I had forgotten about the orchard. C and I had spent a wonderful day there a few years ago, wandering through the trees and gorging ourselves on apples. And because I had forgotten, it wasn’t that orchard- the one near where I currently live- that first came to mind when I was asked out of the blue if I thought going to an apple orchard would be dumb. I instead thought of the orchard we used to go to when I was a kid, which I honestly don’t recall a whole lot about.
When I did remember about the one nearby, I looked it up and discovered it was the thick of apple-picking season (which I suppose would be obvious to most). This worked out perfect as I had spent the day with nothing to do, wondering what to do the next day, when I also had nothing to do.
The next morning I drove the few miles to the orchard, parked the car, put on sunscreen and started walking. The day turned out to be much hotter than it had been for the past couple of weeks, and it turns out that apple orchards do not provide much shade. Also, I had left my water in the car. Nevertheless, I enjoyed sampling from the apples the helpful signs at the end rows said were in season and filling a bag with Jonathans.
The next part of the process was to stand in line for a half-hour waiting to pay for my pickings. It was here that my stomach cramped up and I endured it until eventually I was fortunate the bathroom was vacant. I was also fortunate I quickly found someone who accepted my explanation that I had already been waiting in line but the people I was in line with had already checked out. I added a quart of apple cider and a plastic cup of “apple cider slushie” to my purchase, sat down at a picnic table in the shade overlooking the orchard and slowly drank the slushie.
I then drove to the grocery store for ingredients to bake a pie, which seemed the only logical thing to do with all the apples. After that came research into how to bake a pie, which I had never done before, and can only scratch my head as to why I didn’t do that before going to the store, which I had to go back to for vegetable shortening… and a third time when I discovered I didn’t have enough flour. I finally got the dough mixed and into the fridge to do whatever it does in the fridge for two hours.
The recipe called for three pounds of apples. My bag had been weighed at the orchard, but they only wrote $10.25 on it. So I grabbed my food scale from the disc golf supply shelf in my outdoor storage closet only to discover the batteries were dead and I didn’t have another 9 volt. (I looked in the smoke detector and it was hard-wired with no battery backup?!) I was not going back to the store! So I Googled it. I spent the remainder of the time the dough needed to cool peeling and slicing a dozen apples on the back deck while drinking hot apple cider. I would not make anything with apples again without purchasing an apple corer.
By the time I got the lattice-top crust put together and into the oven, it was 9:30pm. My range had recently been replaced, as the broiler element had gone out on the previous one (I would have simply replaced the part had it been up to me), and this was the first time I had used this oven. I had always set the previous oven 25 degrees hotter than what the recipe called for, but I assumed this new digital one knew what it was doing. I was wrong. Also, I discovered the hard way that the oven shut itself off when the timer ended. The pie was done by 11. The recipe said I could leave it to cool on the oven rack for 8 hours so I did. I took it to work the next morning and had a piece for breakfast. It was delicious; the crust especially was perfection.
Sunday, October 30, 2016
Friday, May 15, 2015
Your Inn
In the summer of 2008, I moved into a little apartment in Portland, Oregon’s Kenton district. It would be my first experience of living alone. The great thing about living alone is that you can use your free time to do whatever you want. I spent the majority of my free time watching baseball and soccer (live and on the internet), making cocktails, comparing Scotches, perusing Goodwill, reading comic books and manga and watching Japanese movies and anime. The downsides are there is often nobody to share your experiences with or offer alternative suggestions for things to do.
That autumn, I found at Goodwill a gold sequin dress that I, for whatever reason, thought would make a hilarious Halloween costume. For obvious reasons, I didn’t try it on until I got home. I had always been skinny, but as I tried to squeeze myself into the dress, it became obvious that I had gained some weight. If any man wonders why so many females struggle with body image issues, I highly recommend he try wearing women’s clothes. They are highly successful at highlighting non-conforming areas.
I realized my lifestyle had been both unhealthy and lethargic of late. My solution was to purchase a mountain bike from a pawn shop. Now, to those that are only aware of Portland by reputation, this might sound like the hip thing to do. After all, doesn’t everyone in Portland ride bikes everywhere? No, not actually, but they do talk about bicycles a lot. Regardless, this was a mountain bike, with thick tires and more gears than the Antikythera mechanism, which is as repulsive to a Portlander as a Casio keyboard to a classically-trained pianist. Riding one was an open invitation for a lecture on the superiority of the “fixie.” Riding one while wearing a cotton t-shirt, blue jeans and no helmet was enough to give a large percentage of the population a nervous meltdown.
I started getting up early on weekends and riding my bike west to St. Johns and traversing the trails in a park at the northwest corner called Pier Park. These trails were intertwined with a disc golf course, which was a game I had played with friends back in the late 90s when I had lived in Cedar Falls. It was fun- more fun than riding a bicycle, which is, quite frankly, boring as hell. Turns out all you do is push one foot down and then push the other foot down ad nauseam. It struck me that disc golf might make for a more entertaining exercise option. So when I found a guy selling discs out of a truck in the parking lot, I bought a couple.
I practiced throwing these discs in a baseball field next to the course and then played the first hole. There was a group waiting at hole two, and they informed me that I should join them because the course was too busy for me to be playing by myself. I meekly replied, “That’s okay,” and walked away back towards my bike as someone in the group laughed, “I think we scared him off!” I learned that the best way to play the course on weekends was to be done before noon. I also found a friend that often played the course with me, but on those occasions he picked me up in his car, even though he was an avid biker.
The logical place to ride a bike from Pier Park is Cathedral Park under the St. Johns Bridge. One weekend, I decided to stop at an uninviting bar I passed along the way cheesily named “Your Inn.” I felt that the lack of a bike rack gave promise that this would not be the typical Portland hipster bar. But upon entering, I discovered the bartender was a girl with jet black hair, arm sleeve tattoos, a black spaghetti-strap top, jean shorts and fishnet leggings- typically hipster. Since this was Portland, I figured she was probably a lesbian. But next, I discovered the strangest thing of all: here were only three beers on tap- Bud, Bud Light and Ninkasi Total Domination IPA. No joke. I didn’t know of anybody in Portland who would even consider two of those three options.
The regulars, I would learn, were retired boaters. Although there was a lot of flannel being worn, they were, for the most part, oblivious that Portland had been taken over by hipsters. They drank Budweiser (and Old Milwaukie,) but preferred it out of the can. They would ask me what an IPA was, but had no interest in trying it. They watched NASCAR on the two televisions strategically hung in the little place and tried their luck at the video lottery machine.
By law, every bar in Portland has to serve food. There are weirder laws, like the one where a vehicle has to stop for a pedestrian in an uncontrolled crosswalk (regardless of whether they’re actually wanting to cross), but I’ll not digress. This bar had a menu written on a chalkboard… and only the French fries were vegetarian.
I became a vegetarian before I knew there was a word for it. I didn’t know another vegetarian for years. Back then, in Iowa, vegetarianism was seen by the vast majority as an affront to their entire way of life. Therefore, I learned to be as discrete as possible about my personal food choices so as to not seem judgmental or disrespectful. I realized, for example, that when I was a guest at someone’s house, the only polite thing to do is to eat what you are served.
Then I moved to the west coast. In Portland, specifically, nearly everyone you meet either claims to be, used to be or wants to be a vegetarian, or worse, a vegan. Vegetarianism is the “in” thing to do. Consequently, when vegetarians go to a restaurant in Portland, they expect, nay demand that their diet be catered to. Portland vegetarians tend to be smug and sanctimonious. So while I was grateful that vegetarian meals were easy to find in Portland, I didn’t relate to the vegetarian clique.
Back at Your Inn, I asked the waitress if there was anything else to eat besides what was on the chalkboard. “Oh, yeah, we have all kinds of stuff back there.”
“Do you have anything vegetarian besides French fries?”
“Uh, I’m not sure, but I love experimenting with things. How about I invent something for you?”
“That’d be great, thanks!”
The waitress disappeared into a room behind the bar for about fifteen minutes, peeking out every so often to ask questions like, “Do you eat cheese?” Someone entered the bar, and the patrons explained that she’d be there to wait on them shortly.
This waitress would make me various random sandwiches on many weekends throughout the next six months. None of them were particularly great, but I really appreciated the gesture. Then one week, she wasn’t there. The gossip was she had been fired after an argument about her giving away too many free drinks. That was the last time I went to Your Inn.
I killed it as Liza Minnelli in the sequin dress on Halloween.
That autumn, I found at Goodwill a gold sequin dress that I, for whatever reason, thought would make a hilarious Halloween costume. For obvious reasons, I didn’t try it on until I got home. I had always been skinny, but as I tried to squeeze myself into the dress, it became obvious that I had gained some weight. If any man wonders why so many females struggle with body image issues, I highly recommend he try wearing women’s clothes. They are highly successful at highlighting non-conforming areas.
I realized my lifestyle had been both unhealthy and lethargic of late. My solution was to purchase a mountain bike from a pawn shop. Now, to those that are only aware of Portland by reputation, this might sound like the hip thing to do. After all, doesn’t everyone in Portland ride bikes everywhere? No, not actually, but they do talk about bicycles a lot. Regardless, this was a mountain bike, with thick tires and more gears than the Antikythera mechanism, which is as repulsive to a Portlander as a Casio keyboard to a classically-trained pianist. Riding one was an open invitation for a lecture on the superiority of the “fixie.” Riding one while wearing a cotton t-shirt, blue jeans and no helmet was enough to give a large percentage of the population a nervous meltdown.
I started getting up early on weekends and riding my bike west to St. Johns and traversing the trails in a park at the northwest corner called Pier Park. These trails were intertwined with a disc golf course, which was a game I had played with friends back in the late 90s when I had lived in Cedar Falls. It was fun- more fun than riding a bicycle, which is, quite frankly, boring as hell. Turns out all you do is push one foot down and then push the other foot down ad nauseam. It struck me that disc golf might make for a more entertaining exercise option. So when I found a guy selling discs out of a truck in the parking lot, I bought a couple.
I practiced throwing these discs in a baseball field next to the course and then played the first hole. There was a group waiting at hole two, and they informed me that I should join them because the course was too busy for me to be playing by myself. I meekly replied, “That’s okay,” and walked away back towards my bike as someone in the group laughed, “I think we scared him off!” I learned that the best way to play the course on weekends was to be done before noon. I also found a friend that often played the course with me, but on those occasions he picked me up in his car, even though he was an avid biker.
