William Shatner's Queen Cover

In case you weren't aware, somebody convinced Shatner to do a spoken word cover album. And, because no cover album is complete these days without "Bohemian Rhapsody":

Apparently brought to by and for stoners. I wonder if this falls in the "laughing with" or "laughing at" category. Hard to tell.

The Greatest Cartoon Theme Song

So io9 is running a poll to determine the best cartoon theme song ever. Alas, though, io9's list, expansive as it is, does not include a clear front-runner, the theme to one of the most amazing, and most forgotten cartoons of all time:

That being said, clearly the finalists come down to the following:

I mean, there's just no comparison between these and the others. Admittedly, I have warm feelings about the Darkwing Duck and Pinky and the Brain openers, but, they're not really of the same caliber. Boy does a good theme song go a long way toward raising a cartoon to the next level.

The Mountain Goats’ "Sax Rohmer #1" As Tragedy

Around the middle of the last century, T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis found themselves on opposite sides of an important literary debate. Lewis thought that the matter of Modern and post-Modern Literature was inherently flawed. That is to say, he was convinced that no literary device, conceit, or convention was worth it's salt unless it preceded 1517. (This position is analogous to that of many hyper-Traditionalists as regards the Liturgy and Duncan Stroik as regards ecclesiastical architecture.) Eliot on the other hand saw nothing wrong with adopting the style of Modernity, as illustrated by his plays and poetry. Why should these materials, this style be any less capable of incarnating reality than the older? Eliot himself proved his hypothesis to be correct, and it is largely as a result of his literary corpus that I agree with him.

A particular style is relatively arbitrary when it comes to a work of art. That is to say, a particular work of art could utilize any, so long as it appropriately incarnates the vision of the artist. Pop music is no exception. There is no reason at all why it should not be possible to produce art in this style. In an effort to show that it is possible and has, in fact, already been accomplished many times over, here beginneth a new feature here at PopSophia: Tunesday (awful, I know), in which I shall endeavor to feature relatively contemporary music which I believe attains to the level of art.

To start then, a song from The Mountain Goats' album Heretic Pride. The full lyrics are included below the embedded mp3. I suggest reading along as you listen. Here's the direct link to the music video in case the audio doesn't work for some reason.

Fog lifts from the harbor, dawn goes down to day
An agent crests the shadows of the nearby alleyway
Piles of broken bricks, sign posts on the path
Every moment points toward the aftermath
Yeah

Sailors straggle back from their nights out on the town
Hopeless urchins from the city gather round
Spies from imperial China wash in with the tide
Every battle heads to war, surrender on both sides

And I am coming home to you
With my own blood in my mouth
And I am coming to you
If it’s the last thing that I do

Elves move in the tower, wolves howl in the hills
Chalk marks show up on a few high windowsills
And a rabbit gives up somewhere, and a dozen hawks descend
Every moment leads toward its own sad end
Yeah

Ships loosed from their moorings capsize and then they’re gone
Sailors with no captains watch awhile and then move on
And an agent crests the shadows and I head in her direction
 All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection

I am coming home to you
With my own blood in my mouth
And I am coming to you
If it's the last thing that I do

As expounded eloquently by Dustin Hoffman's character in Stranger Than Fiction, if Tragedy were reducible to one fundamental element it would be death. Death as inescapable. “Every moment leads toward its own sad end.” In Tragedy time always seems to be running out. It presses on the protagonist, reminding him there’s only so much left. The Tragic protagonist is pursued relentlessly be the agents of death and damnation. The entire song encapsulates this feeling of impending doom: “Piles of broken bricks, sign posts on the path / Every moment points toward the aftermath.” Enemies are everywhere. “Agents” and “spies” always upon us. Nature itself seems evil and unhinged, turning on itself and the protagonist with ferocity: “Elves move in the tower, wolves howl in the hills / . . . And a rabbit gives up somewhere, and a dozen hawks descend.” Life becomes but a horridly painful struggle. There is no grace, no mercy, no salvation: “Every battle heads to war.” Even more than that, the song speaks to this struggle’s Tragic futility. Ships are engulfed while leaderless sailors watch and do nothing. No one cares about anything or anyone else because there is no meaning. “All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection.” There is no right choice. No matter what I do, I end up gone, swallowed by the Abyss closing in around me. Soon I will be done for. For what? Nothingness awaits me in this life and the next.

