now, but how many books that you buy for children have thought-provoking websites designed by philosopher-Web pundit-humorists?)

Posted by AKMA at 08:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 15, 2006

You Tell 'Em

I was going to develop a laudatory commentary on Dorothea’s “Blogging and the ‘Social Journal,’ ” but really I don’t have anything substantial to add — except an enthusiastic Amen! from the writing scholar’s side of the analysis.

Posted by AKMA at 02:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Checking In, Checking Out

I very much want to square away the sermon today, so I won’t devote reflection time to my comments on the status of the Anglican Communion, the idea of “reinventing” things and selves, year-end lists of music, or any of the other topics that dangle shiny trinkets in front of my easily-distracted consciousness.

I’ve been challenged to incorporate a variety of allusions (from widely varying contexts) into the sermon. Richard Kieckhefer and I were discussing the extent to which such challenges — allusion, specific rhetorical figures, alphabetical embedding, acrostics, lipograms, other Oulippean devices — can paradoxically make composition easier; since one can’t write just anything, what one must write sometimes comes more easily to the fore. We’ll see whether that’s the way this sermon develops.

(By the way, Mac users, there’s a terrific holiday bargain available at Mac Heist: an array of excellent, useful, enjoyable software for the package price of $49, with a percentage going to charity — can’t beat it with a stick. And now I too have Delicious Library.)

Posted by AKMA at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 14, 2006

Sixth Thing

Bonus Sixth Thing: Evidently, I permitted my feet to suffer cold damage at some point — I suspect the days when I was driving a Waterbeds East delivery truck with holes in the floorboards — and parts of my feet are painfully sensitive to cold weather. (By the way, I went to college with Fred, whose site hosts the case study about Waterbeds East, and who preceded my tenure at that retail establishment. Fred, if you’re following a referrer log back to this page, Hi!)

Posted by AKMA at 01:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

And You Really Didn't Want to Know

Yesterday, Maggi listed me among those to whom she passed the webquery about “Five Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Me,” and in the message she sent me about the post, she allowed that I might be cranky about such phenomena — but she was very polite about giving me an escape clause, so I’ll respond by not taking advantage of that offer.

(At this point, Margaret rolls her eyes and wonders how much more there is to know about me about which I haven’t already offered too much information online, and with good reason.)

One, echoing Maggi’s fourth point — I too am inordinately prone to vertigo; I have a hard time watching movie scenes involving heights, and I even get edgy playing Warcraft when my character is on a precipice. This affords my offspring frequent opportunities to fleer and jape at me as I cower in my seat at the movie theater, or press myself back against the couch while watching a DVD at home.

Two, I was once a bowler, both in a Sunday family “league” (a dozen or so friends and neighbors who got together every week to roll a few frames) and in the Taylor Allderdice Bowling League (wherein I headed a team whose name I don’t remember, though I recall getting the Captain Kirk Award at the end of the season, for “valiant captain, incompetent crew” because although I maintained the second-highest average in the league, the rest of my team dredged the bottom of the league, and got worse every week, so that even our handicap didn't help us). And I was second board on the high school chess team one year, second to Dennis Fischman.

Three (I should find something more recent to mention), I started working in computer graphics in 1980 or ’81, with a PDP-11 (I think it was a PDP-11; by the way, I am not in the picture to which I linked, nor did I work with anyone who looked like either of those characters) the size of two phone booths and a custom-built camera the size of another booth.

Four (even more recent), ummm, I have a particularly heightened sensitivity to betrayal of trust — the scene in The Fellowship of the Ring where Bilbo tries to reclaim the Ring from Frodo knots my viscera.

Five, the first car I drove was a rusty white Toyota pick-up truck handed down from my dad in 1978. One particularly snowy day, John Markert and some accomplices not only filled in the cargo area, but went on to bury the entire vehicle in a monumental pyramid of snow. When Michael Cartwright found out that I drove a pick-up truck in college, he said “You were postmodern even back then!” but I’m not sure what he meant by that. Since then I’ve driven a Dodge Colt, a Mazda 626, a Toyota Tercel wagon, a Dodge Grand Caravan, and our present Subaru Outback. Of these, only the Tercel was bought new.

I don’ usually tag other people for this sort of thing, especially if it means extracting from them more personal information than they have already offered the whole online universe and its permanent memory. If, however, you think I might have tagged you if I’d been so inclined, by all means post a list of five and cite me as the person who tagged you. I won’t deny it.

---

Mom says:

Gee, even I am learning things I didn't know! xx, Mom

Posted by AKMA at 09:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Welcome to Blogaria

The Christian Century has dipped an editorial toe into the waters of blogging — and it looks interesting. I’ll keep an eye on them to see what happens when a classical-media theological enterprise drinks the digital Kool-Aid.

Posted by AKMA at 08:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 13, 2006

Ephemeron

It will disappear shortly, but I want someplace on the Web to record the delightful header for this auction at eBay:

1910'S HOLY CARD JOAN OF ARC: GO, LADY OF GOD, GO!

Rah, rah! Sis-boom-bah! Go, Lady of God, Go!

Posted by AKMA at 10:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Musing

I’m reading through composition paragraphs from students, and ruminating about what they indicate. This year’s final composition assignment asked students to compare their writing process at the beginning of the term with their writing process at the end of the term; I was inviting students to say, in effect, “This was a total waste of time” or “This helped,” and they did. The exercise also provided a medium for checking their writing skills — they knew I expected them to compose an orderly paragraph with smooth transitions, carefully chosen words, active verbs, and minimal Blank Space.

The papers didn’t surprise me much; most students expressed strong resistance to the premise that they should be devoting class time to improving their writing (some of the better writers suggested that it was a waste of their time, some of the weaker writers suggested that it made them frustrated and ruined their love of writing). Some resisted at first, but reluctantly acknowledged that they could see the benefits of observing their written work for the key characteristics that our class emphasized.

As I read over the papers, I note first of all that they show much more attention to the characteristics I highlighted in class; to that extent, the time spent on writing proved worthwhile, right from the start. I do wish, though, that students felt the improvement as a gain, rather than an unwelcome intrusion. I wonder why students resist devoting time to enhancing a fundamental skill that they’ll use through their careers in ministry. Somewhere along the line, some students of all skill levels got the message that they did not need to improve in a particular area, even though they had to be aware that there was plenty of room for improvement. When I introduce several ways of distinguishing ordinary writing from better writing, students seem to resent the knowledge of how their writing could move toward greater clarity, precision, and persuasiveness.

(For the record, I do not impose inflexible ukases; though I discourage passive constructions, I describe particular circumstances that make passives more appropriate, and I always stress that sometimes excellent writers depart from the patterns that generally characterize the best composition. For someone to mount a coherent case against my approach to writing, they would have to assert that writers ought to use words without regard to readers’ expectations about what those words mean; that abrupt transitions and discontinuous structure improve a composition; that unannounced digressions and extraneous information contribute to essays’ quality; that essays should be written with maximal recourse to passive constructions, and that the verb “is” s