Judging Art

I’m reading through Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water as part of how I start my day.   This quote was from a while back, but it came up today, when I was talking with a friend about how to judge a good love song:

“When we look at a painting , or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more named, then, for us, that work is a work of Christian art.  But to look at a work of art and then to make a judgment as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous.  It is something we cannot know in an any conclusive way.  We know only if it speaks to our own hearts, and leads us to living more deeply with Christ in God.”

Then she quotes a professor friend

We do not judge art.  Art judges us.

I know she’s using the word “Christian” here, but I think that I would insert the word “good.”  Not because I don’t have standards about art.  I mean, people turn in drafts to workshop and I can see what’s not ‘working.’  I do think there’s something to that.  Stories can have flaws, and sometimes my flawed stories can move people in the way I’d hoped, but I still see that it needs work before I can call it “Good.”

Still, I have this urge to resist calling other people’s creations “bad.”  Maybe if those creations hurt people with intention.   Maybe I’m talking about some Eminem songs–but then again, I must admit that I enjoy a good ‘roast’ from time to time.  See? “Good roast.”

This topic makes my head spin.  But I think that I would enjoy my life more if I weren’t constantly pinning ‘good’ and ‘bad’ on people’s work, which is a perspective I aspire to, I suppose.  Easier said than done for some of us?

poetry, yoga, and joy (to name a few)

I want to share one of my favorite poems with you:

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

–Robert Hayden

You may have read it before.  It’s popular.  I just taught it for Intro to Creative Writing and had the last two lines in my head on the way out of class.   And then, to my amusement, a firetruck went by.  I was at the campus’s busiest intersection, waiting for the light to turn and it came around the corner, squealing as it wove around the braked cars.  “What did I know,” I thought.  “What did I know…”*

I thought our class discussion went well, particularly about this poem.  It’s hard to top the feeling of leaving a class after students contribute to discussion, especially about a piece of writing that you love and you offered them as an example of whatever you’re trying to teach.  This is a poem I’ve read and thought about several times, but the students came up with interpretations that never came to my mind before.  So, I thought.  This is why so many people want to teach English to college students.

In light of all of this, I’m reminded of my yoga class this morning.  (I’ve been going to yoga every morning.  This is my eighth class since the semester started!) The instructor announced, before we started stretching, that all of us contain every quality in us.  She asked us to choose a quality we wanted to cultivate in that yoga session.  On a side note, I have to say that I love this idea, that everyone carries in them the capacity to embody all qualities.  It’s one of my favorite things Thich Nhat Hahn says–he talks about it in terms of peace and in terms of anger.  We all have seeds of anger in us and seeds of peace, and every choice we make determines which seed grows.  I think I just like metaphors using plants.  ANYWAY…

I chose ‘joy’ as the quality I wanted to cultivate in yoga.  It was a great choice; every time I was in pain, or wanted the class to end, I would think about enjoying the stretch.   This idea, the idea of using yoga to cultivate joy– I feel like it carried over to the rest of my day.

*in case you don’t know, my father was a fire fighter

Wanderlust

When I was young–let’s say four–I went for a walk around the neighborhood alone.  I walked around the block and across the street and saw some other kids playing outside, so I went into their backyard.  They had a swingset, something bright and plastic.  Lemonade made an appearance.  That’s all I remember, but I can recognize the house when I drive past it on Bretton.  It was one of those bigger houses, one of those that made me most curious to know what was inside.  I don’t remember going inside, but I vaguely remember a mother.

My mother flipped when I got home.  I was grounded for a week.  Not spanked, because when you have a toddler with wanderlust, spanking only delivers the message so far.   Being grounded is the only appropriate punishment for a toddler with wanderlust.

Old Songs

This week we’re looking at religious music.   This is one of the “hymns” I guess, that was in our packet to read, from Medieval England:

A God, and yet a man?

A mayde, and yet a mother?

Witt wonders what witt can

Conceave this or the other.

A God, and can he die?

A dead man, can he live?

What witt can well replie?

What reason reason give?

God, Truth it selfe doth teache it;

Mans witt sinkes too far under,

By reasons power to reach it–

Beleeve, and leave to wonder.

Gospel Blues

You might have heard me say before that my favorite genre of music is “gospel blues.”   In an essay I just read, I’ve figured out why.

In Stephen Citron’s “SONGWRITING: A Complete Guide to the Craft,” he describes the different forms of song.  He goes through pop, country, musical comedy, rock, spirituals, and then blues.  Here’s what he says about blues:

“While the spiritual expressed the belief in the Bible and the hereafter, the blues avoided religion and was concerned with the now.” (26)

What happens when we combine the two?  We get a Gospel that speaks to us now, that avoids religion, and gets at the core of humanity and its need for salvation.  When we combine the two we get this:

And this:

(Yes, that is a Tom Waits song.  Yes, that is the theme to the Wire.  Watch it! All five seasons! Netflix it! Now!)

And let’s not forget about this song:

And these guys–these guys are probably my favorite:

American Music

When I moved to Bangkok (and lived there for two years), I wasn’t too happy about being an American.   It was during the height of the Bush years, when my lack of health care and a steady income was giving me hell, when it just wasn’t cool to say you were from America in other parts of the world (Is it now? Who knows.)  Though I threw myself into the Thai culture, picking up on everything I could to put aside my national identity, I found that I craved American music.  It was the one thing I was proud of; one thing I felt we had done right.   Later I got to appreciating Thai music too (the country stuff is fantastic), but at first I only noticed the songs that were covered everywhere–The Eagles, Brittany Spears–the kind of stuff I wasn’t too excited about.  I listened to Wilco, Woody Guthrie, Lucinda Williams, Eric Bibb, John Lee Hooker, and later John Legend and Corinne Bailey Rae.  Friends sent me CDs.