The logical place to ride a bike from Pier Park is Cathedral Park under the St. Johns Bridge. One weekend, I decided to stop at an uninviting bar I passed along the way cheesily named “Your Inn.” I felt that the lack of a bike rack gave promise that this would not be the typical Portland hipster bar. But upon entering, I discovered the bartender was a girl with jet black hair, arm sleeve tattoos, a black spaghetti-strap top, jean shorts and fishnet leggings- typically hipster. Since this was Portland, I figured she was probably a lesbian. But next, I discovered the strangest thing of all: here were only three beers on tap- Bud, Bud Light and Ninkasi Total Domination IPA. No joke. I didn’t know of anybody in Portland who would even consider two of those three options.
The regulars, I would learn, were retired boaters. Although there was a lot of flannel being worn, they were, for the most part, oblivious that Portland had been taken over by hipsters. They drank Budweiser (and Old Milwaukie,) but preferred it out of the can. They would ask me what an IPA was, but had no interest in trying it. They watched NASCAR on the two televisions strategically hung in the little place and tried their luck at the video lottery machine.
By law, every bar in Portland has to serve food. There are weirder laws, like the one where a vehicle has to stop for a pedestrian in an uncontrolled crosswalk (regardless of whether they’re actually wanting to cross), but I’ll not digress. This bar had a menu written on a chalkboard… and only the French fries were vegetarian.
I became a vegetarian before I knew there was a word for it. I didn’t know another vegetarian for years. Back then, in Iowa, vegetarianism was seen by the vast majority as an affront to their entire way of life. Therefore, I learned to be as discrete as possible about my personal food choices so as to not seem judgmental or disrespectful. I realized, for example, that when I was a guest at someone’s house, the only polite thing to do is to eat what you are served.
Then I moved to the west coast. In Portland, specifically, nearly everyone you meet either claims to be, used to be or wants to be a vegetarian, or worse, a vegan. Vegetarianism is the “in” thing to do. Consequently, when vegetarians go to a restaurant in Portland, they expect, nay demand that their diet be catered to. Portland vegetarians tend to be smug and sanctimonious. So while I was grateful that vegetarian meals were easy to find in Portland, I didn’t relate to the vegetarian clique.
Back at Your Inn, I asked the waitress if there was anything else to eat besides what was on the chalkboard. “Oh, yeah, we have all kinds of stuff back there.”
“Do you have anything vegetarian besides French fries?”
“Uh, I’m not sure, but I love experimenting with things. How about I invent something for you?”
“That’d be great, thanks!”
The waitress disappeared into a room behind the bar for about fifteen minutes, peeking out every so often to ask questions like, “Do you eat cheese?” Someone entered the bar, and the patrons explained that she’d be there to wait on them shortly.
This waitress would make me various random sandwiches on many weekends throughout the next six months. None of them were particularly great, but I really appreciated the gesture. Then one week, she wasn’t there. The gossip was she had been fired after an argument about her giving away too many free drinks. That was the last time I went to Your Inn.
I killed it as Liza Minnelli in the sequin dress on Halloween.
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Wrestling With God
When I first got to college in 1994, my Bible was so thoroughly marked with underlined and cross-referenced verses I liked, I would just flip through it and re-read those parts. When I realized I was doing this, I decided to read the bible with a different approach: underlining the parts I didn’t like and cross-referencing inconsistencies.
My original objectives for this exercise were to solve any problems with the Bible that I might encounter and discover nuances in the Bible that I had previously overlooked. So, for example, I used the pages of who begat who to calculate with a high degree of accuracy when events in the Bible took place. The attention to detail in these chronologies are pretty amazing. Somehow, the very first humans were quickly able to discern the number of days in a year, use that information to keep track of how old they were when their children were born and preserve this data by passing it down through generations.
Another thing that happened with me around this age was that I started to develop what is commonly called “critical thinking skills” (and what neurologists would call my prefrontal cortex). One application of this is gaining an ability to intuit when something doesn’t quite seem right; even when you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is right away. As I began asking questions about the contents of the Bible, I expected to find answers, but instead found more questions.
The immediate result of Adam and Eve disobeying God is that they gain the ability to differentiate between good and evil- in other words, a conscience. The first thing they recognize as evil is nudity and, as a result, experience shame. Now, it doesn’t take an anthropologist to point out that embarrassment about ones own body is not an intrinsic but instead a cultural trait. Pondering this threw me for a loop. Could the Bible contain cultural and not necessarily universal values and truths? Could the Bible be suggesting the conscience was a genetic difference between Jews and cultures of the day that did not wear clothes? Could this story be laying the groundwork for an agenda that is primarily concerned with the feeling of shame?
In Genesis 6:6, it is written that God regrets creating humans. Perhaps this is another attempt at instilling shame in humans, but the bigger question is: how can an all-knowing being experience regret? It is literally not possible, unless it falls under the category of knowing you were going to regret something and doing it anyway, which would place the blame solely on God himself, making him both imperfect and unjust. God concludes the best solution to humans not living up to his expectations is to drown all but eight of them and also most of the animals. The Pentateuch is written very matter-of-factly, and the god in it remains terrifyingly unpredictable, which makes sense when coming from a time full of unexplainable and uncontrollable natural phenomena. This god’s idea of a righteous man is a guy who urges for his two daughters to be gang raped and then shortly thereafter, while mourning the death of his wife, gets drunk and impregnates both of them on consecutive nights. Soren Kirkegaard obsesses over this Old Testament god, and argues we should fear and respect him precisely because he is so scary.
The god of the New Testament, especially in the works attributed to John, is depicted as a more loving being. This conception of god poses a couple major problems: tragic and cruel things happen seemingly at random; he demands to be loved in return; hell exists… but this is the god most people today want to believe in. Christians are eager and enthusiastic about defending this god. Books are written on why this god behaves the way he does. And then this god of love is used to explain that the blood-thirsty Old Testament god also acted out of love, because they are the same god. This only makes sense if you strip the word “love” of all meaning, like an abuser who pleads his love for his wife after beating her. It is only the extremists of a religion that focus on the violent actions of their god and disregard the rest, and yet the majority, who focus on how patient, loving and forgiving their god is, do the exact opposite.
Perhaps the genius of the Bible lies in the ability it bestows to find and focus on verses that mirror whatever you happen to agree with, enabling your beliefs to be retained without further justification.
At the same time I was exploring this question of the nature of God, I discovered philosophy, and discovered the god from my childhood described by Plato (circa 428 – 347 BC) and Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 – 430). These two important figures theorize about and describe a very familiar supreme being, in terminology verbatim to what I heard in Sunday School growing up. I found this fascinating, because Christianity usually teaches that it relies only on the writings included in the Holy Bible. I began to research how the Bible had been compiled, edited, translated and used over the centuries, and discovered a fascinating and complex history. There are literally hundreds of different versions of the Vulgate (the first “official” Bible, written in Latin), for example, as it has undergone nearly constant revising from its inception in AD 382; one would be hard-pressed to find any two versions that are alike, even after the invention of the printing press. One motive for highlighting the importance of the Bible has been to get rid of religious and secular works and writings disliked by the religious leaders of the day- entire libraries full of one-of-a-kind books have been burned to the ground in the name of Christianity. The Bible canon idea has also been useful for discrediting and destroying Christian sects such as the Gnostics. The Protestant Christian Bible I grew up with, consisting of 66 works divided into Old and New Testaments, is not 2000 as I’d always assumed but less than 200 years old, dating back to the 1820s. (This modern compilation contains dozens of references to books no longer considered canon.)
Christianity insists the most important thing is to believe that there’s one God, and further, to believe he showed up in human form as his own son. Ultimately, this visit had to happen because God decided he wouldn’t forgive us unless blood was shed. This is another example of him being overly dramatic and inefficient- thankfully humans are not advised to emulate this policy. Who besides a death metal frontman would respond to a sincere apology with, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness!” But in pondering this whole ideology, my main question became- why does God even care whether or not we believe in him? It seems really petty. Imagine Kris Kringle from the movie Miracle on 34th Street cursing people for not believing he’s the real Santa Claus. It would be antithetical.
Christians are quick to point out that it is impossible to comprehend anything about God, especially his motivations. Only God can judge, and we must assume God is always right. Any words humans use to describe God necessarily fall short, and so even the descriptions of God in the Bible fail to adequately capture or express his true nature. So regardless of what the Bible says about God, entertaining the possibility that their god could be flawed or non-existent is out of the question. Because God cannot be explained, he conveniently becomes the explanation for everything. The logical result is that the explanation for everything is that nothing can be explained. The irony of this is frequently lost on Christians, which can make trying to have a rational conversation with a Christian excruciatingly frustrating. Because there can be no answers, there needn’t be any questions. From a Christian perspective, the acquisition of knowledge is considered a futile distraction from “Truth,” which is yet another synonym for God. Far too often, religion provides little more than an excuse to remain ignorant.
I spent many late nights during my third year of college wrestling with this specific obstacle of how to contemplate a being beyond understanding with my friend Eric. At the same time, I was deeply engrossed in the works of Immanuel Kant. Kant was a genius at being able to work around unsolvable problems by exploring our limitations and what we can determine after accepting those limitations. One thing Kant writes extensively about is the concept of a priori knowledge, or knowledge that is not dependent upon experience but reason. For humans, he says, the purest form of what we can know a priori is limited to deductions regarding the conditions of possible experience. In other words, we can imagine a logically consistent universe without needing to experience that universe; this imagined yet consistent world needn’t have any connection to reality whatsoever, but the same rules that are necessary to make an imagined world consistent must also apply to ours, because otherwise our world would allow impossibilities. So, for example, once I use reason to conclude that, by definition, two plus two must equal four, I can also conclude that if I pick up two sticks with one hand and two sticks with the other, then I must be holding four sticks.
The exciting thing about this, for me, is it demonstrates that humans can both recognize logical consistencies and discover things to be true that we neither believe nor experience to be true. For example, Albert Einstein composed his theory of general relativity by first imagining a universe consisting of an observer in free fall. When he applied the necessary conditions derived from that imagined universe to ours, he discovered, among other things (like the existence of black holes), its calculations could only be accurate if our universe was expanding, which he didn’t think was true, so he applied an alteration to the formula (known as the cosmological constant)… but just over a decade later Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble separately discovered a method of measuring the distances between stars and found that our universe is expanding. So while it may be true that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are our ways his ways, (Isaiah 55:8) the knowledge we can acquire and possess is not absolutely limited by our activities and thoughts.
