Monday, November 4, 2013

If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On (Part 1, Arcade Fire)


Preface: I had no idea how hard it would be to write this post. After several false starts, I re-watched a lecture called "Three Chords and the Desire for Truth: Rock 'n' Roll as Search for the Infinite" given by the Irish journalist John Waters, in which he says that the way we feel about music is something we shouldn't talk about. Ah...right. No wonder: I've read dozens of articles and watched just as many performances on YouTube and I still haven't been able to type a word. I've scrawled all over napkins and loose leaf as ideas have come to me; but why am I so reluctant to put these thoughts out there? I suppose because it is so very personal and subjective. I'll just say this: if I achieve nothing in this post accept getting you to click the above link and watch the Waters talk for an hour and a half, then I will have done a great service to God and the whole world. I'll be referring to it throughout both parts of this post, but you needn't watch it in order to follow along.

Inscribed on the back of my iPod are the words, "If music be the food of love, play on." It is a line from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and it is exactly how I feel about the effect that music can have on the soul. It's clear that plenty of chant and symphonies and movie soundtracks (heh) can be the "food of love"; but I submit what every other fan already knowsthat rock 'n' roll can be, as well.

For me, two bands stand out for all of the times that have set my soul on fire with joy and pain and life: Arcade Fire and Mumford & Sons. I know that some people who are reading this are already annoyed that those two band names are touching in a sentence with nothing but the word "and" keeping one from tainting the other. From what I can tell, they both are a major part of hipster fandom but seem to be fixed on opposite sides of the gamut. I've discovered that I'm something of an anomaly for loving both bands at the same timebut I hope it's not quite like when one of my classmates in a college course on Tolkien and Lewis said that her two favorite series were The Chronicles of Narnia and His Dark Materials. I then suffered a suppressed freakout since I knew that Phillip Pullman crafted his stories to convey a message exactly opposite to that of Lewis's. The difference here, I think, is that both bands do have the same message, even if it is expressed in different ways and irrespective of how conscious it may be in the intentions of the band members. The message is that we desire so much more than what seems available in this life.

I happened to be watching Saturday Night Live when Arcade Fire made their first appearance to most of America. They performed "Intervention." My first thought was that the lead singer (Win Butler) looked sort of hungry and sad. Then as the music began to swell, my heart rose with it: "What? What is this?" I thoughtjust as John Waters describes. It wasn't the voices that grabbed me, but what was in the voicesunder and surrounding them: a longing, an intensity, a rawness of emotion, an exquisite talent. There's something here. Then, some the lyrics began to surface:
Working for the church while your family dies
You take what they give you
You keep it inside
Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone
Wow. Rough stuff. Over the last seven years of listening to Arcade Fire very faithfully, I find that there is usually a disconnect between my head and my heart. There's a wrestling within me as I ponder the world of Win Butler and friends, yet I always go back for more of their music. Since I have every episode of Seinfeld on file in my brain, I think the best way to capture this struggle is to recall "The Kramer", in which a painting of Kramer himself elicits this interchange between two onlooking art enthusiasts:
WIFE: “I sense great vulnerability. A man-child crying out for love. An innocent orphan in the postmodern world.”
HUSBAND: “I see a parasite. A sexually depraved miscreant who is seeking only to gratify his basest and most immediate urges.”
WIFE: “His struggle is man’s struggle. He lifts my spirits.”
HUSBAND: “He is a loathsome, offensive brute. Yet I can’t look away.”
WIFE: “He transcends time and space.”
HUSBAND: “He sickens me.”
WIFE: “I love it.”
HUSBAND: “Me too.”
I wouldn't be quite as hard on this band as this husband is on the painting; but I would echo the wife's comments exactly. Situated squarely in the midst of the postmodern condition, Arcade Fire is constantly preoccupied with themes of childhood, innocence, wonder, freedom, roots, and dreams, usually lamenting the loss of these precious things. Now, as a mother watching that video clip of "Intervention," the sight of Win Butler's anemic-looking face and droopy eyes triggered my maternal impulse. At the end of the song, several of his guitar strings have broken and, out of disappointment, he smashes it on the stage. He looks just like my son when he has made a tower out of blocks but then obliterates it when he sees that it's not as good as the one in his head or perhaps even in his hearthis interior castle in smooth wooden stones. Looking at Butler's gaunt face and hearing the bottomless desire in his voice and the voices of the instruments, I find deeper meaning in the phrase "starving artist." He is starving for Truth; and he is sad because he thinks reality doesn't meet desire. Christianity offers the belief that reality does meet desire since reality includes the higher Truth of which Butler seems to have despaired.