Why, then, would anyone still fight? Why not just commit suicide and be done with it if there's no point to anything and it's all going to end up in death anyway. The refrain offers a glimmer of hope—the person waiting at home. To get back to her. It’s going to cost me dearly—blood at least, if not my life. But there’s nothing left to try for except to get back to her. She is Cordelia to my Lear, Antigone to my Oedipus (see Oedipus at Colonus), there to wrest me out of the arms of Nothingness. She is the one agent of grace left in the world, the only chance to make something of life. And death. To give it meaning and purpose. To make the fighting, the suffering, the humiliation that is life count for something. She is the Beloved of Scripture and countless lyrics. She is the Church, the Bride for which Our Lord lived our wretched life and died our wretched death, thereby making it possible for our life and our death to become a participation in the Divine life and death.

Celebrating The Prosaic: The Magnetic Fields' "The Book of Love" As Comedy

The vast majority of the time works of tragedy focus on one man, one central protagonist. This man is usually an important figure, perhaps a king. Assuming he doesn't die a horrible death (think Macbeth and Othello), this king must learn a lesson about pride by being knocked down off his high horse. He will probably still die in the end, but it will be a good death--one that means something (think Oedipus and Hamlet).

Works of epic literature nearly always focus on one man as well. He is also usually a king. Where Epic differs from Tragedy, though, is that the epic hero isn't just himself, he is the leader of a people, whose desires he represents and whose actions he undertakes. The true protagonist of any epic work is actually the people the epic hero personifies (e.g., Ithaca in the case of Odysseus and Rome in the case of Aeneas). Unlike tragic protagonists, Epic heroes fight to elevate themselves higher than everybody else. They must be the ultimate badass, the conquering hero on behalf of their polis.

In works of comedy we see something quite different. Comedies always focus on a group of people, at least two (a couple), and their relationships to one another. This group which consists of at least two people is in fact (or, at least, will become) a family. This family usually starts out in low estate; i.e., they usually don't matter much at the beginning of the work. By the end of the work, though, they have been elevated to the level of a royal household (like Nick Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Trygaeus in Aristophanes' Peace, both of whom "wed" goddesses).

Titania and Bottom, by Sir Edwin Landseer

Where in Tragedy the king must be removed from the high place which he won for himself (and which won him his pride as well), and in Epic the hero must do everything in his power to conquer on behalf of his people, win glory and honor, and establish peace and justice on their behalf, in Comedy the protagonists actually do very little.

That is to say, nothing is won or conquered by them. Everything they receive is given to them by some external force as a reward. A reward for what you ask? Being stupid. Silly. Dumb. Idiotic. In a word: humble. The entire action of comedic works is geared toward the celebration of humility--of the prosaic, the down to earth. When the goddess Titania falls in love with Bottom he is literally an ass. Trygaeus gains entry into Heaven and council with the gods by riding a dung beetle there.

Consider the following song by The Magnetic Fields. As usual the lyrics are included below. And here's the direct link to a music video in case the embedded audio doesn't work.

The book of love
Is long and boring.
No one can lift the damn thing.
It’s full of charts
And facts and figures,
And instructions for dancing

But I,
I love it when you read to me,
And you
You can read me anything.

The book of love
Has music in it.
In fact that’s where music comes from.
Some of it is just transcendental.
Some of it is just really dumb.

But I,
I love it when you sing to me,
And you,
You can sing me anything.

The book of love
Is long and boring,
And written very long ago.
It’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes,
And things we’re all too young to know.

But I,
I love it when you give me things,
And you,
You oughta give me wedding rings.

This is the prosaic, the humble, the day in, day out lifestyle that Comedy (and Christianity) extols. "The book of love is long and boring." Married life, real life, isn't bliss. Far from it. It's full of troubles, trials, and pain. There's nothing at all romantic about it. "It's full of charts / And facts and figures." In fact, oftentimes even the supreme expression of love--the marital embrace--must submit itself to charts, facts, and figures. The whole point is to work through it. To bring good from it. To infect the people and the world around you with your loving hard work. The point is to stick it out. To keep doing it every day. No matter how "long." No matter how "boring."

"No one can lift the damn thing." This line is reminiscent of a passage from Revelation that has to do with opening a book.

"I saw in the right hand of him who was seated on the throne a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals; and I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, 'Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?' And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it, and I wept much that no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to into into it. Then one of the elders said to me, 'Weep not; lo, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals,'" (Rev. 5:1-5).

No one can open, no one can lift the book of love, the Book of Life but the one who wrote it--the Author of life and love, Love himself. The book of love has always been his book. If we get one word in one footnote it's because he has given us everything we are, every insignificant bit of love we have been able to give to another.

