If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On (Part 2, Mumford & Sons)

Preface: After I wrote about Arcade Fire (part 1 of this post), I found a music video for a few of their new songs which appeared on Saturday Night Live. It's loaded with celebrity cameos, including Bono from U2, the band to which Arcade Fire is most often compared.  In the middle of the first song ("Here Comes the Night," probably my favorite from Reflektor), there's a joke at the expense of Mumford & Sons. I'm not surprised by it, as it exemplifies my earlier point about the two bands occupying opposite positions in the hipster gamut. But aside from a couple of funny parts, this music video is just too weird for me and even a bit nightmarish. It reminds me of why I never watched other AF music videos and never really wanted to see them in concert. I love a lot of their music, but I prefer to enjoy it far away from the visual interpretations that often have  been associated with it. I haven't faced that tension in Mumford & Sons; and what I aim to do in this post is to defend Marcus and his friends against those who hate them. Here is an article from First Things titled "Against Mumford" that got me all worked up. Be sure to read the comments, too, a few of which I found particularly satisfying.   

I heard a little snippet of "Little Lion Man" one fall day in 2010 and promptly rushed to my computer to find more of that sound. The first song I clicked on transported me to a place that can best be described as wedding feast celebrating a marriage between my senses and my nostalgia. I had chosen "Sigh No More"—the title track for Mumford & Sons' first album, because I immediately recognized the words of Shakespeare's poem by the same title which is often used in film and theater adaptations of his comedies. As I heard these four male voices singing together, I felt transported into their world—their shared friendship represented by the words carefully shared by all, and also their individual hearts suggested by the different voices. Then I realized that the loveliness of the lyrics reflected the swelling in my soul:

Serve God, love me and mend
This is not the end
Lived unbruised, we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
You know me
You know me

Yes, I know you, whoever you are, I thought; and you seem to know me. How did you manage that? The experience was just as John Waters describes in his talk:

What? What is that? What is that? […] Who is this guy with this voice? This strange voice, this ethereal voice, who seems to know something about me? Who seems to know what I want? Who seems to know what appeals to me. The song seemed to promise some world some place that I’d only dreamed about.

I felt like I was listening to the friendship shared between C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the other "Inklings" set to music. I felt like the Four Evangelists were soothing me to a peaceful rest, telling me all together but each in their own unique way that I must serve God, adding that it will be difficult, I will screw it up sometimes, yet I need not dwell in sadness:

But man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Then, as the song picks up in tempo, my heart rose with it and my reaction was not unlike that of the Emotional Baby. These four men (probably from the Shire, I imagined) were singing about love, and the love they described was real love, Love Himself—the love that moves the sun and the other stars. Unlike millions of songwriters before them, these men knew that

Love; it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be

I was utterly enraptured by this song, and it is because of that fact that I take issue with the author of "Against Mumford." He says that their "tradition" is invented and inauthentic, just an eclectic mishmash. Well Jimmy crack corn and I don't care. It is moving to me and millions of other people. It touches on something real, plugging me into the "Deep Magic" described in The Chronicles of Narnia. It might not be firmly rooted in a musical tradition, but it is in a religious and literary one. That's what enlivens me. So many beautiful things that I've read and forgotten about return to the forefront of my mind and heart when I hear some of these songs. I wished that it had been released a few years earlier so that I could have blared it for my high school students when we came across references to love in the New Testament which served as a stumbling block to them in their painful life (and music) experience. Some of them seemed cynical and unmoved when St. Paul told them "Love never fails" (1Cor 13:8) but perhaps they might give that idea another chance if they heard it being proclaimed here and now from a drum, a guitar, a piano, and a banjo at full voice. Mumford & Sons has managed to make St. Paul sing to an enormous amount of people. This, I believe, is what we all have to thank them for: they preach to the masses, as the NPR article said. Of course they are no substitute for actual confessions of faith or liturgical worship; but they can complement those things. I know as well as anyone else who has carefully studied their lyrics or read their sometimes troubling interviews that they aren't perfect and they have plenty of growing to do (just like the rest of us); but their music is like a corporal work of mercy in a world filled with seriously offensive forms of artistic expression.

The next song I heard was "The Cave." I sent it to my brother and he said, "If that song were a woman, I would marry her." From that moment on, I knew I wanted to go with him to a concert. I had never been to a live rock 'n' roll show in my life except for catching a bit of Hootie & the Blowfish when I was a kid. Mumford & Sons reminded me of them—of those very long road trips to visit our extended family each summer. It's the kind of music all five of us could agree to. Hootie colored my childhood with my family by way of heart-filled sounds and words; and I could feel Mumford taking that place in my early adulthood. I really think that nostalgia plays a large role in my enthusiasm for this band. But whereas Hootie mentions crying in almost every one of his songs, Mumford sings of kneeling. I was kneeling the first time I really heard the priest say, "Behold the Lamb of God." I was kneeling when my husband proposed to me. I was kneeling right before I wrote this post and prayed that I would produce something worthwhile. When my brother and I were finally surrounded by thousands of others Mumford & Sons fans who were jumping for joy as they sang about kneeling, I felt very grateful that this band had managed to pull together this crowd in such a way, and that we all at that moment agreed that forgiveness and joy and friendship were what we were cheering for.

