Tuesday, October 06, 2009

Hi Tuesday

Notice a change, Mr. Internet?
I grew weary of all the extra white space on the sides here, and also decided that serifs are so old-style. So instead of creating and entirely new blog page elsewhere and elongating my trail of blogs, I picked another template. It's sort of shocking to me that there are only about 15 templates to choose from. Maybe I'm too dumb to figure out how to get other ones. Not a big worry of mine. Now if I can only figure out how to change the font from ugly Verdana..

The culturific All Saints blog posted on a work of art close to my heart: the new David Bazan album. Although, it wasn't much of a review, but largely a flexing of the author's 90's musical knowledge followed by paragraphs hugely unsupported opinions. Basically, the writer is trying to cover up his hurt that Mr. Bazan has crossed over into hostile territory and IMO very unfairly castigates the album's lyrical quality. Granted, I was/am not a Pedro the Lion fan, so I don't have much to compare this to. But, because he is a Christian (is this an unreasonable allegation?) he totally misses the complete beauty of the album.. the beautiful picture of a man struggling with his dying faith and burgeoning agnosticism. It's REAL. You don't need to be eloquent or poetic to express the deepest feelings of human experience. You just need to be honest, and that he most definitely is. If that's what the author means by "lyrical drought," then I think he is largely missing the purpose of the album. Art for art's sake is useless. I am most certain that this difficult album has connected with many others besides B and I. A "godsend," if you will, in a culture where doubt isn't necessarily encouraged and most often ignored or looked down upon.

EDIT: I saw the author at the show (along with friendly Karl), and I wondered if he was mad at me/if he read this post. Sorta like how he didn't want David Bazan to read his post because it bashed him. I doubt it, since I do not post my website on my All Saints blog postings, but I guess I will never know.

2 comments:

Rachel B said...

I agree, I hate that doubt is generally taboo in today's Christian culture...it's one of those things that seems so silly because we all experience it from time to time, and if we don't, we're delusional.

Bazan's lyrics are so angry...I wonder what he would identify as the object of his anger?

Fern said...

The all saints podcast royally crashed my browser .. :/

I think he is more frustrated and possibly tired of struggling. I do not know exactly as I have not followed his output.