Radical Transparency

Fun little phenomenon that names fall in and out of cultural favor.

Ralph is out, for the moment, for example. I bet he'll be back.

Adolf, however, is probably gone forever.

And then there's Goliath. At a glance, the biblical baggage doesn't seem insurmountable. Someday?

According to Craig, 70, a long time prisoner, Prisoners Listening to Music is not scary...

You don't understand nothing. They're not dying. They're gettin past their hungers. It's the music that makes them pure, like angels. Listen, when I was young down south, we had a chaplain. Every day he would play music for us. Old music, beautiful. At first we couldn't listen to it. We never heard nothing like it. Sometimes a song would last a long time, no words. But then we started to love it. We would listen like in the picture, and we'd remember things. And we'd cry. Sometimes you could hear ten men cry. And sometimes the priest would cry too. We were all together in it. But then he retired, and a new chaplain came. He was different. He wanted us to see the doctors and counselors, the case workers. They would ask us questions about ourselves and make us go to classes, programs. They were working on us, and the music ended. It was different. It was us against them.

Howard Zeiderman, founder of the Touchstones Discussion Project, quoted Craig in an essay called The Hunger for Control - Caged Explorers (could only find a .pdf; sorry).  Kathe Kollwitz drew the picture.  And I clipped it out of a Touchstones textbook.

The conversation started with ionized water.

It moved to fully absorbing the passion of a cause, NEEDING to change the world in the ONE way you KNOW it needs changing, committing, for good, for life, to a model or project or technology or religion.

And then we got specific. A dude that loved blue glass, thought it healed him, thought it could, should, and would heal everyone. Because he'd experienced it. Because he knew it worked.

And we remembered the Placebo Effect, remembered everything we don't know about how the body heals itself, remembered layers and layers of science, remembered how silly we are to imagine that we've peeled away all the mystery.

We weren't listening to this song. But we can pretend we were.

Soap Box Preacher is track 4 on Storyville.

Click here to download:

Soap Box Preacher.mp3 (5002 KB)

A few days ago, the Texas Board of Education met to discuss the possibility of repealing a rule that requires that the "strengths and weaknesses" of all scientific theories be taught.

At the center of the debate is evolution. 

Creationists love the rule because it gives them opportunities to get weird in classrooms. 

People afraid of fundamentalist religious lunatics love the proposed repeal because it would eliminate some opportunities for creationists to get weird.  In state sponsored schools.  In front of children.

Here's an excerpt from an article about the lead up to that meeting:

Protesters and activists gathered nearby, fervently arguing their sides of the debate.

"My grandfather was not a monkey!" one woman shouted at a crowd before the meeting began.

I think I need to talk to the reporter.  Fervently arguing one side of the debate?  Pointing out that her grandfather was not a monkey is fervently arguing her side of the debate?  The woman clearly thinks so, and fair enough to acknowledge that.  But.  I think the words argue and debate might be feeling a little taken-advantage-of, no?

The creative life is uneven. You have a few short bursts of genius now and then, the rest of the time you're trying SOMEHOW to get the magic back again, mostly without success. It's exhausting. I am exhausted, often.

Hugh MacLeod wrote that the other day.  On his blog, which is awesome.  And in a post that's pretty heavily religious, which I didn't expect but kind of dig.  Because I didn't expect it.  If that makes sense.

Anyway, I like the observation.  Makes me wonder how many of us not quite artists can be said to be living the creative life.

I wrote about protest yesterday, about generational distance, about the failure of a call for marching and sitting to resonate.

Calls from Bob Marley never fail:

Don't you forget your youth, who you are and where you stand in the struggle.

Notice the power of religion to justify. Notice the law and innocency. Notice the nonsense. Notice the abrupt ending.

So Much Things to Say is track 2 on Exodus.

Click here to download:

02 So Much Things To Say.mp3 (2939 KB)

Apparently, Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers is considering an appeal.

Months ago, Senator Chambers filed a lawsuit against God. 

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused "widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth's inhabitants."

Day before yesterday, however, the judge dismissed Senator Chambers' case.  The defendant, said Judge Marlon Polk, has no legal address, so the proper papers cannot be served and the defendant cannot be properly notified of the lawsuit.

While he's not sure if he'll proceed, Senator Chambers, a law school graduate that never took the bar exam, is not satisfied with the ruling.

The court, Mr Chambers said, had acknowledged the existence of God and "a consequence of that acknowledgment is a recognition of God's omniscience".

"Since God knows everything," he reasoned, "God has notice of this lawsuit."