I am not naive about the fact that some people surrender themselves to music and wind up very lost, quite apart from a stable community of love searching for God. With the use of drugs or just highly stimulated baser passions, some rock 'n' roll fans whip themselves up into a frenzy of self-indulgence. Pope Benedict identified this problem, and it is his comments on the subject (see bottom of page 9) that inspired the Irish journalist John Waters to build an exposition (the subject of his lecture recommended as a companion to these two posts) in order to say to his beloved pope, 'Yes, rock 'n' roll culture can lead people astray; but it doesn't have to. There is more going on.' He talks at length about the so-called "27 Club" which includes all of the musicians who died at that young age, often as a result of drug and alcohol abuse. He suggests that the real cause of their death is that they misunderstand their own desire. Fans, too, are at risk of this same disordered seeking, and so they must be discerning: Does this music—this particular song—feed love? Is it real love? Is it love that will not betray, dismay, or enslave me? If not, skip it.

Mumford & Sons is criticized for a hundred things and I feel like I've heard it all. Some people just can't stand the banjo. Some people are annoyed by their constructed back-country image and their lack of literal sons. Some boycott them for using the F-word a few times and for saying some strange things about Christian identity. Regarding their sincerity, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Regarding their faith commitments, I'll just say they seem spottily catechized and unsatisfied with the version of Christianity that has been presented to them. As I claimed about the members of Arcade Fire, I think they have a very sacramental world view that wants proper ordering. I wish I could be their Apologetics teacher. I have a great affection for these guys. I see them as very childlike—filled with humility, wonder, and joy; and I hear in them a deep and lasting yarrah (which I described in my previous post) which is almost perfectly illustrated by that laughing, aching "harrr" sound that they so often make when no other sound will do.

If you watch the lecture from Mr. Waters to the very end, you'll  hear him discuss Mumford & Sons. He says that after he heard their first album, he thought they were "this new thing" in which the art is informed by the nitty-gritty of everyday life while contemplating great transcendent truths in a Chestertonian way. He was really disappointed in their second album, however. (I thought the piece in the Atlantic captured the problems with it quite well.) But, wisely, Waters isn't ready to dismiss them yet. He says, "The fact that they were there—that that flame flickered for a little while—tells me that it still could happen." He adds that it's "harder and harder because the culture of misunderstanding gets in the way." I really like most of the new album, but I did notice something off about it. I think that the culture in which they and their fans find themselves did get in the way for them. Instead of playing for God in their midst when two or three (or four in this case) of them were gathered, they played too much for their fans and for their fame. It is like C.S. Lewis said: "Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth thrown in. Aim at Earth and you get neither." But I join in Waters's hope that it can happen again. And I found that the live show which mixed both albums was brilliantly done. I had the same sensation that I had when I first met them in "Sigh No More." They peacefully, graciously invited me back into their joyful world with "Lover's Eyes," and I soon began to anticipate each song, calling them out to my brother before they started playing again. That familial sense came back to me: I remembered happy times with my parents and brothers; and I imagined myself with the Inklings sharing laughs and pints at The Eagle and Child. I celebrated it heartily.

Perhaps this hilarious parody video of "Hopeless Wanderer" (which the band commissioned in order to make light of themselves, by the way) may help endear them to you. If that doesn't work and you just can't bring yourself to like them, please don't ruin it for any of their fans by making them feel stupid or uncultured. You don't want to wind up like these hipsters discussing their playlists, do you? And to those of you who are already fans, I recommend watching the documentary Big Easy Express, including the deleted scenes which contain some of the finest moments.

I see both of these bands serving as modern day poets who shake us loose from complacency. I believe Mumford & Sons has some great answers for Arcade Fire and lovely reminders for many of us (perhaps as a Brideshead Revisited to a Great Gatsby as I suggest in my earlier two posts); but they still have a long way to go. They're only in their twenties, after all, and their hearts are at least beating very hard indeed. If they keep seeking, acknowledging their weakness, asking for forgiveness, and calling out things like "awake my soul," I trust they will do much more good than harm with their fame.

One of the newest Arcade Fire songs (the one I mentioned at the top) asks the question, "If there's no music up in heaven then what's it for?" I'll leave you with that.

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Next topic: Unless something unexpected like Gravity happens to me again, I plan to see the Coen Brothers' upcoming film, Inside Llewyn Davis and write something about it in early December, followed by a post on Dante and Dickens in time for Christmas.

