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)
yes. yes. yes.
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锘縅AN MOIR: Can this Cruella de Chav sink any lower?
Proust again? Jilly Cooper? Dependable Faulks? Something challenging from the classical canon or perhaps a gripping autobiography? As you head off to the beach with your tasteful selection of summer paperbacks, be afraid聽 -聽 be very afraid聽 -聽 that back home, something terrible is happening. For this is turning into the long, hot summer of Jordan. Yes, we must return once more to Katie Price, the revolting former topless model, author and reality television star. This week, Sapphire, the latest 'novel' from Price聽 -聽 a bonkbuster ghost written by someone else, of course聽 -聽 shot to the top of the bestseller lists, while Price's sleazy attempts to gain publicity for herself plumbed new depths of public depravity.聽
Sleazy: Jordan is desperately trying to keep the public titillated
First, who could fail to be depressed by the news that Sapphire has outsold wholesome mass market stalwarts such as Sophie Kinsella, Danielle Steel and John Grisham? It's enough to cast a positive light on the literary genius of Jeffrey Archer and the Beano. Of course, feminists have long praised Price's sexual audacity聽 -聽 on the pages of her books and in life聽 -聽 as the sign of a liberated woman, enjoying her own body and wanton appetites. Yet some of the salacious detail contained in her autobiographies and novels always seems engineered to encourage the crusty mac brigade to pore over her books in the way that they once pored over her topless pictures. Her mastery of the sordid and the cynical puts a pimp to shame. This week, a stunt cooked up for tabloid newspapers saw the near-naked glamour model being fondled by her new cage-fighter boyfriend in the grounds of a Marbella golf hotel. Holy Chavarama! Can life get any classier than that? Yes, it can, I am afraid. Later, Price climbed into a groaning basque-cum-tutu to go nightclubbing with fighter Alex 'The Detonator' Reid. Then she and the big D were seen blearily having a 5am kebab together to round off the perfect romantic evening. Isn't it sad that thousands of little girls (and their mums) want nothing more from life than to Be Like Her? Of course, Jordan the model has gone to great pains to rebrand herself as kind Katie Price, the author, struggling mum and pony lover. Sure. This is a bit like Cruella de Vil insisting that she has gone vegan, loves puppies and that everyone should henceforth call her Ella. We all know that a Dalmatian, a leopard or a Jordan can never change their spots, although I keep wondering how much more of the knicker-flashing, sex-mad, balloon-breasted, drunk and disorderly, great She-Chav mother-of-three can the public take? A lot, it seems. Everything she can throw at them and more. Price has gone into turbo-drive since the meltdown of her reality television marriage to nice but dim Peter Andre. In a reversal of roles, he is the one who has been left holding the children and complaining about being faithful, while she has hit the town like an out-of-control tank. It's a kind of equality, I suppose. Even if it is unlikely to lead to any long-term happiness or stability for her poor, troubled kids. As the carnage of her social life continues, surely even her most blinded and ardent fans must be beginning to see the light? Which is that Price is a pantomime villainess of the old school. Her laughable fig leaf of respectability聽 -聽 that she is a good mother聽 -聽 looks more tattered with each passing vodka shot and bloke grope. Her life gets sleazier with every passing week. It is not just her best-selling book or the X-rated publicity stunts. It is more that the promise of easy sex throbs through everything Price does, like the reek of cheap perfume in the whorehouse of modern celebrity. She represents everything tawdry and regrettable about what stardom has become, and it can only get worse from here on. That is the problem with being a reality star. When your life is your job, you have to keep on inventing more ludicrous and desperate scenarios to keep the public titillated. How I fear for her lost tribe of little children.