But now our conversation must turn from knowledge to faith, because that is the way these conversations go. Faith acts both as a bridge between the known and unknown and like a placebo to alter outcomes. Faith turns our dreams into realities and presents evidence for our theories (to reword the famous verse Hebrews 11:1). The first hurdle regarding faith as it pertains to Christianity is that Christians almost universally assume they have a monopoly on it. They don’t. Taking a mathematical formula created in an imaginary world and applying it to ours requires a leap of faith. But, for Christians, holding onto faith in God is of utmost importance because the alternative is disbelief, and those who don’t believe burn in hell.
Christians will resort to reiterating their faith as way of expressing their contempt for anything that might challenge their assumptions about or limitations imposed by reality. It is used as a get-out-of-jail-free card to insist that our understanding is not only paltry but irrelevant. They will, for example, declare that, by faith, the impossible IS possible. Although, whether or not something is possible is obviously not determined by whether it is declared to be so, certain things can be logically determined to be impossible- a square cannot be round, to cite a famous example. In this regard, the impossible cannot be possible in the same way that A cannot equal B. To deny this is, quite simply, a refusal to allow that a word can have a concrete definition. If we cannot define terms, everything is meaningless, logic does not exist and anybody who says they can read this random string of shapes is a liar (because we cannot, for example, determine that “p” is anything more than a line and a circle). The improbable is possible; the impossible is, by definition, not impossible. It would be absurd to expect or assume that even an all-powerful being could do the impossible.
When it comes to something like predicting the future, it is true that our knowledge is feeble, but there’s not much that we understand less than time. Knowledge and faith are never mutually exclusive, and as we learn, our dependence on faith decreases. With knowledge, we can evolve from faith healers to doctors. (Medical science is fully aware of the miracle of faith healing- they call it the Placebo Effect.) Jesus, in Matthew 14:31, suggests that anyone with faith in him can walk on water (and this is demonstrated literally, not figuratively), which at least implies that everyone who cannot walk on water is a hypocrite and going to hell. Most, like the disciples other than Peter in the story, get around this by simply not trying to walk on water, but “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17) Walking on water is a truly useful skill, and would give Christians a huge advantage in both commerce and evangelism. It should be extremely rare for a Christian to drown relative to the general population. If it were true that anyone who believes in Jesus could walk on water, there is no way they wouldn’t be doing it. There will always be a few people who do truly believe they can walk on water, like those parents who let their kids die while praying for them instead of taking them to the hospital, but the majority realize, even if they won’t admit it, that while faith is a powerful and necessary force, knowledge more often than not trumps faith.
God wants not only to be believed in but obeyed. As the number of pages in my Bible marked with bizarre tales and inconsistencies rivaled those I had marked in high school because I agreed with them, I began to question whether God was qualified to handle a leadership role. This was a being who ordered the mass genocide of the people who had raised Moses, sparing only the female virgins for the soldiers to keep as slaves (Numbers 31). The Bible is pro-slavery throughout (although because it is so diplomatically written, the New Testament book of Philemon, a letter given to accompany a slave Paul had ordered to return to his master, asking the master to forgive him for having escaped, is often misinterpreted as being anti-slavery). Christians will explain that God had to make compromises because he had to make laws that fit within the constraints of the culture of the day, but this is utterly ridiculous. Why would someone with ultimate authority have to compromise? God refrained from standing up for basic human rights because that was too radical an idea for the day and the timing wasn’t right? Who was he afraid of offending- the status quo? This same god created a world in which the women in it exist to keep men company- without consulting Adam first.
Contrary to what the Bible teaches, I steadfastly believe (have faith) that mass genocide is never and never has been an acceptable course of action by anyone, for any reason. If God himself dropped down from heaven and ordered me to prove my loyalty by killing anyone, let alone my own child, I would like to think I’d refuse… even if promised blessings or threatened torture. As I write this, I am reminded of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. It should be required reading for every person on the planet. I first read it in 1997, three years into my critical analysis of the Bible. It is an examination of a Nazi at a war crimes trial that determines the key personality traits of a man guilty of committing horrific atrocities were that he couldn’t think for himself and was ambitious.
People will point to Biblical prophecies as proof that it’s divinely inspired. Unfortunately, when you eliminate prophecies that were written about after they were fulfilled (which could simply be cases of revisionist history) and prophecies that haven’t happened yet, there is not much to point at. Using prophecies whose foretelling and fulfillment are both written about in the Bible to prove the Bible is true and accurate involves a fallacy of circular logic whereby one must first assume the Bible is true and accurate. In fact, many of the prophecies in the Bible were not fulfilled, such as that the land of Egypt would be abandoned for forty years (Ezekiel 29) or that Jesus would remain dead for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40). The latter is a great example of how the Bible works: almost every Christian will tell you that Jesus was buried for three days and three nights while they simultaneously celebrate Jesus’ death on the evening before the Sabbath after nightfall (Mark 15:42) and resurrection before dawn on the day after the Sabbath (John 20:1), which is a span of one day and two nights. (Without hesitation or research, Christians will explain how, for that time or culture, three days and three nights was the same as one day and two nights, with is as absurd and desperate as it gets.) It’s not even close to three days and three nights, and yet, somehow, a blind-spot is created which causes almost everybody to ignore the facts and focus on the story. Not the story in the Gospels- which disagree with each other on many details such as who discovered the empty tomb- but a story that is not written anywhere but which lives solely in the public consciousness.
Christians will claim God has never broken a promise. In reality, he promised Abraham he’d give Abraham’s descendents the territory between the Nile and Euphrates (Genesis 15:18). Most people today simply assume this “promised land” is modern-day Israel, but it is actually a huge expanse of land stretching from Egypt to Iraq that the Arabian Peninsula sits between. Christians will immediately explain that the descendents of Abraham never actually owned all that land because of their wickedness, but Deuteronomy 9:5 specifically guarantees that the original promise will be kept regardless of the wickedness of the descendents. Today, another world war would be required to fulfill this promise. Frighteningly, a large number of Christians would support this war, even though Israel has nuclear weapons. Humans generally would prefer to discover justifications for their assumptions rather than truth or peace.
Some will admit that the Bible is necessarily fallible because it was written by humans. (Notice the ever-present theme of human fallibility.) I would counter that if God wanted a perfect work with no way of parlaying excuses, he could have given Moses a whole bunch of tablets containing his laws, instead of just one copy to be kept in a box and destined to be lost- especially after Moses immediately destroyed the original tablet. Even Jesus could have written his own Bible and handed out 5000 copies along with the fish and bread. Any number of writing methods could have been utilized which would have been better adept at avoiding egregious errors like Aaron dying twice and being buried in two places.
Jesus said, “If you don’t believe me, believe the things I do.” My mom correctly points out that the best thing about Christianity is that it encourages some people to do great things like provide humanitarian aid, and I wholeheartedly appreciate this benefit… that many religions and non-religious charity organizations also provide. I’m personally suspicious of anyone unwilling to do charitable work unless inspired by a supreme being, but Christianity teaches everybody is inherently wicked, and so Christians are skeptical that anyone can do good without a supreme being’s influence. Regardless, my exploration into Christianity was more interested in its truth than its utility, and these are two separate questions.
In all my years growing up in the church, I never witnessed a miracle, with the possible exception of one time when I was about eight our car wouldn’t start in the church parking lot and some guy appeared to help push start it and when that worked my dad stopped to thank him but he had disappeared. I heard about miracles all the time, however. Others will frequently state they’ve witnessed “all kinds” of miracles, but when pressed, fail to come up with anything specific that’s uniquely attributable to the god of Christianity.
In the old days (9th century BC), Elijah puts on a highly publicized miracle-working contest where he mocks 450 prophets of Baal who futilely attempt to have their god light an altar. Elijah then dumps buckets of water on an altar and prays to God, who promptly sends not only fire from heaven to light it but, after another prayer, rain to put it out and end a famine. A chilling part of the story that conveniently gets overlooked is that Elijah has the 450 prophets put to death, but it is a key point in part because it leads to our introduction of Jezebel, who remains an interesting sub-plot right up until she is thrown out a window, trampled on and eaten by dogs.
Even though Matthew 18:19 says God will grant any request asked by two or more people, these days it is considered blasphemous to assume a prayer will be answered, because while it’s okay to ask, who are we to tell God what to do? Preachers will explain that our prayers are answered either yes, no or wait. This answer is not literal of course- it just means that something we ask for will either happen now, happen later or not happen. I cannot help but notice everything that is not prayed for also happens now, later or not at all. In other words, that claim is a tautology (true by definition).
Miracles are claimed in every religion. Christians will usually not deny these but instead remind that Satan can perform miracles, too. These are always called “false miracles,” but are virtually indistinguishable from God’s miracles. This is why we have to be really careful not to be fooled by Satan- because he is virtually indistinguishable from God. (One of the few depictions of Satan in the Bible is in the book of Job, which begins with Satan visiting God in Heaven and, after a discussion beginning with, “What have you been up to?” God and Satan place a friendly wager….) Just as God provides a useful one word blanket explanation for how everything other than God exists, Satan is an easy way to categorize evidence to the contrary as being a deception.
In the book of Judges, Gideon asks God to perform three tests in order to prove his authenticity. The second and third tests are for God to have morning dew on a wool fleece but not on the ground and vice versa. Out of desperation, I decided to replicate this experiment. I took a wool blanket outside on a summer evening, sat on it and prayed. I ended up falling asleep on the blanket and it was wet when I awoke at dawn. Excitedly, I reached out to feel the grass around me and much to my surprise… it was also wet. I immediately began sobbing. Then I thought, well maybe this is some sort of test, so I repeated the experiment for two more nights- although on those occasions I just left the blanket out and slept inside. Those ensuing days were an intense emotional roller coaster of frustration, betrayal, denial and anger. By the third morning of nature following the laws of nature, I felt stupid for having actually thought God existed and simultaneously a sense of peace from being liberated from having to worry about it anymore.