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 knows—that 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 time—but 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 thought—just as John Waters describes. It wasn't the voices that grabbed me, but what was in the voices—under 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 heart—his 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 me—something 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 feel—the 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 trust—that 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 this—that he forgives and transforms rather than forgetting—but 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 unmasked—as 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 hope—to 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 compassion—even, 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 love—and a place where God may make His dwelling place in our hearts.

Play on, Arcade Fire—may 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.

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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.

Mission Abort: A Way of Interpreting "Gravity"

* My Mumford & Sons/Arcade Fire post will have to wait because I must write this now, spoilers and all.

Maybe it's because I was profoundly moved by the story of Gianna Jessen a few years ago. Maybe it's because I read "Angel in the Waters" to my son a thousand times when I was pregnant with his brother last year. Maybe it's because I untangled a Terrence Malick movie a few days ago. Maybe it's because I just talked to my mother who is praying outside an abortion clinic every single day this month. But apparently, I saw a different movie last night than everyone else. I thought that Gravity, a film starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney that is being hailed as a cinematic masterpiece—was about a failed abortion. Then I went home and did some Googling and found that no one else has seen it this way. Well, I've never let that stop me before, so here we go.

Before I saw this movie, a friend told me that it is "very pro-life" and that I would "get it." I expected that it would deal with end of life issues so I was prepared for a meditation on euthanasia. But as soon as I saw Dr. Ryan Stone (Bullock) curl up in the fetal position and go to sleep, I realized that we were inside a womb. Then I considered that every pregnancy magazine, 3-D ultrasound photo, and "inside the womb" YouTube video I have ever seen looked remarkably like this movie: the swimming motion, the umbilical cords everywhere, the parachute as a placenta...more and more keep occurring to me as I write this. Some reviewers have pointed out some of these elements, and the filmmaker himself, Alfonso Cuarón, says that the film is about rebirth and evolution. But why all this distress in the womb, the safest place on earth?

Then, as I saw all that debris flying at the characters, I thought it looked like a spray of saline. And Matt Kowalski (Clooney) being pulled away from Dr. Stone seemed caught in a vacuum hose. And all of the huge pointed objects hurling at them were like the other tools used to procure abortions. I remembered my mom telling me about the film "Silent Scream" as I thought about the opening text of Gravity which tells us that there is no sound in space. Even Bullock's character's name, Stone, might as well be Clump Of Cells. Her first name, Ryan, is ambiguously gendered, just as we're usually not sure of the baby's sex until he or she is born. Piecing this together, outer space has become the inner sanctum of a woman who wishes to terminate her pregnancy, thus rendering the environment inhospitable. This realization gave new weight to the other piece of opening text, "Life in space is impossible."

Let me pause to make something clear: I'm not claiming that the filmmaker had all of this in mind, consciously anyway. One of the main points of this blog is that it gives me a place to work out the idea that our human aesthetic and moral sensitivities, when poured out sincerely in art, often echo God because we are made in his image and likeness. I think there are other ways of reading the movie—some of which seem quite complementary—and I hope moviegoers will take with them what they already have and leave with something more. Also, I'm not claiming that this is an exact allegory, so not all of the elements have to fit into the vision perfectly. I just see enough evidence to make a substantial claim. That said, let's keep going.

Think about the moment when Dr. Stone says she is worried that no one will pray for her soul. This is of course a deeply moving statement within the context of the film, but with this subtext we can imagine it as a cry of the unborn. She also says that she has no one on Earth looking up at her, and that she has never prayed because she has never been taught. It is almost as if she has never lived in the outside world at all. Seen in this way, the film works like a thought experiment for those people who choose not to see the fetus as a human being. What if the unwanted life inside were a fully formed adult? What if we could see her? What if she were beautiful and talented—an Oscar-winner, even? Think of the potential of that human life. One year at the March for Life in Washington, I held a sign that read "Equal Rights for Unborn Women" with a picture of the female symbol ♀ with another one (only tiny) floating inside the circle. This movie underscores all of the posters and prayers offered up by the marching masses each January.

Matt Kowalski became the guardian angel for the baby inside the womb. (If you haven't seen and read this book, I highly recommend it.) Matt is clearly some kind of supernatural or paranormal entity the last time that we see him. As Ryan loses oxygen and is dying, he comes to the rescue—to light, to guard, to rule, and to guide, as the prayer says. He tells her about the world on the other side, just like the angel in the book. But the difference is that she may choose whether to die or go on struggling to survive. This reminds me of C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity when he talks about the crisis of birth:

Until we rise and follow Christ we are still parts of Nature, still in the womb of our great mother. Her pregnancy has been long and painful and anxious, but it has reached its climax. The great moment has come. Everything is ready. The Doctor has arrived. Will the birth "go off all right"? But of course it differs from an ordinary birth in one important respect. In an ordinary birth the baby has not much choice: here it has. I wonder what an ordinary baby would do if it had the choice. It might prefer to stay in the dark and warmth and safety of the womb. For of course it would think the womb meant safety. That would be just where it was wrong; for if it stays there it will die.

