Faithful Night, Listening

The backs of sleeping buildings turn to mourn Clinton.

My bike is now freshly unimpounded. They stole it, from my office. $20 to retrieve it.

This morning a bus hit one of our cities bikers.

Last night Clinton Miceli was killed on LaSalle Dr.

900 block.

I live at 820.

6:45 Crash.

6:46 Moments later I saw him lying in the road.

2 SUVs.

He had a helmet. He was 22.

I turn 21 on Monday.

Would Ivan Ilych Golovin judge Clinton Miceli’s youth as a blessing

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago: A Review

To be published in the Moody Student Paper: 

Bon Iver, Justin Vernon, has a beautifully esoteric way with things. For Emma, Forever Ago is not an easy album to unpack. Deeply personal, the album seeks to communicate through the use of metaphor and half thoughts. To pull forth a linear story of any type of event from these songs would be impossible and would miss what I think to be Vernon’s intention. The album is, by title even, about Emma. She does not need to be a real person but can serve to stand merely as a representation of relationships/love. Track 5, Blindsided, is his retelling of the infidelity of the target of his love. This tragedy is wrapped in melodies that cause the listener to look back almost fondly with Vernon on his past sufferings. Suffering, pain and loss scar the album, lamenting and laughing at the same time. The album is lyrically diverse and instrumentally unique though the instruments are standard; bass, guitar and drums (with occasional help from some more unique instruments). Bon Iver stands up to the indie rock genre and challenges it to grow up and go folk itself. Following in the recent footsteps of artists like M. Ward, Basia Bulat, and The Great Lake Swimmers, Justin Vernon is taking the independent sensibilities of our time and reaching into the past to pull lyrical and musical concepts from the likes of Bob Dylan and Paul Simon.

For Emma, Forever Ago was written during four months of winter in a cabin in Wisconsin. The album reflects the isolated and natural environment in which it was written and is a testament to Vernon’s ability to interpret his surroundings into sound. It was only in the last couple of weeks that I began to sink into this album. Since my first listen I have been unable to get away from this album. I have been listening to it at work constantly alongside Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 and The Fiery Furances Widow City. Bon Iver is my new companion during a long day of work and at night serves to accompany me while I cook some dinner for myself and friends. For Emma, Forever Ago is the perfect album to help us in discerning the passing winter. As I head into the spring and look back at the past winter months Bon Iver helps me to look forward to the spring and appreciate the cold, that was, and is still lingering.

A World of Adventure

America is a country that does not have any serious violent internal opposition. Many countries continue to wage war within their own borders, with each other. We don’t have this in America, we have a working democracy where the defeated party just waits for the next election and whines, and whines, and waits and whines. There are no skirmishes in the hills of Virginia anymore. 
If there were to be such a thing I think that of the current presidential candidates McCain may have the upper hand in an sort of skirmish. But as it stands this is not the case. We choose to handle things differently in America. We fight economic battles, a battle to reach the upper-middle class. We do not fight for freedom because apparently we already have it. We do not fight for the injustices of the world, we are too busy campaigning against men who want to marry other men.
This is harsh and over-generalized but concise.   

Adventure and rebellion in this country can be found on an economic if not a military front. I do not seek to be violent and warlike but there is something in conflict that seems to unite men under some truer cause of humanity. Where to build a new shopping mall or what kindergarten to send our kids to is not really very unifying, or so it seems.
Instead I find myself trying to find ways to go exploring in this capitalistic landscape of ours. I don’t want to eat the other dogs, I just want to hang out with them.

Ashes, ashes…we all fall down.

Today is Ash Wednesday. I attended the service this evening at my church. I have a black cross on my forehead. I probably looked scary walking down Clark Street tonight. I like that people at my church want to know my name. They actually want to know so that the next time we see each other we can start to develop a relationship without having to start over at the beginning with all that business with the “what was your name?”.  I want college to be done with. I find it to be becoming just an ongoing lesson in patience. It’s not that I’m not learning anything, not being pushed to become a better person, it’s that it’s all happening in the wrong ways. School should cause you to learn not cause you to go and seek learning everywhere else because you are not getting it there. My classes teach me items of information, they give a factual basis for which to possibly probe the bare surface of some ideas. I want more, I want to be done and be free to live the life I am on my way to living. But for now I will finish out, but a few more months. And now I go to bed with ashes on my forehead. Reminding me that I will die, and that Christ alone is capable of saving me. Sleep in peace and arise in Chirst. Amen. 

Salt.

Doug: Good morning day! So nice to see you.
Day: Good morning Mr. Cook! It’s a beautiful day outside!
Doug: Really?! that’s great! What is the temperature?
Day: 10
Doug: oh.
Day: Look on the bright side! it’s not -6 like it was yesterday!
Doug: You’re right. I need to be more optimistic.
Day: Oh. You didn’t get a job. I checked your e-mail. They e-mailed you back.
Doug: oh.
Day: But don’t worry! You’ll find something. 
Doug: You’re right. I need to be more optimistic.
Fast Forward to 11:45
Day: Back home from school?
Doug: Yeah. I  wrecked my bike on the way to school.
Day: Did you get hit by a car?
Doug: No. Just the road.
Day: Well at least you didn’t get hit by a car!
Doug: You’re right. I need to be more optimistic.
Day: Oh, the gas bill, the phone bill, and the dsl bill are here.
Doug: oh, right. ok.

Giving and Getting

I know that the concept of wanting something in return for a good deed is not very well looked upon. I propose a better way: giving and getting. When I get something I am also giving something. Say…I buy an apple, I also buy an apple for a hungry boy. Because I am blessed with “disposable income” I am able to spend more to buy items that I would get anyway. Spending more to give and get. Examples:

For every pair of shoes you get, since you pay more, TomsShoes gives a pair of shoes to a kid who doesn’t have shoes. You give and you get.

