Farthington's Voicemail: mistake theology

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.



9/16/14 5:09 AM 9 days ago

Hello to experience that for the first time to the I. I just think of Abraham, Lou You know maybe dat i don't. I don't think you did, but maybe it doesn't. I don't know kinda passed on to him. So all through it. And such. But way The error and being approached, by 7. Got and not having any idea about This person is believe that God and and then actually getting enough. These are pretty crazy things I. I think the maybe it is a universal thing, that You know, guidance, obviously doesn't Like I said before that and if you can use insurance and the things that have already been experience, but if we're just sort of resting on those Laurel then. Are you gonna have a chance. 23. Are we going to have a chance. 2. You caught up in that room answer cell and I don't think that we are. I think that we recapitulated. We we didn't work out that the and all that stuff and and you know we come in with our own little foregone conclusion. All of which are true. But. Not What gas getting. I think it in time. If not, that's not the laugh at that point. We were talking about. The topic of creation and we're talking about the topic, mistake theology, yeah you know all of the doctor and everything, so it's still there But that's not what this It's about that's not what we're doing right now, we're doing something else we're doing something else. You know, I mean if you want to think of it from my cellphone. If what we're doing something else in television history right now. I'm gonna stay in through something that experience here. Whether it be the experience of Creation or easy experience of being called out of You know if you have an I've given time and laser beam. Steve, Just, or whatever. I'm gonna give me a nice things of that and I didn't know if not a foregone conclusion. And I'm going to so i can use the old. If the where I'm going to discover the things to you If you do personal, error. I think that for.

Farthington's Voicemail: Received full Revelations of

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.



9/16/14 5:05 AM 9 days ago

Test test. And I'm trying to get that maybe. Why some of those hit hardest actually made ME HI added advantage on this. You know, wanna come. 2. The A creative. Because the You know they have no problem going back to that moment fire two religions, and those do that you know air out before we head You know, Received full Revelations of. Of. It's been given to us, through. True Religion, He This is in stock. You know I'm just trying to call 4, why that isn't quite honestly. You know why I was much better, listen to some of those artist and I will. Two, Christian artist at least. The when he comes to music and in poetry in Literature could that be one reason and it is there a way. Is there a way 8 4 I mean. It seems like seems like they should be. I don't think that it's. It doesn't seem. Really strange, that having religion. That being Christian we've put you at a disadvantage. When you come. 2388 and and I'm wondering if there's a way checking all that stuff that the door. Net things of that true. Like I said before that thing with any of the dot. And that list. But oh well. God For the call. One into this experience of creation. Creating from sorry from the up and you know that there's been put together, K I. This is what it is. Bye bye. But they have that experience in creating from that And I don't, work on conclusions to have a note to chat with us come down from the mountain To have no old the New Testament sitting on your book shelf. And since see what What this universe is about. He wasn't got it is about You know I don't know if the more Stuart most of the like. 4 You know some of the people and Dennis is we're in we covered got for the first time. You know, I know if I have.

Farthington's Voicemail: Experience, Joey

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.



9/16/14 5:00 AM 32 hours ago

Hi. This is here experience better and because God knows the they need to. And make sure that we would. Experience, Joey. And you know in doing an experience that experiencing that that to create. Now from nothing but from Chaos. And I have a new revelation that we have, which is all. Here it is back on the way nothing about years of experience. Nicky, any of that. That's happened with the new so I'm gonna be able to put in the new covenant That's all. So here But HI, This is not time travel back before all of that. Since we are headed into the lightness of God and since we do house that aspect be Little creators. I have an experience of going back. Because He knows that we'll have a chance to rejoice in our creation, and I. I feel like a lot of people out of our 7 have felt that way felt like You know I may. I may even though quite a few things that I really hold of each true. , it otherwise. But I can't really bring those to the table artistically and, I think that's kind of what I'm trying to get it here. Is. You know, Christian artist, as to You know some other calls. Why did you leave all that stuff at the door, so to speak. And and head back into this. This is. If you're a winner. No, that has been established, none of those true, and I don't think they part rooms but none of those true. 78. It has been established. And I was wondering if that gives two counts. For the fact that we can kind of a lot of insight artist. People who obviously don't have any of those true. And it is You know I was just kind of a band in those are never have chosen the first place, really doing so amazing things amazing thing.

