You Will Set the World Ablaze

The following is an email sent from Art to Will and Joe on 29 March 2016.

Captain Nemo playing the organ aboard the Nautilus

I'm trying to remain positive, but I haven't been in a naturally positive place.

Saw my uncle yesterday and we talked about a young recording artist that he knows—and about the near impossibility of breaking in to anything with that style of music. Then he brought up his usual question, what is your niche, what are the three things that you can do that no one else can?

And while questions like these tend to bounce off of me like so many cannonballs off the hull of Captain Nemo's Nautilus, I suppose he has a point.

Maybe those are the right questions to ask. Maybe those questions miss the point entirely.

Maybe we need a different category of question. One other possible category is what positives does the project engender, both in our own lives and in the lives of others? One thing is that the project has gotten me to read a lot more, practice a lot more, stay in touch with others a lot more. I'd even say it's deepened my faith life. I honestly don't know what others get out of it.

That brings me back to the question from before: what are the three things that we can do that no one else can? Just speaking for myself, I won't be remembered as a musician, songwriter, playwright, performer, philosopher, or theologian. Those are not my niches and it's too late to catch up at this point.

As I think about it, I see a key to this question in the story of Arthur White. Arthur White was a mystic whose brother tried to fry it out of him with ECT. How many mystics have had their mysticism fried out of them by our electronic age!

I think our niche may be that we believe our primary job is to penetrate the mystery of our lives. That none of the facts of our existence are mere coincidences, that God has a special message and mission for each one of us. And that everything will follow from penetrating to the core of that message written into the very substance of our being. Thus, “Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt 6:33).

I say penetrating the mystery of our lives is the same as seeking the Kingdom of God because of Luke 17:20. Tolstoy's translation for his book is “The Kingdom of God is within you.” The New American Bible is “The Kingdom of God is among you” (Luke 17:20). Obviously, the latter is more Catholic in that it implies that the Kingdom of God is found in community, not in each separate individual.

That confirms for me some of the best things that have come out of the project. It goes along with the Married Couple's Prayer ideal of a “holy rivalry.” Just to keep up with you all, I've read a lot of the books you've read (I'm reading The Power and the Glory now). Now Liza is introducing a new standard, that of being a true artist and contemplative.

So, I'm getting some ideas about our “niche.” One is a belief that God has a special message and mission for each one of us, written into the very substance of our being. Two is a belief that the Kingdom of God is found among us, not in our isolated individuality.

We necessarily steer this question of niche back to the issue of God's will. The niche emerges insofar as we penetrate the mystery of our lives. I would say that's true for everyone, but most especially for us. On some level, we've always held that as our criterion. What does this mean for the project? Liza models this for us in her dispersed excursion to the Keweenaw and in her countercultural lifestyle generally.

I recall John Paul's Letter to Artists:

Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.

Not to mention this:

...if you are what you should be—that is, if you live Christianity without compromise—you will set the world ablaze.

I've got to get to bed, but I'm beginning to think that the next step in the project would be to go on retreat and ratchet up our spiritual lives. The power of the project lies in rivalry.

My Formula for Human Greatness

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 27 February 2016.

The Return of the Prodigal Son by Leonello Spada

Something has been consolidating or coalescing in my brain recently that I wanted to throw out there for your consideration. Today's reading about the prodigal son helped me put several things into partial perspective.

It hit me with this passage where the prodigal son returns:

…his father ordered his servants,
‘Quickly, bring the finest robe and put it on him;
put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.
Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.
Then let us celebrate with a feast,
because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again;
he was lost, and has been found.’
Then the celebration began.
Now the older son had been out in the field
and, on his way back, as he neared the house,
he heard the sound of music and dancing.

I'm putting this all together with several different things, some of which we've discussed before. I'm just going to list them off here:

1. Nietzsche's amor fati/eternal recurrence/lake that dammed itself up
2. Camus's Sisyphus
3. Hamlet's inaction
4. The wisdom of Silenus
5. Arthur White's motif of long delays and our distrust of the Benefactor

And if you can believe it, I'm formulating a Christian version of all these things, one that finds a formula for human greatness and heroism.

What the prodigal son did in this reading is ask for his inheritance early. What he really asked for was a horizon beyond his father's house, beyond his life—a kind of Camusian suicide. Upon receiving his inheritance ahead of time, he “collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.” Like Nietzsche's lake, he flows off to a distant horizon and, in so doing, drains and dissipates himself.

This is no formula for human greatness, no matter how resplendent the horizon, no matter how grand the enterprise. As Horatio puts it, we follow ghosts “to the dreadful summit of the cliff.” Similarly, what Christ is saying in this reading is that the horizon of action, of accomplishment, of ambition is the primary occasion for our perdition. It is how we become next to nothing, so that all that is left is to hire ourselves out to tend swine.

Chances are, we've already done this countless times in life. But we can always dam ourselves up and become a healthy sized lake, whatever altitude we're at. Smaller streams draining off to this or that enterprise seem to be an appropriate part of a lake's ongoing health, but not the eager gushing of our whole selves off to some counterfeit consummation. Herein lies the difference between “dying to self” and Camusian suicide. The former not the latter is the “consummation devoutly to be wished,” as Hamlet only later realizes. When the prodigal son returns to the father's house, he again experiences its riches—the finest robe, the ring on his finger, the sandals on his feet, the sound of music and dancing, etc. But he has died to the idea of a horizon. Which is scary because most of our lives are hell bent on the horizon.

I can't help but read Camus atheistic text from this Christian perspective:

Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory.

