Farthington's Voicemail: many of oops

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience. 



3/15/14 10:37 PM 5 days ago

Art:

If answering machine cut me off so i'm gonna continue. But You know, and then going back after the fact and seeing how much had been written and how many ideas had been thought of the never quite never explored, never became a reality so many different realities. Whatever Brock, to. For away. She never brought to reality and many of oops, ad. Interesting, maybe more interesting than the one for them to the up getting used and You know so that part of. I think some of that is some of what bloggers about this is just letting some of those ideas. The expressed in and maybe they go somewhere, maybe they don't. If you know. But then taking that same principle. A leading those old ideas. This past ideas, find expression, but also was in the present. You know, the ones that are kind of coming up now and thinking about. In some ways to me seems much more interesting to sketch out something that might happened sketch out some sort of. Possible story that might explain, the many different elements that are involved that might serve as the meeting point where the collision of all these various elements, could happen and whether or not. Those are the quote unquote official. Story, I think. That's part of what I'd like to explore. I feel like we're Well, be on the point where. That is, at all stranger unacceptable in terms of literary President. Just kinda interested in, sketching some of those things out in some ways, getting to that final draft. If you will. Is Really, not one of the main things on my mind. Yes, writing a final draft means that we kill off all the other possibilities, that there were. So many different possibilities. That's such rich Smith, was there, prior to making that final decision deciding.

Farthington's Voicemail: just voice Sings the Blues

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  At the request of researchers, enthusiasts, law enforcement agencies, and other followers of the project, voice-to-text transcriptions have been published as-is rather than edited for sense.  We hope that this will better capture the texture of the spoken word, rendering it more accessible and/or flexible for the diverse purposes of our audience. 

3/15/14 10:30 PM 5 days ago

Art:

Just walk around 12 midnight here something like that got a little one here and we'll go to sleep so. Just thinking out loud a little bit about this. Concert for. I saw and soul blog idea you know or we've spinning our wheels. We getting things done there moving in the right direction. And I don't know, what the answer to that question You know, at least done a certain level, seems like we're wasting time. I'm wasting time that. But You know, I think. At the very least one of the things that I'm trying to fight off at this point is, forgetting seems like But these songs cords You know just voice Sings the Blues court simple Ericsson. So on and so forth, is one of the things that I want to, commit to memory and my memory, does not serve so to commit these to memory sets eat. The flow at the socks. Even, the look of. My fingers. You know it's configuration set on the keyboard and on the guitar, course being able to write music with help a lot with. With that, but it's too late for that. And to have a permanent record. You know if so. That's the thought process at this point. In the meantime, lots of other things. Obviously, getting recorded some of which may be interesting. Some of which. Maybe not, but You know, I guess one of the things that I think of. It's just how much gets lost. In any process. I think that was one of the for the more startling revelations about. The May 30th show. Liz just I mean it was. It is pretty good and in many ways and very happy with the way that turned out I think you know, but I just can't help feeling a little bit especially since we never performed any of that material. Again, that It was A little under well, maybe. So.

Farthington's Voicemail Greeting #1

A treasure trove of Carlton Farthington's voicemails has recently been made available to the blog.  As way of introduction to this vast collection of audio files, we have included Farthington's voicemail greeting, along with the original text typed into his text-to-speech reader.



You have reached the voicemail box of Carlton Farthing tun

A farthing for your thoughts!

Tunnels within tunnels means an infinitude of nothing

And that’s a good thing…

I’m all ears…


no mouth anymore

“sadly”

not that a mouth can ever be taken away




you know the drill!

The Principles of Theory: Brown Bag Lunch Seminar

The following is an excerpt of correspondence between Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request. These notes formed the basis for Carlton Farthington's now notorious book The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  

Since his "accident," Carlton Farthington has spoken entirely with the aid of a text-to-speech reader. These excerpts were recently delivered as "speeches" to Cape Fear Community College students at the Union Station auditorium.  Go Sea Devils!




Text:

In the next five weeks, I’m going to arrange a series of five brown-bag lunch seminars at which we will have various experts from the community to talk about the hazards of the workplace.  I’ve already lined up Officer Morales to give a speech about the myriad of dangers that beset both patrons and employees in a library environment.  I told him that your students at the Natural Science Museum might find especially useful and interesting a section on the perils that sharp Tyrannosaurus Rex teeth can present in the maintenance and day-to-day upkeep of these razor-sharp relics of prehistory!  Maybe you could enlist the help of some of your students to build huge, life-sized papier mâché dinosaurs—the point being to show the magnitude and power of these creatures as they were when they roamed the earth many years ago.  Perhaps a huge, life-sized brontosaurus (propelled by twenty or so students) could be tackled and devoured by several veloceraptors.  Or a hapless T-Rex could be thrice-impaled on the deadly crest of a powerful triceratops.  Realistic, dramatic scenes from history would only serve to underscore Morales’s speech.  These types of things are something that students can really get into and can instill a new respect for the tall, bony monsters of yore that tower over them daily. Finally, Officer Morales will explain how dinosaurs could actually exist today and that the great white shark is in fact an ancient cousin of the Tyrannosaurus that grew fins and set off to patrol the mighty deep with it’s “gory mouth a-gape” (“The Sea Gorgon” by Shelley).  This is where Morales starts running after me or you or the both of us yelling that he’s a great white shark.  This will only drive home the point of how in Australia one in twenty people in the water is a great white shark.  Maybe at this point, all the dinosaurs could run outside and tackle each other and the shark and this would be a good time to really get all those feelings of aggression out in the open.  And Officer Morales will give a short closing speech about how far we have progressed since the dinosaurs.  That our brains are actually smaller than the dinosaurs and the shark, but that their brains have large parts of it devoted to senseless and random hunger.  The torn up dinosaur costumes scattered around us will only serve to put this profound truth in high relief.  Anyway, let me know what you think.  Interesting?  I’m off my rocker?  All of the above?  Let me know if you have any students who would like to spearhead this.

The Principles of Theory: Mayan Men of Math

The following is an excerpt of correspondence between Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request. These notes formed the basis for Carlton Farthington's now notorious book The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  

Since his "accident," Carlton Farthington has spoken entirely with the aid of a text-to-speech reader. These excerpts were recently delivered as "speeches" to Cape Fear Community College students at the Union Station auditorium.  Go Sea Devils!