When Jacob wrestled with God, he was punished with a physical injury but rewarded with a new identity. I received no punishment but the same reward. Admitting to myself that everything I’d been taught, believed and preached made more sense if it wasn’t true was probably the most difficult and courageous thing I’ve ever done. Whenever Christians who knew me growing up find out I am no longer a Christian, they automatically assume this is due to ignorance or a lack of faith or self-control, and usually bizarrely note that I seem angry. Christians can really be extraordinarily arrogant, but to be fair, a lot of effort has gone into convincing them non-Christians are ignorant, unhappy (or suffering “false happiness”), reckless and angry. In reality, I decided for myself beyond a reasonable doubt, after intensive research and examination over the course of three years, that that vast majority of the Bible was a work of fiction, and the god described by it was not only extremely inconsistent but something less than admirable. I have come to believe shame is instilled and continuously reinforced by Christianity because the only people who need something external to believe in are those you do not believe in themselves.
Mark 4:22 says, “For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.” There are a ton of things in the Bible that most Christians would rather ignore than ponder or discuss. Simply insisting that humans aren’t qualified to question the Bible is unreasonable- we were deemed qualified to write it, after all. When it comes to religion, legitimacy should be too important a concern for any of its scriptures to be treated flippantly. Having faith that something is true does not make it so, nor is seeking knowledge demonstrative of a lack of faith. Having faith is admirable- remaining stubbornly ignorant is not; neither is forcing or expecting religious fervor to be revered above factual knowledge or universal human rights. I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that perhaps crediting all actions and opinions to a silent, invisible, superior being is little more than a way of avoiding personal responsibility. Christians should be able to ask themselves, “Would my actions and opinions be defensible and justified if I didn’t have someone else to pin them on?” I think a lot of Christians could benefit from having more humility in admitting their beliefs are held despite unanswered questions instead of insisting they have all the answers and wanting to impose them on everybody else.
My original objectives for this exercise were to solve any problems with the Bible that I might encounter and discover nuances in the Bible that I had previously overlooked. So, for example, I used the pages of who begat who to calculate with a high degree of accuracy when events in the Bible took place. The attention to detail in these chronologies are pretty amazing. Somehow, the very first humans were quickly able to discern the number of days in a year, use that information to keep track of how old they were when their children were born and preserve this data by passing it down through generations.
Another thing that happened with me around this age was that I started to develop what is commonly called “critical thinking skills” (and what neurologists would call my prefrontal cortex). One application of this is gaining an ability to intuit when something doesn’t quite seem right; even when you can’t put your finger on exactly what it is right away. As I began asking questions about the contents of the Bible, I expected to find answers, but instead found more questions.
The immediate result of Adam and Eve disobeying God is that they gain the ability to differentiate between good and evil- in other words, a conscience. The first thing they recognize as evil is nudity and, as a result, experience shame. Now, it doesn’t take an anthropologist to point out that embarrassment about ones own body is not an intrinsic but instead a cultural trait. Pondering this threw me for a loop. Could the Bible contain cultural and not necessarily universal values and truths? Could the Bible be suggesting the conscience was a genetic difference between Jews and cultures of the day that did not wear clothes? Could this story be laying the groundwork for an agenda that is primarily concerned with the feeling of shame?
In Genesis 6:6, it is written that God regrets creating humans. Perhaps this is another attempt at instilling shame in humans, but the bigger question is: how can an all-knowing being experience regret? It is literally not possible, unless it falls under the category of knowing you were going to regret something and doing it anyway, which would place the blame solely on God himself, making him both imperfect and unjust. God concludes the best solution to humans not living up to his expectations is to drown all but eight of them and also most of the animals. The Pentateuch is written very matter-of-factly, and the god in it remains terrifyingly unpredictable, which makes sense when coming from a time full of unexplainable and uncontrollable natural phenomena. This god’s idea of a righteous man is a guy who urges for his two daughters to be gang raped and then shortly thereafter, while mourning the death of his wife, gets drunk and impregnates both of them on consecutive nights. Soren Kirkegaard obsesses over this Old Testament god, and argues we should fear and respect him precisely because he is so scary.
The god of the New Testament, especially in the works attributed to John, is depicted as a more loving being. This conception of god poses a couple major problems: tragic and cruel things happen seemingly at random; he demands to be loved in return; hell exists… but this is the god most people today want to believe in. Christians are eager and enthusiastic about defending this god. Books are written on why this god behaves the way he does. And then this god of love is used to explain that the blood-thirsty Old Testament god also acted out of love, because they are the same god. This only makes sense if you strip the word “love” of all meaning, like an abuser who pleads his love for his wife after beating her. It is only the extremists of a religion that focus on the violent actions of their god and disregard the rest, and yet the majority, who focus on how patient, loving and forgiving their god is, do the exact opposite.
Perhaps the genius of the Bible lies in the ability it bestows to find and focus on verses that mirror whatever you happen to agree with, enabling your beliefs to be retained without further justification.
At the same time I was exploring this question of the nature of God, I discovered philosophy, and discovered the god from my childhood described by Plato (circa 428 – 347 BC) and Augustine of Hippo (AD 354 – 430). These two important figures theorize about and describe a very familiar supreme being, in terminology verbatim to what I heard in Sunday School growing up. I found this fascinating, because Christianity usually teaches that it relies only on the writings included in the Holy Bible. I began to research how the Bible had been compiled, edited, translated and used over the centuries, and discovered a fascinating and complex history. There are literally hundreds of different versions of the Vulgate (the first “official” Bible, written in Latin), for example, as it has undergone nearly constant revising from its inception in AD 382; one would be hard-pressed to find any two versions that are alike, even after the invention of the printing press. One motive for highlighting the importance of the Bible has been to get rid of religious and secular works and writings disliked by the religious leaders of the day- entire libraries full of one-of-a-kind books have been burned to the ground in the name of Christianity. The Bible canon idea has also been useful for discrediting and destroying Christian sects such as the Gnostics. The Protestant Christian Bible I grew up with, consisting of 66 works divided into Old and New Testaments, is not 2000 as I’d always assumed but less than 200 years old, dating back to the 1820s. (This modern compilation contains dozens of references to books no longer considered canon.)
Christianity insists the most important thing is to believe that there’s one God, and further, to believe he showed up in human form as his own son. Ultimately, this visit had to happen because God decided he wouldn’t forgive us unless blood was shed. This is another example of him being overly dramatic and inefficient- thankfully humans are not advised to emulate this policy. Who besides a death metal frontman would respond to a sincere apology with, “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness!” But in pondering this whole ideology, my main question became- why does God even care whether or not we believe in him? It seems really petty. Imagine Kris Kringle from the movie Miracle on 34th Street cursing people for not believing he’s the real Santa Claus. It would be antithetical.
Christians are quick to point out that it is impossible to comprehend anything about God, especially his motivations. Only God can judge, and we must assume God is always right. Any words humans use to describe God necessarily fall short, and so even the descriptions of God in the Bible fail to adequately capture or express his true nature. So regardless of what the Bible says about God, entertaining the possibility that their god could be flawed or non-existent is out of the question. Because God cannot be explained, he conveniently becomes the explanation for everything. The logical result is that the explanation for everything is that nothing can be explained. The irony of this is frequently lost on Christians, which can make trying to have a rational conversation with a Christian excruciatingly frustrating. Because there can be no answers, there needn’t be any questions. From a Christian perspective, the acquisition of knowledge is considered a futile distraction from “Truth,” which is yet another synonym for God. Far too often, religion provides little more than an excuse to remain ignorant.
I spent many late nights during my third year of college wrestling with this specific obstacle of how to contemplate a being beyond understanding with my friend Eric. At the same time, I was deeply engrossed in the works of Immanuel Kant. Kant was a genius at being able to work around unsolvable problems by exploring our limitations and what we can determine after accepting those limitations. One thing Kant writes extensively about is the concept of a priori knowledge, or knowledge that is not dependent upon experience but reason. For humans, he says, the purest form of what we can know a priori is limited to deductions regarding the conditions of possible experience. In other words, we can imagine a logically consistent universe without needing to experience that universe; this imagined yet consistent world needn’t have any connection to reality whatsoever, but the same rules that are necessary to make an imagined world consistent must also apply to ours, because otherwise our world would allow impossibilities. So, for example, once I use reason to conclude that, by definition, two plus two must equal four, I can also conclude that if I pick up two sticks with one hand and two sticks with the other, then I must be holding four sticks.
The exciting thing about this, for me, is it demonstrates that humans can both recognize logical consistencies and discover things to be true that we neither believe nor experience to be true. For example, Albert Einstein composed his theory of general relativity by first imagining a universe consisting of an observer in free fall. When he applied the necessary conditions derived from that imagined universe to ours, he discovered, among other things (like the existence of black holes), its calculations could only be accurate if our universe was expanding, which he didn’t think was true, so he applied an alteration to the formula (known as the cosmological constant)… but just over a decade later Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble separately discovered a method of measuring the distances between stars and found that our universe is expanding. So while it may be true that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, nor are our ways his ways, (Isaiah 55:8) the knowledge we can acquire and possess is not absolutely limited by our activities and thoughts.
But now our conversation must turn from knowledge to faith, because that is the way these conversations go. Faith acts both as a bridge between the known and unknown and like a placebo to alter outcomes. Faith turns our dreams into realities and presents evidence for our theories (to reword the famous verse Hebrews 11:1). The first hurdle regarding faith as it pertains to Christianity is that Christians almost universally assume they have a monopoly on it. They don’t. Taking a mathematical formula created in an imaginary world and applying it to ours requires a leap of faith. But, for Christians, holding onto faith in God is of utmost importance because the alternative is disbelief, and those who don’t believe burn in hell.
Christians will resort to reiterating their faith as way of expressing their contempt for anything that might challenge their assumptions about or limitations imposed by reality. It is used as a get-out-of-jail-free card to insist that our understanding is not only paltry but irrelevant. They will, for example, declare that, by faith, the impossible IS possible. Although, whether or not something is possible is obviously not determined by whether it is declared to be so, certain things can be logically determined to be impossible- a square cannot be round, to cite a famous example. In this regard, the impossible cannot be possible in the same way that A cannot equal B. To deny this is, quite simply, a refusal to allow that a word can have a concrete definition. If we cannot define terms, everything is meaningless, logic does not exist and anybody who says they can read this random string of shapes is a liar (because we cannot, for example, determine that “p” is anything more than a line and a circle). The improbable is possible; the impossible is, by definition, not impossible. It would be absurd to expect or assume that even an all-powerful being could do the impossible.