It is in the father's house that the present moment subsists. Only in choosing to live in the father's house can we hear “the myriad wondering little voices.” In my case, those “wondering little voices” are often actual children. When the roaring torrent of my own ambition isn't deafening me, I can hear those little voices, smell their hair—in short, exist. But that is only after the idols have been silenced.

And this isn't a prosperity gospel I'm talking about, but in the father's house, we are rich. At the same time—like Hamlet, like the prodigal son, like Camus's Sisyphus, like Nietzsche's lake—the hero of the story strains against and even overleaps its bounds, usually to his own detriment. Thus Jacob wrestles with God. Thus Jesus says of the skeptical Nathaniel, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.” Thus, the older son is not the hero of the story.

But outside the father's house—traveling off toward some horizon, following those ghosts—we don't own anything, and we end up slaves or at the bottom of some cliff. When Hamlet returns from his voyage out over the waters, the ghost is gone. Only then does the story tilt quickly to its denouement. I have a feeling a similar criterion has emerged in The Return of Arthur White.

So with some edits, I agree with Nietzsche that “this is my formula for human greatness.” Not love of fate or fortune, but of God's will, “which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we will.” Not saying our project will ever partake of that greatness, but I want to set that up as its criterion.

My Horn is Exalted

The following is an email sent from Art to the group on 22 December 2015.



I'm picking up an old thread regarding achieving success and fame in the context of Christianity. Eschewing any false "prosperity gospel" perspectives, it seems that the Christian is exalted only IN GOD.

I'm looking at today's psalm:

My heart exalts in the LORD,
my horn is exalted in my God.
I have swallowed up my enemies.
I rejoice in my victory.

Only after one has been swallowed up IN GOD—or more precisely, had one's "horn" swallowed up IN GOD—is it exalted. I'm sorry, I've always thought "my horn is exalted" is pretty funny.

And maybe this is too sexual a way of looking at it, but is God the only environment in which we swell, become erect and strong and capable of projecting forth that fructifying seed? Only IN GOD can this life be nourished and flourish into its fullness. Paradoxically, is the point at which we, in turn, are able to swallow up the horns of our enemies? And I don't think this can be thought of a pre-Christian vanquishing of enemies, which would necessitate some malevolent mechanism, an abysmal or toxic womb, vagina dentata, etc. In other words, something antithetical and incoherent with the beneficence that has benefited us.

Yes, bows are broken and the tottering gird on strength, but neither of these mess up the phallic/yonic imagery. The arrows of our enemies remain unbroken and, well, the word gird.

So, we swallow up our enemies in some similarly benevolent sense, nourishing and nurturing them as it were. The victory consists in their enmity being dispersed, defused...made diffuse but allowed to flourish in its inner essence. In the Christian vision, wouldn't those horns also be exalted? Bows broken, but horns exalted. We swallow them up; they gird on strength.

So back to the axiom: my horn is exalted in my God. And this means only in God. This means total self-giving, no guardedness, no prophylactic constraint, no holding anything back. Thus, the watchwords for the Christian artist (or, more precisely, the artist) are prodigality, proliferation, profusion. We pour out the whole alabaster bottle of perfume, keeping none for ourselves, nor even for any charitable purposes (Matt 26:7).

In this environment, the desire for money and fame aren't destroyed, they are just increasingly diffuse, negligible. The desire for money and fame can only solidify in a falsely exalted, frozen state. True exaltation occurs only in an environment of ecstatic love, wherein all falseness melts.

On a somewhat related note, enjoy Klaus Nomi's performance of the aria from Purcell's King Arthur, "What Power Art Thou," in which the Cold Genius is awoken by Cupid and later is forced to acknowledge his power. Incidentally, this was Nomi's last performance before succumbing to AIDS.

What power art thou
Who from below
Hast made me rise
Unwillingly and slow
From beds of everlasting snow

See'st thou not how stiff
And wondrous old
Far unfit to bear the bitter cold

I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath
I can scarcely move
Or draw my breath

Let me, let me,
Let me freeze again
Let me, let me
Freeze again to death
Let me, let me, let me
Freeze again to death...

Taking What the Defense Gives You

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 13 November 2015.

Friedrich Nietzsche

As I wake up from my 2-hour nap and confront my ubiquitous pile of papers, I'm having a few thoughts about Arthur White.

Our current idea is to record the Joe Lazarus album. I'm beginning to think this is a bad idea. I just don't think I can hack it.

But I've been thinking that we've gotten away from a central principle in the project. Here's Hello Liza and Allison!: "We believe that, inside the swaddled/crucified existence, whatever utterance you're currently capable of making is the best utterance. Don't wait until come down off the cross—you'll be dead then!"

Well, this is the cross, so to speak, and once again we're imagining utterances that require a huge infusion of money, time, and resources. In other words, Camusian suicide. This is why The Benefactor is such a nefarious figure: he wants to GoFund our suicide.

Here's another good quote, this one from A Polylogic Epistolary Novel:

There are times when I can't play music, times when I can't sit down at the computer, times when something is broken, times when I don't have time, times when I force the issue. Going along with the Nietzschean concept of the eternal return...I've tried to wall myself up in those moments and circumstances and not go out to some transcendent horizon where I will have all the tools at my disposal. I think we try to make whatever utterance we are capable of making, communicating with one another the best we can. Trying to make it as good and coherent as possible, of course, but not waiting for anything like clarity.

And I can't quite wrap my words around what I'm saying here...but with all due reverence...this is how the project can in some way participate in the mystery of the cross.

I'm thinking along the lines of the seven last words of Christ: continuing to speak words of that strive at meaning, recognizing but never acquiescing or capitulating the limits it encounters.