Text:

The problem we encounter in speaking on the ever-popular topic of "dimensions," especially of "higher dimensions" is that we lack the linguistic apparatus to explicate the deep mathematical concepts involved. We are finding that the great Mayan mathematicians may have developed a technical language more amply equipped to grapple systematically with these unwieldy ideas.  Only now are we discovering stone tablets and in fact whole walls of writing that adumbrate some of their visionary experiments. 

Ted Newhausen at Stanford is spearheading much of this research and I had the honor of accompanying him to Chichen Itza last summer. Let me tell you, the process of deciphering a pictographic language is an arduous one, and our modern languages (Ted and I know seven between the two of us) are indeed too small a vessel to contain the mighty, gushing stream that is the Mayan tongue. One finding, however, published by Ted in the September issue of Zygon, revealed a kind of "visual cliff" experiment whereby these mighty Mayan "men of math" determined the age at which a baby forms its first inklings of that thing we call "time." 

We are learning, albeit slowly, how to explain these concepts that we so carelessly toss about like so many scraps of torn undergarments. Think about it: were you to approach the average man at his home and suggest to him that the "space" he inhabits has no conceptual value, you'd likely get nothing more out of him then a good boxing about the head. We are very attached to and even defensive about these concepts, as well we should be, but I would wager that even the boldest and most garrulous of mathematicians would be hard pressed to describe in plain language those ideas on which we place the very pillars of our existence.

The Principles of Theory: My Grandfather's Orchard (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of correspondence between Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request. These notes formed the basis for Carlton Farthington's now notorious book The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  

Since his "accident," Carlton Farthington has spoken entirely with the aid of a text-to-speech reader. These excerpts were recently delivered as "speeches" to Cape Fear Community College students at the Union Station auditorium.  Go Sea Devils!



Text:

We are bits of matter hurtling through the blank "what-ness" (I use Foucault's term) of time. We know that the universe is expanding in every conceivable direction: left, right, forward, backward, up, down, and everything in between. We do not, however, have the ability to move "forth and back" on the continuum of time. We move "forward" in time, but we are deprived of the experience of going "backward" in time. Thus, potential energy can be converted into kinetic energy, but the resultant kinetic energy will not, of its own accord, convert itself back into the potential state. 

Think of the dimensionless kernel that was our universe back before the big bang. Infinitesimal as it was, it nonetheless possessed a vast amount of potential energy, implying that it must have at one point existed as a far-flung diaspora of kinetically energetic matter, snapped back, as it were, from the outer edges of time. I am convinced that this expansion/contraction has occurred an infinite number of times, and that time is therefore itself expanding (and most probably contracting) along the continuum of yet another, unknown dimension. Suffice it to say that when the tide of matter begins receding from the shoreline of time, we will witness a complete reversal of inertial law.

The Principles of Theory: My Grandfather's Orchard (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of correspondence between Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request. These notes formed the basis for Carlton Farthington's now notorious book The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  

Since his "accident," Carlton Farthington has spoken entirely with the aid of a text-to-speech reader. These excerpts were recently delivered as "speeches" to Cape Fear Community College students at the Union Station auditorium.  Go Sea Devils!



Text:

In my youth, strolling through the peaceful acreage of my grandfather's orchard, I would reach up and pluck a ripe, beautiful apple from a bended branch and eat it, its sweet juice erupting from my mouth and trickling in rivulets down my neck into my shirt. I fancied myself a "devourer of apples," and would spend the better part of each day sinking my young white pearlies into the ripe flesh of these "forbidden fruits." Grandma would chide me for my indulgence, but, young, incorrigible man I was I would merely laugh and chase her through the rows of trees, pegging her with apples. To me, apples were, as you say "a delicious fruit." But in another sense, at least insofar as Grandma was concerned, they also had hard, stone-like properties. And so I saw the dissolution and diminution of something that had once represented an elemental whole. 

On the densely empixelated white of this computer screen I can in some way lay claim to that unsullied image of truth/beauty, i.e. the veritable geysers of sweet juice o'erbrimming the small confines of my mouth. Like a mason laying brick, I can stack words around the fact that in my hands these ruddy vessels of purity became instruments of hurt, missiles of malignment. We can say that the kernel of truth that was "apple" has "exploded," not only into the sticky mess on my hands and face, but into a widely differentiated range of uses and experiences. 

The question is whether that which has been differentiated can in turn be reintegrated, that is, returned to its original state of wholeness. The answer is no, we are currently incapable of reintegrating that which we have differentiated, fettered, as it were, by the laws of physics. Just as a popped piece of popcorn can never return to the "fully integrated" kernel form, neither can my apples return to their pendulous "state of grace," not yet compromised by their involvement with the back of Grandma's head.

The Principles of Theory: Popcorn

The following is an excerpt of correspondence between Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request. These notes formed the basis for Carlton Farthington's now notorious book The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas.  

Since his "accident," Carlton Farthington has spoken entirely with the aid of a text-to-speech reader. These excerpts were recently delivered as "speeches" to Cape Fear Community College students at the Union Station auditorium.  Go Sea Devils!



Text:

The essence of any argument is a kernel of truth.  This "kernel of truth,” of course, can be quite useful. In and of itself, however, it has no palpable existence. I read some interesting research by Jeff Rosenthal out at Berkeley. He discovered that human beings are made out of 70% water. This finding, as you know, set the scientific world on its ear. Even more disturbing, however, was his further discovery that 99% of this water is in fact air and that 20% of this air is in fact nothing, just a whorling black hole.  And, if that weren't enough, the other 30% of our bodies are made up of hot, vaporous steam. 

What we are finding is that the human body (and perhaps other types of matter) is made up of absolutely nothing. These discoveries may cause you to panic and eat a lot of heavy, dense food such as pizza and eliminate things like rice cakes and water, which are actually made up of close to 100% air. But that "kernel" you speak of does contain something elemental that is of use to us. A kernel of corn, when spun around in the hot, desert-like environment of a popcorn "popper," will soon spontaneously blossom into a fluffy, cloud-like flower known to movie goers as "popcorn." Pour some thick, golden butter and sprinkle some granular granules of iodized salt, and you have a pop-ular snack that just about everyone enjoys.

Into the Volcano (Tunnels Within Tunnels Ad Infinitum) (song fragment)

The following is one of a series of song fragments Arthur seemed to be working on in the days and weeks leading up to the Concert for Iceland.  Recorded in a variety of formats and locations, these tracks will be released as they become available.

Chords:
Intro: Dmaj7, Cmaj7
Main part: D, Dmaj7, Dm7, G7, Cmaj7

Here's what it sounds like right now. It will come off the last D chord as Arthur transitions back into the electric, ecstatic morass.