I’m only writing all this because I’m in awe of the fact that I’m enrolled in a class called “The Rhetoric of Song.”  We’re assigned American roots collections every week and we read essays by the Lomax Brothers (Land Where the Blues Began guys…)  I feel like I’ve waited my whole life to take this class.  The songs we listened to this week are ballads, and the language is just incredible.

“I’ve been to the river to be baptized, now I’m at the burial ground.”

“I got so thin I could hide behind a straw.”

A man tells a woman, “You’ll rue the day for givin’ me the devil because I wouldn’t hoe m’corn.”

People are dying of heartbreak, literally, or getting so drunk they fall in love with cows.

Here’s one about some boys who throw their ball into a gypsy’s garden, with fatal results:

That one was adapted from an English ballad, a commentary about when all the gypsies were exiled, sometime in the 1200’s.  That’s at the core of American Music.  I know, because of this class.  Seriously, people.  It’s the stuff I’d read if I had more time and now I’m forced to read it.

Here’s one with a jugband:

Jugbands!  God bless America.

Spiritually Available

I have two roommates, both poets. J is from Ohio/all over, and M is from upstate New York.  Last night I had a great conversation with M and she said some things that I’m still thinking about and want to write about.

We talked about how we see evidence of God in our lives because of the way we desire to love people (siblingly love, thank you very much) who, to most standards, don’t really require our love. My students, for instance. I find myself praying for love for my students and, so far, God has come through. I really do love my students, even the ones that give me a hard time. I can’t explain it but to say that this love must come from another place.

M and I also talked about mental stability, and how we’ve both struggled with depression a bit. She said that she knows when she’s depressed, or in her head too much and obsessed with negative thoughts, that she’s not spiritually available for other people. That’s why she’s been finding ways to overcome depression (and as far as I know, she’s doing great. She’s in grad school, for one.)

I really like this idea of being “spiritually available to other people.”  Perhaps that is why I made it the title of this blog entry.    No, I think the reason I like it is because it’s definitely something I can’t really define, let alone accomplish.  But I do know what it is; I do know when I’m spiritually available and when I’m not.  I guess a lot of it, in my experience, has had to do with perspective.  This is what I think Jesus is getting at when he’s asking us to love God and Love people. God has been able to clean out my head and help me to see other people, not as broken, necessarily, but on their way to being fixed.

I don’t think that depression is the only thing that can hinder a person’s spiritual abililty.  Right now other things distract me–school pressures, tendency to gossip, etc.  But I was grateful for my conversation with M.  It’s nice to come across people who encourage love and spiritual availability.

For Michelle

While we’re on the subject of Detroit Fires…

Try here

The Wire, among other things

I began this summer between MA coursework with a list of things I hoped to accomplish, mostly books to read and stories to polish for submission.  I’ve done some of that, but I found myself hooked on the HBO Wire seasons.  The show came up a lot during our workshops, on the radio, talking to writers, conversations with friends–pretty much everywhere.  We had a visiting writer come in and the first thing he asked us was “How many of you have seen The Wire?” I think most of us hadn’t, so he proposed, in jest, that we just spend our entire time watching it.  He noted its complex characters and plot development as good study material.  With that in mind, this isn’t really a confession of wasted time–I can’t say I’ve been watching thoughtless TV all these hours.  It does serve a purpose.

I just finished Season 4 this afternoon, about the school system, and I feel the need to promote the show here on my blog to other writers, humanitarians, people who respect intelligence, etc…

I went to church today and after hearing a good sermon (about communion), I felt compelled to introduce myself to the pastor, which I hadn’t done yet though I’ve attended the church for a while.  I hesitated because I’m an English teacher, and university English departments have a reputation for pushing liberal agendas on students.  The pastor asked what I was doing here and I told him I was teaching and he asked if it was through the English department and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was worried… Probably a little surprised that I attend his church.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because I know I have a shameless liberal agenda and the Wire reminded me why.  My political stance springs from my Detroit, or  inner city, upbringing.   I’m quite passionate about urban issues and my students know it.  They debate with me, they make me angry sometimes, but I feel those suffering in America’s city, due to our failed institutions, should be a part of any academic experience.

The Wire’s writers share my convictions about wanting to introduce the public to the forgotten city in America.  The show didn’t do too well, and in the commentary the creators (actors, writers, producers) gave a lot of reasons why, mostly that it’s a tough show.  People go to the TV to escape from their problems and The Wire forces them to confront everything about our society they don’t want to know.   Watching it reminds me of how much I want people to acknowledge these things, to see how complicated they are, and to recognize themselves in the brokenness.

I hear the word “agenda” among Christians quite a bit.  It’s a negative term, it scares people.  But we all have agendas.  Let’s be honest about them.  I can say that I just want people to read good stories, or that I just want to teach my students how to write, and it’s true–I do want these things and I do believe they are powerful.  I also want people to understand life with God’s awareness, which I believe he offers freely to those who are serious about this love idea.   I want my students to have courage when interacting with people who don’t come from the same background.  I want my readers to ask why our systems fail.

Besides the fact that The Wire didn’t do so well with viewer ratings, it was completely overlooked by the Emmy Award committee.  If you’ve seen it, you’ll know why this is such a shame.  The acting is great, the writing is even better.   Among the other things that I think the show can teach us, the series reveals that the public doesn’t want to confront life’s tough issues.   As a writer and a teacher, it reminds me I need courage to tell the truth, courage because truth doesn’t yeild comfort (See The Four Gospels…)  I recommend the show to anyone who holds similar convictions.