BarryTaylorBlog

Fallen Angels Radical Reincarnation: music is my church

Music has always been my church. I might go to buildings and participate in rituals and even make a living by involvement and engagement with more traditionally understood examples of church/religion, but in my heart music is my religion, my church, my heart. it was in music that I found a space to voice and hear voiced my desire, my melancholy, my sexuality, everything. I remember with a fondness not reserved for many other things in my heart, when I bought my first record player, a Dansette, very similar, if not identical to the one in the image. It wasn't the machine itself, it was what it represented--liberation from the family 'sound system', the radio choices of my parents, the tyranny of a world shaped by ideas, values and aesthetics that meant very little to me as I tried to give voice to my own. That record player became a shrine upon which I sacrificed faithfully the artifacts of my faith--the blues, gospel, r+b, soul, reggae--with a fervour and zeal that was a visceral response to the thing that offered me freedom and a path to knowing and finding myself.

I've just started reading a book about Nick Cave called The Art of Nick Cave: New Critical Essays--its edited by John H. Baker. Its a collection of essays about Nick Cave, his music, his writing, his persona etc., divided into five sections: songwriter, murder ballads, film and theatre, influences and sacred vs. profane. It might just be that those five categorizations of Cave's life and work sum up in some way the way music functions as church or religion for me--if nothing else they highlight the issues and challenges which inform and affirm aspects of my life as I journey through it.

I haven't got too far into the book yet, but so far, it is rich with things about Cave, but perhaps more importantly, about music and about life, which I am finding helpful and hinting at things I might want to revisit, redress and rethink in terms of my own life vis-a-vis, what I do, why I do it, and how I broker some obvious disconnects which I am finding very troubling and difficult at the moment.

I think it is fair to say that I am in something of a vocational, if not life, crisis at the moment. Crisis seems a harsh word when I write it, there might be other words that could capture my present state, but I'll let it stand. 

Radical Reincarnation

In his introduction to the book, John Baker explores the role that Cave, as actor and musician, plays in Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire. He also links Cave's dichotomy of desire and the emotional, psychological and existential cost to human existence to the central characters in that film. In naming Cave a version of Damiel, the central angel in Wender's story, Baker likens Cave's songwriting to a fallen angel, whose fall if you like, allows him to explore empathy and catharsis and invite insight and release to himself and the listener to his work. There is a line the author writes that grabbed me,

'He (Damiel) recognizes that the only way in which this desire can be fulfilled is through a kind of radical reinacarnation: his transformation from angel into human. In that sense he risks, like Lucifer, a form of fall from the spiritual into the material world.' This is beautiful imagery, I am sure to some who hold a different view of things religious, where the idea of 'fall' is endowed with ideas of disconnection with the sacred, the act might seem disastrous, but to me the fall is the only way Damiel can realize his desire, the only way he can discover love. The path to 'salvation' to reincarnation-re-birth-lies in this kind of provocative and dangerous act of counter-move. Richard Rohr's book of last year, Falling Upwards puts a safer spin on it, but that sheen of positivism is the essential thing I am trying to overcome in terms of my own relation to the sacred.. I keep having these images of falling to the ground, they have been inhabiting my dream world for a while. At first I was a bit worried, it seemed somewhat final, destructive, but lately I am beginning to see it in a different light, as pathway to my own radical reincarnation--I have been falling dramatically into the material world over the past few years, it often seems to be viewed as the 'wrong direction' by peers and by religion in general, but for me, this 'form of fall' heralds a way to realize a certain desired transformation.

Unspoken Unsatisfied

Having spoken of coming to terms with a certain redirection, at least internally, I must also speak of my continuing belief that satisfaction will remain elusive for me, and again, perhaps I am coming to terms with some things about myself, but perhaps also about life in general. In a chapter of Cave's music, not just the lyrical preoccupation through which most address him, there is a quote from Giorgio Agamben that meant something to me the moment I read it. The author of the chapter, Carl Lavery makes a distinction in his offering between Cave the person and Cave the singer,

"To use Giorgio Agambens' vocabulary, the name, 'Cave,' in this chapter, is posited as an authorial 'gesture,' a proper noun that 'marks the point at which a life is offered up and played out in the work. Offered up and played out, not expressed or fulfilled. For this reason the author can only remain unsatisfied and unsaid in the work.'