"I love it when you give me things." Of course, this is the essence of real love. Action. Day-to-day, moment-to-moment giving. Of "flowers," "heart-shaped boxes," time, energy, foot rubs, and above all, self--body and soul. This is the self-giving love which leads naturally to "wedding rings." It is the self-giving love expressed ultimately in the marital embrace, the self-gift which, when complete, blossoms forth into a new creation, a child which could almost be said to be an incarnation of his parents loving gift of themselves to one another. But it is also expressed in those simple, boring, every day things like laundry.

Notice the balance in the refrain between "I" and "you," each given two lines, half a verse, parallel in form. Real love is a communion between two persons, each recognizing the other as a subject rather than an object from which something can be got. They are a person just as I am, and it is the relationship, communion, community of inter-subjective self-gift through boring, prosaic things in which love subsists. The song also mentions dance, which is a physical analogy for this kind of relationship.

It is the life that means nothing, that amounts to nothing that we all must hope and work for. Of course, it isn't actually nothing, for love, self-gift, and the new life that hopefully results are the most important things there are. They are what allow us to become like Love himself--who himself loved so much that he produced a Son from eternity, whose relationship of loving action with his Son produces a loving Spirit, in whom we have all been made able to share.

If you're interested, here's an amazing cover of this song by Peter Gabriel. Check it out.

The Garden: The Decemberists' "June Hymn" As Lyric

It's incredibly interesting to me how music functions artistically. Somehow the meaning is contained in both the text and the music simultaneously, and the forms of each complement each other as a result. I have a theory that if a piece or song is musically beautiful, it must also be so poetically. That is to say, if a song touches my heart and mind with its music and fails to do so with its lyrics, it's likely due to my own lack of poetic sensibility and not the song's lack of poetry.

Take "June Hymn" from The Decemberists' most recent album The King is Dead. As usual, here's the direct link to the music video in case the embedded audio below doesn't work.

Here's a hymn to welcome in the day

Heralding a summer's early sway

And all the bulbs all coming in

To begin

The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens

Disrupts my reverie again

Pegging clothing on the line

Training jasmine how to vine

Up the arbor to your door

And more

You're standing on the landing with the war

You shouldered all the night before

Chorus:

And once upon it

The yellow bonnets

Garland all the lawn

You were waking

Day was breaking

A panoply of song

And summer comes to Springville Hill

A barony of ivy in the trees

Expanding out its empire by degrees

And all the branches burst to bloom

In the boom

Heaven sent this cardinal maroon

To decorate our living room

[Chorus]

And years from now when this old light

Isn't ambling anymore

Will I bring myself to write

"I give my best to Springville Hill!"

[Chorus]

Lyric poetry is the most basic, most fundamental form of Literature; as such, it is the most difficult to understand. I think the reason it so easily frustrates so many is that it seems like the meaning should be self-evident, it's staring us right in the face, and yet we often can't see it. It's analogous to the way in which Metaphysics (i.e., the study of being in itself) is the most basic and fundamental branch of Philosophy, and yet, the hardest to grasp...at first. Once understood it contains the simplest, most obvious principles. In fact, it contains those very principles upon which the rest of Philosophy is founded. All of this is to say that, like Metaphysics in Philosophy, in Literature Lyric is last chronologically but first ontologically.

Unlike Tragedy, Comedy, or Epic, then, Lyric isn't saddled with the baggage of plots and characters. In many ways, Lyric simply is. Tragedy, the form of Literature closest to us (in our very hearts, in fact), overflows with exciting and dramatic events and over-the-top characters who do things like murder people and gouge their own eyes out. It's good stuff, and no less good or beautiful than Lyric. It is simply the earthy, gritty, concrete way in which Tragedy goes about incarnating those larger realities which all art does.

Lyric, on the other hand, largely steers clear of such complicated and individual concerns. A poem doesn't incarnate the life of one man as Tragedy does, but of all men simultaneously. Or perhaps we should say that Lyric doesn't incarnate the life of one man, but the life of Mankind himself. This is why every poem retells the story of Adam (who is Man) and Eve (who is Woman) and whose union together constitutes Mankind (and produces life). The usual way to speak about this phenomenon is to use the image of the Lover and his Beloved, the quintessential example of which we find in Biblical Wisdom Literature. All Lyric poetry deals with the Lover and his Beloved, and their union together. Always, too, this union occurs in the fertile Lyric Garden of Paradise.