Will, you will be attempting to crush your drums with some pretty intense drumming à la Tony Williams on Miles Davis's "Fall" or the drummer at the end of The Dells' "Love We Had Stays on my Mind." Again, I think an added bonus would be rolls that don't terminate until a little ways into the next loop. 

Father, you'll probably be playing the electronic bass line as is with whatever variations you like (sliding up to octaves possibly, but mostly strengthening that line). I guess thematically you're going to remain "grounded" in the midst of all this insanity. 

Max, I see you having technical difficulties with your guitar at this point, hitting a sustained high D perhaps, only to lose your connection. You'll be doing that, fiddling intermittently with your guitar cord.

I would like to do this song live, possibly at the beginning of a show. It would be a knockout punch with about 5 synthesizers going!

Spotify link: http://sptfy.com/3fr

The Principles of Theory: Forward [sic]

The Principles of Theory: A Systematic Approach to Ideas is considered the masterwork of Dr. Carlton Farthington and a colleague whose name has since been redacted by request.  The text was culled from emails sent between the two men as they conducted a controversial summer "pilot program" at a prestigious Midwestern university.  This letter, sent by their student, Steffi, was originally used as the work's "Forward" [sic].

October 20, 19--

Dear Professor [NAME REDACTED],

I was there in the tunnels.

This was after the university canned the pilot program and had supposedly sent us home.  I heard about the beast.  They all told me about it.

We didn’t care about college credit anymore.

We had made it to the third subbasement and next floor down was the entrance to the subterranean caves, which, in turn, led down to the center of the earth, safe haven from all the turbulent reversals we thought so imminent.

The whole group of us were down in the tunnels, constructing long corridors of cardboard tied with twine—“tunnels within tunnels” he called them, and via these passageways, he theorized we would pass over safely into the “new physics.”

I myself caught glimpses of the terrible beast Farthington had warned about, sometimes swaggering in the distance up ahead of us in the dim intermittent rays of our flashlights, sometimes turning around suddenly to face us, its human physiognomy smiling to reveal a terrifying array of lion's teeth.

Many of the students stayed on well into the next school year, long after I’d decided to go back to Oberlin.  The university tried its best to cover up what happened to them.  That they had all been devoured by a lion and that the lion had been found and shot and there was a vague mention of a nearby zoo.

That they are dead and gone is indubitable Professor [NAME REDACTED].  But that summer lives on in my memory and in these brief electronic transmissions of which I have honor of laying claim.  May the brilliance of this unheralded mind cast a light through the befuddled corridors of multidimensional learning, what Farthington before his death so fondly referred to as “The Principles of Theory.”

Steffi

Head Over Heels

Performance aired 30 May 1975 on the Detroit Public Television show All Things New with Fr. Bernard.

"An Evening with Arthur White" Set List/Notes

Performance aired 30 May 1975 on the Detroit Public Television show All Things New with Fr. Bernard.

1. Helen of Troy Suite (Invocation; Parts A, B, and/or C--we need to arrange)
• Father plays Invocation on organ to coax Arthur out of mind warp; Arthur rises to sings Invocation; takes over from Father at the keys to play two or more of the other parts as an introduction; Father finishes the song on bass
2. Message of Love
• At end of "Helen of Troy," Will taps out tempo and we launch into "Message of Love" immediately
3. Head Over Heels
• Songs 3-8 we may whittle down on the basis of what sounds best, but I’ve basically organized them to go from prosperity to adversity, as Aristotle would say
4. We Won’t Give Up the Fight
5. Hands Reach Through the Haze
6. Losing Game
7. The Splinter
• Father definitely needs to be on organ for this one
8. Centerstage (sheet music available; not recorded yet)
9. Helen of Troy Suite (Main song; possibly Parts A, B, and/or C--we need to arrange)
• Bookending the main set is "Helen of Troy," which is now heard from the standpoint of desolation and chastisement.  At some point as the band is vamping the outtro, Arthur rises from the organ, sneaks to the front of the stage, places a tape in an envelope addressed to Joe Lazarus Sr., and drifts out through the audience and out the door. Will pursues.
10. Encore: The Treatment?

An Early Chronology of Songs (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 26 August 2012.

Arthur White's Apotheosis:

Not sure how this happens, but Arthur White loses his band and his family at this point.  The loss of The Sweet World occurs at the end (or perhaps before the end) of the Asian tour.  Thus in "Tokyo Nights," he muses: "Wonder if I could bail on the boys in the band."  Apotheosis is kind of like Hendrix's Band of Gypsies with maybe only a live album.

• Tokyo Nights
• Losing Game
• Tell Me Why (You Took Away My Children)

Asian spiritual odyssey (kind of like Richard Alpert/Ram Dass or Leonard Cohen): Burned by these losses, Arthur White tries to find solace in the spiritual, parting ways with the band after their show at the Budokan (perhaps he leaves between the first and second show).

• Arthur White Theme
• Centerstage
• Paradise Parade
• High Time
• Tryptych

Arthur White's Brand New Life

Whereas I personally would likely have gone with an austere Zen or Theravadin Buddhist monastic tradition, I think these are too imaginatively impoverished for Arthur White.  He gets embroiled in some arcane, convoluted cult run by some megalomaniac charlatan, ultimately signing over all his possessions, including his entire discography.

I see him having been asked to destroy his music because it is too worldly, but the cult double deals with him and actually holds onto the rights, thinking they may be valuable later.  He does eventually get out, but there are rumors of him being followed and even that his life is in danger.  Having undergone brainwashing, he is racked with doubts about his choice to escape. There are probably some more difficult romantic relationships in here as well.

• Seven Storey Mountain
• Mountain Cave
• The Splinter

Somehow, Arthur finds the peace of mind necessary to bang out some very strange, new songs--a seeming total departure musically and lyrically from things he's written in the past (wonder why!).  Maybe he starts trying to reconnect with his children, etc.  This could be a burst of clarity right before his ultimate demise, almost like he has a premonition of his imminent transcendence and is no longer grasping.

• Brand New Life Theme
• Selling My Gold
• Retire the Empire
• Helen of Troy

An Early Chronology of Songs (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 26 August 2012.

Okay, here's a tentative chronology of some songs with the bands that played them underlined:

The Sweet World of Arthur White:

This is the far-off gaze on the object of love.  Some problems, but still highly idealized.  Would corresponds to the novice stage of religious life, courtship phase of romantic life.