 Dr. Stone chooses to live. She is then born, and thus reborn. As her pod enters the Earth's atmosphere it looks like a head moving into the birth canal. The scene of reentry made me weep heavily with both memory and anticipation. I recalled vividly the moment when my son was crowning—the ring of fire, it is so aptly called by we mothers who've experience natural child birth. Ryan says, "Houston, I'm either gong to make down in one piece, or I'm gonna burn up in 10 minutes; either way, no harm no foul." Not the best bit of dialogue ever but it did remind me of how I felt pushing out a 9 pound baby: "I might die right now." She's screaming, I'm screaming (into my scarf), babies everywhere being born right now screaming—what a shocking and terrible and bizarre way we come into the world. And then, suddenly, the plunge into the water. I didn't think I could take any more obstacles at that point, but birth is that way, too. Will the baby be able to breath on its own? Will the cord be wrapped around its neck? Will the heart rate plummet or skyrocket? Then, at last, she surfaces and takes in that precious oxygen. I half-expected a giant bulb syringe to appear and clear away the mucous as she coughs and sputters. Then, with the weakness of a newborn, she drags herself onto the shore. She grips the earth and releases it like Mary in The Passion delivering her Son into His Father's Kingdom. She presses her forehead to the ground, and whispers, "Thank you," like all of the thousands of unwanted babies who are unintentionally and despite all odds born alive.

The film runs 91 minutes, like 9 months plus 1 year as we get to witness not only the birth but the first breath, first pushup, first crawl and first step. I had the privilege of attending it with a dear friend who is five-months pregnant. There just a foot away from me was the real thing teeming within. A 3-D ultrasound could have shown us just how that baby reacted to all of those loud noises, just as the 3-D photography heightened our own experience of the movie. What an age we live in.

It's worth pointing out that this director also made the film, Children of Men, which also features a profound commentary on pregnancy and hope. The director of photography for that film and this one also made The Tree of Life, a soul-stirring beauty-fest on all levels. May God grant that these people come into the fullness of faith, and along with them, many from the viewing audience.

If you'd like a few more essays with religious interpretations of this movie, you might enjoy this from Patheos, this from Barbara Nicolosi (who first got me excited to see this movie), and this from Fr. Barron. 

What do you think? Can you fit any of the other scenes or images from the film into this framework? Feel free to argue with me if you think I'm dead wrong or crazy. That's what I'm here for. 

A Bad Man is Hard to Break: Revelation and Redemption in "Breaking Bad"

*If you want to make the most of this post, I encourage you to take the time to read the four links in the second paragraph. It'll be worth it. Oh, and there are spoilers all over the place so watch out.

NOTE: If you are one of the many people who were curious about all of the Breaking Bad hype, watched the pilot, and then ran away in disgust, I have a few important things to tell you: 1) at first, the creator of the show did not know which network would pick it up, and it seems he leaned in a more HBO direction; then, AMC grabbed it and the whole thing became PG-13-ish instead of R-ish; 2) you have to get through the third episode in order to really have a sense of what the show is about. If you're not hooked by then, you probably never will be.

A few days before I started my blog, I read this by Kendra of "Catholic All Year." It made me talk to (plead with?) my computer screen like never before, because I LOVE Flannery O'Connor and Breaking Bad, and part of my mission in life is to defend them. That's why I want to start a blog, I thought—so someone might actually hear the stuff I'm saying out loud when I have no one around but my napping infant to convince. As I began to dig around to see what has already been said, I found this fantastic response by Haley over at "Carrots for Michaelmas." And Kendra is responding to a brilliant post by Jennifer Fulwiler of "Conversion Diary." Also, I found a very good essay called, "The Theology of Breaking Bad" and you can find it right here. There's great stuff out there already. Yet I feel that there is still more to be said, so let's see what I can cook up with this post.

I'm fascinated that good Christians can have such widely disparate reactions to these two things. I'll never forget the first time I encountered O'Connor in my public high school English class. We were assigned "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." It was violent, shocking, and disturbing—and yet it moved me profoundly. My teacher's presentation of the story didn't help at all. She didn't mention that Flannery was a devout Catholic who had intended her stories to depict the action of God's grace. In search of something akin to Jen's piece which might have been called, "Why a story about a grandma getting shot in the chest made me feel closer to God," I asked my dad to read it hoping for a good discussion. He reached the end, looked at me with open mouth and slanted eye as if he were picturing his daughter transforming into one of those goth kids and said, "I hate it." It wasn't until I took a short story class in college that I came across O'Connor again; and that time, I had my Catholic stuff together. At last I was able to see and articulate what made her so great. Then, I began to read her essays, which I think explain perfectly what she is doing as she marries her faith with her art. (I actually think that she will be canonized eventually, and I pray that it happen in my lifetime.)