What I'm talking about right now may be as simple as what coaches call "Taking what the defense gives you."

Molten or Molded?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 10 November 2015.




I read this article, which makes me wonder if our method of "caressing" the content of this project could be Snapchat.

If you have a chance to read this, it kind of clarifies why Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the blog are not appropriate. Implicit in "Return" is "Disappearance." In other words, whenever Arthur's world returns, it means that it has previously disappeared. If we believe Hegel that "no man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit," then we need to understand why youngsters seem to prefer things that disappear like they do on Snapchat.

Why do youngsters increasingly NOT care to make themselves look good and eternal when they arguably have all the necessary tools to do so? Instead, they are increasingly okay with being authentic and transient (and authentically transient?). Liza's recent set of "unfinished" illuminated texts partake of a similar impulse.

Why is summer the only time that I can muster the time and effort necessary to caress, shape, and pattern my existence sufficiently for Instagram and Facebook? Why should it take time to share reality with one another?

With Snapchat, we are more in touch with the "do it for the Fat Lady" ethos. But at that point, are we even "a thing"?

Perhaps this discussion is too abstract, too remote from the reality of being a band. Everyone needs to compete, to assert themselves in that arena, right? But the effort required strikes me as very linear, rationalizing, Gutenbergian, insincere. It's so wearisome this effort to become universal, definitive, infinite, immortal—seeking tîmê and kleos like we still live in an age of heroes.

As Herodotus pointed out, Zeus put an end to all that with Helen. That thematic decline of heroes continues through Odysseus and Oedipus until it is finally transformed in Christ. We are no better than the chorus. We are the chorus.

Actually, inasmuch as we don't have Christ's hypostasis, the thematic decline of heroes is transformed in Mary. Her Magnificat is now the model and pattern for all other utterances of transcendence.

So there's the negative: that kind of heroism is no longer possible. On the positive side, think of the French onomatopoeic, Gutenbergian word, cliché, "the sound of a mold striking molten metal." Do we want to be molded or remain molten? I have a hunch that the two are mutually exclusive.

But perhaps this line of thinking is unnecessarily absolute.

Certain things persist. As we've mentioned before, people still buy CDs and records and books. But Arthur at least seems further along this path. He has remained molten in spite of Will's attempts to mold him.

Will, I know that this doesn't really respond to your recent email, but I feel like we have a different definition of tribal. I feel like Arthur is tribal. Like McLuhan, I consider the return to tribalism to be a positive development, one that will result in our being more in tune with the rest of humanity, as in his "global village" concept. In your email, you seem to see it as a negative development, presided over by the lodestone. I point to Gutenberg and the Reformation as evidence that widespread alphabetic literacy has resulted in widespread militarism, specialization, individualism, malaise, alienation, schizophrenia.

This is the opposite of the tribe, and yet, it is what has caused the fragmentation.

Those Who Sow in Tears

The following is an excerpt of a 31 October 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

St. Paul in Prison by Rembrandt

Will:

The podcast my friends Russ and Fred run has a structure that could work for us.  Basically, Russ tells the story of the inspiration behind one of his songs and then plays the song.  We could run a similar structure: Legends of Arthur White, in which we tell a story about Arthur that May or may not be true and end with a song from the era we address.  The whole, "correct" story could be told in another medium, and a podcast could go in multiple contradictory directions without any issues.

Art:

I noticed that; that's a really good idea.  

I feel too hampered, hobbled, hindered to accomplish that (or anything beyond emails and practicing songs with Francis). I'm not enjoying my small sharing in the swaddled/crucified existence right now. Half wishing the Benefactor could make all of this go away. But I'm sure Paul and John the Baptist and so many other heroes of the faith felt the same when they were imprisoned, their lives and voice snuffed out. But as Paul writes us from his prison cell: "Nothing can separate us from the love of God through Christ Jesus." 

I'm having a hard time believing this, both with teaching and with this project (Psalm 126:5-6): 

Those who sow in tears
shall reap with cries of joy 

Those who go forth weeping,
carrying sacks of seed,
Will return with cries of joy,
carrying their bundled sheaves.
will reap with cries of joy.  

I feel like I'm sowing in tears; I just don't believe the second part. Help my unbelief! 

I'm not sure what you were imagining with the podcast, but if you were able to create and host the show (along with the theme music, bumpers, etc.), you could actually just run the whole thing. 

What about having guests on who would learn the songs, possibly bringing their own interpretive flair, and play them up in T.C.? Then, you could call me on the phone (there are ways to set this up for podcasts) and see what I thought. When appropriate, you and I could provide some background about the song and it's meaning. I could just be myself or I could get into the Arthur White role. I could also play the song from my home, either instead of or in addition to the other person performing it. 

Alternatively, we could discuss some of the story lines. But I still like the idea of me being only a relatively small part of the show.

Channeling a Horror Story

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 28 October 2015.

A Tale from The Decameron by John William Waterhouse

I agree with everything you've said.

I'm just channeling a horror story right now. Is Arthur White like the The Decameron or Canterbury Tales or One Thousand and One Nights, just a flimsy frame story within which to tell cool stories? Is this Alyosha saying, "Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!"

I know the context is different, and I don't think we'll be talking about all of our favorite horror movie ideas in Heaven (it is a troublesome line nonetheless!). And I don't think our story has a lot in common with a frame story. But we have come up with a basic idea as to why all these unrelated stories can be subsumed and integrated, namely, the effect the lodestone and the turbulent reversals seems to have on characters and plot lines.

