Ain’t no room for hobbyhorses
In the stables of the Lord ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Mother Nature’s little sister
Taught me everything I know ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Just re-listened to: Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) by TV on the Radio. Thick, noisy, wordy, loopy apocalyptic post-rock that manages to maintain pop leanings. (We observe once again that minimum viable pop is catchy melodies plus reliable rhythm, which this album has in large, dirty piles.) An excellent would-be Bowie album, as if Bowie had been taking Peter Gabriel-administered steroids in a cavern and as an eerie side effect had developed the ability to sing in two voices simultaneously from his one mouth as long as those voices were separated by octaves or some other such wide harmonic interval.

It all makes for an excellent Halloween album. But despite its spook and force, the pathos is what lingers. And I haven’t even yet paid attention to the lyrics, of which there are plenty. Love is kinda crazy with a spooky dirtywhirl like you.

The album art depicts a nest, but it sure looks to me like a crown of thorns.

Just park right here with the hazards on
I think I’m sure the bastard’s gone ✏️ 🎤 🎵

You find yourself lost ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Most metonymy is a mistake.

Here’s an audio recording of my essay about the reasons and mechanics of Jesus’ self-subjection to crucifixion for folks who prefer listening to reading. It’s roughly 50 minutes in length.

Just re-listened to: Jesus Freak (1995) by DC Talk. Is it nostalgia that enables me to delight in it? Surely in part. I was 13 years old and well ensconced in evangelical subculture when it came out. But Smitty’s fellow CCM platinum release I’ll Lead You Home came out that year, too, and you don’t see me writing about that now, do you?

Look, the ingredients that make for pop-rock I like—shapely melodies, generous harmonies, three lead vocalists, and verve—are present here on every track. There’s so much smiling energy—so much more than on their non-CCM contemporaries’ albums—not to mention highly skilled session playercraft on offer that it’s very easy for me to listen past a few awkward rap bars and the album’s religious superiority complex. It’s a pop tour de force. And besides, I’m not really spinning this for the lyrics, although I don’t care what you say, I don’t care what you heard: “Colored People” is a great song.

It’s fine, Babe
It’s fine.
I do it all the time, Babe.
Except I never know what to tell you when I’m done. ✏️ 🎤 🎵

I dream of a world in which smartphones and laptops display the title of whatever you’re looking at on their backsides. This would have two societally salubrious effects:

1. Serendipity might strike as we discover you’re reading a book I’ve also read or listening to an album I think is cool. Or at least you’re letting your stranger-neighbors know a little bit about you; a little uncertainty reduction goes a long way toward reducing stress.
2. You’re less likely to take in junk.

Geez, Steve
We’re gonna need you to leave
We’re just trying get some work done
 
Please, Steve
Don’t act so bereaved
Can’t you see we’re working under the gun? ✏️ 🎤 🎵

In the three thousand words or so below, you’ll find my long-gestating attempt to grasp why Jesus allowed Himself to be crucified and how His crucifixion achieved those aims. Or at least, you’ll find most of it: I cut the writing short. That’s because when it comes to disciplined, long-form argumentation, I may be the slowest writer I know. (Hence, despite a love for knowledge and understanding, I never pursued a PhD and probably never will.)

I typed the first word of what you’ll read below sometime in October 2022. As of the writing of the words of this paragraph, it’s late August 2024. At the rate I’ve been going, to get all my ideas out onto the page would take me another year. Yet every minute I spend writing this essay is a minute not spent relating directly to people or indulging my other expressive hobby, making music, which seems like I’ve all but ignored this entire time. I want to get back to that stuff, especially as both my kids are now in high school and my time with...

Hey!
You married him.
He’s always and in all ways gonna stay him.
Means he won’t leave ya,
But he’s prolly gonna grieve ya
Again and again and again. ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Don’t worry
You’ll be the next hard act to follow ✏️ 🎤 🎵

You’re saying I should give in to the vernacular?

— Scott

percentage of adult household members holding a full-time job ∝ (frequency of dinner guests hosted by that household)^-1

Just re-listened to: Carrie and Lowell (2015) by Sufjan Stevens. When Christgau wrote of this album, “How best expiate a conflicted grief? Surely something with more tensile strength than musical flower arrangements,” he did capture its aural beauty, but he clearly wasn’t listening to its devastating lyrics. As far as grief albums go, this one is better even than Funeral and Tonight’s the Night. My favorite Sufjan by a substantial margin.

I miss the white pages ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Just listened to: The Sky Will Still Be There Tomorrow (2024) by Charles Lloyd. Easygoing, desultory, flute- or breathy-tenor-sax-led freeish modal jazz for inspiring hippies at night. Bonus point of interest: The esteemed saxophonist/flautist is 86!

Uncommitted time I anticipate with pleasure, but planned time I often anticipate with a low level of discontent, even if it’s time I planned for pleasure. Why is that?

[edit, 8/13/24]: I think it’s planned social time that evokes the mild discontent—and I think it’s because I still hold an idolatrous candle for solo productive time. After all these years, GTD is still my god. Sigh.

Switching costs and triskaidekaphobia be damned: We ought to ditch the Gregorian calendar and replace it with a this (Scotian?) alternative:

• thirteen months of the exact same 28-day length,
• New Year’s Day as its own intercalary one-day week, and
• every leap year, a two-day New Year’s Week.

Accountants would be happy about this. Computer code would be simpler. And no one would have to remember “Thirty Days Hath September” any more.

Just listened to: Fireflies and Songs (2009) by Sara Groves. Piano-based adult alternative whose graceful combination of melody, voice, harmonic voicings, and themes make me want to cry—or, just as often, actually make me cry—at least half of its runtime. Christianity Today’s runaway number-one choice for album of the year that year. But other than the lyrics of “Joy Is In Our Hearts,”, this is hardly a Christians-only album. It deserves a wider audience.

Freeloading days are here again ✏️ 🎤 🎵

Just listened to: Silence & Music (2017) performed by Gabrieli’s “Rolls-Royce” of a choir, conducted here by their artistic director Paul McCreesh. This is fifteen 20th-century secular British partsongs exquisitely sung and perfectly recorded, thereby gratifying my anglophilia, audiophilia, and love for small-choir singing all at once. Hat tip to the late David Vernier for the recommendation.

Just listened to: Open Your Heart (2012) by The Men. Noisy, abrasive rave rock. Sometimes like Sonic Youth, but often faster and shoutier, hence punk-er. I like it best when droning, as in “Oscillation” and “Presence.”