This longing for truth through rock 'n' roll is the theme of John Water's splendid talk. Quoting music and culture critic Greil Marcus, Waters describes something called the yarrah, which all great musicians have in their voice. He says it has a bit of a yes in it, but the rest is the arrah which expresses resignation, frustration, a deep sense of almost inarticulacy. Music is the attempt to surrender to the yarrah or to make it surrender to the artist, to bury it, to dig it out of the ground, a note so unfinished and so unsatisfied. He then adds that, when one considers the experience of a brilliant piece of music, the question might really be "Is the song singing you?" Arcade Fire delivers this masterfully. Listen to the song "Wake Up" with headphones on and eyes closed. Do you feel the yarrah? Doesn't it feel like it's singing you?

Yes, Arcade Fire sings me. Two of the "Neighborhood" tracks ("Tunnels" and "Kettles") from their first album Funeral have become part of my very being I've listened to them so much. These people seem to know mesomething about me that I don't even know myself. But am I as dark as these words?! Sometimes I am. In my fallen state of darkened intellect and weakened will, there are occasions when nothing will help me out of a sad spell more than blaring "No Cars Go" into my ears on the elliptical machine. The lyrics meet me where I am, but the music lifts me out of myself. The yarrah is bifurcated between the words and the instruments: the former cries out in despair while the latter reaches up in hope.

I did feel a sense of satisfaction and even relief when John Waters said that the lyrics don't necessarily matter. I have had this intuition ever since my dad played The Who's "Baba O'Riley" for me in the car when I was a kid and I watched him bliss out to the words "teenage wasteland" being screamed over and over again. The whole is greater than the sums of its parts. It's like when poets describe their work by saying they compose a poem, send it out to be read, and then finally discover what it means in the hearts of their readers. Reading a few interviews that Win Butler has given convinced me that sometimes he doesn't really know what he is singing about. It's a sensation tied up with memories mixed up with dreams and a few words that happen to rhyme. For example, Arcade Fire's second album is titled Neon Bible because Win Butler wrote those two words down one day and thought they sounded cool together. Well after he came up with that title he and his bandmates bought an abandoned church and transformed it into a studio to record that album. As they played their hearts out to the groans of a pipe organ and by the blue light of stained-glass windows, they revealed how very Christ-haunted their music is.

I had the privilege of seeing Kenneth Branagh's new Macbeth through National Theater Live last month and was struck by the choice to stage the play in a de-consecrated Gothic church. The audience sat in pews and most of the play's action took place in the nave, which was filled with mud. I thought of Arcade Fire's church-turned-recording-studio and realized that the feeling I get from their music is much like the feeling I get from Shakespeare's tragedies. I'm dazzled by poetry at the same time that I'm wrenched by suffering. The texture of the songs is so rich and colorful that it reminds me of illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Describing their desires in words and sounds, they hint at a sacramental world view that awakens us to the sacred, accessible right here in the midst of us. I only wish that I could tell them that all of that agony they feelthe loss, the betrayal, the hopelessness—all of it can be sanctified in the sacrifice of the Lamb; and every beautiful thing they've glimpsed in dreams (and have dismissed as merely that) is in truth far more real than their art will ever be able to express.