Two things, one is that I think this is why my favourite songs/artists and those whose work expresses dichotomy, tension, paradox and melancholy--whether it is the plaintive joy of blues and gospel or the apocalyptic musings of Radiohead, it is more often not, the ache in popular music that most speaks to me when it all comes right down to it. It is not that I need to be continually reminded of what is missing or lost (I love 'happy music' too, but there is always that 'thing' lurking beneath the surface) but that inherent tension and release mechanism in some music is what drives my love for it-- I just don't always need sheen and veneer to make everything pretty and ok. 

That melancholy, rooted at the heart of music that emerges from dislocation, disorientation, despair, desire, is what keeps music church for me and it might just be why I struggle with the institutional expressions of church/religion. It lacks melancholy and therefore, for me, it lacks the one ingredient that makes it vital, necessary. As Richard Kearney has written, melancholy brings us to the limits of reason--which for me is ultimately the place where communion with the sacred truly begins. Guardini declares that melancholy issues from 'the very ruptured depths of human nature whose disquietude is a sign of the eternal.' So there's that.

The other thing with regard to this statement is that I too have a name (much lesser of course), a voice, a role, that is public, that is performance--in academia and establishment--and both are difficult. I have spent a long time attempting to merge both public and private voice, and that hasn't proven easy--there are some serious obstacles in both environments that have to do with assumptions, perceptions etc. and I think I have spent way too much time trying to be 'heard' rather than judged or analyzed or critiqued--and I don't mean that in a 'victimy' way, I just mean that the liberation of a musical voice is that it is 'otherness,' the melancholic preoccupation, is almost a given,whereas in the church/theological worlds I inhabit it tends to be viewed as something peripheral, again, at least in my own experience which is the only perspective I can hold with deep conviction. Part of this is the need to find one's audience--not something that I have been too good at, I seem to have been capable of putting myself in environments, that, for want of a better word, are more conservative in both perspective and practice than I, which then heralds tensions and troubles, both great and small.  The 'gesture' voice, the public voice for the performance of theology and religion, is one that I have spent many years working on. I came across a quote from John Wesley that every (man) should strive to be a voice and not an echo, which is lifework and maturity, but once the process of discovery has begun that voice then has to find it's hearing and that I'm still working on--not that people don't listen, or that I even need them to, I need to hear my voice in its right place in both inside and outside.

System to the Sacred

"Cave's sacred is part prophetic Jesus, part Father in the Christian tradition, part Old testament force of retribution, part metonym for human love and sexual energy, part violent power with unknown capabilities, part absence, part extension of the Cave ego. Is there a system to Cave's sacred?" Lyn McCredden.

Does my 'system of the sacred' fit? Fit in the containers I attempt to put it in? Fit in the worlds I seek to express it in? Yes and no, that's probably true of all systems I imagine, but before that perhaps I have to ask if I even have a system? Or if I even know what it is. Increasingly I do--it is not the same as Cave's but there are crossovers for sure. What I cherish particularly about Cave's work is that it is both church in and of itself and it often addresses the other church in my existence--the institutional religion of Christianity--and I sense affinity between he and I on many things not least of which is his conviction that institutional religion is more often than not an unhelpful container. But he is out of it, and I am in it. Am I better or worse for that positioning? Lately, I have been feeling that I am completely fucked by it--it has been my working life--which raises complex issues of material need versus vocational practice-desire, sublimation, games without frontiers in some ways--but it is a continual source of concern, worry, a beast that refuses to be tamed and wants to eat my heart out at times, or at least that's how it feels. And of course, it could just be that it is not a suitable container for me, for my system of the sacred, as I realize that it is still viable for many people--and I don't mean this to be a broadside moan about church etc. I am speaking purely of myself. I am not sure it is necessary to state fully, or as fully as I able, my system, but I can say that after many years I find that much of it is not the system others around me are working from, and that's fine, but ...