• Could I Be The One?
• Message of Love
• Head Over Heels
• The Treatment
• The Guarantee
• Give You a Taste

Next seems to come some kind of commitment phase, profession of vows, married or religious. Continues with previous list of songs, but these feature more of a spiritual/existential horizon.  This is also a bit of a "Yoko" phase for the Sweet World as Arthur disappears into family life a bit more.   "Hands Reach Through the Haze" is written for his first daughter.  This tendency toward isolation--while relatively healthy and appropriate in the context of marriage and family--will become disordered later on as those things fall apart.

• Bird's Eye View
• One and Only
• Hands Reach Through the Haze

After some initial success, he is approached by Serbian-American filmmaker Bohdan Damien...(can't remember his last name), and writes a partial score for the never-released movie Street Heat.  I like the thought that Arthur White, after the movie's demise, releasing the music under the album name: Music That I Wrote for the Movie Street Heat.

• Sweet World Intro
• Sweet World Genesis
• Rocketship

Probably would name these songs something different for the movie, but when the movie didn't happen, that's what I ended up calling them.  Maybe "Theme from Street Heat" or "Arthur Plays It Cool" would suffice.

Questions for Will

The following is excerpted from a December 2012 email exchange between Will and Art.

What role does Agniesczka play?  

I don't foresee getting an actress to play her.  At most, we might need some old photographs, but even those could be of her and the kids.   

In the old days, Arthur wasn't around much or there wasn't any reason for her to end up in the band footage, so she is mostly just alluded to in the narrative.  In the present day, she is dead or otherwise gone.   

I do hope for a day when we turn the whole story into a musical; at that point, neither of us will play our roles, so we can develop her role more fully then--and that of Will's girlfriend Linda--when there's no need for us to do the acting.  Will spends most of his life in the future and Arthur has a really tenuous relationship with chronological time, so I don't see either of them as big picture takers.

Why would Will use marriage to control Arthur?  

Will is torn between his Polish roots and his New World roots.   

His New World roots can only think in terms of being a swinging single: initially, he tempts Arthur into forming The Sweet World through women.   

He feels guilty about that when he sees how that path nearly destroyed him, so he turns to the Old World alternative: marriage. Will can't think in terms of celibacy, which is what Arthur really needs.  But if Arthur becomes a monk or hermit, he can't be a rock star.  Plus, celibacy just seems to weird and unnatural to a modern man like Will.   

So Will wants to make amends (here again is how we keep Will from wearing a black top hat and twirling his mustache).  Will took a vow that he would make his brother a star. His approach in the Sweet World failed, so he tries another approach, grounded in a very Polish vision of stability (marriage and church) as well as a 70's vision (psychology, counseling, support groups, settling down).   

I think Will feels that if Arthur has stability at home, he can compartmentalize and be a husband and father by day and a rock star by night.  Initially, Arthur sings about domestic bliss, but soon he feels called to subjects like confessing his guilt and the state of America's soul.   

As Arthur comes closer to singing about the things he feels called to sing about, his marriage, band, and relationship with his brother deteriorate.  Will sees everything that he tried to build for Arthur falling apart and resents him for it.  Will can only think in terms of real-world responsibilities, and here's Arthur chasing ghosts while the woods are burning.  

The ECT is a combination of revenge, resentment, a quest for control, love for his brother, and fear that his brother may be right and that everything Will has pursued is wrong. 

Will's hamartia is a type of misguided nobility.  If you want to go as far as a lobotomy, we can; I think he does need to be permanently scarred from his institutionalization, but ECT might be enough.  The treatment severs his ability to easily distinguish between past, present, and future, real and mystical, word and deed.  His capacity to distinguish what is reality the way other people perceive it and what is his own mystical connection to God was never strong to begin with, but it's gone now.   

Will is too salt of the earth to get that, and he just sees crazy.  Joe will figure it out, though, and help Arthur reenter the world.

An Austere Cult

The following is an excerpt of a 26 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will.

I still see an austere cult as fitting the story/songs, for several reasons.

It's more in keeping with the meaning/process of apotheosis

I'm thinking very much of Ovid's (my paesan, who lived and wrote just 20 miles north of where my family originates!) telling of Heracles poisoning and subsequent apotheosis.  Apotheosis usually (to my knowledge, always) involves a burning away of the human so that the only divine is left.  It's a pagan concept, co-opted probably by the Manichaeans, but it is also not a far cry from John of the Cross or Catherine of Genoa.

So apotheosis would not likely happen after or during a period of self-indulgence, but rather after a period of self-abnegation and mortification.  I think it's perfect that Heracles' apotheosis occurs shortly after his new wife is almost kidnapped by a centaur, and that, upon realizing that he has been poisoned, he initiates his apotheosis himself (building and igniting his own funeral pyre!).  Likewise, Arthur's initiates his own imagined apotheosis during or shortly after his divorce.

It's more in keeping with the normative rock/r&b star phenomenon

I see the spirituality of chastened hubris as the more common phenomenon when it comes to rock star types (cf. George Harrison and the Beatles generally, John MacLaughlin/Mahavishnu, Carlos Santana, Robert Alpert/Ram Dass, Stevie Wonder, etc., etc.).

You can also lump in Al Green and Marvin Gaye, who, when burned by the fires of human love, would retreat into spirituality (the Rev. Al Green did this for a couple decades after his then girlfriend assaulted him with a pan of hot grits and then committed suicide).

I am less impressed by the more modern phenomenon of Scientology and Kabbala (and by the types of people who tend fall into it).  I think  it's a distinctly different phenomenon and one reserved for people who don't have the rich spiritual background (such as Catholics or blacks have).

It more clearly parallels the normative path as laid out by the mystical doctors of the Church

I really see this as key to the plot line of this story.

It's borrowed loosely from the Household Saints character Teresa Santangelo, played by Lili Taylor. By the end of the movie, it's clear that, in spite of getting knocked off the traditional saintly path by modernity, she nonetheless became the saint God intended her to be.

In short, it seems that God used the spiritual desolation of modern life as her road of trials.

Arthur goes through a similar process.  His divorce is a distorted version of the dark night of the senses. The cult represents a distorted version of the dark night of the spirit.  Electroshock represents the final threshold after which Arthur arrives at a distorted version of "the soul in a state of perfection" from which it is unlikely to fall again (in his case, a pure spiritual state that many ascribe to cognitively disabled people).

In other words, all these stages have their normative counterpart in mysticism.