Makeover: Susan Boyle
Maybe there is hope for us all... Ulrika got a fabulous new body. Susan Boyle got a lovely makeover. So there is hope for us all! And I mean that in the nicest possible way. This proves that real professionals can work wonders with the most unprepossessing material. Unlike lunatics such as Gok Wan. Or those scary women in the cosmetics departments of large stores. Indeed, business there is so dreadful at the moment, that you can hardly walk past a lipstick counter on the way to the tights stand without being rugby tackled by beauticians offering free makeovers. I confess I often acquiesce, if only to get the weight off my feet for five minutes. To be honest, a tiny part of my heart always lives in hope of an amazing transformation聽 -聽 only to be crushed ten minutes later, when I emerge from a cloud of powder looking like a cross between Heath Ledger as the Joker and an exploded doughnut. Never again. Until the next promise of a free sample. What's funny about this gross assault? Many people seem to be amused by the unfaithful married man who was humiliated by his wife and three putative lovers. The four scorned women plotted together to lure him to a Wisconsin motel to exact some revenge for his philandering ways. There, the poor sap was blindfolded, taunted and tortured by having intimate parts of his body glued to his stomach. The women are now on bail and face charges of false imprisonment and sexual assault. No doubt the truth will come out at the trial, but what is most unsavoury is how the tawdry events to date have been reported with a barely concealed air of glee. Imagine if the genders had been reversed, and four men had done this to a woman? No one would be laughing about it then. This is not a triumph for feminism or another show of empowerment. These sisters doing it for themselves showed a cruel and bullying steak. If guilty, they deserve to go to jail. Not to be applauded. Hattie's in charge. We're all doomed! Did anyone notice that Gordon Brown went off on holiday this week, leaving Harriet Harman in charge? Of course they did! The old girl made sure they did. Cannonballed fresh from her weekly Woman's Rage Workshop, Harman rose to the task with the zeal of Corporal Jones temporarily being appointed leader of the Walmington- on-Sea platoon. Don't panic, Captain Mainwaring! Hattie's in charge! New Government initiatives announced this week include Boys Are Rubbish, Kill Bill (any Bill), Me For Leader and Down With Chaps. She is loving every spotlight-soaked moment. Even if it is becoming obvious that her loyalty to the PM is crimped by her terrible secret聽 -聽 Hattie can never forgive Gordon for committing the unforgiveable sin of being a man. And her short tenure in power reveals that she is even more of a mono-maniac聽 -聽 obsessed with only one topic聽 -聽 than we could have imagined. Doomed. Doomed. We are all, of course, doomed.
Beaming: Bill Clinton and released journalist Laura Ling
Bill, a picture of selfless heroism How amusing to see Bill Clinton recast as a hero on the world stage this week. The former president was instrumental in securing the freedom of two American journalists imprisoned in North Korea. Euna Lee and Laura Ling had been serving 12-year sentences for 'hostile acts' after being arrested there in March. As they sobbed when they met their families back in America, Clinton looked fit to burst. What did that expression on his face say? 'Come on girlies,' is my guess. 'Surely that deserves a nice, big kiss and cuddle for your Uncle Bill?' Regarding聽 the suspected E.coli outbreak at a Wrexham fish and chip shop. If a food outlet is given a zero hygiene rating, as the Llay Fish Bar was last year, why is it allowed to continue trading? Even more astounding, why do people continue to buy food there? Stage school brats vs the real children in need Following the breakdown of ten-year-old Hollie Steel on the finals of Britain's Got Talent, the Government has just launched a review into whether children on television talent shows need better protection. You know, there are lots of children in this country who do need better protection. Some of them desperately so. But you won't find them performing for Simon, Piers and Amanda and a watching audience of millions. You will find them on sink estates and in failing schools, not capering for applause on prime-time telly. Indeed, the kind of stage school brats who haunt these talent shows are usually flinty mini-pros more than capable of looking after themselves, thanks all the same. I always felt that Hollie was crying with frustration because she thought she was being denied the chance to sing again, not because of any evil, showbiz pressure levied upon her. And she certainly recovered her poise and equanimity at top speed. So why can't the Government just let these kids get on with it? There are already strict rules and regulations in place on how frequently and when children can perform. No one is sending them up chimneys or forcing them to listen to Piers Morgan's jokes during rehearsal. Yet Labour is absolutely obsessed with trying to legislate against disappointment or failure or risk. Where it least matters, of course. Both winning and losing are important life lessons for all of us. As the Government might discover at the next election.The Ryan O'Neal guide to funeral etiquette Let us pause for a moment to reflect upon death. Yours and mine. Most of us would, I feel, secretly hope that mourners at our funerals will be too heartbroken to do anything other than ululate with grief and chew the carpet at the unfairness of it all. Personally, I won't be happy unless the entire congregation is shaking their fists at the black sky and wailing: 'When will we ever see such beauty and genius again?'聽
Easily forgotten? Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett
And at the front of the church, chief mourner George Clooney is prostrate over my slim, attractive coffin shouting: 'It was her! Only her. Oh God, it was her I loved all along!' Where was I? Oh yes. Dearly beloved, what none of us wants is someone asking if they can get the money back on the get-well-soon card they sent the previous week. Or the vicar, towards the end of the address, uttering a sentence that begins with the words: 'But seriously. . .' Most of all, what we really, really don't want is Ryan O'Neal there. Attending the funeral of his long-term partner Farrah Fawcett, the 68-year-old actor attempted to chat up a friendly young blonde woman who appeared to know him. It was only when he proposed meeting up for a cheeky cocktail that the woman pointed out that she was his daughter, Tatum O'Neal. The estranged pair had not met for several years, but still! Perhaps Ryan should chuck the truss, rip up his Viagra prescriptions and get one for a new pair of contact lenses instead. And despite the rather obvious and worrying incest issues that cloud this particular incident, can it ever be right to chat up someone at a funeral? Somehow I doubt it. Any plans to publish Ryan O'Neal's Guide To Funeral Etiquette should be quietly cremated.
Posted by: pletcherjay | 30 December 2013 at 02:25 PM