New Pathways

The following is an email sent from Joe to Will and Art on 31 March 2016.

Will: Though I always knew it would be true, I must say I'm relieved you don't see my loss of Catholicism as creating a chasm too wide for us to bridge. I know what you mean by not having a reference point that would help you understand my situation, and me yours. It bothers me, but that's one of the reasons why I want to keep talking with you and Art. I'm trying to be methodical and accurate in my description of this "loss of faith"—even that phrase isn't right. Your description of Sartre likely approximates the truth. And you're right, it isn't a mystical atheism. Nothing in Greene gets at this—trust me, I checked. Negation is the right method here: I know what the loss of faith is not. And it is decidedly not John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul. There's no embrace for which I yearn.

I've changed so significantly in the past two years—in many more ways than one—I feel a strong urge, as a necessity, to go "home," to square one, to where I started before everything changed. Your friendship and mentorship has meant more to me than you can know, and in many ways is my mental home. You gave me many of the terms by which I think and write. 

It's funny, because you did teach me to think, and because you provided me with certain habits of mind that burned new pathways in my neural framework—that got me through college, that got me the job I have, that got me into grad schools—I must infer and really do feel that my thinking about God was influenced by you, as well as my thinking about the very atheism that has taken the place of my former belief. Your mentorship laid the foundation for a lot that goes on in my mental world—the stuff you surely would have intended, and the stuff you maybe wouldn't have, or at least the stuff that might have given you pause. Anyway, I'm excited and anxious to see you soon.

Art: I'd have no problem posting these wherever, and certainly have no problem with anyone in the group reading them. I'm honored (and a little surprised!) that you'd like to keep reading, and that you think others would as well.

I've been trying to write about this for the past two years.The big shift in me, the loss of faith, happened or at least was catalyzed when I went to India two years ago. A lot happened there, both on the streets of New Delhi and in the desert mountains of Leh, a city in the Himalayas, and I've been trying to capture it. The sights and sounds and smells of India are inextricably bound up with the contours of my own spiritual story. But I've never trusted anything I've put on paper about it. Now, for some reason, I feel like I can finally write about India and everything that happened after. I'm hoping our emails can provide some of the foundation for that. And, along the way, I'm hoping you and Will can read what I write and respond. 

À la recherche du temps perdu

The following is an email sent from Joe to Will and Art on 30 March 2016.

Marcel Proust

It's funny you bring up the Myers Briggs, Will. After having accepted my designation as an INFJ for years, I began to realize just recently how significantly I have changed in the past twenty-four months. It's mostly because of my job: I've been required by social and professional and even intellectual necessity to cultivate savoir faire and sociability—to do my job even remotely well, I've had to run with traditionalist conservatives and social conservatives and libertarians and tenderhearted center-leftists and democratic socialists and gender-and-race theorists, as well as hipsters and vegans and young Republicans and every other variety of millennial. I've come not just to like this sort of living, but to derive all my energy from it. So, I decided to take the test a few days ago to see what I've become. Verdict: very pronounced E, pretty pronounced N, only 6% preference for F, and a meager 1% preference for J.

That's a roundabout way of getting at my interest in politics, Will. Not accounting for the interest I developed in political philosophy as an undergraduate, nor for the attraction to political and cultural criticism that I've developed only in the last two to three years, the root of my urge toward the political life is an acquired preoccupation with politics in the Thucydidean sense: not the politics of casting ballots necessarily, but rather the activity of discoursing and debating with other people on every social level—in small communities of thinkers, throughout a university, and in the wide world.

At the same time, I must acknowledge that partisan politics became interesting to me right around the time when I lost my faith, which was about two years ago. There's much to be said about that topic—and frankly, if it does not prove too often to be a non-sequitur in our conversations, I'd like to haggle over and piece through it a bit with you both. I want that mostly because you both knew me when I was at my most, shall we say, faithful: my most Catholic in the spiritual and social senses. You knew me when I felt certain that I would live a devoutly Catholic life, when my main preoccupation was how truly to be Catholic in a secular world. And now you are among the only people in my life who can critique me, who can remind me of faith in ways others just can't (not to re-convert me—I am not asking for that, have no real interest in it—but to remind me). This is admittedly selfish. I hope in return that my agnosticism might be of some use to you and the project. If it's not, I'll stay out of it. But I do remember that my character is an angry, disaffected agnostic. Now that's a character I can play.

Presently, there's something about my agnosticism (let's be honest: functional atheism) that troubles me. Because my agnosticism is so easily incorporated into secular life, especially among academics and the sets toward which I most naturally gravitate, I am not required to contend with the claims and virtues of my old Catholicism. In other words, it would be very easy for me to ditch the former Joe—the one who was devout, the one whose mental horizon was populated with Christ and the Church and Aquinas and Dorothy Day—for the new Joe—the one with new political interests, new moral sensibilities, who can run head-first into the sort of life offered by the 21st century educated cosmopolitan milieu that runs The New York Times, most universities, and with whom I generally feel at home.

