Come-From-Behind Comic Victories

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 4 August 2014.

More thoughts about why artists and prostitutes don't fit in to the usual progression of aesthetic, ethical, religious.

Whenever a group takes away the religious sense and tries to reduce faith to an ethical proposition, it spawns artists, druggies (of the psychedelic, not hedonistic, variety), and prostitutes as a "4th sphere"--almost a kind of limbo.

That's exactly what the Pharisees did. That's exactly what Pentheus did. And thus, you have prostitutes and tax collectors trying to get beyond that wall by breaking its rules (not the ideal, normative way through, by the way!). A similar thing seems to have happened in our own day, but actually both the the religious and the ethical senses are being attacked, leaving nothing but the aesthetic. You're right that there are no "noble Romans" in our day. Fr. Bernard could be turned into one, but I don't think it would be edifying for anyone.

You should never harsh the Bacchants' mellow frenzy

This phenomenon is bound to funnel a lot of would-be mystics into various distorted paths. I think I enumerated some of them back in our meeting at the diner: psychedelic drug use, sexuality, cult membership, bacchic rites of music (think Jimi), insanity, etc. All of these would be characterized by an inarticulate longing for the ecstatic union of the religious sphere, a longing that Christ seems to have readily picked up on.

That is why you and I rightly (I think) have so much more admiration for a Marvin Gaye or a Gil Scott-Heron than we do for the guy who comes to church wearing his team's gear, goes down for donuts, and talks about yesterday's game. I know that God is a lot more merciful than us, by the way. But I have little patience for people who presume to judge why these artists suffered such an ignominious demise. "They should have never left the Shire!" is what these Chubs, Grubs, Boffins, and Brandybucks would say! No, they risked traveling a very high and narrow path, without the guidance and expertise that existed in past centuries, and therefore had a long way to fall.

Is it wisdom to stay close to Hell so your fall isn't as profound?

I hope that the one who "began a good work" in some of these Pancake Breakfast types "will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6). And that is one of the more beautiful things about our religion: it finds everyone where they are and comes up with some unlikely, miraculous, come-from-behind comic victories.

Arthur's "Solution"

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 4 August 2014.

If everything Arthur experiences is a distorted version of the antecedent will of God, then Iceland should have been his Patmos experience. The solution that Will comes up with is a religious stretch for him, but not for Arthur.

So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me empty,
but shall do what pleases me,
achieving the end for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

Being a good Catholic is not enough for Arthur; he is a type of Catholic that has been largely banished from both secular and religious circles. He's kind of like a Abba Joseph of the Desert Fathers or a St. Joseph Cupertino or a St. John the Apostle. It's also reminiscent of Thomas Merton, who spent his early conversion days teaching Harlem youth--clearly a good thing--but not where he belongs. He's a contemplative, a visionary, a mystic. The guy levitates, has fire come out of his fingers, alternates between visions of Heaven and Hell, and does very little that would work in the context of a K of C Pancake Breakfast.

Iceland is not where he belongs either, but it needs to be something on that level. This is the situation inside God's consequent will, which is patiently guiding Arthur's feet back making use of these broken elements.

Perhaps the happy ending can be conveyed in an epilogue-type thing, like at the end of Life of Pi. Maybe we visit Arthur in a small hermitage. Maybe he has even become a priest through some special dispensation (he wouldn't be able to get through any of the heavy theological study--I'm sure there is some example of this in history).

That's the final frontier for Catholics: being able to retreat from life altogether. But only priests who can confect the Eucharist can truly live this lifestyle. Maybe the hermitage is out back on some huge property that Will bought with the money from some successful endeavor--maybe even from making it big with Arthur White!

Will's solution is a neat and tidy one, but the point for me is that Arthur's "solution" no longer has any place in society--maybe it never did. The only fellow feeling he finds is in music world of the Jimi Hendrix-style druggie mystic and in the cult world of Carlton Farthington. It's not like either of those are necessarily closer to God's will, but I think this may be one of those areas in which “Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you" (Mt. 21:31).

The people sitting in the pews--still trying to "win a game of ball in a cup," as you say--are so far removed from the reality of the kingdom. Who would convert more quickly were they to meet Jesus face to face: the former or the latter? I think what Jesus is saying is that the former, having unmoored themselves from any chance of success in the worldly sense, are so much more ready to embrace the kingdom. They already live in tents; once they see the column of flame, there's nothing to slow them down from following it through the desert.

So, the Catholic audience is chastened by this message, coaxed into laughing at Carlton Farthington and the cult, only later realizing that they need to get down to at least that level themselves--not in the context of the cult, of course, but in the context of their detachment from the world and seeking the kingdom first.