"how can inspiration or for that matter God be moral?" Cave's question resonates deeply. I am sick of moralizing religioisity, sorry just am, I find it completely unhelpful, unimaginative, constricting, inadequate, shallow, easy--do I believe in morality? Of course, but morality that has been rooted essentially in reason doesn't work for me and that is what I encounter much of the time.

I remember musical moments perhaps more than any other, they are inscribed on my heart in a way that other encounters are not, it has always been that way for me--they are the ritual experiences personal and public that have shaped me in deep and abiding ways--I find myself in music, I find others, I sometimes find god-although 'finding god' has never been my primary preoccupation, maybe when it comes down to it, as Jack Caputo says, God doesn't exist, God insists, and music might just be the principal insistence conveyor for me.

(musical accompaniment to this post: trouble will find me, the national-on repeat--gorgeous)

Bicycle-making

How a Bicycle is Made (1945) from British Council Film on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/39401575

 

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the next day or bowie's ascension

 

There was a brilliant response to David Bowie's latest music video, The Next Day, from the Catholic league. Bill Donohue, president of said organization declared it the work of a "switch-hitting, bisexual senior citizen from London" that "is strewn with characteristic excess." A little dose of the pot calling the kettle black in terms of excess I think, but whenever religious or catholic images and ideas are addressed in these ways we shouldn't be surprised. On one level this video is predictable and trite--transfer sacred imagery into profane space and you have enough controversy to generate comments like those from the Catholic League.

Mieke Bal, the Dutch cultural theorist makes some key insights about Western society. She declares that there are three important considerations that must be taken into account when examining what is happening within western society. Christianity is there, meaning that it is impossible to begin to think about cultural analysis without acknowledging the theological underpinning of the western world. Secondly, Christianity is a cultural structure that informs the cultural imaginary whether one believes it or not, and finally, that Christianity is just one of the structures, it is not the only cultural structure, nor the only religious structure that underpins who we are or have come to be.

I think her theory helps to explain the ongoing appropriation of Christian imagery in contemporary culture, be it via the work of Damien Hirst or Bowie, Christianity was one of the interlocking structures that formed our world and it remains, even as a ghost in the machine if you will.

So Bowie creates a critique of religion and presents himself as a sort of 'prophet,' which is echoed by Gary Oldman in the video, and eventually 'ascends'--technically disappearing from their midst, but if we take the imagery to logical extensions that's what we are seeing realized. There are the usual madonnas, stigmatas, bishops and clergy, all of them inhabiting, perhaps running a brothel of sorts. On the one hand it is a classic and almost tired stereotypical critique of religion's hypocrisy, unfortunately it remains a prescient critique because of on-going scandals and revelations about sexual activities amongst relgious communities that claim the moral high ground with regard to sexuality and other issues in life. The video enacts a sort of battle between the sacred and the profane and perhaps raising questions as to whether or not the truly sacred is the profane.

The treatment for the video apparently came from Bowie himself but was realized with the help of photogrpaher and director Floria Sigismondi, who has worked with a lot of edgy musicians--Marilyn Manson, Bjork, The Cure, as well as more mainstream artists like Justin Timberlake and Katy Perry. She has a signature style, developed out of her art and sculptural interests which she defines as "entropic underworlds inhabited by tortured souls and omnipotent beings," much of which could be seen in this video. The collapse of sacred and prfoane boundaries can be provocative stuff by itself, when it gets charged erotically, as in the case of this video, you can see why people might get incensed.