Farthington's Voicemail: The Conventional Allen

"Soon Yi Previn and Woody Allen at the Tribeca Film Festival" by David Shankbone - David Shankbone. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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.




9/16/14 4:56 AM 32 hours ago

Yeah, I don't know if it's significant that 3000 but creation is is something that has shared with all. People it. It's not part of the covenant. 35 and then creation in this experience would be something that shirts that all people, it would be easy. Testament or A A Revelation. That would be available all people. You know, because we're all This is from van for them and then. And so, in some ways. We Partake of some kind of. I think maybe pre with pre religious experience alright and in again You know some of the things that I'm sitting. I feel like I'm tripping on. Very nice. Dr only. But. And I'm just gonna saving that they want to correct with it, but would be great. Because, I. I just think that is kind of an interesting phenomenon is why wiring harness tap into this and You know, maybe not going through the conventional Allen is because you know, we do have people going to the conventional Avenue Evanston. Sometimes I wonder about the the quality of luck to you produce in there going through the conventional attitudes HI. I think this is. That. When We Partake in creation, got lots of go back and I don't, for, or you know You know, I know I don't wanna I don't wanna jump to conclusions about this, but because of the Thank God wants us to go back to you. So, pretty religious. Experience, okay free all the things that were revealed in the Bible and then You know, and and back to that periods of creation, which was pretty the file. And we're God within the last review and so anyway. And try and throw it back into that have experience of that former slaves, it'll never be at your for mostly 0. That would be nothing again, but I have that experience because.

Farthington's Voicemail: Exciting New York

New York is widely considered to be the most exciting city in the world. "ChryslerBuildingMidtownManhattanNewYorkCity" by Massimo Catarinella - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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.



9/16/14 4:52 AM 32 hours ago

Okay. One of those if the I'll be getting there on This is the idea of setting up one phone. 5. Policy and To the extent so what. To what extent is that A valid, activity or or a good at 50 and I think. Please give us a little complicated, and, and they do that part and parcel of what you're doing with that. That You know, 3. Being in or is this, Posie you do that certain things. Because you party and You know if you need to the image and likeness of got you You have a chance. Or, if you can HI experience creation. And that you get a chance to be a little creator because that is what more fundamental aspects of got in, been meeting like next You would have out certain of those aspects, you would have that desire. And you know many of the other attendant. Things are going along with the creation you've experienced those same things in some way You know. Obviously we go create from nothing but I was kind of a The email you do get a chance 23 From, Tia which is This is not entirely. I'd like nothing. In fact, in some way that I think one of the translation form less Whatever. You know the of the The Waste So work with. I think for you soon. It is The again. Again, it is that from and But You know the opportunity to start from. Yeah this is the pretty amazing experience and to bring something out of chaos, it You know is. It is very unlikely thing which makes it. Exciting New York all kind of my return your call. And then when you're done with it, you're happy with it because of it and then the in the probably we're taking field.

910-541-3466

The following is an excerpt of an emails sent from Art to Will and Joe in April 2014.

Carlton wants you to leave messages on his machine ("About anything!" he says).

Call him at 910-541-3466!

Share some of your thoughts and feelings about the project with Carlton.

The other reason for calling Carlton is because it is an easy post for me to make. It has allowed me to spend more quality time with the songs.

So please help me keep up the blog with minimal effort by calling Farthington...regularly, if you don't mind. I think you'll enjoy it, actually!