When it comes to something like predicting the future, it is true that our knowledge is feeble, but there’s not much that we understand less than time. Knowledge and faith are never mutually exclusive, and as we learn, our dependence on faith decreases. With knowledge, we can evolve from faith healers to doctors. (Medical science is fully aware of the miracle of faith healing- they call it the Placebo Effect.) Jesus, in Matthew 14:31, suggests that anyone with faith in him can walk on water (and this is demonstrated literally, not figuratively), which at least implies that everyone who cannot walk on water is a hypocrite and going to hell. Most, like the disciples other than Peter in the story, get around this by simply not trying to walk on water, but “faith without works is dead.” (James 2:17) Walking on water is a truly useful skill, and would give Christians a huge advantage in both commerce and evangelism. It should be extremely rare for a Christian to drown relative to the general population. If it were true that anyone who believes in Jesus could walk on water, there is no way they wouldn’t be doing it. There will always be a few people who do truly believe they can walk on water, like those parents who let their kids die while praying for them instead of taking them to the hospital, but the majority realize, even if they won’t admit it, that while faith is a powerful and necessary force, knowledge more often than not trumps faith.
God wants not only to be believed in but obeyed. As the number of pages in my Bible marked with bizarre tales and inconsistencies rivaled those I had marked in high school because I agreed with them, I began to question whether God was qualified to handle a leadership role. This was a being who ordered the mass genocide of the people who had raised Moses, sparing only the female virgins for the soldiers to keep as slaves (Numbers 31). The Bible is pro-slavery throughout (although because it is so diplomatically written, the New Testament book of Philemon, a letter given to accompany a slave Paul had ordered to return to his master, asking the master to forgive him for having escaped, is often misinterpreted as being anti-slavery). Christians will explain that God had to make compromises because he had to make laws that fit within the constraints of the culture of the day, but this is utterly ridiculous. Why would someone with ultimate authority have to compromise? God refrained from standing up for basic human rights because that was too radical an idea for the day and the timing wasn’t right? Who was he afraid of offending- the status quo? This same god created a world in which the women in it exist to keep men company- without consulting Adam first.
Contrary to what the Bible teaches, I steadfastly believe (have faith) that mass genocide is never and never has been an acceptable course of action by anyone, for any reason. If God himself dropped down from heaven and ordered me to prove my loyalty by killing anyone, let alone my own child, I would like to think I’d refuse… even if promised blessings or threatened torture. As I write this, I am reminded of Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, by Hannah Arendt. It should be required reading for every person on the planet. I first read it in 1997, three years into my critical analysis of the Bible. It is an examination of a Nazi at a war crimes trial that determines the key personality traits of a man guilty of committing horrific atrocities were that he couldn’t think for himself and was ambitious.
People will point to Biblical prophecies as proof that it’s divinely inspired. Unfortunately, when you eliminate prophecies that were written about after they were fulfilled (which could simply be cases of revisionist history) and prophecies that haven’t happened yet, there is not much to point at. Using prophecies whose foretelling and fulfillment are both written about in the Bible to prove the Bible is true and accurate involves a fallacy of circular logic whereby one must first assume the Bible is true and accurate. In fact, many of the prophecies in the Bible were not fulfilled, such as that the land of Egypt would be abandoned for forty years (Ezekiel 29) or that Jesus would remain dead for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40). The latter is a great example of how the Bible works: almost every Christian will tell you that Jesus was buried for three days and three nights while they simultaneously celebrate Jesus’ death on the evening before the Sabbath after nightfall (Mark 15:42) and resurrection before dawn on the day after the Sabbath (John 20:1), which is a span of one day and two nights. (Without hesitation or research, Christians will explain how, for that time or culture, three days and three nights was the same as one day and two nights, with is as absurd and desperate as it gets.) It’s not even close to three days and three nights, and yet, somehow, a blind-spot is created which causes almost everybody to ignore the facts and focus on the story. Not the story in the Gospels- which disagree with each other on many details such as who discovered the empty tomb- but a story that is not written anywhere but which lives solely in the public consciousness.
Christians will claim God has never broken a promise. In reality, he promised Abraham he’d give Abraham’s descendents the territory between the Nile and Euphrates (Genesis 15:18). Most people today simply assume this “promised land” is modern-day Israel, but it is actually a huge expanse of land stretching from Egypt to Iraq that the Arabian Peninsula sits between. Christians will immediately explain that the descendents of Abraham never actually owned all that land because of their wickedness, but Deuteronomy 9:5 specifically guarantees that the original promise will be kept regardless of the wickedness of the descendents. Today, another world war would be required to fulfill this promise. Frighteningly, a large number of Christians would support this war, even though Israel has nuclear weapons. Humans generally would prefer to discover justifications for their assumptions rather than truth or peace.
Some will admit that the Bible is necessarily fallible because it was written by humans. (Notice the ever-present theme of human fallibility.) I would counter that if God wanted a perfect work with no way of parlaying excuses, he could have given Moses a whole bunch of tablets containing his laws, instead of just one copy to be kept in a box and destined to be lost- especially after Moses immediately destroyed the original tablet. Even Jesus could have written his own Bible and handed out 5000 copies along with the fish and bread. Any number of writing methods could have been utilized which would have been better adept at avoiding egregious errors like Aaron dying twice and being buried in two places.
Jesus said, “If you don’t believe me, believe the things I do.” My mom correctly points out that the best thing about Christianity is that it encourages some people to do great things like provide humanitarian aid, and I wholeheartedly appreciate this benefit… that many religions and non-religious charity organizations also provide. I’m personally suspicious of anyone unwilling to do charitable work unless inspired by a supreme being, but Christianity teaches everybody is inherently wicked, and so Christians are skeptical that anyone can do good without a supreme being’s influence. Regardless, my exploration into Christianity was more interested in its truth than its utility, and these are two separate questions.
In all my years growing up in the church, I never witnessed a miracle, with the possible exception of one time when I was about eight our car wouldn’t start in the church parking lot and some guy appeared to help push start it and when that worked my dad stopped to thank him but he had disappeared. I heard about miracles all the time, however. Others will frequently state they’ve witnessed “all kinds” of miracles, but when pressed, fail to come up with anything specific that’s uniquely attributable to the god of Christianity.
In the old days (9th century BC), Elijah puts on a highly publicized miracle-working contest where he mocks 450 prophets of Baal who futilely attempt to have their god light an altar. Elijah then dumps buckets of water on an altar and prays to God, who promptly sends not only fire from heaven to light it but, after another prayer, rain to put it out and end a famine. A chilling part of the story that conveniently gets overlooked is that Elijah has the 450 prophets put to death, but it is a key point in part because it leads to our introduction of Jezebel, who remains an interesting sub-plot right up until she is thrown out a window, trampled on and eaten by dogs.
Even though Matthew 18:19 says God will grant any request asked by two or more people, these days it is considered blasphemous to assume a prayer will be answered, because while it’s okay to ask, who are we to tell God what to do? Preachers will explain that our prayers are answered either yes, no or wait. This answer is not literal of course- it just means that something we ask for will either happen now, happen later or not happen. I cannot help but notice everything that is not prayed for also happens now, later or not at all. In other words, that claim is a tautology (true by definition).
Miracles are claimed in every religion. Christians will usually not deny these but instead remind that Satan can perform miracles, too. These are always called “false miracles,” but are virtually indistinguishable from God’s miracles. This is why we have to be really careful not to be fooled by Satan- because he is virtually indistinguishable from God. (One of the few depictions of Satan in the Bible is in the book of Job, which begins with Satan visiting God in Heaven and, after a discussion beginning with, “What have you been up to?” God and Satan place a friendly wager….) Just as God provides a useful one word blanket explanation for how everything other than God exists, Satan is an easy way to categorize evidence to the contrary as being a deception.
In the book of Judges, Gideon asks God to perform three tests in order to prove his authenticity. The second and third tests are for God to have morning dew on a wool fleece but not on the ground and vice versa. Out of desperation, I decided to replicate this experiment. I took a wool blanket outside on a summer evening, sat on it and prayed. I ended up falling asleep on the blanket and it was wet when I awoke at dawn. Excitedly, I reached out to feel the grass around me and much to my surprise… it was also wet. I immediately began sobbing. Then I thought, well maybe this is some sort of test, so I repeated the experiment for two more nights- although on those occasions I just left the blanket out and slept inside. Those ensuing days were an intense emotional roller coaster of frustration, betrayal, denial and anger. By the third morning of nature following the laws of nature, I felt stupid for having actually thought God existed and simultaneously a sense of peace from being liberated from having to worry about it anymore.
When Jacob wrestled with God, he was punished with a physical injury but rewarded with a new identity. I received no punishment but the same reward. Admitting to myself that everything I’d been taught, believed and preached made more sense if it wasn’t true was probably the most difficult and courageous thing I’ve ever done. Whenever Christians who knew me growing up find out I am no longer a Christian, they automatically assume this is due to ignorance or a lack of faith or self-control, and usually bizarrely note that I seem angry. Christians can really be extraordinarily arrogant, but to be fair, a lot of effort has gone into convincing them non-Christians are ignorant, unhappy (or suffering “false happiness”), reckless and angry. In reality, I decided for myself beyond a reasonable doubt, after intensive research and examination over the course of three years, that that vast majority of the Bible was a work of fiction, and the god described by it was not only extremely inconsistent but something less than admirable. I have come to believe shame is instilled and continuously reinforced by Christianity because the only people who need something external to believe in are those you do not believe in themselves.
Mark 4:22 says, “For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open.” There are a ton of things in the Bible that most Christians would rather ignore than ponder or discuss. Simply insisting that humans aren’t qualified to question the Bible is unreasonable- we were deemed qualified to write it, after all. When it comes to religion, legitimacy should be too important a concern for any of its scriptures to be treated flippantly. Having faith that something is true does not make it so, nor is seeking knowledge demonstrative of a lack of faith. Having faith is admirable- remaining stubbornly ignorant is not; neither is forcing or expecting religious fervor to be revered above factual knowledge or universal human rights. I don’t think it’s unfair to suggest that perhaps crediting all actions and opinions to a silent, invisible, superior being is little more than a way of avoiding personal responsibility. Christians should be able to ask themselves, “Would my actions and opinions be defensible and justified if I didn’t have someone else to pin them on?” I think a lot of Christians could benefit from having more humility in admitting their beliefs are held despite unanswered questions instead of insisting they have all the answers and wanting to impose them on everybody else.