But, since modern American life provides none of the traditional guides or guideposts (once widely available to anyone desiring to embark on the journey toward God), God intervenes and sanctifies Arthur through these counterfeit, unintended trials.

It illustrates something that I believe generally about an unbelieving age: that many modern saints (though probably not the canonized ones) will be sanctified almost entirely within God's consequent (as opposed to antecedent) will.  The irony is that someone who departs from God's will can't fully free himself from God's will; God's will asserts itself even in an evil and unbelieving age.

Yes, Jonah returns to the right path and preaches repentance to the Ninevites, but the famed "sign of Jonah" is his time spent in the belly of the whale!

A sudden loss of musical inspiration wouldn't seem rational

One of the ideas implicit in the distorted spiritual path concept is that something pure persists in spite of being dragged through the muck.  It's a very incarnational idea.

In the case of Arthur White, that something is music.

Whether he is at the height of his hubris/bravado, in the abyss of his involvement with a cult, or even the catatonia of his post-electroshock life, the music persists.  In fact, it is paradoxically strengthened by each debasement.  Grace flourishes further.

I know that a cult could be considered an "irrational element" that brings about an abrupt change (such as an abrupt loss of musical taste/talent), but, like Aristotle, I believe that irrational elements (another one would be deus ex machina) should be kept to a minimum.  It seems more likely that his inspiration would remain with him through this period as well.

Pino Marelli

The following is an excerpt of a 7 December 2013 email sent from Art to Will.

I like the backing band ideas, definitely.

I'm honored that you think these songs are deserving of that treatment (the ones we've co-written too, of course).

Pino Marelli in Sarasota

We are on the same page with the late-80s Leonard Cohen, but I was thinking even further in that direction:

I want to pre-record strange synthesized backing tracks to play with live.

I have been a big fan of this for a long time, although, admittedly, in an ironic Gen-X kind of way.

I get the hugest kick when, for example, in Italy, I'm wandering the streets hearing some cheesy band playing and I round the corner and it's just one guy playing guitar with a backing track!

Italians, in particular, have seen this as a monumental breakthrough in the history of music; it really has become the industry standard at most Italian gatherings.  The most recent one I saw was Pino Marelli at the Italian American Club of Lansing dinner.

The advantages of this approach are myriad:

• It is culturally accurate to our identities: immigrant populations are unencumbered by culturally elitist concepts like authentic/fake, cool/cheesy, analog/digital, etc.
• It takes steps toward and facilitates later, more full-fledged projects in that potential collaborators can start learning songs and MIDI recordings can be turned into sheet music
• Its tracks can be muted/un-muted depending on the personnel we happen to have on hand 
• It can be added to and improved through time
• It is considered hopelessly tacky, way more so than Leonard Cohen
• It allows you and I can work on these songs at our leisure
• I did this once before back in my Ann Arbor days and the hipsters really liked it

Spotify link: http://sptfy.com/5Qf

An Unnamed Rustbelt City

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 28 December 2013.

I thought this would be a good time to explore Arthur's "miserable, dejected state," especially since Will is gone.

I want to play karaoke-style versions of my songs because that's all I have left (both in real life and in the story).  I think it makes sense that this is when you find me, Joe.

I'm thinking about some pretty intense character disguise with a white beard, shoulder-length white hair, and an old beat-up Cosby sweater.  Maybe I could even be playing my songs on my beat-up classical guitar at one of these corners where you see people begging (I don't know--that's probably insensitive).

This is when Joe Lazarus finds me and takes me in to his home "in an unnamed northern rustbelt city" (unnamed for fear of Farthington's thugs).  Here they set about attempting to re-record the lost songs (documenting the results in words, pictures, video, and rough tracks).

Long story short, this is a much scaled-down phase of the project, one that will allow me to work on songs and keep the story somewhat on people's radar.

Posting old pictures would be another thing.  In addition to working on my "old" Arthur White look, I want to work on the younger one as well.  Once I have that put together, I may start "leaking" some more old photos.  If either of you feel like getting into costume and finding an authentic setting (does Joe have/need a costume?), we could start stockpiling some photos from "the past."

A final disclaimer is that these things may take a period of several months to get up and running.  In other words, I may do a lot of work before officially "launching" this phase.

A Mechanical Spider Built of Harpsichord Parts

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 24 August 2012.

As for Arthur White's love life, I think it's very Marvin Gaye influenced.

It's kind of a feast or famine, with no middle ground of quotidian, pedestrian realities of love.

It is clear in Marvin's case how this idealization of his love object leads him headlong toward his own ignominious downfall.

But one can also see in his personal catastrophe a distorted version of the contemplative's singleminded desire for divine union, a desire that renders everything else--praiseworthy worldly endeavors, the beauty of creation, even sweetness in prayer--repugnant.

There's nothing wrong with this kind of love; it's just when it is focused on a creature rather than the Creator that it tends to burn up and destroy everything. God alone is the appropriate object of such unrestrained adoration.  Arthur White's Asian odyssey (post-"Tokyo Nights") stems from this same impulse, but results in more burnout as he is drawn into some kind of destructive cult.

Maybe they're the ones who have prevented the release of his music!

At this point, I think Arthur White is at the end of his love life.  Involvement in the cult places a barrier between him and the earlier period, which is a wasteland of abandoned wives and children.

From now on, the only love song he'll ever write will be akin to the saccharine-sweet, stomach-turning Marvin Gaye song "Falling in Love Again":

I found somebody...said she loves me

This song, buried as it is at the end of Here, My Dear, is so disturbing in light of everything that has come before and in its weird instrumentation, which for some reason sounds to me like a mechanical spider made out of harpsichord parts.

There's something to a song where someone who has plumbed the depths of misery tries something utterly shallow and superficial again, when everyone--artist and audience alike--knows that it will only hasten his demise.

Spotify link: http://sptfy.com/5Qe

The Thoroughly Dionysian Underpinnings of This Universe

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 20 February 2014.

I have really been enjoying this Internet vision a lot.  Whether anyone else will enjoy it is another matter, but, for the time being, it giving me a surge of purpose and creativity.

At any rate, I figured it's probably just as well that I manage the blog and other electronic aspects of this approach.  I did, however, want to ask you if I can continue to "curate" your emails alongside my own (I've only done the "Interview with Rustyy" so far).

I'm thinking, for example, of your January 24th message about the Apple rep, which I loved.

What I'm proposing is that you let me edit these a little--breaking up your paragraphs into a more journalistic style that bloggers favor (e.g. occasionally giving a significant thought its own one-sentence paragraph).  The alternative would be that, when I find something that I like, I could send it back to you and you can edit it yourself.