Put otherwise, I see something wrong or unwise in the prospect of sliding unthinkingly and comfortably into postmodern secularism and en vogue secular cosmopolitanism. Granted, I already sort of fit into these categories.  There is just something fundamentally unsatisfying about what would be most comfortable: a quick change of worldviews from Catholicism to 21st century secularism, the stripping off of my Catholic clothes and putting on of the ready-to-hand jumpsuit of the liberal secularist, the NPR-listening educated Democrat, the good citizen.

Because I have this ill-defined fear, I head to mass once in a while, usually at a church where I'm anonymous, to try to re-enter the mental space of my old Catholicism—to smell the incense, hear the organ and, à la recherche du temps perdu, be brought vividly back to my old mind and soul. But occasionally these attempts at anonymity fail, and I run into someone I know. Many such people are aware I don't go to church anymore; many also heard rumors about me, circulated among Grand Rapids Catholics a couple years ago and that seem never to go away, which insist that I'm some kind of rank hedonist, or Hitchensian anti-theist, or sexual adventurer. So I'm often looked at with a mixture of hesitance and curiosity and mild, pious concern. Indeed, this very sort of thing happened on Good Friday, when I went to Tenebrae at the Cathedral of St Andrew. The questioner, a Catholic Central grad, asked what brought me to church? I told her it was the aesthetics.

I said that because I think Joyce once said it, and anyway it's true: the aesthetics, the beautiful physicality of the icons and deep sorrow of the chants, stir into life certain old feelings and associations. But their function is nostalgic, and I'm becoming less interested in nostalgia. So why do I still go to church every now and then?Well, that's a question I want to answer. I think talking with the group, being part of this project in some manner, might help me continue to ask the question.

It's funny, it's only been two years since I stopped believing in God—or rather, it's been two years since the moment I noticed that the belief in God had exited me. That's not a long time. But the exit was so dramatic, so complete, that all I felt in its wake was a spiritual vacancy that, after a short while, I regarded with only mild interest and numb concern. That vacancy has filled, in some manner, with other things. I don't sense it anymore, and because I don't sense it, I find it hard to remember what my belief even felt like. Is that because I never believed? Or because I have a short memory? Or because the postmodern malaise is so hegemonic that it not only invades you but blinds you to the possibilities and promises of faith?

Anyway, this project might helping me remember. To what end, who knows? But I prefer the struggle of memory to the blissful ignorance of dementia.

The Return of Joe Lazarus Jr.

The following is an excerpt of a 15 November 2016 email exchange. 

Philosopher Charles Taylor teaches on secularization at the University of Tübingen, June 4, 2013.

Will:

Look who's back! 

It's Joe, aka Joe Lazarus, Jr! 

Say hello to the whole crew—Allison, aka The Critic; Liza, aka Leif Erikson's sister; Nick, aka Nick, Art, aka Arthur White and Carlton Farthington, and Max, aka Joe Lazari III-X.

Art:

JOE!!! YAY!!! IT'S JOE!!! HURRAY!!! JOE!!!

Max:

There is no curse after all!!!

Joe:

Damn good to be back. 

From the looks of it, not much has changed on our email thread since I left: careful meta-analyses of our methods and goals interspersed with allusions to abstruse Theorists with a capital T, both real and imagined. And then there's the Will/Plato vs. Art/Aristotle debate. Have the tables turned on that one? Three years ago, I thought Will was more the Aristotelian.   

One thing I frankly can't remember: which Joe Lazarus am I? Am I just Jr? Or Sr., as well? It looks like Max plays every human being I have contributed to producing, either as father, grand father, or great-grand father. Are we that far in the story?   

Also, as I recall, I was very much a lapsed Catholic for the majority of this narrative. At least, I remember the first blog post I wrote was about my anger over the spiritual bankruptcy of both my biological mother and of Holy Mother Church. I was bitter, but I can't recall why. Clearly I have a ton to catch up on. Will and Art, can you forward me some recent threads?   

At any rate, I do remember that my character was caught up in a kind of spiritual malaise, a kind of modern dark night of the soul for which dawn is not necessarily imminent. Did he return to Catholicism with Art? What brought him back, if so?   

I've been reading a ton of Charles Taylor, whose intellectual history of secularization is on point. Will be useful.   