Monday, January 5, 2015
The Importance of Candi
San Francisco is blessed with a large homeless population. When I moved to the Bay Area from Iowa in 2000, interacting with homeless people was a new experience for me. Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco at the time, was engaged in an active battle against the homeless. Millions of dollars were spent on things like confiscating shopping carts and removing park benches. There were no public restrooms and busking (street performing) required purchasing a permit. Meanwhile, housing costs soared, largely due to an influx of money from Silicon Valley, and the climate remained balmy year round, so the net effect of these policies were solely to increase the suffering of the homeless.
I couldn’t afford to live in San Francisco, so I lived in Richmond on the Easy Bay. When Amy and I moved there, I quickly got a part-time job as a barista at the coffee shop in Borders books in Emeryville, landed an internship at a recording studio complex in The City and joined a weekly jazz improvisation workshop. (For the unaware, “The City” is San Francisco’s rather smug and, if you live there, only acceptable nickname.) Amy got a full-time job in Berkeley. We shared a 1986 Toyota Tercel- she usually used it during the day and I used it whenever I had to haul my drumset somewhere. Most of the time, I got around using BART, the area’s monorail system, whose furthest north station was very close to our quadplex apartment, where rent was $800 per month plus utilities.
In San Francisco, I worked in the Tenderloin district, which is sort of in the middle of town but well removed from tourists, in a well-tagged (graffitied) area full of amazing Thai restaurants and taquerias. The recording studio was about four blocks north of the Civic Center Plaza BART station. The train ride took 45 minutes and costed something like $3.25 each way. The last train left the first station at midnight, and whenever I missed it I slept on a couch in a hallway of the studio.
One day, not long after I’d starting working at the recording studio, an engineer was chatting with me about the homeless in the area. He had a BMW motorcycle, and felt bad that he worried about parking it at the motorcycle parking area next to the BART station, because there were always so many people milling about it. What he would do, when he parked his bike, was give money to a nearby homeless person and say, “Could you watch my bike while you’re, please?” His worry was when he returned and if the same person was there, things could get socially awkward, because, well, dealing with homeless people is awkward.
During this conversation, I buzzed Paul Stubblebine in through the heavy blue door. Paul was a highly-regarded mastering engineer who had presumably worked at the studio for awhile, and was one of those guys who you immediately realized was highly competent. In truth, as I would find out later, he was an extraordinary human being. I’m going to segue a bit here so I can tell my Paul Stubblebine story:
On two occasions while I was there, Paul was hired as a recording/mixing engineer and I was assigned to be his assistant. During one of these sessions, Paul went to the restroom while the band was listening to a mix he had done. While he was away, one of the band members asked if I could turn the guitar up and vocals down a little. Strictly speaking, this was a major no-no; I had no business touching the famed Neve 8038 console. But, being a brash kid, I marked the location of the faders in question with a grease pencil and moved them both half a decibel. Now, answering the question, “How loud is a decibel?” is a complicated one; it doesn’t even make sense to describe decibels in terms of how far you move the fader. Roughly speaking, an increase of 10 decibels is twice as loud. (To truly understand how decibels are calculated, you have to understand the neper, and I don’t.) Half a decibel is about how far you need to adjust the volume to create a minimally perceptible difference. The minimum you can adjust most modern consumer volume knobs is a full decibel.
Paul returned to the mixing room, and while sitting down- so before he was even situated between the speakers- he nonchalantly reached out and adjusted the two faders back to where I had marked their original locations. Everyone who witnessed this realized the appropriate volumes of the guitar and vocals within the mix were definitive. I was too speechless to ever admit I had even moved the faders. It was, and is, the most superhuman thing I have ever witnessed a person do. The only other thing I can think of that comes close is watching Barry Bonds effortlessly crush a baseball.
Anyway, the engineer with the motorcycle asked Paul how he dealt with the homeless. Paul said he followed advice he had been given when he had first come to the area- find one homeless person that resonates with you and give them whatever change you have in your pocket every time you see them. When he said this, I immediately thought of a person who I had ignored asking if I wanted to buy a poem a few days prior.
The person in question was a gaunt, sickly woman draped in layers of rags who looked to be in her 50’s, with long, thinning reddish-brown hair. It was evident she had a drug problem.
People often say that they don’t like to give money to homeless because they will just spend it on booze and drugs. This rationalization hides behind the arrogant premise that we are qualified to judge what others spend their money on. These same people will then proudly explain that their concern is for the other’s health and safety. To follow this logic, the reason they don’t give is out of compassion and charity. They would rather give food, shelter or jobs to the homeless. They don’t do any of those things, of course, but that’s what they “would rather” do. It is telling of our society that those who have a place to sleep at night become so haughty toward those who don’t. I didn’t have food, shelter or jobs to offer, so I began giving this lady my spare change whenever I had it. When I did not have change, I would at least smile and say, “hi!”
In return, she would sometimes give me incoherent scribbling on scraps of paper. Some days, she would chat with me in slurred, garbled speech that I could barely decipher, and I would find myself struggling to stand, smile and listen instead of hurrying on my way. Other days she would be listless and sad and I would feel compelled to talk to her. I found out her name was Candi. I would not have pegged her as a Candi- those kinds of names were more common further up by Van Ness and Post- but I never did find out much about who she was or where she had come from.
One day Candi said she had written a poem especially for me. She fished through her pockets, found it and gave it to me. It was basically, “Andrew I love you.” I felt honored that she actually knew my name. For me, Candi was a face among the faceless. Until then, it had not really occurred to me that I was the same for her.
I would often see Candi twice a day for the next couple of years, and it was the thing I most looked forward to on my trips to and from work. Of course, sometimes she wouldn’t be there. If I didn’t see Candi for a week, I would begin to worry. She wasn’t the type of person about whom you’d think, maybe she found a place to live. In the end I was the one who disappeared for good- and I suppose this was something she was used to.
I have been privileged to meet many amazing people throughout the years, including Paul Stubblebine, but no one has been more important or influential on me and how I perceive the world than Candi. I wish I had thanked her.
I couldn’t afford to live in San Francisco, so I lived in Richmond on the Easy Bay. When Amy and I moved there, I quickly got a part-time job as a barista at the coffee shop in Borders books in Emeryville, landed an internship at a recording studio complex in The City and joined a weekly jazz improvisation workshop. (For the unaware, “The City” is San Francisco’s rather smug and, if you live there, only acceptable nickname.) Amy got a full-time job in Berkeley. We shared a 1986 Toyota Tercel- she usually used it during the day and I used it whenever I had to haul my drumset somewhere. Most of the time, I got around using BART, the area’s monorail system, whose furthest north station was very close to our quadplex apartment, where rent was $800 per month plus utilities.
In San Francisco, I worked in the Tenderloin district, which is sort of in the middle of town but well removed from tourists, in a well-tagged (graffitied) area full of amazing Thai restaurants and taquerias. The recording studio was about four blocks north of the Civic Center Plaza BART station. The train ride took 45 minutes and costed something like $3.25 each way. The last train left the first station at midnight, and whenever I missed it I slept on a couch in a hallway of the studio.
One day, not long after I’d starting working at the recording studio, an engineer was chatting with me about the homeless in the area. He had a BMW motorcycle, and felt bad that he worried about parking it at the motorcycle parking area next to the BART station, because there were always so many people milling about it. What he would do, when he parked his bike, was give money to a nearby homeless person and say, “Could you watch my bike while you’re, please?” His worry was when he returned and if the same person was there, things could get socially awkward, because, well, dealing with homeless people is awkward.
During this conversation, I buzzed Paul Stubblebine in through the heavy blue door. Paul was a highly-regarded mastering engineer who had presumably worked at the studio for awhile, and was one of those guys who you immediately realized was highly competent. In truth, as I would find out later, he was an extraordinary human being. I’m going to segue a bit here so I can tell my Paul Stubblebine story:
On two occasions while I was there, Paul was hired as a recording/mixing engineer and I was assigned to be his assistant. During one of these sessions, Paul went to the restroom while the band was listening to a mix he had done. While he was away, one of the band members asked if I could turn the guitar up and vocals down a little. Strictly speaking, this was a major no-no; I had no business touching the famed Neve 8038 console. But, being a brash kid, I marked the location of the faders in question with a grease pencil and moved them both half a decibel. Now, answering the question, “How loud is a decibel?” is a complicated one; it doesn’t even make sense to describe decibels in terms of how far you move the fader. Roughly speaking, an increase of 10 decibels is twice as loud. (To truly understand how decibels are calculated, you have to understand the neper, and I don’t.) Half a decibel is about how far you need to adjust the volume to create a minimally perceptible difference. The minimum you can adjust most modern consumer volume knobs is a full decibel.
Paul returned to the mixing room, and while sitting down- so before he was even situated between the speakers- he nonchalantly reached out and adjusted the two faders back to where I had marked their original locations. Everyone who witnessed this realized the appropriate volumes of the guitar and vocals within the mix were definitive. I was too speechless to ever admit I had even moved the faders. It was, and is, the most superhuman thing I have ever witnessed a person do. The only other thing I can think of that comes close is watching Barry Bonds effortlessly crush a baseball.
Anyway, the engineer with the motorcycle asked Paul how he dealt with the homeless. Paul said he followed advice he had been given when he had first come to the area- find one homeless person that resonates with you and give them whatever change you have in your pocket every time you see them. When he said this, I immediately thought of a person who I had ignored asking if I wanted to buy a poem a few days prior.
The person in question was a gaunt, sickly woman draped in layers of rags who looked to be in her 50’s, with long, thinning reddish-brown hair. It was evident she had a drug problem.
People often say that they don’t like to give money to homeless because they will just spend it on booze and drugs. This rationalization hides behind the arrogant premise that we are qualified to judge what others spend their money on. These same people will then proudly explain that their concern is for the other’s health and safety. To follow this logic, the reason they don’t give is out of compassion and charity. They would rather give food, shelter or jobs to the homeless. They don’t do any of those things, of course, but that’s what they “would rather” do. It is telling of our society that those who have a place to sleep at night become so haughty toward those who don’t. I didn’t have food, shelter or jobs to offer, so I began giving this lady my spare change whenever I had it. When I did not have change, I would at least smile and say, “hi!”
In return, she would sometimes give me incoherent scribbling on scraps of paper. Some days, she would chat with me in slurred, garbled speech that I could barely decipher, and I would find myself struggling to stand, smile and listen instead of hurrying on my way. Other days she would be listless and sad and I would feel compelled to talk to her. I found out her name was Candi. I would not have pegged her as a Candi- those kinds of names were more common further up by Van Ness and Post- but I never did find out much about who she was or where she had come from.