Here's a preview of the post I was planning using that email.  I've also titled it.

Beyond that, I am just laying the thoroughly Dionysian underpinnings of this universe.  The blog, its search tools, and a few other structural components will later provide the requisite Apollonian "stage" through which to glimpse the Dionysian horror without being destroyed.

I'm going to begin working in some of The Principles of Theory material next (interestingly, another story told primarily through emails), perhaps followed by some "song fragments" (pieces Arthur was working on just prior to the Concert for Iceland), and other artifacts.

In all of this--the excerpting of emails, the curating of artifacts, etc.--something makes you wonder if all these people suffered some horrible demise.  And if that's true, who is running the blog?  And how can Arthur White "return"?

Actually, according to The Principles of Theory, the badly mangled body of Carlton Farthington was found in the third-floor subbasement of the steam tunnels beneath University of Michigan's campus 17 years ago this September.

How, then, has he returned to write these upbeat but strangely disconcerting emails?

Concert for Iceland Update

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2013 email sent from Art to Will and Joe.

I want to start the re-recording process with songs from Concert for Iceland, which I see as Arthur White's last show under his full powers.

Some of the material relates Arthur's marital and mental breakdown, but also some hopeful songs in which he is clearly breaking free from the sham promises of Carlton Farthington.  I'm not sure Arthur even made it to Iceland: this may have been when Will staged his definitive intervention.  Indeed, in the song "Iceland," Arthur seemed to be under the impression that Iceland is made entirely of ice (thus rendering the volcanic explosion even more devastating in his mind).  But he was at least ready to go and not just for the concert.

The true object of the trip is explained in Farthington's Principles of Theory.

The other exciting possibility in this stage is the rediscovery of famed guitarist Rustyy Kryystyylz, who was planning on playing the benefit concert with Arthur.  This was widely seen as a potential new creative collaboration after the dissolution of The Sweet World.

A funny show would be Arthur and Rustyy playing along with a karaoke machine, dramatizing just how both had fallen after the failed benefit.

Agniesczka's Theme (song fragment)

The following is one of a series of song fragments Arthur seemed to be working on in the days and weeks leading up to the Concert for Iceland.  Recorded in a variety of formats and locations, these tracks will be released as they become available.



Part 1: G, C, G, C, G, C, F, G (2x), G, C
Part 2: Em, Am, F(add B), C, Am, F(add B), Fm, Fm13, C/G, Em/G, Edim/G, F, Fm, Fm13, C

Okay, here's a rough take of "Agniesczka's Theme," which is so unbelievably sappy I'm afraid it's plagiarized.  I hope you can hear from my shabby lead work in the second part the kind of anthemic, stadium-type guitar I am seeking.  Drum wise I hear tympani crescendo-type build up in that part as well.  In other words make it as maudlin and melodramatic as possible!

I don't know whether to stand up and cheer or vomit in my mouth.

A Purgative Desert for the Soul!

The following is a December 2012 email exchange between Will and Art.

Will:

It's important to me that Arthur, devoid of Will's interference, would become a saint...that the American Dream is an obstacle to sainthood.  It is God's antecedent will for Arthur to be a saint, and his consequent will that he becomes one after Will's misguided attempts to help him.  Will has a more consequent path, although I struggle with the distinction.

Art:

Again, I more or less agree.  I would just throw in a slight seed of doubt about the American Dream as "an obstacle to sainthood."  Although I pretty much agree with that statement, I can't help remembering this passage from Romans 8:35, 37: 

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?...

No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.

The amazing thing is that not even the American Dream can separate us from the love of Christ.  I realize this is different than those first-century persecutions because, in our case, we are complicit in it.  But this is the genius of works like "The Wasteland" and Household Saints: the idea that modernity, in all its spiritual impoverishment and distraction, is a kind of purgative desert for the soul!

The Church and the Pyramids

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 10 October 2012.

Financing is an interesting problem.

There aren't many ways around it, though.  At the risk of sounding pitiful, I basically have NO disposable income at all, with no prospects of having any in the near future.

Of all the possible routes to take, I'm most comfortable sitting down with my uncle, who has been a big fan and who paid to get my sheet music made.  I wouldn't borrow from anyone but family, so personal liability would not enter into the equation.  I do plan to talk to him about the logistics of paying (or not paying) collaborators and band members.  Whom, how much, at what point in the process, etc...

Part of what I'm struggling with right now is staying centered.

I do feel that the Holy Spirit has been at work in all this.  There are moments, however, when I feel confronted by an endless array of possibilities and I don't know what to do first.   Being short of time and money has been a blessing in a way because I know that, whatever I choose to do, I've got to make it "count."  I've got to choose the most practical course of action and make as much headway as possible before the hurricane comes back.  For me, that means getting these songs ready for launch under any circumstances.  While I still feel drawn to the Thoreauvian idea of building one's castles in the air, I find the approach of building from the ground up sounder.

It's like the women who brought enough oil to meet the bridegroom: focus on the fundamentals and the transcendent will eventually arrive.  As I said, I like Death as the best advisor in matters of importance.

Of course, this project may not truly be important in the wider scheme of things, but Death can rank order things even within a limited context.  So my question is: What if I were to die, say, at the end of this year?  What would be the best steps to take in terms of bringing the project to fulfillment?  I keep falling back on getting the mock-ups complete.  If I got the mock-ups complete, along with the sheet music, and made this available to people who are committed to the music, they could do the rest.  Now, hopefully I survive beyond this year, but if I don't, what I've built is something that can weather anything the world can throw at it.  Take your potential move coming up--this step would allow us to begin the recording process miles apart or prepare for your return.

But the bottom line is the old cliché about putting one step in front of the other.  What I would add to that cliché is that the step should be the best, most productive step available.  And, generally speaking, that it needn't be a leap or a lunge.

At some point, there will need to be some intervention from above.  I mean that in terms of God's grace, but it could also manifest as powerful benefactors, knowledgeable guides, and/or talented collaborators.  The correct disposition strikes me as being akin to what mystics have remarked about the spiritual life: you need to humbly slog it out with the rudiments and then God eventually comes down and infuses your pitiful efforts with divine grace.

Novices tend to grasp at the transcendent experiences when the only way to keep them is to keep one's eyes to the ground.  I've had enough things happen to know that God does seem to have some plan for this project, even if it is merely to move us all closer toward renunciation. I used to stress about how it would come about, when I saw other people winning the Hopwood or having a book published or whatnot.  But those successes were either part of the Pyramids or part of the Church.  If they were pyramids, they achieved nothing.