We also have the idea of legends, stories that flourish around a character, especially ones of dubious historicity. Only at a much later date do individual writers try to impose coherence.

Also, the nefarious process of disintegration that sets itself up against God as All-in-All.

But is does that last one also show God's action in that He is able to integrate even disintegration? Something like "captive led captivity."

It's therapeutic to revisit these stories and hopes and dreams from the past through the magic lens of this story. It's like I'm reclaiming all the mundane moments and locations of my life. I'm not even sure this is an attempt at literature; more like an attempt to retake all the ground conquered by the forces of evil, which, as some have pointed out, is characterized most by its banality.

Lately, I've been tromping around my college and post-college days in Ann Arbor, accompanying those Tokyo International College of Business exchange students to Sleeping Bear Dunes, heading out of Las Vegas into the desert darkness west of Nellis Air Force Range. No need to explain how all this is finding its way into the story.

Because I'm making these journeys not through a spirit of nostalgia, but through an all-out effort to shatter the ice that has encased and obscured them, half expecting—like Philip K. Dick—to find first-century Palestine beneath their stale surfaces.

And is the story obscure because we are being deliberately obscurantist?

Or is it because we are trying to "make dark things plain"?

The Saline Avenger (Part 3 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 20 September 2015.

Arthur and Mordred by William Hatherell

I'm knocked out by all the brilliant stuff!

I've also been prepping for the Kairos retreat I'm directing starting tomorrow. Please forgive my gap in communication!

So, if the vengeful angel is Will's son, we end up with Will as a dark distortion of King Arthur and his bastard son, Mordred?

If we run with a character as disturbing as you've described, I think we would need a figure of a God 's love in the story who reflects the grace of God more strongly than the vengeful angel reflects Puritanical justice.

That character should probably be Arthur, which I think is a tough move for you, given your relationship with the character. I think I've written all of the miraculous stuff into his character, and you've written all of his foibles! In so many ways, you are nicer to Farthington than you are to Arthur, which I get from playing Will. I can put my shortcomings into Will, but I still don't feel like he's that much like me. I'm not entrepreneurial, brash, or patriotic. You may have a little Puritan modesty going on, which might really be self-deprecation, since anything that makes Arthur an impressive figure might be read as a reflection of you.

The Saline Avenger (Part 2 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 18 September 2015.



So I've been wondering: who is the figure that will wreak vengeance on all of us? It can't be Carlton—he's too evil. Maybe suffering the fallout of colonialism would qualify him to play this role, but he's just not innocent enough. I don't think Steffi can do it either.

Then it occurred to me: I want to pattern our vengeful angel on Gianna Jessen. Watch this recent clip of her testifying before Congress.

Burned alive in the womb at 7 months, she survived and now is one of the most terrifying people I have ever heard speak. Regardless of your viewpoints on the topic of abortion, no one can say anything to Gianna Jessen. She has a carte blanche for her entire life. Truth be told, she impresses me as an extremely loving and forgiving person. But who would be more justified in killing everyone than an innocent who was burned alive for 18 hours and survived?

So who would this person be in the narrative? I think I have an idea.

It's Steffi's unborn child who Farthington, as part of his regimen of emptying his novices of all traces of identity, attempts to abort and discard in the tunnels. I'm not sure whose child it is: maybe Will's, maybe Farthington's, maybe someone else's. As we know, Will has gone down into the tunnels to kill Farthington at this point. In the chaos of that encounter, is the baby born alive and left in the tunnels? Who saves the child? I'd like to think it's Steffi, who with her now jawless, speechless mouth, raises the child in darkness.

Now, again, these ideas are all within the puerile Puritan tradition that, like the Socratic Euripides, requires a deus ex machina to resolve the entanglements of the plot. And as I've mentioned before, this kind of approach belies a latent atheism, a disbelief in the omnipotence of God. Thus, we need to help God. Like at the end of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we have to help a rotting, moribund Grandpa kill Sally with a sledgehammer.

At some point, we should transition into the mature Catholic view, namely, that we don't need a deus ex machina when we have a Deum de Deo, one who gratuitously takes the punishment we deserve. And it is only when we refuse this grace that we implode in on ourselves and suffer the results of our sin: the collapsed reality of hell in which we become next to nothing.

What the Lord Hath Made Crooked (Part 6 of 10)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these illuminated texts along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

Hand cramp. Let's give this beast another college try:
In the following passage, Dorothy is writing in response to discouragement: both that og which she finds roots internally and that which finds roots externally. The only thin is to be oblivious, as Peter is, and go right on. And so on I go...

Upon rationalizing general grievances regarding the cleanliness of the communities served by the Catholic workers, Dorothy suspends (or, perhaps detracts/) her thought. In correction, she writes,

"But what am I talking about? Why am I justifying myself and my family? I am ashamed of myself for getting indignant at such criticism. It just goes to show how much pride and self love I have. But it has been hard lately. Not only outside grumbling, but grumbling from within, the criticism, the complaints, the self doubting and questioning, the insidious discontent spread around by a few *- these trials are hard to bear. However, the thing is to bear these trials, these unavoidable trials. Patiently, to take them lightly, not to let them interfere with the work. The very fact that it is hard shows how weak I am. I should be happy, however, to think that God believes in me strong enough to bear these trials, otherwise I would not be having them. Father Lallemant says that we must beware when things are going too smoothly. That is the time when no progress is made.

Oh dear, I am reminded of St. Teresa, who said, "The devil sends me so offensive a bad spirit of temper that at times I think I could eat people up."

"The best thing for being [discouraged]," replied Merlyn "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails you. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you."