I think Bowie raises issues about the sacred in this video, issues that I myself am asking in a world where ideas of sacredness are dramatically shifting and seldom tied exclusively to religious environments anymore, as Gordon Lynch writes in his book, On The Sacred, "the sacred in our contemporary Western world is neither synonymous with "religion", nor has it completely shifted beyond it. It forms the symbolic and moral terrian within which religious and secular lives are lived out."

same love

  

Like much of the rest of America I am a fan of Thrift Shop, the catchy song about wearing other people's clothes by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. Talk about a catchy hook and when you combine that with a funny video..well you have a massive hit. I've read a couple of interviews with Macklemore and he seems to be an interesitng man on a very wild ride, attempting to deal with addictions in the midst of a wild ride on the fame train. This song is another from their debut album and has managed to garner over 30 million plays on You Tube--I think it is really beautiful and poignant--particularly so as it addresses an issue that is just beginning to be re-addressed in the world of rap and hip-hop which is well known for its rampant homophobia. The song essentially addresses two groups--certain christians who interpret scripture in a way that castigates and condemns people based on gender orientation, and the hip-hop community that does the same.

Mary Lambert, the Seattle-based song-writer who has worked with M+RL on their songs and videos, wrote the beautiful hook for Same Love in a couple of hours. What is interesting is that she used to attend Mars Hill Church in Seattle, Mark Driscolls neo-conservative mega-church, widely known for its' leaders extreme views on gender roles and pretty much everything else. The echoing line at the end of the song, "not crying on Sundays" and Lambert said that it came from here experiences at the church. She has said that she didnt think the church was hateful, just that they clearly thought being gay was a sin, and because she was, Lambert would find herself returning home from church upset and constantly apologizing to God for being who she was. Liberation came when she realized that a loving God wouldn't condemn her for being herself.

sing to the moon

Laura Mvula--you should buy this album its beautiful.

 

death is not the end: belfast 2.0

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds," declares William Shakespseare in Sonnet 94. I was going to use this as the starting place for some of my thinking at the Idolatry of God event in Belfast. Pete had written to me and outlined some ideas for conversations around the idea of death and decay. Well, who would you turn to first for thoughts on death and particualrly decay but WS? He can be a starting place for many issues pertaining to material existence and death is one he handles well. The idea of rotting lilies in this sonnet, one of the 'fair youth' series, which explores his love for a young man, is aimed at the thought that the fairest things are meant to remain fair always, but the surprise is often that those things which seem so fair and beautiful can, when they begin to decay, smell far worse than the things we expect to stink--if you've ever let flower water go unchanged for a while, you'll understand the reference.

I was going to stretch this thought and use it to encompass a conversation about church/religion/belief, and the surprise to many, that our experience of it can, and actually must, undergo a decay, if there is to be any hope of something other in terms of the sacred experience. This is a necessary part of the death process--as Pete himself says, decay is a must--the structure is enacting the death, or words to that effect. The rotting, the festering is the post-death move--its where things really start to smell, to challenge the senses. For me it represents a key theological move, one in which the death is only the beginning of a new process. I think that often the death of god/radical theology movement is viewed as a completely nihilisitc affair--it may be for some but as Dylan declares, for me, death is not the end. More on all this later, just finding moments here and there in the meantime, Here's a very decayed version of Dylans song featuring Cave, McGowan and Minogue:).

 

internet as playground and factory

 

In my theology and culture class we moved into a discussion about media, media theory and media culture this week, exploring the new realities facillitated by the technologies and various media we employ--how our self-understanding is often reconfigured. We spent a little time with McLuhan--I think you have to regradless of ones opinion about his work and we wound up with Virilio and particularly his theory of dromology--speed, and its effect upon us.

The work of Dominic Pettman in this realm is also pretty helpful. I love the maxim that was part of the inspiration for this talk/conference that, "Social participation is the oil of the digital economy," Pettman uses the term 'social lubrication' to explore the relationship between the virtual oil of digital economies and the way in which real oil drives economies. Below is a taste of some more of his work.

 

 

belfast and the idolatry of god

I was in Belfast, mystic city haunted by the horrors of sectarian violence and the spirit of Van Morrison last week, spending time with my friend Pete and a group of people from various spots around the globe, all gathered to explore some of Pete's theological ideas in the setting and environment that gave rise to them.