The lyrics of Arcade Fire do not ever suggest that one could find in God the ground of truth of which the songs sing with such deep desire. Indeed, God is an only implicitly touched-upon topic of their songs, as in the line "working for the Church while your family dies." Christianity (and, implicitly, God) appears here fleetingly, as tied up with past wrongs committed by their loved ones, particularly their parents. The great weight, the deep and abiding wounds inflicted by those whom one ought best to be able to trustthat is the context within which, perhaps, God does not seem so obviously a stabilizing ground.

In the song "Windowsills" Butler cries out: "You can't forgive what you can't forget." Christianity proclaims that God does just thisthat he forgives and transforms rather than forgettingbut where, in these lyrics, do we find any evidence that this could seem a plausible answer to Butler's anguish? Anyone experiencing the life described by so many of these songs might understandably find this notion of forgiveness and love to have been already unmaskedas an untrustworthy sham, a fantasy pursued by those who, disavowing with their lives what they profess with their lips, "work" for the Church while their families die. It would be easy to draw from such an example the conviction that "[e]very spark of friendship and love will die without a home."

How can one find a home that others seem already to have shown to be false? Is it possible for the singer depicted by these songs to discover some hopeto perhaps be awakened to an indefatigable steadfast merciful lover (Ps. 100:5)? To be freed by this love even to the point of forgiving those who have so greatly trespassed against us?

Here is where I find Arcade Fire's music especially effective. It is not thoroughly despairing but, in its yarrah, suggests the possibility of transcending the suburban wasteland of despair by inviting the audience into a community of anguish, yes, but also of compassion. Butler's lyrics declare to others who are wounded and adrift: We know what you feel. We yearn for more! Knowing that others feel what one feels, one might be bound with others in friendship and might even discover the ability to turn outward to others in compassioneven, in great time, toward those by whom one has been so deeply wounded. For the compassion to which Butler invites his listeners, containing within itself the suggestion of authentic love, is itself the counterexample to others' lovelessness, from which he has so suffered. If music nourishes compassion, then compassion can become the food of loveand a place where God may make His dwelling place in our hearts.

Play on, Arcade Firemay your music bring you and your fans closer to God evermore.

Now please, please, please watch the John Waters talk (linked again so you don't even have to scroll!) or at least write down on your calendar when you'll do it. You will be so happy. And here are two really good articles on Arcade Fire's music: The Hipster Conservative's look at the Grammy-winning album The Suburbs plus Aleteia's piece on the newly released Reflektor.

***

After many years of listening to Arcade Fire in addition to most of the bands that are now linked to them on Pandora, I suddenly heard "Little Lion Man" by Mumford & Sons which came like a (banjo-y) bolt out of the blue. I told my husband, "I found a new band! They're sort of like....Arcade Fire...but without despair!" Join me next time for part 2 of this post.

17 comments:

  1. I do enjoy Arcade Fire's music very much, but my feelings for them aren't so strong. Joni Mitchell, on the otherhand, is definitely the artist who "sings me", as you say. So I understand just where you are coming from.

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    1. It's so great to have that experience. Glad Joni Mitchell does it for you!

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  2. I loved this post! I am a huge M&S fan but now I am going to listen to Arcade Fire. You are a great writer!

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    1. Thanks, friend! My ode to M&S is forthcoming. In the meantime, listen to one of my favorite songs ever, "Kathleen" by David Gray. I bet you'll like it.

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  3. Kathryn! This is a chillingly beautiful post. I especially like what you say here about the experience of entering into the communal struggle. However, I can't help but wonder: what they are doing here is so intentional that "entering into it" in that way doesn't seem to be good formation for the Christian soul. While the initial title of the album "Neon Bible" might have been random, it seems like the rest of it is too perfectly fit together to be random. It seems like there is a purposeful effort to almost set forth an inverse church, a community or even "mystical body" of despair. When I was watching that clip from the 2007 SNL, I was struck by how much it reminded me of a church choir or praise band. Some of the instrumentalists were singing along to the lyrics although they clearly didn't have microphones. That's the kind of thing I've only seen in praise music like contexts. All of this just brings into question for me whether we should surrender ourselves into that kind of a communal movement. If we make ourselves part of that "Body," we'll be moved in the direction the body moves. If it's intentionally facing despair, it almost seems presumptuous to assume that experience could lead us closer to Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. BUT (1) I haven't listened to the talk you recommended yet, so this might all be addressed there, and (2) I listen to Arcade Fire all the time and really enjoy it, so I'm really just putting this forward for the sake of furthering the conversation! Thanks for giving me something to think about!