910-541-3466

Just anything related to the project. Themes, questions, concerns, misgivings, ideas, etc. Listen to any of the ones posted on the blog. Oftentimes, I'll string together 5-7 in a row because the 3-minute time limit prevents me from getting it all out. But it does get me to organize my thoughts with an ear toward concision.

I feel that this has been both therapeutic and helpful to my thinking. I think that effect will only be multiplied with your guys' ongoing input.

I have been hindered and constrained in many ways having a newborn this year. Often, I am literally unable to sit down at a computer or keyboard (I'm actually holding the baby right now).

I say this is a good thing (cf. the mystery of the cross).

Here are some possible topics to talk about when you call Carlton (910-541-3466):

• What do you find most interesting about the project?
• What is most problematic about the project?
• What concerns you about the project?
• What do you find most promising? Least promising?
• What are the major themes or ideas you most want to explore?
• What is a message or moral that you'd like to see expressed?
• Why do you think the project is important or worthwhile?
• What are some logistical issues that you're thinking through?
• What are your ideas for the narrative/story, shows, etc.?

Here are some ideas that I've been talking through myself:

• How McLuhan's proscenium arch relates to Carlton Farthington and his cult
• The framing/reposting/retweeting/embedding phenomenon
• The karaoke/sequencer tour
• The necessity of constraints; ideas and constraints as two parts of a synthetic whole

The Monster May Actually Be Real

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

Maybe a "staged" Concert for Iceland is an attempt by Arthur's therapists to overcome his psychic break. I don't know, maybe a post-ECT Arthur has become uncooperative, incorrigible. Although never violent, he becomes a danger to himself and others.

Maybe it's his stylite phase, climbing up on things.

Fr. Bernard comes on at the beginning of the show, explaining the whole concept: "Thanks for coming tonight, and thank you for your support for Arthur and his ongoing recovery and healing..." Fr. Bernard explains that the Concert for Iceland was a sham hatched by the charlatan cult leader, Carlton Farthington, and that Arthur was swept up in the story. At the recommendation of his therapists, they are trying to give Arthur an experience of closure: preparing for the Concert and performing it. The idea being that, once that is all done, he will have peace.

St. Alpius the Stylite

Finally, after the long explanatory intro, Arthur is wheeled out on stage by his nurse. Seems like everything is going according to plan. Nothing would need to be huge or amazingly produced because we're just trying to trick this borderline-catatonic guy that the Concert is happening.

But then we can have some weird stuff happen that makes us wonder whose reality is real.

Maybe he's a stylite and he's encouraging the other patients to do the same through his example. Maybe even some of the orderlies are being converted. Could he be wheeled in in a straitjacket and just do the singing? Could the entire band be made up of people from the sanitarium: therapists, orderlies, etc. (also Will and Fr. Bernard, of course)? Could we field questions from the crowd between songs (maybe even members of the media)?

And maybe he somehow gets away again in the end.

The crowd follows him through the streets. Could we fake a death with him falling from a pillar (there is a row of nonfunctional pillars on campus). Or could he just wade across the river and disappear into the darkness? That'd be some awesome footage, people tweeting it as they follow.

I think Will would be pissed and do it begrudgingly. But probably he also does it because there was nothing else doing at that point. Maybe this is the penance Fr. Bernard gave him for doing this to Arthur in the first place. There could be heated conversations between him and Fr. Bernard. Maybe Arthur has to go to the bathroom at some point so they wheel him off and Will and Fr. Bernard come downstage and have a conversation while he's gone. It'd be cool for them to be having that conversation the way they way people plot against each other in Shakespeare plays--not acknowledging the audience. But then have one of the media break down the wall by asking them questions, giving Will and Fr. Bernard a chance to field some uncomfortable questions, providing some more character development in the process.

I'm thinking we could get a large percentage of the story--including the apocalyptic ending with the sea monster--through diegesis, just telling it. A lot of what we've imagined would be very hard to show and I think it'd be better to start from the rationalistic perspective that these are just the dreams of a madman. Maybe we can get some scary scrawled drawings on a slideshow as part of the intro. Perhaps the head therapist comes in at this point and takes over the telling of the story.