It was a few days of intense conversation and engagement with ideas that seek to extend the radical theology conversation into the 21st century, by taking into account the cultural, philosophical and religious shifts that invite new reflections on what it means to talk about God, belief, faith, church etc. The mix of people was something of a surprise to me at first. I think I imagined that it would draw an entirely different group, don't know why just did. But it was a great group, and I think, the right kind of group. There was openness and willingness and desire to not only express concerns and worries, but also to seriously consider some radical departures from conventional wisdom. It also provided an opportuntiy to think out loud and almost 'refine the ideas' in public. Sometimes people ask questions that demand you make sure that you aren't simply sloganeering, that there is substance beyond the provocative statement or theory. The practitioner experience demands an entirely different perspective than theoretical ideas--can they, do they work on the ground? what good is a theory if it cannot be lived out? I have never doubted Pete's work because I knew it came from somewhere concrete, that it was birthed in a community of people attempting to live something out, but it was a good reminder of that, and it was great to be in Belfast and meeting again with some of those people.

There were all kinds of events--lots of talking without a doubt, but enough art, food, music, magicians, experiences a d tours of the city, to keep things fresh and alive. I talked a bit about cultural moments and contexts, about sacredness and the profane, about holy ideas and wholly other views of the divine and Pete and I talked together about re-thinking Paul--something that philosophers are doing in earnest, and something I feel that theologians and practitioners need to be engaged in with similar intenstiy and focus.

I came back on Saturday and jumped back into my regualr life at full speed, so more thoughts later--but it was good.

that i'll never be forgotten

+++WARNING!!!!+++ THERE IS NAKEDNESS HERE!!!

Jonathan Harris' latest project, I Love Your work, is very interesting, and in terms of content, quite a departure from his usual stuff. Well, it's not really a departure--his work is all about telling stories of life, his own, others etc. and this particular project is the story of nine women, who happen to work in lesbian porn. He approaches the topic by taking ten-second video recordings of whatever is happening at five minute intervals over the course of ten days. The results are well, you have to see for yourself really. To be honest, I wasn't that interested when it first popped up on my radar--I follow his stuff and find it quite compelling, but lesbian porn? It seemed a bit too trite and predictable to me, and I am not that enamored with lesbian porn, in spite of the supposed fascination that all men have with woman on woman sex etc.:). But I realized that however Harris told this story, it would more than likely bear many of the features that make his work so interesting to me, so I watched the little promo film above. It's all I've seen, it is probably all I will see--mostly because, well I don't know why really, maybe I will see more. The was a line in the clip that arrested me a little, one of the women says,

"I just want to leave enough images behind that I'll never be forgotten." She goes on to say that she can handle aging etc. but she wants to be remembered--a moment worthy of the project if you ask me, and I think it is probably what makes Jonathan Harris an important piece of my internet/culture/life equation. This thing with feeling the need to be 'immortal,' to live on after we are gone, is something worthy of ongoing reflection, perhaps it speaks to the desire to have life mean more than its seeming insignificant earthly arc? I'm not sure I have the answer, I just acknowledge that it is something I hear iterated in many different ways, and, to be honest, something that I have felt in my own life. Harris seems to have an uncanny ability to get these moments, to find the heart of things in most of his projects, and this venture looks to do the same. Fast Company declared that it is an, "intimate protrait of a marginalized community opening up in a way that's downright real." There is heartache, sadness, empowerment--all the complexities of life wrapped up in this project. I won't tell you to watch it, it may offend your sensibilities too deeply, nor am I applauding or decrying the women in the project for what they do/are, it just is. I just think that Harris is a compelling miner at the interface of life in the contemporary situations of our digitized world, and there is something of substance here.

 

dont swallow the cap

 

food glorious food

Days in the Food from George Widodo on Vimeo.