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    1. Megan, thank you for raising these issues. I watched an interview the other day in which a few of the band members explained the title "Neon Bible" and how it encompasses all of the songs on that album (as you point out). From what they said, I gather that they don't think the neon Bible is the same thing as the real one. The neon part is the worldly take on Christianity. It's clear to me that what they rail against in their songs is that the actual person of Jesus or His Bride the Church but instead a corrupted version of that which they've unfortunately known. I think it's ok for us to sympathize with this, even good for us to share in their grief over the parents who let their family die while they were working for the church. They are pointing out hypocrisy. It reminds me of Flannery O'Connor, really. She could have written a story called "Neon Bible" about a Protestant revival gone off the rails in which Catholicism surfaces (in relief) as the right answer.

      Despair is only one dimension of Arcade Fire's art, like the shadow that gives their subjects shape. They haven't given over to it completely or they'd probably be dead. I don't believe that despair can create. It is rather the absence of the creative power because it is cut off from the Creator. What I hear in their music is a hope for more that transcends what the lyrics express.

      Do listen to the talk from Waters because he addresses your concern about surrendering into the wrong community when he talks about Pope Benedict's problem with rock music. I will address this point further in the second half of this post. Also, the article from Aleteia to which I linked gives some hints at a new direction for the band found in their latest album. I've only heard a few of the new songs so far, but I really think their struggle for truth and authenticity is bringing them closer to the light.

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    2. Thanks for this response, Kathryn. It really does clear things up for me. Your comparison to Flannery O'Connor especially makes sense to me. I can definitely see how they both highlight the brokenness of the world in order to make room for our understanding of the need (and true victory) of the good. I'll definitely look at those other links. It's fun to work through these ideas with you!

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    3. You're very welcome! Yes, it is fun. One of my favorite things to do.

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  4. Thanks for the great post, Kathryn! You made us listen to Neon Bible again this morning and I'm appreciating it even more than I did when I first got it.

    Just to stay on this issue about despair. Since this is almost all I read and write about these days, I couldn't help to notice how much of Neon Bible has to do with the effects of the media (and technology more broadly) on people's lives. Black Mirror gets into questions about self-knowledge in front of televisions and surveillance cameras; Keep the Car Running (along with Black Wave) keeps up the surveillance theme and gets into the question of what other people can and can't know about you and about reality through these media; Neon Bible and Antichrist Television Blues deal with the commercialization of religious and moral language; Intervention and My Body is a Cage deal with our increasing inability to really be with each other to share each other's joys and sufferings. A lot of this also comes together in Windowsill.

    There's a whole slew of 20th century writers who saw technology as not only controlling people but instrumentalizing and commodifying every aspect of their lives. With respect to the internet more specifically, these kinds of critiques often touch on how the particular places and times where people actually dwell and live their human lives gets left behind in a network that is everywhere and nowhere, and that connects you with everyone and no one simultaneously ("every spark of friendship and love will die without a home / hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone").

    You've told me that Win Butler is really into Kierkegaard. Incidentally, Kierkegaard had a really famous critique of 'the press' that a number of people have applied to the internet. K thought that newspapers and their use in 19th century public discourse flattened distinctions between important and unimportant things, between good and evil, etc. Everything you would read about in them would be just as important and as unimportant as anything else. Nothing could exercise an absolute moral or religious claim on you and demand your undivided engagement (as would happen, for example, reading Scripture). Online, one could be watching pornography, click to the Pope Francis interview, click to a site asking for a $5 donation to Haiti, click to a Wikipedia article on Haiti, click back to watch more porn, etc. "A vial of hope and a vial of pain / In the light they both looked the same."