OLPC (One Laptop Per Child)
Now through December 31st you can buy one of their simple, durable, flash based, linux laptops and because you get one they give one to a kid so that they can learn. Again, you give and get.

When we are willing to spend more money on simple pratical things we can give to others. This is a great way to live life. Give and get.

I hope that is something that we start to see more often. This giving and getting. I think it can work in other ways as well. Not with giving but with supporting. I want to give money to companies that I like, that I believe in and who are working hard. I don’t want to give money to….”the man?” (who is he? why do we blame him? poor guy….)

I want to buy good produce so as not to support bad farming practices, but to support good farming practices. Spend more to support better things.

I want to buy clothes that are not made in sweat shops, or by kids. Kids should be playing with legos, not sewing machines.

I want to buy electronics from a company like Sony who is doing a great job being “green” in making their products, unlike Microsoft and Nintendo who are 2 of the worst.

I want to support independent shops are providing jobs, relationships and original and local products to their community.

I want to serve and honor God not just with how I spend my money but where I spend my money, and who else benefits because I spend that money.

Where Roads become Trails.

When are involved in an activity, a place, a person, a group, a cause, after a while it becomes an easy and normal way of life. Then when change comes things act up, there are hiccups, you fall down, you get up, you raise the flag again. Every time I cross over into a new area of life this is how I feel. I become the new man again, I step ahead.

I have an apartment that I will be moving into on this coming week, this is something new. It signifies a new part of life, one without dorms. One where I am in possesion of my own space to do with what I will. I can re-paint if I choose to. I can alter my space, I can design a new life.

I live a block from my favorite concert venue.
Closer to some good friends.
Close to Sultan’s Market (Where I find my stomach carrying me lately)
Close to the lions and puufins.

Monday I get keys.

Come visit.

,Douglas

Menomena

Today I got the following things done:
Found shoes.
Got an apartment.
Rode on a motorcycle.
Saw Menomena.

The Menomena concert was nice, I ran into Seth and Erica from Anathallo and invited them for some chili once I get my apartment put together.

The apartment is pretty cool: hardwood floors, high ceilings, bay windows, right across the street from my favorite concert venue in the city, it’s pretty perfect.

Thanksgiving is soon which means Pittsburgh for me. Sounds good.

Finding…

I have just finished my first draft of my next article for the paper. Here it is.

The Soul in Notation

Stoics use the word “pneuma” to express, what we might call, the soul of a person: her creative force, his “vital part.” Through reason philosophers attempt to logically discern what this invisible piece of man is. It is the theologians who have hypothesized about it’s origins and it’s creation process: does God make each soul at the time of birth? Have all souls been created and are now just awaiting bodies? Are souls just pieces of a divine being? Shards of an everlasting deity?
As the great thinkers of the world have attempted to define the soul they often put such a great emphasis on the individual nature of the soul, as if the soul itself is a separate being from the body that is a part of. Defining the soul apart from the body is akin to demanding to know the functions of the heart removed from the chest.
Reasoning is insufficient to pull forth the pneuma, and theological assumptions trying to explain God’s interaction with the soul are more often then not are just that, an assumption. If logical and academic thought is unable to make known the soul then we must turn to what the Greeks called Euterpe and Erato, the muses of music and poetry. It is in the songs and lyrics of honest artists that this “vital part” of humanity may be discerned.
While listening to Sigur Ros, one of Iceland’s greatest gifts to the artistic community, there is an undeniable expression of beauty beyond just aesthetic. Sigur Ros employs massive musical arrangements coupled with stark simplicity to create complex and moving music that is most often sung in an imagined dialect of Icelandic. There is something in their post-modern approach to music that allows for souls to communicate through notation and unknown lyrics in a way that many types of lyric music does not.
To Radiohead we turn to find the souls aggressive confession of confinement. Thom Yorke, front man, decries the current state of the human soul, he feels trapped. In the song Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box Thom hints at his feelings of pointless bondage and inability to know anything outside of them when he sings “After years of waiting/Nothing came/And you realize your looking, looking in the wrong place.”
“While we’re on the subject/Could we change the subject now?/I was knocking on your ear’s door but you were always out.” Isaac Brock, lead singer of the indie rock band Modest Mouse, has a soul that is obsessed with God. He has a desire for the divine, but only finds a door slammed in his face. His soul wants to ignore God but cannot, he is instead continually pushed to question. He is haunted by a sovereign God that he does not know; a God that he only knows how to rebuke and scorn. His soul mourns over his inability to understand, frustrated with his own mortality.
But there is more to be discerned from the soul through music then beauty, entrapment, scorn and obsession, and frustration. We must be able to confront music, and all the arts, with the knowledge that a soul is being communicated. There is no place for passivity in the appreciation of music. When we turn off our souls and refuse them meaningful contact with music we are allowing ourselves to absorb truth through osmosis instead of critical interaction. Music does not exist as background noise, it exists as a means of communicating love and anger, confusion, discontentment, disappointment, hope, and also one of the ways that we make a declaration of worship to God. To be passive is to enable our souls to stagnate, wither, and perish.

Breaking Records

I’ve always been a fan of records. The vinyl kind, vinyl like you put on the side of a house, but instead of warming a house it plays music. I purchased a new one of these players, it is in the mail…coming to me.
I also purchased The Boxer by The National on a vinyl LP record in order to have something to play on my new player of records.
Records are my….weight lifting?long run? what do people do to relieve stress? Records are that for me.
It will be good to have them back.
I also pre-ordered the Sigur Ros film Heima.