As the show goes on, however, we should cast some doubt on these rationalistic narratives; the monster may actually be real.

You Have One Identity

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

I guess my thought is to not worry too much about what the era is with the pictures.

I believe one of the aspects of the project is finding one's true self, and, in our case, that would be resolving the dichotomies of Art and Arthur, Will and Will. I still think it makes sense to put together fantasy situations whenever we have the time, resources, and wherewithal to do so. But I also think we should document things as is, as they are actually happening in reality. Using the "vintage" filters adds an interesting layer to the dichotomy of true and false selves, but I think it's worth doing in whatever capacity.

Mark Zuckerberg

You mentioned in a previous email about how "nobody sustains the legend." I think our project is about bringing a legend to life and as I said way, way back as my rationale for starting a blog, that is an interesting story in and of itself. As for myself, I probably won't be able to muster much authenticity this year, costume or setting wise. But I'm going to go ahead and document me working on the project. And if that means a 70s-looking photograph of me sitting at my Mac working on Garage Band, so be it. At this point, it is keeping with the disjunctive time aspect of the project.

Remember, our own time period would be post-"turbulent reversals"!

This brings up some ideas worth exploring. I had a pretty awesome discussion with my cousin a few years back. It started with Mark Zuckerberg's famous quote "You have one identity," which is so fascinating, since he is one of the prime forces facilitating the wholesale fragmentation of identity we experience today. Of course, he's not totally to blame, because the machine just serves up whatever dream/nightmare the human being imagines.

But could it also be said that we express our one identity more fully by having avatars? I keep my identities way more separate than you do, but I'm conscious of a lot of "orphaned" aspects of my identity that are reclaimed within this project. When I chartered the whole idea back in 1998, it was my way of expressing a seeming overabundance of masculinity in a music scene dominated by shoegazing indie eunuchs. In inventing this and other identities, I have, in some sense, created more commodious frames for self expression. I guess it could be true that there is a way to just "be who you are" sans avatars but, in my experience, I've needed to find, invent, and/or hijack various vehicles to fight back against the deadening effects of society's ever-constricting boundaries.

I'd like to hear your opinion on this, but I also like that the project has not come to a definite conclusion about this question, that we are holding up both possibilities as the tragic and/or comic outcome of this undertaking. Documenting the project in its artifice and in its reality seems like a good idea regardless of what we decide (if we decide).

So that's my pitch for both fiction and nonfiction photographs.

The Third "Leg" of Our Retirement Plan

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 18 August 2014.

An old Poladroid Polaroid

We're working out the day or night that I can get everyone cleared out of the house for recording purposes. We definitely think it can be done, but we're just looking at the most advantageous, least disruptive opportunity. I worked over at my parents a few times while they were gone, but it's just inconvenient. It's much easier to do it in our house, but it really requires that my beloved progeny be gone. I will start loading those up to Dropbox as soon as I finish them.

I remain committed to the blog for various reasons (I can be potentially talked out of these). One is that I feel my creative process is aided by the dialectic of our email exchanges. My process has a tendency to become involuted and, even though we're not making much progress right now, it invigorates me and keeps me on an even keel with the project. I know you haven't been as keen on it at times, but if you can indulge me whenever possible, I'd appreciate it.

Or explain to me why it's foolish!

A second reason is the perhaps laughable idea that all this will be interesting to someone someday. I show The Truman Show every year to my seniors and I found it interesting that the production was held up for a number of years for some reason, during which time the screenwriter or director wrote backstories for all the characters. Some of the actors remarked how helpful all those backstories were as they tried to get inside the minds of their characters. I like to think that--unlike backstories, which never see the light of day artistically--our musings are actually part and parcel of the project. Whether or not that's true, it is a rich repository of our ideas, one that can definitely play a role in any future dramatic productions.