Last little bit: I've often wondered if the ring in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is something like this fervor that drives someone to burn out on psychedelic drugs or join a cult. It's nothing that the usual hobbits in the Shire would ever encounter because they're too comfortable, too averse to adventure. So, from that perspective, Bilbo, Frodo, and--yes--even Gollum can be considered closer to the kingdom than the hobbits back in Hobbiton. Yes, there are many dangers and pitfalls that beset the hobbits that come in contact with the magic of the ring (or of the adventure in general), but there is never any sense in which ordinary life back in Hobbiton would have been the better or more noble option.

Cataclysmic Changes (Part 2 of 3)

The following is an excerpt of an email sent from Art to Will on 10 April 2014.

Carlton Farthington, as we've been developing him lately, has no content of his own.

He is an emblem of the reposting/retweeting/embedding phenomenon.  Interested fans of the project will go digging for that kernel of actual content but will come up empty handed.  The joke with him is that he is a guru who has absolutely no message!  So siphoning the message off Arthur White would make total sense.

As for the "cataclysmic changes," I'm beginning to like the option that they may have been about to happen, but that the volcano settled down and nothing happened.

That is, if you eliminate the possibility of a "many-worlds interpretation" from the Schrödinger's cat paradox (which I personally do not).  Here's the March 24 email:

So, for example, Farthington's emergence on the campus of Cape Fear Community College could have taken place in 1984 or 2014 or both or neither.  He may or may not be the person in the mascot suit or with the Google account.  The catastrophe in Iceland could have happened in 1976, never happened, or is about to happen now.  Strict timelines can be introduced, but they become less trustworthy as other alternate realities are considered.  Essentially, this opens the door to our competing narratives and creates a frame in which we never have to get it right, never have to put all our eggs in one basket, never have to sell ourselves out to a single storyline.

Why is this happening?

Two possible reasons that I can give:

1. It's the fulfillment of Farthington's prophesy about the "turbulent reversals" 
2. It's all happening in Arthur's mind, which is now "unstuck"

Again, what happens is either nothing, something, or the "turbulent reversals."  You made a convincing claim about what the turbulent reversals might look like when you wrote,

The Principles of Theory is nothing until the technology exists to suck it out of his followers...Essentially, Farthington's power rises as digital culture rises, and the more the culture moves from the pagan, analog, portable village model of rock stardom that the sixties gave us and that faded in the seventies and toward the more sophisticated obliteration of time and space (since digital culture puts us in all times and all places at once and becomes an age of recycling and mosaic instead of innovation)...

What I like about that is that Carlton actually is creating a counterfeit Christianity, a "He must increase, I must decrease" dialectic.

Interestingly, this is the very idea Nietzsche warred against in his master/slave morality diatribe: that the Judeo-Christian worldview was/ is just a gambit to wrest control of this world from the Übermensch (cf. my email on Ibsen's "O for a Viking Spirit").

Without going into that at all, Carlton's counterfeit is actually the type that leads one directly to the nothingness of Hell, not toward the humility that is a precondition for Heaven. I've really been starting to parse out this very fine line between the humility described in the Gospel and the nothingness we approach as we near Hell.

And as for Arthur's mental state, I don't think he needs to be a vegetable.  We can nuance that.  My main idea is that his powers were paradoxically released by this sort of outsider meddling.

Questions for Will

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

What role does Agniesczka play?  

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

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

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

Why would Will use marriage to control Arthur?  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Austere Cult

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A sudden loss of musical inspiration wouldn't seem rational

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

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

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

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

"Let the Atheists Themselves Choose A God"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Was Arthur's Great Early Sin?

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

Arthur's great early sin was simply a deviation from God's will.  

It should be something related to hiding (cf. Genesis 3:8).  My first remembered sin was when I hid the fact that I was wearing shorts when it was below 60 degrees outside, against my parents' wishes.  I literally pressed myself up against my parents bed so my mom wouldn't see.  Arthur's sin could have happened all the way back in childhood, maybe something he and Will did.  

Every sin after that is going to have that character of hiding.  

He's hiding from God in his band, in his love interests, in his marriage, in his family, in the cult, etc.  God can "find" him and redeem him in any one of these situations (maybe besides the cult).  But, whatever life he's in, he gets restless because he can hear "footsteps in the dark."

Those footsteps belong to the Hound of Heaven.

Arthur probably should have joined the Cistercians or some other austere order in the first place.  His "first love" of Catholic mysticism remains an ongoing dalliance throughout all these phases, but, like a lot of people in our modern age, he gets duped into looking elsewhere.  Plus, it's more hiding.

I like the ideas that we threw around about the cult initially.  First of all, I like appropriating your "Fist of Karma" name.  I found a quote of yours from earlier in our discussions where you talked about the "two contradictory extremes that cults offer: the promise of transcendent god-like wisdom and complete self-abnegation."  

That's a very pagan (or Manichaean or Gnostic) approach to mysticism.  

I don't think the doctrine is overly important, but it intersects slightly with our story in that part of its novitiate involves handing all documentation of one's prior existence over to the cult--that would include photos, VHS tapes, report cards...

And--most importantly for the purpose of our story--recorded music and written lyrics.