For me, the experience of watching an episode of Breaking Bad is remarkably similar to the experience of reading an O'Connor short story. It feels like an intense workout—mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and even physically (I ran around the couch like an excited dog during the Tuco shootout). I admit that I resisted the show for many months just because I was put off by the premise. Crystal meth is just something that I don't want to be a part of my life in any form, I thought. Then, a friend of mine whose opinion I value highly said something very dramatic: "I would pay ten thousand dollars to have never seen a single episode and then start right now." Ok. I'm there. Right away, I found the show utterly captivating, in much the same way Flannery O'Connor has always been. Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, was born and raised Catholic. Sadly, he's not practicing now; but I really believe that those baptismal graces are still churning within him, for his show is a spectacular exploration of the corrosive effects of Pride. Pride is the root of all evil and certainly the root of all of Walter White's badness. He has chance after chance to break out of the cycle of lies, corruption, and violence but pride keeps his hand to the grindstone at every turn. There is a full theology underpinning the storyline, as one of the above links lays out. Here I will focus on the theme of redemption using the Christian sense of the term, salvation from sin.

 Almost all of the articles I've read on Breaking Bad say that Walter White is an irredeemable villain. Phrases like "pure evil" and "heading straight to hell" are peppered everywhere. I find this troubling. The Christian Tradition holds that the possibility for redemption exists until the last second of one's life. I love the image in the Purgatorio of the man who lived a horrible life but then was saved by a single tear at the moment of his death. The tear signifies repentance—full repentance—not just fear of hell but love of God, which for Dante means also an abhorrence of the wrong that one has done, precisely because it is wrong and not merely because it is damnable. No human being can be 100% evil because of his or her inherent dignity as a child of God made in His image and likeness. The inherent dignity means we have a will that can turn towards the good—that was made for the good. It also means we are made for God, who works to turn us. Unfortunately, Walter White himself has never been taught any of this before. He says to his partner Jesse, "If you believe that there’s a hell...we’re already pretty much going there. But I’m not gonna lie down until I get there." This a moment of despair. He doesn't believe it's possible for him to be turned back to the good, or at least he has decided not to. Walt has a sort of Faustian sold-myself-to-the-devil attitude through much of the story. The big question for me leading up to the finale was whether or not he would be swallowed up by Hell Mouth like Dr. Faustus. The final shot of him laying on the floor while the camera pulls back through the rafters was reminiscent of that, I thought. But while the images convey some of the meaning, the songs that plays over those images cover the rest:

Guess I got what I deserved
Kept you waiting there too long, my love
All that time without a word
Didn't know you'd think that I'd forget or I'd regret
The special love I had for you, my baby blue.

 The "baby blue" that has been "kept waiting" is his signature brand of crystal meth with which he has been painfully estranged for many months. Walt spends his last moments on earth gently patting the cooking equipment, quietly smiling, taking in his achievement. Vince Gilligan said Walt is like Gollum and the blue meth is the One Ring—he dies clutching his "Precioussssss." His cancer-induced coughing even sounds like the phlegmy "gollum, gollum" sound. I'm still processing the finale and I'm tempted to just keep typing about it forever; but I'll try to restrain myself for the sake of making a few good points. 

Right after the series ended, I listened to an interview by Terry Gross of NPR's "Fresh Air" with two of the writers of Breaking Bad. I will quote it at length since my treatment of this topic is largely based on the following two excerpts:

GROSS: Well, let's start with the very ending and the clip that we just played. Why was it important at the end to have Walt say yeah, yeah, you were right, it wasn't really about the family, it was about me, I liked it, I liked doing this?
GOULD: We had talked over and over again over the years about when is Walt going to see himself the way we see him? When is he going to have, like, a revelation of what he's done and who he really is? Sometimes there would be a big episode, you know, he let Jane die or something else, and we'd play with the idea of having him start to see himself, and it never felt right. And we came to the realization that once he really sees himself, once he has a full idea of who he is and what he's done, the show's over.

 This immediately made me think of Flannery O'Connor. We find in most if not all of her stories is that violence is paired with illumination; or, something violent happens and then the character finally sees. She even titled one story "Revelation" in which an obnoxious woman is mentally criticizing all of the people around her in a waiting room when she is suddenly stuck in the face by a textbook and told, "Go back to hell where you came from, you old warthog." Shortly thereafter, the woman has a vision of all of the souls who are closer to heaven than she is. In the story I mentioned above, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," an elderly woman has a revelation when she sees the humanity of the "Misfit" who holds a gun up to her head. This single moment of compassion is her salvation. Walter White has a few instances of revelation in the series but he is usually on some inhibition-loosening substance and he doesn't die after any of them. He keeps picking himself up and returning to the well of Pride.