This leads me to my final topic, and I could use some input. I will almost certainly not be able to keep up my level of email exchanges during the school year, especially with the renewed focus on recording. I want to introduce a new type of post, which would essentially involve keeping a photo log of our labors. Let me give you my rationale and some ideas I have.

First, the photo log is something I think we should be doing anyway given the "self-mythologizing" theme that is so central to the project. We can't have all those photos be thrown together the last minute when we're putting the finishing touches on our large coffee table book (the "third leg" in our retirement plan). We will need thousands of pictures by then. At any rate, this is a discipline that we can no longer procrastinate. My thought is we should simply take lots of pictures of ourselves working on the songs.

I like Instagram's filters for creating instantly vintage-looking photos, including a high-contrast black and white. I haven't used it because I don't have a phone on which to download the app, but it might be a good option when I get one. I think flickr is pretty much just as good. But I like that we would do a little on-the-fly mythologizing by taking appropriate pictures and slapping a cool filter on them. Everyone knows it's just a filter...but we are so okay with that! Do you have any experience with these platforms? Preferences?

I'm also pretty sure all of these can be embedded and posted to other websites: Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, and possibly Pinterest.

link: Poladroid.net

Richly and Radiantly Signed

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 17 August 2014.

"Holmes reichenbach" by Sidney Paget (1860-1908) - Strand Magazine. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Yeah, I just read McLuhan's bit about Sherlock Holmes up here. I appreciate your unique ways of connecting the dots. I think dialectic is a critical feature of this project, definitely in the Socratic sense, and possibly at times in the Hegelian and early-Nietzschean sense.

Okay, this doesn't respond to everything you talked about in your two emails, but here goes.

I draw a clear line from Nietzsche's "Socratic man" to McLuhan's Sherlock Holmes. Nietzsche traces the death of culture (and a persistent, centuries-long death--originating at the end of the 6th century B.C.) to the one-two punch dealt out by Socrates and Euripides. Sherlock Holmes can be seen as Socrates/Euripides/Plato taken through to their logical conclusion. When you banish art and the irrational/artistic/mystic means of "understanding" the world, culture (and inevitably even philosophy and religion) dries up and dies. What's left, centuries later, is Sherlock Holmes--a shriveled Socrates, so to speak. Like Holmes, Socrates had so little interest in or patience for literature ("Nil" as Doyle puts it). Socrates only appreciated Aesop and Euripides--nothing ineffable like Aeschylus, thank you very much. Plato burned all his own tragedic writings in order to be his disciple. According to Nietzsche, this was the beginning of the end for the greatest culture to ever grace the face of the earth. And every subsequent culture, holding up this degenerate moment as their gold standard, has likewise bumped up against this ceiling.

In a Christian sphere, this degenerate state has looked like brittle moralistic religion. What's left to the ordinary Christian but the nuptual embrace--the one place they can experience the ineffable, that chaotic, drunken substratum. Then your orthodox Christian buckles in to his apologetics and rote prayers, and hands out fliers for Fireproof ("Fireproof your marriage!"), because he's constantly battling an addiction to pornography. And the answer to all this is, at best, "accountability," as in an "accountability partner" or "Promise Keepers." As Nietzsche points out, "the god" (or daemon) who guided Socrates only spoke to prohibit him from doing things, never to inspire. Is that what modern orthodox Christianity worships, a God of negative moral precepts?

Yes, part of this issue comes from the fact that the Internet has made certain sins so readily accessible, but as McLuhan points out (I think in Mechanical Brides but I can't find it), what the machine serves up is merely a projection of our desires. So what is our spiritual state such that this is what we see when we gaze into the electric pool? Acknowledging Hubert van Zeller's image that morality and orthodoxy are the "cooler embers" that shore up the inner mounting fire of mystic union, is there not another sense in which mysticism is the constitutive element, the substratum, the protective hedge? As I mentioned in an earlier post:

Like a classical garden, this predominating aspect of Arthur is the moss-covered fountain of Pan, through which water from the wilderness is brought in to irrigate the well trimmed rows and patterns of the garden.