- (taking a page out of Art's book) The Once and Future King, T.H. White 

We Go Medieval on the Seventies

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to the group on 4 September 2015.

Detail of The Last Judgment by Hieronymus Bosch

Okay, I think what you've clarified is the intuitive leap we made a while ago between the cults of the seventies and the digital age.

Both speak to the spiritual needs of a culture that has lost God. Farthington is more of a song-and-dance man, an Oz who points people to something larger than himself that isn't really God. He's also a Vernean scientist, though, leading people on wild rides toward proof of something greater than man.

Steffi Humboldt (I just mistyped it Hymboldt!) is basically the digital age. She not only "gets in front of" where Farthington chases (although he chases to get in front of great catastrophes, mainly to be the authority on them), but in our vision of the feminist totalitarian warlord she becomes one with the satellite and absorbs all data into herself, which perhaps makes her the whore of Babylon.

We also have the Benefactor, who doesn't take vacation photos even though she oversees Detroit/America's rise and fall and who ultimately recognizes she must have a showdown with Steffi and lose, kind of like Beowulf vs. The Red Dragon except the dragon doesn't die...it absorbs Beowulf's power. Here we have McLuhan's idea that the global village recalls the patterns of paganism, which I think is the lens through which he read Nietzsche. I remember some outburst of his in which it dawned on him that Nietzsche's "God is dead" refers to the Newtonian god of "everything in its proper place."

Speaking of proper place, McLuhan would agree with Baudrillard that we retreat to the comfort of bonanzaland rather than live in our own age, but I don't think that's what we're up to. The only part of our project that sentimentalizes the seventies is the music, and I am not using sentimentalizes pejoratively here. I love seventies music unabashedly and you know how much sheer joy I get out of trying to play the difference between a 1974 song and a 1975 song...I'm like a kid in a candy store.

But outside of that very necessary indulgence, we are upending everything else that is warm and fuzzy about the past. In our own way, we've gone medieval on the seventies, like a Bosch painting! Our seventies slouches toward Bethlehem and eviscerates American history and the digital age through the tale of the lodestone. The only comfy place we're offering in our upcoming efforts is the album, and it's hard to call an album of prophecies calming. In fact, the prospect of a Trump presidency is making "Hey Rome" feel especially prescient, like we are this close to the lodestone revealing America for what we are. I'm tempted to vote for him, except that I'd feel like Judas, who may have betrayed Christ to see Him manifest his power.

At any rate, I also remember McLuhan saying he has no point of view because electronic culture made being grounded impossible, which is why our project examines from all viewpoints and resists just being a book or a musical or a series or even just being written. It's why it can be an 18th-century autopsy of 20th- and 21st-century culture, and my favorite, a 14th-century morality play with a postmodern take on memento mori.

The Accursed Defiler of this Land

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 18 August 2015.

Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens

Maybe all of this is too abstract, too remote from my own experience.

Jesus says, "Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me" (Mark 9:37).

I satisfied that requirement, right? I've received seven such children into the world. But how do I react when my 4 year old knocks over the whole bowl of eggs I let him whisk? When they don't do their chores completely or competently? When they misbehave in public? What is happening in my heart at that point? It's hard to describe exactly, but it isn't good. And in the collapsed morality of the Gospel, in which thinking something is tantamount to doing it, in which looking lustfully is tantamount to adultery, in which anger is tantamount to murder, how am I not a habitual murderer?

How am I not the "accursed defiler of this land"?

In the collapsed moral universe of the Gospel (as well as that of Oedipus the King), saints and heroes identify themselves as defilers. In this universe, we find that even language collapses in on itself as "the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you" (Matthew 5:2). This does not mean, as some have concluded, that we don't say anything, that we retreat into a chastened quietism, that we don't show up at the various rallies, protests, vigils, etc. But the mystic and artist shows up to these things with characteristically empty hands due to his experience of collapse. There is no "other."

There is only a trinitarian civilization of something. Love, death, sin, what?

Mystic theologians have always affirmed the crucial nature of this work. Maybe we got into it because it was fun or ecstatic or whatever. But allowing oneself to become sin in this way and be nailed to the cross, we help bring redemption in a way that more polemical or political means cannot.

Again, this is because the devil "seeth every high thing," except that which goes on in this dark night of collapse.

Call Me By My True Names

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 18 August 2015.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Continuing on to some of your other letters, I see that you interpreted my question--"to what extent does reflecting 'the devil we are possessed by' necessitate identifying with that devil?"--with "devil" meaning enemy, as in Donald Trump or Dan Gilbert. And indeed, the tendency in our polarized time is to demonize anyone who is not on my side. The spiritual practice you recommend is a good one, akin to metta, or loving-kindness, meditation practiced in Theravada Buddhism.

So I agree. But we also have an obligation to stop people who, for whatever reason, think they have a right to kill other people--starting with the weakest and most innocent and working our way up from there. Otherwise any commitment to loving-kindness becomes incoherent.

I should clarify that what I meant was identifying with actual, damned, irredeemable devils. The souls of Donald Trump and Dan Gilbert are still "in play." But maybe what you and I are talking about is a distinction without a difference.

My point is that the artist and mystic, following in the footsteps of Christ, operates in a much more "collapsed" reality than do other crusaders.

In some mysterious sense, he identifies his own sin as fundamental, as constitutive of the world's problems. So if babies are being dismembered, it is because I am in some sense a dismemberer of babies. I am Pharaoh, I am Herod. I am so unwilling to allow Moses or Christ into this world that I kill everything that resembles him within myself and others. This sentiment is not unlike the one expressed in Thich Nhat Hanh's poem, "Call Me By My True Names":

Call Me by My True Names 

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive. 

