Category Archives: Culture & Art
art and envisioning a new world
In the last few weeks I’ve been studying early Jewish apocalypticism. Perhaps the best known apocalypse is an early Christian text, the Book of Revelation, with a close second being a Jewish apocalypse, the Book of Daniel.
One of the things I have been convinced of is, in simple terms, the intention of apocalyptic authors to shift the symbolic universe of their readers. In short this means changing the lens through which readers view things, helping them imagine a better world. In terms of the early Jewish apocalyptic texts this looked like composing a transcendent narrative that inspired hope and resistance in the face of oppressive foreign empires.
This has got me thinking (again) about the place of other forms of art in encouraging resistance to evil and inspiring social change.
In order to remain committed to change in the world people need constant inspiration – without it their ability to envision a better world diminishes. Art has a transcendent, even mysterious, potential to energise us by critiquing the current reality, or imagining a new one.
Father John Dear (whose book Put Down Your Sword I have been reading devotionally for some time) says this: Read the rest of this entry
does my guitar say anything about me?
Warning: This post is almost completely untheological. Non-guitarists may wish to click off now – you may get bored!
Guitarists, you may be deeply offended by my opinions (I know how personally we take out tastes in guitars…)
—
Some of my readers may be aware that I enjoy playing, writing and recording music. These days it’s nothing serious – I just enjoy it.
My journey through guitars is interesting, to me at least, and I wonder whether it reflects anything about me as a person.
I first started playing music at 14 when I picked up the bass. From there I added the guitar and then other instruments subsequently.
Gibson Les Paul
My first guitar was a cheapy, but the guitar I aspired to was the Gibson Les Paul. As a teenager there was something about this guitar that just stood out to me. Guitarists often know Les Pauls for their attitude, their fat, punchy, thick sound, and their heavy weight.
For non-guitarists who have bothered to get this far, think songs featuring Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses, Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin or Pete Townshend from The Who for famous and typical examples of the Les Paul sound.
The rougher edged growl of the Les Paul sound resonated with me, and so when I eventually bought one I thought I had found my perfect guitar.
But tastes change. People change. Read the rest of this entry
the art of resistance
This post is going to be short and sweet. Actually, what I’m really after is your response.
I’ve been thinking about the place of art in resistance movements and social change, everything from the American Civil Rights Movement to the Jewish apocalypticists.
(Currently that Dewey Cox movie is on in the background, and he’s taking off Bob Dylan. It’s kind of off-putting given the present subject.)
So here’s what I’d really love your reflections on:
- What place does art (any kind) have in social change?
- What effects does/can it have? (feel free to include stories)
- What are your favourite expressions of resistance art?
Feel free to answer any or all of those broad questions.
If you know people who might be interested in this subject, or who could contribute to it, I would love for you to point them here. I think this could be a really interesting and rewarding conversation.
MCA
our time is running out: the importance & death of time
As New Year’s passes and we enter into 2012 we find ourselves ducking and weaving to dodge the plethora of resolutions that will, by statistical accounts, mostly fall to the ground by January 20th.
Despite the overwhelming failure of New Year’s resolutions to affect change in our lives we continue to make them year after year. Why?
In our mind there is something special about particular times. We make resolutions on New Year’s because in our minds it is a time of new beginnings, of fresh starts. Read the rest of this entry
the mourning in moving: making spaces into places
My wife and I are in the midst of moving home.
It is a predictably arduous undertaking, and we’ll be glad when it’s over and we are settled in our new place.
But on the other hand we feel a sense of mourning over leaving our current unit, even though we rent and do not own it.
This is not necessarily the first time I have felt this way. Any time I have moved homes in the past (only three times or so) I have felt the same way. In fact whenever I am in the geographical area of a past home I often find myself driving there and sitting out the front.
What is it about our attachment to particular places?
Why do people attach so much value to places and spaces?
Why do people, groups and religions enter conflict, even violence, over particular spaces that are deemed special, sacred or holy? Read the rest of this entry
tgif (trash goes into flight): the bastardisation of creativity
Turn on the radio and you’ll find yourself bathing in the cesspool that is popular music.
Whoa, slow down there cowboy! That’s a pretty harsh way to start, you can’t open with that!
Maybe you’re right. I suppose that lots of music on the radio is actually very good. But you have to admit that a good deal of it can hardly be called beautiful.
Yes, yes, you’re right on that one. But on the other hand beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and those songs you’re talking about tend to be very popular, hence why they are on the radio. Somebody must like them!
Of course, I’m not denying their appeal. But I think the problem with these songs goes beyond their appeal.
What do you mean?
Well, I wonder what makes a song beautiful, or creative. Surely much of what appears in the music charts cannot be said to be creative.
That opens up a big set of questions. What does it even mean to be creative? Read the rest of this entry
the perils of hipster-dom: subcultural exclusivity
Today I watched a story on the news about a fellow who set a challenge for himself – he would become a hipster and study his experience.
One definition of a contemporary hipster might be: Read the rest of this entry
let’s talk about sex, baby! (…and consumerism)
Many Christians are very critical of contemporary sexual culture, and rightly so. But what is the worldview behind this culture of so-called sexual liberation? Perhaps, by directly attacking modern ideas about sexuality, Christians are like people trying to scoop water out of their hallway with a teaspoon when it would be much smarter to turn off the flooding bathtub.
In their book Colossians Remixed, Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat make a very brief and powerful statement about the connection of contemporary sexual culture to our culture of consumption. Speaking about Colossians 3:5 they say:
Sexual sin, greed and idolatry – what is the relation among these? Why end a list of sexual sins with an economic sin? Because sexual sin is fundamentally a matter of covetousness, an insatiable, self-gratifying greed that has the control and consumption of the other person as its ultimate desire. Sexual sin is not sin because it is sexual but because it is invariably covetous. it replaces the pleasure and sexual enjoyment of two people in a loving relationship with a self-centred gratification of sexual longings that can never be fulfilled apart from commitment. Read the rest of this entry
confessions of a “worship” leader
For years I have been involved in playing music to help lead Christians in worship.
Music leader, song leader, worship leader; call it whatever you want. Without wanting to sound in any way conceited (I assure you, about this I am not), I earned a fair amount of praise and encouragement from people who claimed my leading helped them in some way.
In my late teenage years (I have now just turned 26) so-called “worship” and music was central to my faith journey. My identity was largely derived from my music leading, and there was a lot of pressure to conform to the image of other well-known worship leaders. I truly believed that my calling, that my purpose, was to be found in leading people in worship by way of music.
I sang a lot of songs. A lot of words. But eventually something dawned on me – all that music, all that so-called “worship,” wasn’t necessarily changing me or anyone else I was leading. Read the rest of this entry
neither refugee nor refuged: christ, empire & the unsolution
The so-called Malaysian Solution marks a terrible chapter in Australia’s immigration history.
While many people have tried to argue that Julia Gillard lied about the carbon tax, I find this argument to be wilfully ignorant of the events of the last twelve months.
Where Gillard has lied, however, is on the issue of asylum seekers. She has previously claimed that the Howard Government’s so-called Pacific Solution was, “costly, unsustainable and wrong as a matter of principle.” Read the rest of this entry