I finished my latest term at the art school last night. I teach in the advertising department but most of the wrok i do is only tangentially connected to ad directly. Mostly, we expore where ideas and concepts come from, how to find ones voice, connecting the dots in life and employing the diverse strands and interests we all have, thinking about creativity, artistry and stuff like that. One of the projects this term was related to how we catalogue 'useless' information. We used food intake--so the task was to record everything consumed through the term and find a way to present the data. There were others issues regarding paying attention--not only to what we eat, but also to the streams of information and data that make up our lives. The results were pretty cool. One student kept all of her food receipts and made a replica of the 23' of small intestine by rolling them up and joining them together---this was stuffed into a 3-d stomach another one made which was a collaged image of everything he had eaten. the video above was shot entirley on an iphone 5.

 

messing with minds

Danny Boyle's latest movie, post Slumdog Milionaire, came out this week. It is very much a 'Danny Boyle' picture, creative and vivid cinematography, wonderful editing, nail-biting tensions, bits of graphic-edge-of-seat-gruesomeness, insanely delicious soundtrack and a really interesting story.

I suppose it's closest film comparison would be Inception, in that they are both essentially crime-drama, film noir with psychological twist. There's a lot to be said for that comparison. Although as the film unfolded I was continualy reminded of a lecture I attended by Antonio Damasio on his book, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. The film which is about an art-auctioneer embroiled with thieves, who has experienced amnesia and must recover the memory of a lost piece of art, covers many of the questions Damasio raised in that lecture about identity, memory and the like> The film explores these perennial ideas--probably raising more questions than answers, but keeping things moving by constantly baiting and switching the audience as to who the 'bad guys' really are. As the film explores the rapidly changing dynamics of the story by using parallel images, reflections, alternate scenarios, you get the sense that the film is also messing with the viewers capacity to rely on their onw memeory to unravel the story.

Some of it was predictable and a bit pedestrian, but I still came away feeling like I needed to go back and watch again--it has that Memento/Inception mind-fuck thing going, which I personally find quite compelling.

What is memory, how is it constructed and can it be manipulated? Would seem to be central questions the film raises--I am not sure there is any consensus on any of those questions and I am not certain the film gives much clarity, other than to say that memory is a construct and a vulnerable one at that. Encoding, storing and retrieving memory are fascinating concepts and riddles at the same time--memory makes, gives us a sense of who we are and helps us to locate ourselves in time and space, Trance plays with all of that and more. I think we want certainty on these issues because we recognize the vulnerability when we forget--this is the dilemma of the film's central character--he is desparate to remember and resorts to hypnosis, but this leads him deep into the confusing world of memory and the manipulative power of suggestion, and the 'truth' becomes even more elusive. This sort of film can be quite unsettling at times, but it's well worth the discomfort.

Bombino Nomad

I've been listening to this new album by Tuareg musician Bombino all week long. It's produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and you can tell. The production lifts the music to a different level in terms of production and sound value I think and shows even more what a great player Bombino is. I love music from this part of the world (Mali, Algeria and Niger essentially, although the Tuareg are Berber, a nomadic people)--it must be the desert, I don't know. I always wanted to go to the Festival of the Desert, the future of which is decidedly uncertain given the fighting in Mali--should have got my shit together and gone years ago.

 

divided?

The Creative Review has a little section on an ad created by BBH to accompany an aticle on Margaret Thatcher in Saturdays Guardian newspaper. Marmite is a love/hate food for the Brits (which is also the ad slogan)--you either love soldiers' with your boiled egg or you don't. Personally like Thatcher, I can't stand it, think it should be banned--to me it's just a weird holdover from a different era when it seems  nutritional sources were a bit scarce and people needed added iron in their food or something, it's a salty yeast paste made from brewing by-product...exactly.

The image is catchy, and works really well--the message is very clear if you are British, it sums up Margaret Thatcher's life and death--a polarizing force for good or ill depending upon one's perceptions and experiences.

This is the second re-configuring of Marmite that I have seem in the past few months, Selfridge's launched a No Noise project and featured Marmite as one of the de-branded products, along with Heinz Baked Beans and Tomato Sauce--all of them instantly recognizable food products for us.

And that is enough Marmite on this site!!

dark was the night cold was the ground

This song by Blind Willie Johnson is going to form the backbone of my talk at the Vigil tonight.