The very next thing said in the Fresh Air interview was this:

GROSS: Well, he had a much more honorable and redemptive end than I was expecting. You know, he tells Skyler he knows it wasn't about family, it was about him, implying that he's been selfish. He makes the police think that she was a victim and never went along with anything involving the meth business. He figures out a way to get money to his family. He kills the white supremacists, and he liberates Jesse.
GOULD: And then he dies, but of course like he has to die at the end, either of the cancer or of a bullet. I was expecting something closer to, like, a Shakespearian tragedy where, like, everyone on the stage is dead, you know.
(laughter)
GOULD: We talked about it. We talked about every possible ending, I think, and that was - I think that was also a favorite I would have really enjoyed if Walt was the last man standing, but it just felt right for him to go out in the end like he did.
SCHNAUZ: You know, it's interesting, I don't really see him redeemed. I just the fact that he sort of accepts what he's done and who he is, that's not redemption to me. I mean, I think ultimately - you know, we all, we talked about the morality of the show a lot while we were working on it, and to me, you know, he's - the actions he's taken are beyond redemption.
There may be some lightening or some understanding that he has, but I think I would distinguish between self-understanding and any kind of redemption.

Even the writers are saying that Walt is "beyond redemption"; but again, this is theologically unsound. The whole concept of redemption is infinitely more incredible and beautiful than Terry Gross's understanding. Schnauz is saying that Walt can't make up for his own sins with a few good deeds. But that is true of all of us. We're all beyond redemption if you count up our sins. That's the whole point of Jesus' death of the cross.

As Schnauz said, there is certainly a distinction to be made between revelation and redemption. Revelation is simply a step that must be taken for redemption to be possible. Once we sinners see ourselves clearly, we should be moved to repentance; and it is from there that we merit redemption. Like Walter White, O'Connor's characters experience revelations about their true natures; but the difference is that they don't stop there. Because they are repentant, the moment at which they are shocked by violence they are also purged and restored by grace. Humility brings them to their knees as they finally look beyond themselves for their salvation. As I watched the final scenes of Breaking Bad, I wondered what it would look like if he suddenly repented. Maybe he'll finally try the blue meth. Maybe it will affect him the way that beer and that sleeping pill did when he tearfully but enigmatically confessed his sins to his son and to Jesse earlier in the series. Maybe he'll double over heaving sobs laced with violent coughing until he collapses. Well, he doesn't. It's not surprising that he doesn't, just tragic. 

But there is a silver lining to this gruesome tale: we have plenty of reason to hope that Jesse Pinkman will be saved—that he will embrace full repentance and live a good life, even the life of the world to come. And interestingly, that might not have been true if not for his relationship with Walt. I imagine that if Jesse had been killed after season one as the writers originally intended, he probably would have gone out like Combo or Victor—taken like a thief in the night and missing the higher good—the something beyond, the transcendent meaning in light of which to re-order one's life. Had he never reunited with his former chemistry teacher at all, he might have lived out the rest of his days just like Badger and Skinny Pete, who've never murdered anyone, but whose souls can be bought for one hundred thousand dollars:

BADGER: You know, I don't exactly know how to feel about all this.

SKINNY PETE: For real, yo. Whole thing felt kind of shady, you know, like morality-wise?

BADGER: Totally.

(Walt holds up the money)

WALT: How do you feel now?

(They take the money)

SKINNY PETE: Better.

BADGER: Yeah, definitely improving.

 I saw Richard III recently with my husband and he reminded me of this very similar interchange:

FIRST MURDER: Remember our reward when the deed's done.
SECOND MURDERER: Zounds, he dies! I had forgotten the reward.
FIRST MURDERER: Where's thy conscience now?
SECOND MURDERER: O, in the Duke of Glouchester's purse.
FIRST MURDERER:  So, when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out.
SECOND MURDERER: (my paraphrasing) Yeah, basically.  

Jesse could have easily ended up one of those guys. But thanks to his misadventures with Walt, he realizes that he can and must resist the temptation of blood money and thus has many opportunities for lightening and self-understanding. Those moments move him to repent of the bad deeds that he commits. His conscience rips him open, filling him with shame and regret. His heart is not hardened like Walt's, or blinded like Badger's and Skinny Pete's, but is instead wrapped in barbed wire. That boy needs Confession so hard. Thank God he knows it on some level.