One day Candi said she had written a poem especially for me. She fished through her pockets, found it and gave it to me. It was basically, “Andrew I love you.” I felt honored that she actually knew my name. For me, Candi was a face among the faceless. Until then, it had not really occurred to me that I was the same for her.
I would often see Candi twice a day for the next couple of years, and it was the thing I most looked forward to on my trips to and from work. Of course, sometimes she wouldn’t be there. If I didn’t see Candi for a week, I would begin to worry. She wasn’t the type of person about whom you’d think, maybe she found a place to live. In the end I was the one who disappeared for good- and I suppose this was something she was used to.
I have been privileged to meet many amazing people throughout the years, including Paul Stubblebine, but no one has been more important or influential on me and how I perceive the world than Candi. I wish I had thanked her.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
The Importance of G.I. Joe
I grew up in a farmhouse in the 1980s. It was on a gravel road, surrounded for miles on every side by corn or soybean fields. We lived two miles from the school, where I had 17 classmates, and 10 miles from the town of Fort Dodge, Iowa. Water was supplied to the house from a shallow well, and if it didn’t rain for a few months, we would run out. My parents, brother, sister and I raised various animals and tended a large garden. I loathed all chores other than burning the trash in a rusty old oil drum, but chores were not optional. Fortunately, during the school year, I only did chores before school and on weekends.
After school, I ran from the school bus down the driveway and through the house to my parents’ bedroom, where I could watch G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero on a 13” black and white television. Maybe because it was a UHF and not a VHF channel, this was the only of our two televisions that picked up FOX, even though it only had a stick antennae protruding out of the back while the other one was attached to a huge antennae on the roof. The only thing in the world better than the G.I. Joe cartoon was the Hasbro G.I. Joe toyline.
The first G.I Joe figure I got was the COBRA ninja known as Stormshadow. I was a shy kid, but I was so excited about this toy that I decided to participate in “show-and-tell” at school for the first time, to explain things such as: All of the G.I. Joe characters had code-names sort of like super heroes, and they all came with a file card description of their rank, abilities, personalities and real name… unless it was “Classified” or “Unknown.” The cool thing about the G.I. Joe action figures themselves was that the elbows and knees bent, the torso swiveled and you could attach a backpack onto them, making them far superior to Star Wars toys. The unimpressed reaction of my classmates to this incredible toy made me acutely aware that I had just voluntarily embarrassed myself; thus ending my public speaking career. It was 1984 and I was in second grade.
I received an allowance for chores (one to two dollars per week) and saved my money and also the “flag points” on the back of every box in order to buy more G.I. Joe action figures and vehicles. After getting Stormshadow, I spent what felt like forever saving up enough money to buy the “Dragonfly” helicopter that came with a Texas rancher code-named Wild Bill. It was $15.99.
Before I discovered G.I. Joe, I played “cowboys & Indians,” and had always understood that it was about Native Americans protecting their land from invaders unabashedly destroying it, so I didn’t trust Wild Bill. I pretended that he was a double agent. As my toy collection increased, I would continue to rearrange which figures were considered good guys; after all, this was my universe to manipulate as I pleased. For the most part, the actual good guys were drab and suspiciously homogenous, whereas the bad guys were a random hodge-podge of interesting characters that didn’t get along. One notable exception to this was Spirit, although now I realize it is sort of weird they gave the Native American a red loin cloth instead of military issue garb. (The G.I. Joe comic story arc would reveal that Stormshadow was in fact a good guy acting as a spy within the COBRA organization, and Hasbro re-released him with an outfit and gear that I liked even more than the original one.)
I had a bunch of Star Wars toys, but I never played Star Wars. They were mostly used as cannon fodder and substitutes for Joes I didn’t have. I used Luke Skywalker in Duke’s role and put Princess Leia on the bad side to be The Baroness. It was already 1985 before I purchased my next Joes: Tomax and Xamot. They were bankers, so they were obviously evil. The leader of COBRA was supposedly the egomaniac Emperor Serpentor, but I just couldn’t take an adult who dressed up in a snake suit and drove a hovercraft chariot very seriously. As a clone long before Jurassic Park, Serpentor was ahead of his time. (Remember, these were the days before there were clones in Star Wars- there was only a throw-away, non-descript mention of “the Clone Wars.”) It did not escape me that this made Serpentor expendable, because if he was killed, he could just be re-cloned. I also owned Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, but to me, Tomax and Xamot were the ones running COBRA from behind the scenes, funding and pulling the strings of the terrorists.
Speaking of ahead of its time, according to the cartoon’s theme song, “G.I. Joe is the codename for America's daring, highly-trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against COBRA- a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world.” Outside of G.I. Joe, there was literally no mention of terrorists in America in the ‘80s; the bad guys were generally considered to be the U.S.S.R.
I did not like playing indoor recess or P.E. with the other kids, so I frequently spent that time hiding alone under the bleachers in the gymnasium playing with the Star Wars and G.I. Joe toys I had smuggled in my pockets. I got caught once, in Kindergarten, by the P.E. teacher who spanked me in front of the class after I refused to answer his absurd question, “What are you doing under the bleachers?” After that, I mostly stuck to only hiding behind the bleachers when they were folded closed. Nobody looked for me there, because no adult could fathom that I could actually fit behind them. Eventually I did outgrow that spot, but then I figured out if I volunteered to fetch the rubber balls and then didn’t shut the door to the supply closet all the way, I could sneak back in there after delivering the balls. I did this for years until one day a P.E. instructor (not the same one who spanked me) walked in on me in there during recess. When the teacher that was supposed to be in charge of supervising the kids at recess couldn’t explain how I had gotten out of her sight, I knew I wasn’t getting in trouble.
This is why, when Zandar was introduced in 1986, he immediately became my second favorite character. He lived in the swamp and his specialty was hiding. He had a twin sister who was basically a method actress assassin and a creepy older brother, a “master of disguise,” who was also the leader of a biker gang and looked like a member of K.I.S.S. when he wasn’t wearing his mask. (The siblings’ skin turned blue when left in the sun.) In my recreation, the older brother remained a bad guy while the twins were good guys.
I drew topographic maps transforming my bedroom into G.I. Joe terrain, conceived original plots and wrote scripts for the figures. I sent in for the Steel Brigade character that came with a personalized bio card. I completed the two “Live the Adventure” code-breaking assignments and sent them in to get certificates and patches. I read several of the G.I. Joe comics, but they conflicted with my G.I. Joe universe, so I preferred reading Marvel comics. Two movies from 1985 that informed my G.I. Joe playing were Rambo: First Blood Part II and Witness, but mostly I just used my imagination.
My favorite figures- Stormshadow, Zandar, Zarana, Snake Eyes, Beach Head and Mainframe- became a splinter group headquartered at the Dagobah tree fort. G.I. Joe would contact them with special missions and they would consult with Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi and decide whether the mission was aligned with their code of striving for equality and justice. So they would carry out assignments like retrieving hostages and using money from Tomax and Xamot’s bank to feed starving children in Africa while the main regiment of G.I. Joes would have to do stuff like assassinate Serpentor or bomb the COBRA Hoth base themselves. This splinter group did not work alongside the other G.I. Joes, but they would often be assisted by the Ewoks. The official military’s stance on the Ewoks was that they didn’t exist. They also denied that there was a group of mutant bounty hunters led by Jabba the Hut living on an island used for nuclear testing.
Adults tentatively tolerated but frowned upon G.I. Joe. It was too violent. Sure, yeah, okay, whatever. The fact is, these toys were allowing me to manipulate, explore and ponder the world of adults with the pace, creativity and naïveté of the child I was. G.I. Joe taught me the importance of well-coordinated and communicated teamwork, but also that sometimes you have to go it alone. It allowed me to play through all kinds of ethical dilemmas and ponder the balance of justice through violence and justice through peace. As I got older, I began to understand the probability of surviving one dangerous, top-secret mission, let alone several per week. When you enact battle scenarios on a daily basis for years on end, you begin to ponder: If the bad guys were the ones who wanted to take over the world and the good guys were the ones in charge, how could the good guys have come to power without having first been the bad guys? Didn’t the bad guys simply want what the good guys had? As a kid, the terrorists I controlled never attacked without reason; that would have been a waste of time and resources. If G.I. Joe wanted to defeat COBRA, they had to learn to think like COBRA without underestimating them. Alternatively, instead of defeating them, they could learn to work together by finding common goals.
Because of G.I. Joe, I had things figured out by sixth grade that few adults seem to understand even to this day… and knowing is half the battle.
After school, I ran from the school bus down the driveway and through the house to my parents’ bedroom, where I could watch G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero on a 13” black and white television. Maybe because it was a UHF and not a VHF channel, this was the only of our two televisions that picked up FOX, even though it only had a stick antennae protruding out of the back while the other one was attached to a huge antennae on the roof. The only thing in the world better than the G.I. Joe cartoon was the Hasbro G.I. Joe toyline.
The first G.I Joe figure I got was the COBRA ninja known as Stormshadow. I was a shy kid, but I was so excited about this toy that I decided to participate in “show-and-tell” at school for the first time, to explain things such as: All of the G.I. Joe characters had code-names sort of like super heroes, and they all came with a file card description of their rank, abilities, personalities and real name… unless it was “Classified” or “Unknown.” The cool thing about the G.I. Joe action figures themselves was that the elbows and knees bent, the torso swiveled and you could attach a backpack onto them, making them far superior to Star Wars toys. The unimpressed reaction of my classmates to this incredible toy made me acutely aware that I had just voluntarily embarrassed myself; thus ending my public speaking career. It was 1984 and I was in second grade.
I received an allowance for chores (one to two dollars per week) and saved my money and also the “flag points” on the back of every box in order to buy more G.I. Joe action figures and vehicles. After getting Stormshadow, I spent what felt like forever saving up enough money to buy the “Dragonfly” helicopter that came with a Texas rancher code-named Wild Bill. It was $15.99.