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone. 

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive. 

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly. 

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog. 

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda. 

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. 

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to my people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp. 

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans. 

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one. 

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Catholic Church'ing?

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Liza and the group on 18 August 2015.

Dorothy Day

Okay, here goes. Just about everything is in agreement with what you've said. But before I started typing everything out like I said I would, lots of things started coming to mind. I knew I just needed to just get it all down.

I'm actually starting (mostly) with the first "Haunted by God" illuminated letter.

I want to first address the question of communicating as widely as possible. This is something I may have worried about earlier, but I've come around. I have a somewhat obvious realization about the four of us (and actually the 6 of us if we open it up to Father and Max): we are all Roman Catholics--post-Vatican II ones--and a fairly representative ideological slice at that. Due to this, our communications are a participation in the Body of Christ, the Church.

Inasmuch as God does not desire "that any should perish" (2 Peter 3:9), all people participate in this reality. Furthermore, due to the fact the Spirit "blows where it wills" (John 3:8) and that Jesus has "other sheep that do not belong to this fold" (John 10:6), we must think of the reality of the Church in the widest sense, indeed--as with all things Catholic--"according to the whole." So I agree with you when you quote Dorothy Day's words: "Many who serve Him officially have never known who He was, and many who do not even know His name, will hear on the last day the words that open to them the gates of joy." St. Augustine says something similar in his City of God.

That said, I don't think it is presumptuous to assume that we have a privileged position due to our closeness to the Church and the Sacraments instituted by Christ. Christ seems to be speaking directly to us as Catholics when he says, "Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more" (Luke 12:48).

If you more or less agree with what I've written here, I'm going on to the similarly banal, obvious point that we, as Catholics, should do everything we can to stick together as the Body of Christ. Lots about that in the daily readings in recent days, perhaps most clearly in St. Paul's beautiful exhortation in Ephesians 4:1-6:

Unity in the Body. 

I, then, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received,
with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love,
striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:
one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call;
one Lord, one faith, one baptism;
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

And I'm not good at this. I am a big burner of bridges and have a polemical side to my personality. Of course, plenty of our saints have suffered from this as well, and God has used it to build the Church. As I've said before, we're always building one of three buildings: the Church, the Pyramids, or the Tower of Babel. All too often, I've been building the latter two: pressing others into service and/or collaborating with others, both for prideful reasons. As we know from these stories and from our own personal experiences, both lead to scattering of minds, confusion of tongues, cacophony: the opposite of the unity proper to the Body of Christ.

So, long story short, I agree that we should keep cc'ing (Catholic Church'ing?).

Haunted by God (Part 1 of 6)

The following is a series of attached photos sent from Liza to the group during her electronics-limited "dispersed camping expedition" through the Keweenaw Peninsula during the month of August 2015. We will publish short excerpts of these illuminated texts over the course of the next several days along with a corresponding portion of the original photo.

The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it illuminated and in its entirety, following Liza's directions.

Quick notes: 

1. First "response" attached. Begin reading on the page addressed to Art (& others), move left, and then move on to second attachment as a continuation of first attachment. In explanation of quoted excerpts: I've been absorbed in The Catholic Worker lately and have a newfound fascination with Peter Maurin, namely his Easy Essays. Worth checking out if incognizant and/or interested in Catholic social justice warriors.
2. Response to most recent e-mails in the works. Patience is appreciated and admired. This here human hand sure don't move as swift and mighty as that there information technology. 
3. I wrote these by hand to avoid screen time, yet here I am breaking this very rule through these "quick" notes. The machine wins again. I'll beat it next time, I swear.

I'm Turning Myself to a Demon

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 12 August 2015.

Emily Dickinson

But seriously, I guess it's that old Dickinson tack of "tell the truth but tell it slant."

Art needs to approach these things obliquely (and I don't mean Art Art, just art). As Oedipus says, "When the stealthy plotter moves on me, I must be quick with my counterplot." I always think that I'm closing in on the murderer, but the artist and mystic realizes that he too is possessed by this same murderous spirit. I can try to rationalize myself to higher ground, distance myself from the demon as it were.

But I can't name it until I've fully seen it in myself, that I am "the accursed defiler of this land." That may be the religious reason for identifying myself with Farthington. After the collapse of "old polar schema," to what extent does reflecting "the devil we are possessed by" necessitate identifying with that devil?

How tempting to fall back into the old polarities!

So, it's been weird because sometimes I feel like I am the demon, that I simulate and dissimulate like a demon, that I sound demonic. But then again, to what extent does this approach partake in the cunning used by Christ: "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21).

Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
by Fleet Foxes  

Dear shadow, alive and well
How can the body die?
You tell me everything
Anything true 

Jessie, I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself into a demon
I don't know what I have done
I'm turning myself to a demon

Art Art

The Devil We are Possessed By

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to the group on 12 August 2015.

Flannery O'Connor

Look to this Flannery O'Connor quote as to how to be a religious artist in the modern and postmodern age:

The novelist and the believer, when they are not the same man, yet have many traits in common--a distrust of the abstract, a respect for boundaries, a desire to penetrate the surface of reality and to find in each thing the spirit which makes it itself and holds the world together. But I don't believe we shall have great religious fiction until we have again that happy combination of believing artist and believing society. Until that time, the novelist will have to do the best he can in travail with the world he has. He may find in the end that instead of reflecting the image at the heart of things, he has only reflected our broken condition and, through it, the face of the devil we are possessed by. This is a modest achievement, but perhaps a necessary one. (Spiritual Writings)

I would say this is more than a modest achievement now (maybe it was more modest in her day). The vast majority of us don't believe that our world is possessed by a demon at all. Most people think that history is headed in a progressive direction analogous to evolution (as in "my views on the topic have evolved"). Thus, the weak-ass atheists we've seen crop up in recent decades. That's why I find the existentialists so refreshing: they realize that the death of God means anguish. This naive crop is like a throwback to the Enlightenment, coasting on the fumes of Judeo-Christian morality and gloating like they've staked out something new.