Did anyone but me notice that some of the imagery from the last episode seemed to identify Jesse with Jesus? That flashback scene of him woodworking to render his cherished box was remarkably similar to the scene in The Passion of the Christ where Jesus is making a table. The cinematography matches so well—the lighting, the camera movement, and especially the dramatic cut to Jesse chained up in the lab which  lined up with the cut to Jesus chained up in the custody of the Sanhedrin. Just look at this

 

and tell me it's not crazy-similar to this

In the key of Jesse, "Right?! Yo?!" In both scenes, two different forms of self-gift are expressed: Jesus and Jesse freely using their talents to work and create art juxtaposed with imprisonment for the love of another (the whole human race/Brock). I can't be sure if Vince Gilliagan had this in mind. But what he has made is good art, and so it participates in the Paschal Mystery even despite intentionally. I love being a Christian.

A bad man is hard to break, but not impossible. This is what Flannery O'Connor teaches so well and what Vince Gilligan shows us in part. God can overcome even the worst criminals if only allowed in, like the Good Thief hanging next to Jesus. There are always opportunities for repentance in light of a higher good (i.e. God)—opportunities to withdraw one's will from past acts. But Walter White embraces darkness by indulging in self-worship, thus hardening himself against love. His self-knowledge leads to less and less regret, and never leads to repentance. Grace cannot enter into Walt's soul he clings to his brokenness, even when he sees it. It's the best thing he thinks he has: he is good at the empire business. He has been called an Everyman because the viewing audience can really sympathize with him in the beginning of the story. But Jesse is also an Everyman—a sinner, made in the image and likeness of God, called to repentance. We just have to pray that we follow a path more like Jesse's than Walt's by the end.

One of best things about Breaking Bad and Flannery O'Connor's work is summed up in this excerpt from the Fresh Air interview:

GOULD: What's interesting, Terry, though, is that in storytelling - [...] so much of it is what you leave out, the choices of what you decide not to show. I remember in season one, one of the moments that we were always talking about is, you know, Emilio - the character Emilio gets melted in acid. And then later in the episode, Crazy Eight is dead. And what are they going to do with the body?
And what we decided to do was just have Jesse show up, go into his basement, and have everything perfectly clean. Because we know that Walt knows how to dispose of bodies using acid at that point in the story. And we thought it was sort of - it was more interesting to give the audience just a few pieces, and let them put it together.
There's a quote from Billy Wilder - I'm probably misquoting him - that we would often talk about in the writer's room, which is give the audience two and two, let them make four, and they'll love you forever.
SCHNAUZ: Mm-hmm.
GOULD: And the storytelling is really a collaboration between all of us on the side of making the show and what's going on in the audience's head. And so sometimes we like to keep things a little ambiguous and let people be smart.

O'Connor employs this very same technique, which is why it can be difficult to interpret her motives and meaning. But if you already love Flannery O'Connor (like you, Haley!), you have a really good chance of loving Breaking Bad. And if you already love Breaking Bad (like you, Dad!), I'm confident you'll love O'Connor, too. Let's talk about it, yo.

If you want more on Flannery's faith, I hope you enjoy this paper I wrote.

***
Next topics: The movie Gravity. Then, Grammy-winners Mumford & Sons and Arcade Fire. 

Finding Hope in a Fierce Little Human Tragedy (Part 2, "Brideshead Revisited")

Last time, I discussed The Great Gatsby; this time, I turn to Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. Evelyn Waugh wrote his masterpiece twenty years after F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his, but they are set in roughly the same time period: the early-to-mid 1920s. Both Brideshead Revisited and The Great Gatsby are centered on an "enchanted palace;" both concentrate on thwarted passions; and both contain thematic elements such as wealth, self-indulgence, transformation, authenticity, family, memory, the quest for happiness, and the presence of God; both even feature a room elaborately stuffed full of flowers. Here I will focus again on the role of hope—hope specifically as expressed in the Catechism's definition—the virtue by which we "desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness."

In case you're unfamiliar with the story, here's a link to a good synopsis.

Charles Ryder is a far more developed character than is Nick Carraway, the narrator of Gatsby. In fact, Charles becomes the central character of the story; like Dante in the Commedia, Charles the Narrator illuminates for us Charles the Pilgrim. Sebastian is a kind of Virgil for the first half of the novel who is then replaced by Julia as a type of Beatrice. Charles describes Sebastian as a "forerunner" (as John the Baptist was for Jesus) for his love for Julia. But then Julia becomes a forerunner for his love for God. The journey to that point involves many detours as thwarted passions obstruct the path. Charles like Gatsby grasps at a woman for the fulfillment of all of his hope. Juxtapose in your mind the climax of each of these stories: the scene in the Plaza Hotel when Gatsby realizes that Daisy is not entirely his and that he does not understand her set against the scene at the fountain when Charles realizes the same thing about Julia. The falling action splits into different directions, however. Unlike Daisy's betrayal of Gatsby, Julia's severing with Charles is an occasion of grace; for her intentions are not at all selfish. As she realizes that their affair must now come to an end and she must give up the one thing she wants so much, she explains,

The worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. That is what it would mean; starting a life with you, without Him. One can only hope to see one step ahead. But I saw today there was one thing unforgivable, [...] the bad thing that I'm not quite bad enough to do; to set up a rival good to God's.