Also, regarding the footage of our concert that you probably think is long gone. Well, it isn't. I told Will this, but I should say to Art and Max: I apologize for falling completely off the grid for a year or two, and taking the footage with me. I hit a few bumps in the road and resigned from life for a while. Interestingly, I did this only after I went East, to India. Didn't Art become reclusive after he went East? Or just insane? 

Anyway, I'm convinced I can salvage the majority of the footage we have from before. My attempt to make a documentary was a failure (after watching it, my film prof, a trusted friend, put her hand on my back and said, "You know, Joe, maybe you should stick with writing." I laughed, then cried a little). Then again, I can see now I really did not have enough material for a coherent narrative. Perhaps we can take up the documentary project again one day, or on and off through the years. 

Anyway, glad to be back on board.

Some New Fangled System (Part 2 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 25 June 2014.

A lot of these decisions that we're making right now are not unlike the decisions made by translators before they get started on the translation.

It's the question of how we translate the vision from its current, almost-incomprehensible form into something more defined that nonetheless does justice to the original. A.D. Melville chose to render the dactylic hexameter of Ovid into blank verse with occasional rhyming couplets.

"What is painting but the act of embracing
by means of art the surface of the pool?" - Alberti

Any choice is going to lose some of the richness of the original.

So, the question to be asked at this point is whether approaching it in this way--with the real-life Art and Will as the main characters--is preserving something essential about our underlying theme or is it just a "new fangled" attempt to avoid the sheer difficulty of writing something. Regardless of which it is, I think a case can be made for the former.

As we've discussed at length, one of the main motifs in the work is renaming and false identities. It feels a little disingenous to explore our characters' fakery without acknowledging our own--the idea that we, like them, are adopting false identities or avatars in order to achieve our ends in a circuitous way.

And that this inauthenticity or fraudulence is a fundamental characteristic of the age in which we live.

I have no idea what documentary Joe was trying to make, but as I look back about the material he compiled, I think that was the direction he was going. We were the main characters in his documentary. That's another critical theme: that satellite technology makes us behave as if we were famous, as if we are the main characters. That's pitiful if it isn't acknowledged and claimed artistically. But this postmodern approach does take responsibility for that central pretense.

And it opens the door to some pretty pathetic/tragic/comic details, depending on your interpretation. Your experiments in pursuing fame. My writing these songs and then sitting on them until I was pushing 40. Joe starting the documentary and then losing all the footage. If we go with one or more traditional approaches to writing this story, I feel like we are amputating a large percentage of what makes the story so strange and beautiful.

Wow, quite the response...dinner time, so I'm going to close. I do think this is a critical point at which to have this conversation.

And there is always the third option: that the two options are not mutually exclusive.

Some New Fangled System (Part 1 of 2)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 25 June 2014.

I do like Jo as the documentarian searching for meaning and peace and trying to put together a good documentary in the process.

That could provide for some interesting on-camera and off-camera conversations were it to be staged like last time. It also provides the basic motive for telling the story. And it banishes anything irrational or beyond the scope of human understanding.  I also like the idea that she could have conversations with her faculty advisor as another way of telling the story.

Boy, in some ways, what we had with Joe was unique in that we had an actual person trying to create a documentary. I wonder if that would be a good route to go in the future, finding someone (Joe again?) who would be able to conceptualize some approach. The mainstream approach is beginning to get hackneyed, what with all the Christopher Guest movies, The Office, Extras, etc. How is ours going to be different?

Jim looking at the camera

One thing that bothers me about those aforementioned fake documentaries is that they often require more and more suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer.

At some point, the idea of all these people willingly going along with a documentary seems more and more unlikely. And the motive for having the documentary too...i.e. why are we spending 11 years documenting the lives of paper company employees in Scranton?

If we wanted to get super postmodern about it, we could make the documentary about the quest of Art and Will to "make this happen"--and, yes, become somewhat famous in the process. This, of course, does not fit your Apollonian leanings, but, as I said before about the blog, it releases a deluge of material to be exploited. Also, it provides much-needed relief from the approach that is getting hackneyed.

Now that I think about it, this was actually the direction we were going with Joe! Joe took tons of footage and interviewed us as ourselves! What was he going to do with that?

I understand the thought that this may be a cop out writing wise. A.D. Melville gives a good definition of cop out in the "Translator's Note" of his Metamorphoses: "some new-fangled system, more or less metrical, turning its back on achievements it is frightened to face." I'm not exactly what he's talking about, but it calls to mind Robert Pinsky's translation of The Inferno, which uses Yeatsian rhyme and loose iambic pentameter (really just 10-syllable lines) to render Dante's stricter terza rima.

Obviously, there are some gifted writers out there developing excellent made-for-TV serial fiction. Are we avoiding head-on competition with them in taking this route?

It's a good question and I don't know the answer.