    (to be continued)

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    1. (second half)

      In this album and in a lot of this literature on technology, there's this constant sense of tragedy (even despair) because you know these devices pose serious threats to really important things in human life, and yet you also know that escaping from technology is either impossible or unlikely to resolve the problem. Both options get explored in Neon Bible. In Keep the Car Running, one waits for an unspecified, maybe eschatological opportunity for escape, but ironically the paradigm for watchfulness is MORE technology (keeping the car running). In Bad Vibrations/Black Wave it won't do any good to escape because outside the overdeveloped western world there are just as many problems, ecological disaster awaits, and your own sin will follow you. My Body is a Cage points out the gnostic tendencies in the desire to escape (which just mirror the relative disembodiment of going online). No Cars Go isn't very clear; we don't actually know where we're going, but the path leads to some kind of real knowledge and involves something between artificial light and sleep (faith? poetry? meditation? sex?). It could also be that My Body is a Cage expresses second thoughts about No Cars Go. And Butler isn't even sure "staying up in the lighthouse" is doing any good ("can't you see the funny side? The ships ARE gonna wreck." Did we leave the well and climb the lighthouse for anything other than the feeling of helping things get better and the safety of not being adrift in the 'ocean of noise'?).

      All this to say: I agree that there's a really strong tension in AF between a deep appreciation for religious faith and disillusionment with American Christianity. But there's also a near-despairing tension between wanting more than a dehumanizing "alone together" world and not really knowing what to do about it--especially when you've got all these versions of Christianity just trying to get swept up by the rapture. There's something like a Kierkegaardian leap of faith here, but a deep reluctance in just about anything else. And what else is there? What else are Christians doing today with respect to technology that would get Win Bulter's attention?

      LV

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    2. Dear LV: Thank you for your very thoughtful post. I agree that there's still plenty of damage within Arcade Fire, and I agree that Christians today have a duty to reach them and people like them in whatever way we can. Is it through technology? That's one way. That's what I'm trying to do with this blog. But we certainly need more. I hope that your work will advance the Church into these arenas. Since I know they're probably never read this and I'll probably never get to hang out with them, I pray for them at Mass. I invite others to pray for them and people like them--other celebrities who clearly need the help of the Church Militant. What if no one else will?

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  5. 'Working for the church while your family dies
    You take what they give you
    You keep it inside
    Every spark of friendship and love will die without a home
    Hear the soldier groan all quiet and alone

    Wow. Rough stuff.' You mean it's really bad, right? Count me as an ally of the Seinfeld husband here. Utter piffle.

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    1. Dear Anonymous: Yes, I do mean those particular lyrics are really bad (I meant "Wow. Rough stuff." to come off as a humorous understatement. I'm sorry if that didn't work.) and I don't play that song when my little kids are around because of them. Those words were written in a moment of anger and grief and may be aimed at one person in particular who is possibly guilty of those sins; but I don't think the band members actually believe that in general. Other of their lyrics--and the music itself, I'm arguing--betray that theme.

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  6. I enjoyed the John Waters lecture. Surely he is onto something. I wonder where taste comes into all this, for Arcade Fire does little for me and I hear no "yarrah." Now if you want to talk about the New York Dolls...

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    1. So glad you liked it! Yes, I think taste has plenty to do with it. Find what sings you. :)

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  7. I've been listening to the Oh Hellos on an endless loop all day. Tomorrow, I'll have to try Arcade Fire. What's their most popular song? Surely, I've heard one or two of them, as the band name is familiar.

    You ought to try Florence + the Machine. I'm convinced she's working her way (artistically, certainly, spiritually? I hope so!) through Paganism, then Gnosticism, and then . . . who knows?

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    1. Huzzah! With Arcade Fire, try "Afterlife." Then "Tunnels" and "Wake Up."

      Yes, I love Florence. There was a time when my then-three-year-old told everyone that his favorite song was "Cosmic Love." I think you're right about where she's headed. I read somewhere that one of her parents is a Medievalist.

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