Far Country Tell : the wit of jesus and orpheus

the revealing

the magic of advent culminates on the 'twelfth night' of Christ/mas/tide. . . tomorrow the revealing!

Auden's Modern Mystery Cycle

Boxing Day here in the UK. Christmas day has past and the magic of this ancient high festival slowly fades.

On Christmas Eve BBC brodcasted a special radio production of W.H. Auden's For A Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

"WH Auden's postwar passion play is a modern mystery cycle which reinterprets faith for those exposed to the horrors of the Second World War."

This is magic and mystery crafted for the modern pallet. I encourage you to go now to BBC Radio 3 (follow the link here) and listen to the radio broadcast while it is still available. I believe they said it would only be up for 7 days.

If you miss the radio broadcast I encourage you to seek out this tale before twelfth night arrives and the magi's gifts reveal God's shining forth in the God-child . . .

the aesthetics of Total War Pt. 2

"The reason I'm painting this way is becasue I want to be a machine" --Andy Warhol

In an age of Total War what becomes of the language of aesthetics? In the age of the machine we become the servants of the machine . . . our servitude is reflected with great pride in our plastic arts. this is what Virilio calls, Art Terrorism.

In the age of the machine representation is not enough: "The art of painting at the time was already busy trying to outdo mere REPRESENTATION by offering the very presence of the event, as instantaneous photography would do, followed by the PHOTO-FINISH and teh first cenematographic newsreeels of the Lumiere brothers and, ultimately, the LIVE COVERAGE offered by CNN." (21)

Drawing on Bonhoeffer, Virilio critiques this fetishism of immediacy (the cheap whore of forced materialization!!) as ultimately an attack on personhood. Our serventhood of the machine is reflected in the plastic arts whose Mengeleian (un)creators continue the scientific arts which were begun in the research labs of Auschwitz-Birkenau . . . Upon Pope Benedict Ratzinger's visit he lamented that the Nazi hope was to kill the God of Abraham, Isaac and David . . . if Nietzsche was right, Virilio laments, and God is dead then the coming victim is not the creator but the created!

"Avant-garde artists, like many political agitators, propagandists and demagogues, have long understood what TERRORISM would soon popularize: if you want a place in 'revolutionary history' there is nothing easier than provoking a riot, an assault on propriety, in the guise of art . . . the art of the twentieth century became 'monstative' in the sense that it is contemporary with the shattering effect of mass societies, subject as they are to the conditioning of opinion and MASS MEDIA propaganda - and this, with the same mounting extremism evident in terrorism or total war." (17-19)

The problem of the simulacra . . . the problem of representation is a question that must be addressed (theologically?) at the dawn of the 21st century. In an age of the machine what can the church offer as a response when it is a servant of the machine? when art -as an extention of 20th century mutilation- is the main commodity of a people then what becomes of the people? when the tools of Total War (the virtual) becomes the language of social interaction what is left, save the hyperreal?

what will we do?

Feuerbach . . .

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness”

Feuerbach / Preface to 2nd ed. of The Essence of Christianity

Summer Solstice

The longest day of the year is a tempestuous one here in st. andrews . . . a crossroads of pagan, Roman Catholic, and high Scot Protestant traditions. the sun rules the day but the strong West winds drive the tempurature down as the clouds forshadow the days to come. the honey moon (the first full moon in june when honey is harvested) is past us and the ironic joys of summer are upon us.

Midsummers Day also known as the Feast of St. John the Baptist is actually June 24 marking the dark twin on the Cardinal Cross. We now slowly decend into darkness and begin, with anticipation, the birth of the light of the world.

The importance of the Christian calender deriving meaning from the pagan is now lost . . . the protestants have succeded in erasing that memeory into shadow and turning the days into rote spiritualism.

However, while in Switzerland I have managed to find an interesting key. The Lausanne Cathedral, concecrated by Gregory X in 1275 (construction began a century earlier), house the most unusual stained glass. The Rose window, original to the cathedral from the 13th century, is window into the Medieval Christian imagination. [see images from the Princeton Univ. archives] Christ at the center, images of daily life throughout the four season, the astrological zodiac surrounds those images and 'monsters' mark the edges.

During the Reformation Lausanne Cathedral was stripped by iconoclastic Protestants . . . except for this window?? Why did they leave it? What truth about the nature of existence did it continue to reveal to the Reformers?

May you be fully present to this day beyond the usual numbers, facts, and the picayune.

Bono: The Independent (Red): An inbreaking

as summer approaches the sun has been rising earlier and earlier. amazingly, by 5 a.m. there is no qualitative difference in light from 10 a.m. Suffice it to say, sleep patterns are a bit wacked.

This morning I finally finished reading through The Independent edited by Bono. Half of the issue cover price donated to RED which is dedicated "to fight AIDS in Africa" by teaming with corporate sponsors. Needless to say the issue was a breath of fresh air from the usual dank air provided by most journalism.

From the front cover (by artist Damien Hirst) Bono reminds us the theme of this edition: there is a radical disjunction between Gen 1.27 and 6,500 Africans dying daily "as a result of a preventable, treatable disease. (HIV/Aids)".

Some notable moments in the Issue: 1) The opening article and image was incredibly powerful. "Aids and a lost generation: Children raising children" addresses what is at stake . . . an entire generation being laid waste an another growing up with no hope. Later, this is complimented by a unique first hand account by Internal Development Secretary Cahal Milmo . . . a witness to the suffering.

2) Two excellent articles highlight the connection between oil greed, the suffering of the poor and debt relief. . . "The woman who has the power to change Africa" is about Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala (Finance Minister of Nigeria) fighting corruption -both internal and external (IMF?!). Also, the article/interview with Hugo Chavez was intense . . . illuminating and frustrating. Chavez is responding to miserable conditions in Venezuela (The military suppressing an uprising which started because the IMF forced the government to divert money from the poor to the repayment of loans). The irony of both stories was that both Nigeria and Venezuela should be wealthy from their Oil.