Without this influence (literally, flowing in) of untamed wilderness and creativity, the ordered, well-trimmed rows dry out and die--in fact, they fall out of existence entirely.

Both impulses are necessary to art, but the Dionysian is the more constitutive of the two.

This is (again) why I balk at the idea of a morality play as our approach to the project. To me, a religion that demands that even art serve the end of "moral education" is a degenerate religion, a religion in decline. Because Christianity is not, first and foremost, a moralistic religion. Christianity is the scandal of St. Francis of Assisi stripping naked and walking out of town. Christianity is that experience of freedom, of being unmoored, of ecstatic embrace.  Is God the ground of being or not? The artist and mystic aim to find out. It has nothing to do with skepticism; on the contrary, stepping out onto the waters--as opposed to onto solid ground--involves greater risk, and as such requires the greater faith. The ideal Christian artist is, for the most part, naked when he leaves town. There is definitely something in his heart that differentiates his self-exile from that of the atheistic artist. But I doubt this something is in the realm of a moralistic scaffolding that he sets up prior to commencing his labors.

I suppose this is not unlike a Thoreauvian sentiment:

I wanted...to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness out of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it was sublime, to know it by experience.

A Christian artist probably has a lot of faith that what he finds will be sublime, but he lets go of that presumption due to his overflowing optimism and his hunch that the ineffable gets skittish around such foregone conclusions.

Contrast this with the brittle optimism that preemptively lowers the deus ex machina onto the stage as a kind of idolatry, a savior god of our own making:

The idols of the nations are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.

They have mouths but do not speak;
they have eyes but do not see;

They have ears but do not hear;
nor is there breath in their mouths.

Their makers will become like them,
and anyone who trusts in them. (Ps. 135:15-18)

I love this from McLuhan ("Joyce, Mallarmé, and the Press"):

The job of the artist is not to sign but to read signatures. Existence must speak for itself. It is already richly and radiantly signed. The artist has merely to reveal, not to forge signatures of existence. 

As Christians, we know who has "richly and radiantly signed" existence! But even though we "know" that, we can't go ahead and sign His signature. Such is the high and uncompromising calling of the ideal Christian artist.

The Collapse of Western Man

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 17 August 2014.

Manfred and the Alpine Witch by John Martin

I was just thinking of middle age and your interest in Nietzsche and started thinking of Byron.

McLuhan saw Sherlock Holmes as a sign of the collapse of Western Man and said you could basically draw a line from Byron through Nietzsche to Holmes in this collapse. I have to double check, but I think Darwin and Kipling were in there, too.

Anyways, it's interesting to me that we are in many ways trying to reverse the effects of mankind's modern and postmodern self-image, and that in doing so, we're using a distortion of the trope of the Byronic hero. Arthur White is an opposite of Byron's Manfred. Will is the opposite of Don Juan. From our vantage point of middle age, we're standing against the culture not with heightened versions of ourselves, but deeply flawed and broken ones. Nietzsche takes from Byron the notion of making art out of one's life. We seem to be about wheezing what life we can into art.

Byron never made it to middle age. I wonder what the middle-aged Byronic hero would look like.

The Byronic hero is also a vital to American identity (the concept of the self-made man) and rock and roll (the notion of self-mythologizing: Bo Diddley, Little Richard, Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, etc).

Stan Witkowski is a Pharisee in the Church of the Self-Made Man and Will strives to be. Will also tries to push Arthur down the path of self-mythology, although for obvious reasons, it's a dumb strategy. Will looks at Arthur and sees a blank slate for a rockstar identity, but Arthur is far from a blank slate--he's an incomprehensible slate.

Will is actually the blank slate: he has no understanding of who he is because he thinks that an identity must be achieved. Every time he is on the verge of success, he very nearly becomes a person.

Every time Arthur flops, he unknowingly murders Will!