I think the polarization that we experience right now in our society is one of the aspects of the devil that possesses us. As long as our resistance against him is divided, he will never be recognized for what he is. I should state outright that I personally believe this is an actual, ancient demon that we're up against. And I think that art is uniquely equipped to help us glimpse his face. What St. John of the Cross said about spiritual visions is doubly true of reason, argumentation, and rhetoric: all of these happen in an arena among which the devil can "insinuate himself."

For some reason, artists and poets are able to intuit spiritual realities that would otherwise require passing through the dark nights of the soul to apprehend.

Laughing Song

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Will to Art on 10 August 2015.

Laughing Song by William Blake

Thanks for the clarification. I envy how well-read you are! My dream this summer has been to lie on the beach with a stack of books for a few days on end. Hasn't happened yet! I think I'm relying to frequently on biases I formed a decade or two ago...when I got what I perceived as the big picture, I stopped looking at the details, to my discredit.

I really like the shift you made in "Hey Rome" toward the idea that Rome goes from the seat of the oppressors of Christ to the seat of his Church on earth, that Christ can use all of human absurdity and turn it into divine justice, mercy, and love, all of which appear absurd from the context of our own absurd perversions of these things.

Your discussion actually verges on two things I was hoping for a long time ago in the story: some sort of truth that Arthur White the character can deliver to mankind both in the story and through the project, and some sort of homage to medieval morality plays.

At this point, I don't think Arthur has to have some profound wisdom, but as an enigmatic and seeming focal point in the story, there should be something in him that consistently points toward God's grace. If there is a phrase for it, it's my favorite line from Revelations: Behold, I make all things new. Rome is one of the great emblems we have of Christ's words. In that regard, this album should point upwards and carry this message of the man-made collapsing and being transformed through Christ.

I see a few things happening here.

One is that Will, through decades of suffering, is in the process of reconsidering most of his assumptions and has the humility to encourage his brother to make the album completely on Arthur's terms to the point of bowing out of it if that's what Arthur wants. And then, to steal from The Wife of Bath's Tale, Arthur invites him in, so that Will plays a supporting role instead of a controlling one. I think "Centerstage" makes sense on this album within the theme of "Behold, I make all things new." My songs tend to rip on America, but they don't hit the personal enough. "One and Only" might also work.  By the way, "One and Only" is very Songs of Innocence to me: "In my dreams I heard the sweet song of a bird, and it left me reeling with a happy feeling."

LAUGHING SONG

When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
When the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene;
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing ‘Ha ha he!’
When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of ‘Ha ha he!’

We Want Rome, Not Salt Lake City!

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 6 August 2015.



One final word.

I wanted to apply some of this thinking to an explanation of "Hey Rome." One of the concepts that has interested me lately is the fact that ours is the only persecuted religion that did not merely find a safe, uninhabited location to set up shop (e.g. Salt Lake City). Instead, Christ was crucified by Rome, then set up his Church in Rome. At the time, Rome had only one principle from which it derived its privilege and prominence, that of brute power. And this is the important thing: Christianity did not engage Rome on the playing field of this principle, the stacked deck of this principle. Christianity, in other words, did not beat Rome at its own game, did not engage its content.

In reading Camus's "Myth of Sisyphus," I've realized that he is almost entirely right, that he takes the questions raised by existentialism and modernity through to their most coherent conclusion. But this intellectual victory takes place inside the stacked deck of a certain line of thinking, the context in which this content is undeniably true. I can't quite describe the parameters of this context, but I know that, in addition its sole axiom being that of humiliated thought, it also is an overwhelmingly white male club.

I'm likening the unassailability of this philosophical position to the political one enjoyed by Rome.

It sometimes seems like we are going to live with this principle of humiliated thought--which sets the stage for the murderous dictatorship of relativism--forever, putting God and creation further and further in our rearview mirror until it altogether disappears.

I'm sure a lot of people felt the same way about Rome.

But could it be that Christ has a similar takeover in mind, one that will use the basic root and branch system established by the prior order? God uses Cyrus, Caiaphas, Rome, etc., why not juggernauts like Planned Parenthood or Dan Gilbert? I have come to believe that this is the mysterious way God operates; it is one of my most compelling reasons for belief right now. So much more definitive of a victory than beating down one's enemy.

What would it look like if the Church showed up, not in "the promised desert / wasteland that you set aside for me"--i.e. the postmodern version of Salt Lake City--but rather smack dab in the middle of the postmodern Rome of relativism, hyperreality, or whatever, metastasizing through all its mechanisms and making it entirely its own ("one day I'll make you my home sweet home")?

I think McLuhan had some ideas about the end of the Gutenbergian era with its stacked deck individualism, linear thinking, privacy, repression, detachment, specialization, modern militarism, etc.--all of which put non-Latin, Teutonic Europe in the driver's seat of modern history. McLuhan saw modern media as retribalizing us, and, if we can take his devout Catholicism as a data point in his philosophy, he saw the Church as the best bet for transitioning (back?) into this paradigm. Interestingly, he saw non-white peoples (bye bye northern European Übermensch and all your awful offspring) as being more able to capitalize on the values of this dawning era. Incidentally, he also believed that the new tribal values would ultimately be highly conservative but consensus, as they are in non-alphabetic, tribal societies.