"June Hymn" tells the uncomplicated story of a man and his wife and their prosaic life together. The vast majority of the song is spent describing the garden which surrounds their home. This garden that they have created isn't just a facade, however, they bring it into their very life, allowing it to penetrate every intimate facet of their being: "Heaven sent this cardinal maroon / To decorate our living room."

Theirs is a love which cannot be contained, like the "barony of ivy in the trees / Expanding out its empire by degrees / And all the branches burst to bloom." The garden is not a romantic ideal, though. It is never a dream, never ethereal: "The thrushes bleating battle with the wrens / Disrupts my reverie again." The garden is never a place to escape the world. It is the world, the world to which their loving union, so infectious, brings beauty and life. Their life together, in harmony with that of the world and their garden, produces beautiful music: "You were waking / Day was breaking / A panoply of song."

Though beautified, the world which they inhabit is still imperfect. We are not told exactly what "the war / you shouldered all the night before," but it is unimportant. All that matters is that these are lovers doing their best to  live a good life faithful to each other and the world, working through the pain and toil of everyday life. Like their life together, the garden too must be tended carefully and dutifully, lest it wither. They must sweat through the work day in and day out, making sure their life together bears fruit in themselves and in the world around them: "Training jasmine how to vine / Up the arbor to your door / And more."

This is Lyric. Life, Love, Beauty, "Heaven," the Garden, Paradise, the Divine, encountered in everyday life, in the smallest, most insignificant things you can imagine. Things like one's spouse, a home, plants and flowers in a garden, for that matter, a baby born in a stable, water, and bread and wine.

What Does Heaven Look Like?

Have you ever had a child ask you what Heaven looks like? Perhaps you remember asking your parents that question when you were a child.

At first, I might think to say something clever like, "There's no point in trying to describe it, because it's better than anything you can possibly imagine. You've never experienced anything even close, so you have no frame of reference." Of course, in one sense this is true. Heaven is on such a higher level than anything we've encountered that it's impossible to "understand" what it will be like.

I think, though, it's too easy in our sometimes over-spiritualized, over-intellectualized religion to resort to clever, cop-out answers like that one. We too easily forget that Christianity is and has always been the meatiest, grungiest, most down-to-earth religion there is. That's what it's all about, of course, God humbling himself to become Man—to be born of a little woman in a stable. The essence of Christianity is contained in simple, day-to-day things like a baby, water, bread and wine, and motherhood.

There are those who would try to convince us that Heaven is only a state of consciousness after death. Really, Heaven is whatever we want it to be. It'll be whatever makes us happy.

False. Remembering that Christianity is a nitty-gritty religion, we must never forget that we believe in the bodily resurrection of the dead. Every living soul will be reanimated at the end of time to inhabit either Hell or the re-created Earth—real, concrete places, just as solid as the ground you're standing on now. In fact, in The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis' Heaven is even more solid than the Earth is now, not less.

What we may not realize, then, is that the best answers are those cliché, earthy, almost embarassing ones Holy Scripture itself gives us:

"golden lampstands," (Rev. 1:12),
"white garments" and "golden crowns," (Rev. 4:4),
"golden bowls full of incense," (Rev. 5:8),
"massed choirs singing," (Rev. 19:1),
"[walls] adorned with every jewel," (Rev. 21:19),
"[streets] of pure gold, clear as glass," (Rev. 21:21).

Sound familiar? In short, Heaven looks like this (I recommend clicking the button to watch it on YouTube so you can full screen it):

I was particularly struck by the arresting order to everything, especially the shot from 2:35 to 3:18. The architecture, the shapes, the structure, the colors, the materials, the light, the movements, the symmetry, the sounds—all of it comes together in harmonious order to worship and imitate the God who created this world in the first place, who himself hangs on the cross in the middle of it all, perfectly static and perfectly active at the same time, incessantly exuding love, more than anyone could ever need. A relationship of simultaneous and infinite giving and infinite receiving between God and Man, incarnated in the person of the God-Man Christ. It is the "marriage supper of the Lamb," (Rev. 19:9).

I was also struck by the people—the rag-tag assembly of low-lifes, who spend 99% of their time just going about their daily business, trying to get by, and will never do anything of note. These are the heroes of Christianity. These are the true Saints. The fathers who work tirelessly without complaining to support their families. The mothers who happily and lovingly sacrifice their bodies so that the world can be brightened by the faces of her children. The older siblings who willingly step up to become like assistant parents when 9 kids just gets to be too many for mom to handle without any help.

Heaven looks just like the world we live in now, except, everything will be what it has the potential to be, and more.