As I get older, I want less and less to spend time building pyramids.

So, we're about to enter into the year and, at least for me, it will mean a big slowdown with this project.  The financing is not likely a step that I will address much this year, although I will keep my eyes and ears open.  As with your moving, I want to prepare you for my disappearance into another busy school year.  It's not that I'm an especially intense teacher, it's just that I'm a moderately intense teacher with a wife and 6 kids!

I hope to emerge on the other side a few steps closer to total mobilization.  I'm honored and humbled at the amount of interest you take in the project.  If you did nothing but work on drum parts for the songs as I send them along (Garageband files, from now on), that would be huge.  If you can figure out how to lay down those parts on Garageband and send them back, that would be amazing.  Perhaps you want to devote yourself to something else, like the wikipedia story...whatever you do, I'm totally psyched.

Veni Sancte Spiritus!

Webmaster

The following is a January 2014 email exchange between Will and Art.

Will:

I was thinking...it cracks me up that my alter ego is Will, but that yours is really not just Arthur, but Dr. Farthington.  Farthington, like Will, wants to impose order in Arthur's world, but it's an order that completely disrupts Will's sense of order.   

Simultaneously, his presence in the story tends to be my biggest obstacle...he consistently messes with the vice grip I'd like to have on the story.   

It's pretty awesome!

Art:

Indeed, that is interesting.   

And actually, here's another interesting factor: I have my own "vice grip," an Apollonian side of my own when it comes to certain things...a side that is coming out as I work on this blog (which attempts to bring order to the underlying chaos).  I guess that's Carlton Farthington in a sense, channeling Art and Will's efforts toward his own ends.   

I like a clean, polished, eminently intelligible interface...that's Apollonian.   It's not everything that I want it to be because I'm not a web designer (I want to hire one some day), but it's clearly something that I obsess about.   

Much of my content may be Dionysian, but, with this blog, I find myself searching for different ways of framing and organizing the material (naming conventions, labels, sidebar, and--when we have enough content--a horizontal navigation bar, possibly with drop-down menus). 

I don't want to edit the content of what we've posted, but, in my role as "webmaster," I will exert a strong editorial impulse to make sure everything fits within the organizational underpinnings of the blog. 

I originally thought that maybe we should spend a lot of time brainstorming exactly how to roll things out, etc. but I also wonder if we should just get a posting schedule going and give it a try for a while before evaluating it.  In some ways, I think the overarching architecture of the site will be what makes it all cohere. 

But, as Ezra Pound wrote in his Cantos, "I cannot make it cohere."

We're a Nietzschean Dialectic!

The following is a January 2014 email exchange between Art and Will.

Will:

I think constructing the story of Arthur White fits my Apollonian leanings and throwing it in a postmodern blender fits your Dionysian leanings.   

I'd love to talk whenever you have the chance, but I think it's clear that as far as we and our alter egos are concerned, after we come up with ideas, my job is mostly to impose order and your job is mostly to mess with it.   

I'm most in my element trying to form the legend in my head from start to finish.  I think it's best that you take charge of the architecture of all things stream of consciousness, meta-narrative, disjointed, post-structuralist, tangential, and destabilizing.   

I'm hardwired to write an epic morality tale...that's the strength and the shortcoming I bring to the table.  I'm depending on you to screw that up in meaningful ways...I hope you'll depend on me be the straightening force. 

I think carltonfarthington@gmail.com falls under the purview of your wisdom, not mine.  I think it's a good idea not because I get it, but because you do.

Art:

Yes, I remember now: we're a Nietzschean dialectic!  

Nietzsche was bent bringing back the Dionysian, which he felt had been paved over by the Socratic man, the Alexandrian age, the Enlightenment, his own age...   

But I would like to rewind back to the Hegelian and say, you're right: we need to "know no shrinking or half heartedness" in being the thing we most are.  That's what the all-important sublation/synthesis most needs in order to occur.   The "only wrong" in this dynamic is when "one desires to deny the other power" not realizing itself as just one part of the synthetic whole.   

And I'm referencing Hegel's ideas on tragedy, so there is danger in this.   

As A.C. Bradley explains in his lectures on Hegel, what is tragic about tragedy is that the observance of one power involves the violation of the other (usually with one or more deaths in the process).  But Hegel also pointed out tragedies in which the synthesis is achieved through adjustment of demands/repentance.   

Like how Athena is able to save Orestes by brokering a deal between Apollo (Apollonian/Olympian) and the Furies (Dionysian/Chthonic).  I think we want to go for that latter option, appreciating and making room for the demands of the other...all without falling into half-heartedness.   

And yes, I do look to you to be that other, straightening force!

Will:

It's working...I'm already questioning whether you wrote that response or Dr. Carlton Farthington did!

The Church and the Tower of Babel

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 16 January 2014.

So, I've been racking my brain about some of the details.

I think I want to talk to you on the phone or over Google hangouts at some point about how we will configure the release of these sundry elements (emails, videos, blog posts, etc.).  I think that discussion definitely should be prefaced with a prayer to the Holy Spirit!

We are walking that fine line between the Church ("every man heard him speaking in his own language") and the Tower of Babel ("The Lord confounded the language of all the earth").

That conversation aside, I'd like to slowly but surely start preparing the basic architecture.

The choice of whose account the blog is under seems a critical choice.  As you know, my vote is for carltonfarthington@gmail.com.  That said, I want to configure things on the blog so that this fact is not at all obvious.

Actually, I want people to get the initial impression that it's Art and Will--the real-life teachers in an impossible, barely existent band--doing the blog, talking about their alter egos, Arthur White and Will Witkowski.

The unique circularity this configuration achieves is that one of the least believable characters, Carlton Farthington, ultimately lays claim to the outer frame, rendering the existence and/or agency of all the other characters, including the real-life Art and Will, suspect.

I only want this to occur in the case that someone clicks the "Contact Us" link and sees carltonfarthington@gmail.com show up in the address line.  I might like to bury that information even further, such that someone would have to search around a little bit (perhaps run "Carlton Farthington" through a search engine and have his blog, "The Return of Arthur White," show up in the results).

Or even further, to bury this very thing I'm writing now somewhere in the blog, engendering even more epistemological despair in that Art seems to be the one writing the post but Carlton Farthington is the one posting it on his blog!

We Resolve to Awe and Wonder

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 14 January 2014.