I've never made this connection, perhaps because I'm too close to my own name (it means "protector," so I've seen Will as Arthur's protector), but really, Will is thwarted Nietzschean will. Adolf Hitler, robbed of success, kills himself because he is nothing without conquest: the will to power is hopeless when power is out of reach. Ironically, the Happy Lomans or Larry Hitlers of the world, if you will, can be fairly happy because the promise of power never evades them--just the power itself--so the will continues. In his middle age, Will retreats to that Keith Richards sort of look because it reminds him of days when the promise of power still provided an object to his will/Will.

Arthur on the other hand has an identity so profound that it bewilders even him. I think I see him in his elderly years as a pillar saint. I'd like to take him way, way out of our contemporary understanding of saints. When was the last time the church named a pillar saint? They popped up in the ruins of the Roman Empire, more or less after the martyrs.

Maybe it's time, as Western culture lies in ruins, that we re-encounter the pillar saint.

The Eternal Essence of Things

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


"Gustave Doré - Dante Alighieri - Inferno - Plate 4 (Dante meets Virgil)" by Gustave Doré (1832 – 1883) - Dante's Divine Comedy: Hell - Purgatory - Paradise. Illustrations by Gustave Doré, Translation by Henry W. Longfellow, Published by Arcturus Books, 2007. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

As Dante descends back down the slope guarded by the panther, lion, and wolf, he meets Virgil. As Arthur's prospects for stardom dwindle, he discovers Farthington.

Both guides believe that the next step is to bring their charges through the underworld. At that midpoint in life, it's safe to guess that both were trying to attain something that had evaded them up to that point. Dante's banishment from Florence had weened him of his primary focus on politics, and La Divina Commedia seems to reflect an attempt to reorient his life accordingly.

But, again, as he exits the dark wood of confusion and begins to ascend the mountain (representing some new ambition, perhaps literary achievement?), his ascent is halted by prowling animals. Interestingly, his subsequent path through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven is set up by St. Lucia, Beatrice, and probably the Virgin Mary--all women. I'm not sure why that makes so much sense, but it does. Men and male characters--with the exception of maybe Hamlet--just go for the gold, which almost always turns out to be fool's gold. As usual, I'm fond of Nietzsche's characterization:

This is something that the Dionysiac man shares with Hamlet: both have truly seen to the essence of things, they have understood, and action repels them; for their action can change nothing in the eternal essence of things, they consider it ludicrous or shameful that they should be expected to restore order to the chaotic world. Understanding kills action, action depends on a veil of illusion--this is what Hamlet teaches us, not the stock interpretation of Hamlet as a John-a-dreams who, from too much reflection, from an excess of possibilities, so to speak, fails to act. Not reflection, not that!--True understanding, insight into the terrible truth, outweighs every motive for action, for Hamlet and Dionysiac man alike...now he understands the symbolism of Ophelia's fate...

I feel that I myself (not Arthur) am more like Dante in this regard. Arthur doesn't have any of those worldly ambitions. But a common midlife realization--sometimes taking the form of a midlife crisis--is that our male modus operandi is not getting us anywhere, not accomplishing anything. So we are subjected to this experience that seems so counterintuitive to us, that terrifies us: to be dragged in the opposite direction of our dreams and ambitions, toward the "eternal essence of things." And yet, paradoxically, that is how and why the great work finally gets written. Who knows what would have happened if Dante had gotten past the three beasts, grisly counterparts of his benefactresses in Heaven. Safe to say it wouldn't have been as good as the Divina Commedia. And so, we need to turn our attention away from the hideous aspect of the three beasts and toward the benign influence that frustrates, hampers, and ultimately coaxes us away from Hell-bent ambition and self-sufficiency. Then and only then, having traveled that seemingly opposite path through to its end, do we have the possibility (not the guarantee!) of receiving the original object of our striving, like Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith.