Some I am sure are not finding any of this humorous or thought-provoking anymore. Facebook and Twitter pages have gotten very mirthless. Recent events have made almost everyone (myself included) take sides as drummers or warriors such that we can no longer comprehend one another (cf. Tower of Babel). But I continue to think what we are doing on all fronts is important.

I also hope some of this answers your questions about why we are engaging modernity so much. Although you may not like reading Sartre, Camus, Nietzsche, or Baudrillard like I do, you do like Don DeLillo, who work posits similar theses. I don't think that's because these musings "spark my intellect without engaging my soul." Rather, it's because we have the universe's most commodious frame, that we can comprehend everything "according to the whole." And that perhaps this is one small way in which God as "All in All" is made manifest. We want Rome, not Salt Lake City!

The idea is to keep hanging around getting fed to the lions until the emperor has a vision.

Weezer was the First Weezer Tribute Band

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 6 August 2015.



Thanks for the generous response. So many thoughts. First one a statement from Bryce: "Weezer was the first Weezer tribute band."

I like your balanced Christian cynicism of both parties as well as of the trash talkers on Facebook. It's important to hear. I do find it terrifying to see the left unmoored from its foundations, first and foremost, from the inviolable dignity of the human person. This is not a new development. Camus saw this clearly in his own day:

Traditionally, the left has always been at war against injustice, obscurantism, and oppression. It was always thought that those phenomena were interdependent. The idea that obscurantism can lead to justice, the national interest to liberty, is quite recent. The truth is that certain intellectuals of the left (not all, fortunately) are today hypnotized by force and efficacy as our intellectuals of the right were before and during the war. Their attitudes are different, but the act of resignation is the same. The first wanted to be realistic nationalists; the second want to be realistic socialists. In the end they betray nationalism and socialism alike in the name of a realism henceforth without content and adored as pure, and illusory, technique of efficacy.

This is a temptation that can, after all, be understood. But still, however the question is looked at, the new position of the people who call themselves, or think themselves, leftists consists in saying: certain oppressions are justifiable because they follow the direction, which cannot be justified, of history. Hence there are presumably privileged executioners, and privileged by nothing...But this is a thesis which, personally, I shall always reject. Allow me to set up against it the traditional point of view of what has been hitherto called the left: all executioners are of the same family.  ("The Artist and His Time")

Substitute some details from that first paragraph--namely the idea that killing the weakest of the weak can somehow lead to liberation--and you have the contentless progressivism of modern times (Baudrillard called it "moribund"). No longer can it be said, as it was in Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," "We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of God are embodied in our echoing demands.”

Camus also lamented this same divorce from an atheistic perspective in his essay "Helen's Exile":

It is Christianity that began substituting the tragedy of the soul for contemplation of the world. But, at least, Christianity referred to a spiritual nature and thereby preserved a certain fixity. With God dead, there remains only history and power. For some time the entire effort of our philosophers has aimed solely at replacing the notion of human nature with that of situation, of replacing ancient harmony with the disorderly advance of chance or reason's pitiless progress. Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly. For the Greeks, values pre-existed all action, of which they definitely set the limits. Modern philosophy places its values at the end of action. They are not but are becoming, and we shall know them fully only at the completion of history.

Some of this sounds a lot like your statement "the less art, music, and poetry in the world, the less people will value what it means to be human or feel nostalgia about things that exalted the human experience (mainly, God) or that created boundaries around the human experience (mainly, death)." This is one of the guiding principles I've adopted from you, that the artist has a very particular role to play and that no one in a time like this will appreciate that role. More Camus:

We must simultaneously serve suffering and beauty. The long patience, the strength, the secret cunning such service calls for are the virtues that establish the very renascence we need...the era of chairbound artists is over. But we must reject bitterness. One of the temptations of the artist is to believe himself solitary, and in truth he hears this shouted at him with a certain base delight. But this is not true. He stands in the midst of all, in the same rank, neither higher nor lower, with all those who are working and struggling. His very vocation, in the face of oppression, is to open the prisons and to give a voice to the sorrows and joys of all. This is where art, against its enemies, justifies itself by proving precisely that it is no one's enemy. By itself art could probably not produce the renascence which implies justice and liberty. But without it, that renascence would be without forms and, consequently, would be nothing. Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

Chinua Achebe has some great statements about this in his interview with Bill Moyers, maintaining an activist orientation while at the same time differentiating the role of the poet or storyteller from that of the "war drummer" and "warrior":

Well, if you look at the world in terms of storytelling, you have the warrior, you have the war drummer; the man who drums up the people first of all, the man who agitates the people, I call him the drummer, And then you have the warrior, who goes forward, you know, and fights. But you also have the storyteller, who takes over to recount the event. And this is one who survives, who outlives all the others. It is the storyteller, in fact, that makes us what we are, that creates history...The memory which the survivors must have, otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.

And of course, implicit in his statements, is the fact that his own countrymen almost assassinated him in the post-colonial period. Poetry needs to somehow straddle this fine line between activism and neutrality; its allegiance is never for sale even in the most polarizing of situations (cf. also Yeats's "Easter, 1916": "Hearts with one purpose alone / Through summer and winter seem / Enchanted to a stone / To trouble the living stream").

As Camus writes, "In my mind, neither one is ever separated from the other and I measure the greatness of the artist (Molière, Tolstoy, Melville) by the balance he managed to maintain between the two."