I see what you mean regarding manageability.  My initial thought is that it is a lot more manageable (devil often lurking in the details, of course).

We are writing and otherwise producing volumes of stuff that works within our narrative, because our narrative had already embraced meta-narrative as an integral element long before this recent development.

This is just taking it one step further.

As far as the digital proficiencies, I consider myself pretty capable having been a long-time technology coach/point person in my district.  I've never been a big blogger, but I am adept at mastering and integrating new technologies.  I see a lot of what I like in certain blogs and feel I can replicate the basics of what I see there.  That said, I want to dink around with things for a while before opening it up to the general public.

In terms of losing the wow factor of finished products, I see the concern...

But I feel like our current model has us continually falling off everyone's map (as if we were ever there in the first place).  I have a lot more time to make my way over to the computer or down into the basement than I do to lug equipment to this or that practice or show (which I nonetheless still maintain as one of our preeminent goals).  If we share songs and longings and ideas, faithful followers can potentially have the excitement of seeing sad, lonely chords banged out on a piano transformed into full-fledged extravaganzas with guitars blazing, etc.  And they can participate, they can commune, they can contribute...just like we intended in the first place!

I like what you said about the meta-narrative as well, how it should not just be the domain of relativism.  Instead of necessarily pointing toward the relative, I see it as pointing toward the irrational, which is a wholly baptize-able concept.  Irrational, in mathematical terms, means "cannot be reduced to a ratio or fraction."  So pi, phi, square root of 2, etc. are irrational.  Many times, what Jesus said is irrational in the sense that I've defined above.  Think ye on this (1 Corinthians 1:22-25):

For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom,
but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

I don't think it irreligious to say that we can't reduce God and/or His Universe to straightforward formulas, patterns, and quantities.  Without talking about religion all the time, I think that we--having been created in the image and likeness of that most irrational Creator--might very well partake in that irrationality in our own creations.  Does that mean that God is without symmetries, without rhyme or reason?  Of course not.  But we won't be pigeonholing him in our small-minded human projects and conceptions, reducing down him into comprehensible fractions, integers, natural numbers, etc.  That would be the conceit of the Enlightenment and its intellectual progeny.

As you say, we resolve to awe and wonder.

Resolution to Wonder

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 13 January 2014.

I've always loved tangential meta-narratives, but I also love art that doesn't show signs of its process at all.

I would bet that every great piece of art has a great story behind it, but the art itself should be amazing regardless of the story.  By turning the story into the art, we may lose the wow factor of the "finished" products.  We'd have to maintain a fairly rigorous level of dynamism: the infrequent narration of a story in which nothing happens won't advance our cause.

One of my favorite things about your idea is that it has the potential to subvert a postmodern form: the meta-narrative.

I think the great modern writers generally hated the doctrine of modernism, and I think we may be in a similar boat, striving for Catholic orthodoxy while creating postmodern art.  I don't know a great way to put this, but I see in Apollonian/classical forms a tendency toward resolution and in postmodern forms such an assertion of relativism that resolution is impossible.  What I prefer to both is what I see as a very Catholic thing--something that is both and neither at the same time.

For lack of a better term, I'll call it resolution to wonder.

Christ tends to communicate truth in parable and paradox.  I'm always struck by the fact that what he says is absolute truth and perception-frying mystery at the same time.  It's truly satisfying food and endlessly hunger-inducing simultaneously.  It's an explosion and a resolution...we resolve to awe and wonder.

Where postmodernism's ambiguity tends to point toward relativistic nihilism in its irresolution, great Catholic art draws people toward truths infinitely larger than we are.   The result is that we can feel resolved and unresolved at the same time.  Chesterton and Graham Greene stand out to me as two Catholic authors who nail resolution to wonder in a modern framework (The Man Who Was Thursday and The Power and the Glory are particularly important to me).

I'd like to see what we could do with resolution to wonder in a postmodern framework.

Why Would I Bow To His Majesty? (song fragment)

The following is one of a series of song fragments Arthur seemed to be working on in the days and weeks leading up to the Concert for Iceland.  Recorded in a variety of formats and locations, these tracks will be released as they become available.



Chords:

• Intro/Chorus: Am7, Gm7, C, F#m7(b5), G/C, G, A/C, C7, Csus4
• Verse: Amaj7, Fmaj7, Gmaj7; Amaj7, Gmaj7, Gm7, Fmaj7, A; Amaj7, Gmaj7, Csus4, C, G 

Words (Chorus):

Why would I bow to his majesty
When time after time
We just knew that there had to be
A sovereign of our own
To mount up to the throne
And isn't it time that I questioned?
I've begun to wonder why

Would I bow to his majesty?
Ain't nobody gonna take my place,
Take away my own tragedy:
A sovereign of our own
Will mount up to the throne
And isn't it time that I questioned?
I've begun to wonder why...

"Let the Atheists Themselves Choose A God"

The following is an excerpt of a 29 December 2012 email sent from Art to Will wherein Art answers certain questions about Arthur's involvement in Carlton Farthington's cult.

I like the idea that Brand New Life begins with a burst of newfound creativity and productivity.

I like the idea that Arthur is on the verge of sainthood (although that sounds a little like confounding sainthood with enlightenment) and that Will is likewise on the brink of success.

I agree that this is when Will starts to have concerns and steps in (with ECT), because he sees these two things as mutually exclusive.

I also agree that God wins in spite of all of this. 

If you haven't already, you need to check out the movie Household Saints and in particular the resolution of the whole sainthood thing. Without giving the ending away, sainthood is achieved in utter defeat--even the defeat of the protagonist's pursuit of saintliness! 

It seems borderline blasphemous, but I feel this notion is totally orthodox, having its roots in the utter defeat and scandal of the cross.

Here is one of my favorite Chesterton quotes (from Orthodoxy):

[Atheists] will not find another god who has himself been in revolt. Nay (the matter grows difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist.

It's true that Will is successful in releasing Arthur's gift of prophesy. But I think the profoundest irony is that electroshock, which was designed to bring prophecy within the fold of profitability and predictability, actually releases it to an even fuller extent.

So in the process of totally scrambling Arthur's brain, Will inadvertently pushed Arthur into the final phase: the soul in a state of perfection.

Now, it's important to note that he exists here in a borderline catatonic state, but that was how God accomplished his will in its consequent form.

No, it's not ideal that someone would reach sainthood with a severely addled intellect, but it illustrates the paradox of human freedom and the supreme will of an omnipotent God.