Both Charles and Julia are brokenhearted. Yet is that very brokenness that allows God to come in. Julia relinquishes her earthly aspiration to happiness through love with Charles for the sake of a true happiness that will last for all eternity. And her prayer that Charles may someday understand is not only answered, but transcended as he eventually follows her lead. Following the Catechism's definition of hope, they learn to place their trust in Christ's promises rather than our fallen world, relying not on their own strength but on the help of the Holy Spirit: "Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful" (Hebrews 10:23).

Gatsby never reaches this catharsis as Daisy remains his "rival good" to the last moment. I've argued that it is because Gatsby mislays his hope that he comes to such a tragic end. What so many people find deeply unsatisfying about Fitzgerald's novel is that it doesn't suggest to the reader a better alternative. It asks questions without answering them—not only Gatsby's questions, but the perennial questions of mankind: what is it all for? this longing? this ambition? where am I going? why? We can imagine the green light as a pulsing question mark, keeping time with our beating hearts as we live each day. The trouble with this light is that it is a fixed point on the same horizontal plane as this world below. It is not above us, calling us up and out of ourselves. Therefore, it can never actually fulfill us. As St. Augustine said in the beginning of his Confessions, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

Waugh's light, by contrast, is red. It is the red light flickering above the tabernacle in the chapel of the great mansion. It is red for the Holy Spirit, for the blood of Christ, for the flame inside each one of us that burns for eternal happiness. It is a stop sign to Gatsby's pulsing green light that says, "Here. Stay here. Pray with me. I am the answer to all your heart's desires. I am that which you have sought all your life. I AM."

We can get a very good idea of how Brideshead functions as an answer to Gatsby by situating their final scenes next to one another. Fitzgerald's novel ends,

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

 Waugh ends with Charles kneeling and praying in the chapel:

Something quite remote from anything the builders intended has come out of their work, and out of the fierce little human tragedy in which I played; something none of us thought about at the time: a small red flame – a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design, relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they saw put out; that flame burns again for other soldiers, far from home, farther, in heart, than Acre or Jerusalem. It could not have been lit but for the builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew among the old stones.

Both Fitzgerald and Waugh conclude their great works by having us gaze upon a light and then inviting us to meditate on the past and it's place in our lives. Fitzgerald leaves us with a seasick, Sisyphean feeling while Waugh lifts us into the Communion of Saints.

I've often been puzzled by the fact that F. Scott Fitzgerald said of himself that he was "a moralist at heart" and that he wanted to "preach at people." What was it that he was trying to teach them? Where did he hope to lead them? To the "eyes of God" in the advertisement overlooking the Valley of Ashes? These eyes are described as watching in the sense of judging, but it is not clear that this is a loving gaze that invites His poor sons and daughters back to Him. I can imagine that Waugh might have closed The Great Gatsby, set it by, and thought, "I can do better than that." Waugh lived at the same time as Fitzgerald, saw many of the same things, had many of the same influences, struggled with the same issues; but after becoming a devout Catholic Waugh the satirist set out to write a novel that, he stated explicitly, is "about God" and is therefore "a work of theology." The image of God that we are given in Brideshead is taken from G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories:

"I caught him, with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still to bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."

 God calls us to Him, catches us up like the Good Shepherd that He is. His judging stare gives way to a smiling embrace like the father of the Prodigal Son. And in exchange for our hope, He gives us his peace. In Waugh's novel, Charles and Julia misplace their hope at various points throughout their lives and they all suffer mightily for it.  But thanks to their cooperation with God's grace, they transcend earthly delights and come to know the joy of awaiting heaven. The final sentence of Brideshead Revisited shows this subtly but beautifully as Charles is said to be "looking unusually cheerful today."

The Great Gatsby has just been released on Blu-Ray and DVD. I invite you the watch it and appreciate it for the faithful retelling that it is and ask yourself what it means for this story to be "the classic American tale". Then, find somewhere the 1981 mini-series of Brideshead Revisited, which is the most perfect transference of a book to film ever. (Yes, it's quite long but, whatever you do, do NOT watch the shorter version that came out a few years ago. It turned Waugh in his grave. Here's how.) Look: Breaking Bad might be over by the time you read this. Downton Abbey doesn't start again until January.  Mad Men comes later in the spring. So for three whole months, you probably have nothing to watch. It is the perfect time to embark upon eleven hours of greatness in manageable installments just as it was originally aired. Maybe you have already done this. Maybe you're like me and you've seen the whole thing six times. But I'll be revisiting it myself bearing in mind it's relationship to Gatsby, and I'm sure the experience will be a rewarding one. Care to join me? I'd love for you to share your insights and comments.

***
Next topic: Breaking Bad & Flannery O'Connor.