Looking at the present status of the project, it does seem like we have an opening, a way forward. But to what extent will it consist in trying to weave our way past panther, lion, wolf? I want out of the woods as much as the next guy, I want to finally find some way to ascend! This other path--the one I have described--seems darker, obscure. And yet, in a way, that's where the dream was conceived: in darkness. "What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops" (Mt. 10:27). And so we proceed into the light of day, but inwardly embrace that experience of darkness, which leads us on an entirely different journey. Because we want our proclamation to be somehow true to the original whisper, the original darkness. But how can the dark beauty of those words be preserved in the light of day? Should we shout them up from the bottom of a well?

On the surface of things maybe nothing looks different. It's the anguish of the Kierkegaardian guy who has an existential crisis about whether or not he should go to Deer Park, and then ends up going to Deer Park like all the other plebs in Copenhagen. But because of his experience of inwardness, his action is subjectively different than the others who go to Deer Park as a matter of course, because it's the thing to do. What the Dionysiac man, the Knight of Faith, the thwarted Dante, the middle-aged man, and Hamlet have in common is that they are deprived of knowing the propriety or essential rightness of this or that course. But balanced on that fulcrum, they may finally spy a kind of freedom, something that makes them more than just a "pipe for Fortune's finger."

Whether or not actions in this dark, perplexed, anguished, angst-ridden, hidden, swaddled, crucified state have greater efficacy matters not. In some cases, such an experience of inwardness seems to produce a better result: Dante wrote his Commedia, Oedipus at Colonus bestows divine blessings. In other cases, it produces the same result: Abraham got his nation, Hamlet avenges his father and purifies the kingdom. In still other cases, it does not produce the desired result: Kierkegaard never got back his would-be bride.

Nietzsche thinks it's a good thing:

[Oedipus at Colonus], afflicted by an excess of misery, abandoned to every misfortune that comes his way as a passively suffering man, is confronted by a superterrestrial cheerfulness that descends from the gods, which suggests to us that the hero, through his passivity, has found his supreme activity, the effects of which will resonate far beyond his own life, while his conscious strivings in his former life led him only to passivity.

Most of the above discussion has been in tragic terms, but per our earlier discussions I would say this experience of darkness is ultimately and fundamentally comic, no different from the Sweet World, the Forest of Arden, the Garden of Eden. How silly to think of ambition and self-sufficiency sub specie aeternitatis, in the arms of a loving Creator and Redeemer! Do the three sainted women just appear like prowling beasts, mortal enemies of our ambition?

How tragic that would be--and yet at the same time, how comic!

A Meditation on Midlife

The following is an excerpt of an exchange between Will and Art on 12 August 2014.

Art:

How is this project a meditation on midlife, like Dante:

Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward path had been lost.

The fact that it was conceived in my 20s but really assayed at 40, but is facing all sorts of difficulties. And bumping up against the idea that I'm not special, that I'm normal, and that's okay...but I'm not okay with that idea. And the project itself is an attempt to free myself from this fate, from being dragged back into the chorus. 

But the ascent is guarded by a panther, lion, and wolf. I cannot ascend in the way that I wish: I must descend in order to ascend.

Will:

In many ways, I see myself as a cartoonish version of a great rockstar nobody has ever heard of. 

There's something about Michigan that gives people lots of freedom and inspiration to make whatever art they want, but no support. It boggles my mind to think what Michigan would be like if it paid and respected artists as it does doctors and engineers. But yeah, from my middle-aged standpoint, I think of all the great rock and roll nobody ever heard. Few of us even talk to each other now. Nobody sustains the legend. 

And obviously, there's a lot of spiritual inventory being taken both on a personal and cultural level. I had my head up my butt through most of my 20s, experienced immense spiritual growth in my 30s, and came to a comfortable-but-chaotic existence at 40.

Meanwhile, culturally, I feel like the opposite had happened. The better my faith life gets, the more it feels like the world is falling apart. And maybe that's where our story can offer a postmodern Virgil, examining the landscape of the past six decades.