3) A report of African immigrants washing dead (some alive) on Italian beaches provided the most chilling quote. "This is not Lampedusa's [a resort island] problem. It's Italy's problem, it's Europe's problem. We don't even see them. We have nothing to do with them."

4) The Independent magazine insert EXTRA had an amazing photo-essay by Sam Taylor-Wood on a road trip through the Deep South of the States which reveals "how little the modern world has touched America's rural underbelly". Done with a sympathetic and generous look at the South, the photo-essay addresses silent rural poverty in America.

The photo-essay is balanced by an editorial by Dominic Lawson entitled "Why we should give thanks for Wal-Mart" or how it does "more to raise the living standards of poor Americans than any government agency.

5) Contradiction is dealt with again with "A new nation of philistines: Russians prefer Hollywood to high culture". Basically, the TV and Internet is consuming Russian leisure time . . . a microcosm of the rest of the Western world. On the other hand, there is an interview with the Edge on the rebuilding of New Orleans (the culture).

These are just the highlights from the issue. The real genius though is in the details . . . one gets the sense that the magazine is crafted (like a fine concept album?!) rather than manufactured. There are no easy answers here only a mandate to address the problems and needs of a real world. Theologically, Bono's sensibilities allow for glimpses of the kingdom of God to shine through; an inbreaking of future concerns, possibilities, and prophetic critiques in the here and now. Bono's journalistic anomaly provides us with a  vision of what journalism could be, can, should be (and sometimes is) . . .

Bono's doing his part:

what will we do?

Image and Hypereality: 9/11 revisted

"The airplane is a thin white blur on the video . . ." Has anyone else seen the newly released footage of flight 77 crashing into the pentagon? Have we all lost our senses?

There is absolutely nothing in that footage except a building blowing up and what looks more like a 'rocket' hitting the building rather than a a fully fueled airliner crashing down on it? See the article and the footage for yourself at MSNBC: here.

What is really at work in the article, report, and video is a masterful example of fragmented ideology forcing the reading of an image. We are being told what we are seeing . . . becasue I've got news for you . . . there ain't no effing plane in that video. Check out another image source on YouTube.com

Simon Danser says in his book The Myths of Reality, "The fragmented structure of TV news means viewers can only make sense of the information by relying on pre-existing ideological assumptions or by tacitly accepting the ideological framework within which the mass media 'news industry' operates." (20) The only way to make heads or tales of that video is to rely on pre-existing ideological assumptions . . .

I guess my main beef here is with MSNBC's article regarding the newly released video and the language of ideological certainty. There is no footage of a plane hitting the Pentagon . . . there is only footage of the Pentagon exploding! Either the image is robbed of actual meaning or the words are empty signs detached from their signifiers --either way the third meaning (which is supposed to be definative about reality) actually moves us away from reality.

What are willing to accept in an "information society"? Consensus over the Real? If consensus is what we're willing to accept then we need to come to grips with the social construction of reality . . . and if reality is up for grabs in a world of competing mediations then what is theology's response? Does an information society prove religion to be a social construction . . . an opiate dependent on the security of hegemonic consensus?

What will we do?

(visit Flight 77.info for more information on the release of the pentagon video)

Exorcism of Emily Rose

if you visit rottentomatoes you'll find a mixed bag of reviews of The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005). I finally watched it last night and was pleasantly surprised . . .

The film is loosely based on the events surrounding the death of Anneliese Michel and the subsequent trial (called the 'Klingenberg Case') of the Priest(s) who performed the Roman Rite of exorcism on her. This is the best use of the horror genre i've seen since The Mothman Prophecies: the techniques of the horror genre are used to disclose the fantastic and the strange inbreaking (manifestation) of the spiritual into the physical world.

Have you ever noticed how often the phrase "Do not be afraid . . ." comes up in the bible? It comes up so often because when the supernatural breaks into the narrative it's a frightening event: people get scared! This is how EOER makes use of horror. Images, sounds and actions that break the plane of the 'normal'.

The films disjunctive visual technique is carried over into the structure of the script as well. The film isn't a straight horror flick but moves between the cool rationalism of the courtroom drama and the bizarre disjunctive images of horror. Rather than a Law & Order episode on acid that needs to pick a genre there is a justification for this genre slide that serves the purpose of the narrative. There is a responsibility to "Emily's story" which is under attack. Can rationalism do justice a narrative of faith? The answer isn't easy . . . and the film plays to this hermenutical problem.

with pornography like The Hills Have Eyes and Hostel it's nice to come across a film that uses horror to ask questions rather than overstimulate our reptilian brain stems. It's even more rewarding to find a horror flick that can use the genre to ask theological questions . . .

(for some expert advise of theology and horror visit my friend and colleague Phil at the conversation) . . .

post script: The film is only strengthened by the cast. Tom Wilkinson (see Normal), Laura Linney (see the Squid and the Whale) and Campbell Scott (see The Secret Lives of Dentists) bring integrity to the film.

German filmmaker Hans-Christian Schmid -displeased with the Americanized version- is currently in post-production of Anneliese Michel's (who died in Bavaria) German story.

the texture of a new day:

april notes

3400 years of passover . . .the power of remembrance: one of the many gifts of the Jewish people to the world.

The daffodils are in full bloom, the swallows glide, and the cuckoo's are laying eggs in nests not their own.

Today is Madatum Thursday. The last commands of Christ: Love one another / Remembrance / Pray with me.

Is it any wonder he was betrayed with a loving kiss?

St. George's (the dragon slayer) Day is almost upon us . . .