Before I discovered G.I. Joe, I played “cowboys & Indians,” and had always understood that it was about Native Americans protecting their land from invaders unabashedly destroying it, so I didn’t trust Wild Bill. I pretended that he was a double agent. As my toy collection increased, I would continue to rearrange which figures were considered good guys; after all, this was my universe to manipulate as I pleased. For the most part, the actual good guys were drab and suspiciously homogenous, whereas the bad guys were a random hodge-podge of interesting characters that didn’t get along. One notable exception to this was Spirit, although now I realize it is sort of weird they gave the Native American a red loin cloth instead of military issue garb. (The G.I. Joe comic story arc would reveal that Stormshadow was in fact a good guy acting as a spy within the COBRA organization, and Hasbro re-released him with an outfit and gear that I liked even more than the original one.)
I had a bunch of Star Wars toys, but I never played Star Wars. They were mostly used as cannon fodder and substitutes for Joes I didn’t have. I used Luke Skywalker in Duke’s role and put Princess Leia on the bad side to be The Baroness. It was already 1985 before I purchased my next Joes: Tomax and Xamot. They were bankers, so they were obviously evil. The leader of COBRA was supposedly the egomaniac Emperor Serpentor, but I just couldn’t take an adult who dressed up in a snake suit and drove a hovercraft chariot very seriously. As a clone long before Jurassic Park, Serpentor was ahead of his time. (Remember, these were the days before there were clones in Star Wars- there was only a throw-away, non-descript mention of “the Clone Wars.”) It did not escape me that this made Serpentor expendable, because if he was killed, he could just be re-cloned. I also owned Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, but to me, Tomax and Xamot were the ones running COBRA from behind the scenes, funding and pulling the strings of the terrorists.
Speaking of ahead of its time, according to the cartoon’s theme song, “G.I. Joe is the codename for America's daring, highly-trained special mission force. Its purpose: to defend human freedom against COBRA- a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world.” Outside of G.I. Joe, there was literally no mention of terrorists in America in the ‘80s; the bad guys were generally considered to be the U.S.S.R.
I did not like playing indoor recess or P.E. with the other kids, so I frequently spent that time hiding alone under the bleachers in the gymnasium playing with the Star Wars and G.I. Joe toys I had smuggled in my pockets. I got caught once, in Kindergarten, by the P.E. teacher who spanked me in front of the class after I refused to answer his absurd question, “What are you doing under the bleachers?” After that, I mostly stuck to only hiding behind the bleachers when they were folded closed. Nobody looked for me there, because no adult could fathom that I could actually fit behind them. Eventually I did outgrow that spot, but then I figured out if I volunteered to fetch the rubber balls and then didn’t shut the door to the supply closet all the way, I could sneak back in there after delivering the balls. I did this for years until one day a P.E. instructor (not the same one who spanked me) walked in on me in there during recess. When the teacher that was supposed to be in charge of supervising the kids at recess couldn’t explain how I had gotten out of her sight, I knew I wasn’t getting in trouble.
This is why, when Zandar was introduced in 1986, he immediately became my second favorite character. He lived in the swamp and his specialty was hiding. He had a twin sister who was basically a method actress assassin and a creepy older brother, a “master of disguise,” who was also the leader of a biker gang and looked like a member of K.I.S.S. when he wasn’t wearing his mask. (The siblings’ skin turned blue when left in the sun.) In my recreation, the older brother remained a bad guy while the twins were good guys.
I drew topographic maps transforming my bedroom into G.I. Joe terrain, conceived original plots and wrote scripts for the figures. I sent in for the Steel Brigade character that came with a personalized bio card. I completed the two “Live the Adventure” code-breaking assignments and sent them in to get certificates and patches. I read several of the G.I. Joe comics, but they conflicted with my G.I. Joe universe, so I preferred reading Marvel comics. Two movies from 1985 that informed my G.I. Joe playing were Rambo: First Blood Part II and Witness, but mostly I just used my imagination.
My favorite figures- Stormshadow, Zandar, Zarana, Snake Eyes, Beach Head and Mainframe- became a splinter group headquartered at the Dagobah tree fort. G.I. Joe would contact them with special missions and they would consult with Yoda and Obi Wan Kenobi and decide whether the mission was aligned with their code of striving for equality and justice. So they would carry out assignments like retrieving hostages and using money from Tomax and Xamot’s bank to feed starving children in Africa while the main regiment of G.I. Joes would have to do stuff like assassinate Serpentor or bomb the COBRA Hoth base themselves. This splinter group did not work alongside the other G.I. Joes, but they would often be assisted by the Ewoks. The official military’s stance on the Ewoks was that they didn’t exist. They also denied that there was a group of mutant bounty hunters led by Jabba the Hut living on an island used for nuclear testing.
Adults tentatively tolerated but frowned upon G.I. Joe. It was too violent. Sure, yeah, okay, whatever. The fact is, these toys were allowing me to manipulate, explore and ponder the world of adults with the pace, creativity and naïveté of the child I was. G.I. Joe taught me the importance of well-coordinated and communicated teamwork, but also that sometimes you have to go it alone. It allowed me to play through all kinds of ethical dilemmas and ponder the balance of justice through violence and justice through peace. As I got older, I began to understand the probability of surviving one dangerous, top-secret mission, let alone several per week. When you enact battle scenarios on a daily basis for years on end, you begin to ponder: If the bad guys were the ones who wanted to take over the world and the good guys were the ones in charge, how could the good guys have come to power without having first been the bad guys? Didn’t the bad guys simply want what the good guys had? As a kid, the terrorists I controlled never attacked without reason; that would have been a waste of time and resources. If G.I. Joe wanted to defeat COBRA, they had to learn to think like COBRA without underestimating them. Alternatively, instead of defeating them, they could learn to work together by finding common goals.
Because of G.I. Joe, I had things figured out by sixth grade that few adults seem to understand even to this day… and knowing is half the battle.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
The Importance of Regret
I don’t understand why people are frequently insisting, “I don’t have any regrets.” Maybe others intend it as a polite social convention, like saying, “I’m fine. Everything’s perfect!” Maybe it’s a prudent way of avoiding the inevitable follow-up questions to admitting regrets. But I’m a literally-minded person who doesn’t get the point of saying things that are untrue.
Personally, not a day goes by where I don’t say or do something I regret. I’m constantly wishing I had given a better explanation, been more patient or empathetic, demonstrated more concentration, thought things through before acting or put forth more effort. I have big regrets too: ties with friends that I caused to be severed, work that I failed at, skills I should’ve acquired, relationships that I imprudently pursued, relationships that I ruined and places I shouldn’t have gone. I feel like I could list a thousand regrets before pausing to think. At the same time, I am also very grateful to have never made a truly idiotic move that got someone injured or arrested or whatnot. I am able to keep the perspective that the things I regret are relatively minor. Perhaps the most important aspect of making mistakes is minimizing the gravity of the consequences.
I dwell on regrets, too. Just yesterday I was thinking about the time I threw a vacuum cleaner part into the street and forgot to pick it up. That happened at least five years ago.
Often we say we regret doing something but then behave the same way the next time a similar situation arises. Sometimes we don’t regret what we did but regret getting caught. True regret involves understanding the direct consequences of your actions and wishing they had been different than what they were. I think they have to be specific actions, but maybe not. People will say things like, “That’s five years of my life I regret,” and that seems terrible to me. I realize that a regrettable decision on one day can lead to five years (or more) of turmoil, but if you regret the actions of one day and then the next day you regret those actions as well to a degree that you now have two days full of regret, it seems to me you really need to examine the choices you are making in life. Not everything is a mistake; forgetting the brilliant ideas and wonderful times just because there were lousy parts seems an unjust and unnecessary punishment to inflict on ones self.
Many things happen due to misfortune that no decision could have avoided. For example, someone might say, “I regret going to work that day because that’s the day I got into an accident.” That demonstrates a lack of perspective because there’s absolutely no correlation between the action and the consequence. This is the type of regret that there’s no point in having or pondering. Once self-pity is eliminated as an option, there is often nothing left but to accept your fate. It doesn’t make any sense to regret being born, because you weren’t given an alternative option.
I am of the opinion that criticism provides information to learn from while praise is essentially vapid. My main method for learning is by messing up. I’ve never been able or willing to take anyone’s word for anything. Anything everyone else says always seems nonsense to me until I discover for myself that they were right. I am a slow but thorough learner. I sometimes regret being stubborn, but I more often regret taking another’s advice instead of doing the research myself.
When we make a mistake affecting another, the first thing we are taught as children to do is apologize. As adults, we find apologizing excruciatingly difficult. We don’t want others to accurately accuse us of doing things we shouldn’t have done. We would much rather eschew responsibility, shift blame and make excuses. We do these things even when all another wants is an apology, because, ironically, we demand apologies all the time. We think that our shortcomings are justified: we boast of our phobias, using them to relinquish ourselves of duty, instead of using the opportunity to strive to overcome them. At the same time, we find the shortcomings of others ridiculous and inexcusable. We wonder why others are so inept at doing things we would never do ourselves. This is because we live in a society where we are wired to find opponents to destroy instead of relationships to build.
Some people are afraid of making mistakes. I really only have that problem when it concerns social interaction. Because of this, I have been forced (unless I wanted to become a crazy person) to ignore and overcome fear most days of my life. I suppose that is why I consider being afraid something to embrace instead of avoid. I’d rather regret doing something that I thought was the right thing to do than not doing something for fear of failure. Most of the time, I am over-confident and when I blow it am startled by the result, even when it should have been expected.
There’s a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt that goes something like, “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” People will mull over decisions even when there is literally no way of anticipating the outcome. I’ve witnessed others become completely overwhelmed by something as benign as choosing from a menu even though the only guaranteed way of knowing whether you like a dish or not is by eating it. One can either fight through this fear of the unknown or remain in a small, familiar world. For many, expanding knowledge and experience is less important than avoiding regrets, complications, embarrassment or disrespect.
Life can quickly become unbearable without maintaining our senses of humor and beauty. Your existence might be the most important thing there is, but you just can’t take it too seriously. Playing the “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” game gets tedious really fast. It’s prudent to remember that perceiving past mistakes is due to having gained an improved perspective- and improvement is a good thing. Hindsight is a bit like knowing the answer after it is given to you; it’s a lot easier than knowing the answer before it’s revealed but feels like you should have known it all along. It also gives the false impression that we know what the outcome would have been had we altered the past. The fact is we don’t actually know what might have happened had we done things differently.
I played football in seventh and eighth grades. Our team was terrible; we never won a game. There were twelve kids on the team, so another kid and I only had to participate in every other play. My job on offense was to go in from the sideline, relay the next play the coach had given me to the quarterback and then fill in as the weak-side tight-end. For two years, every single play was a running play. The other teams figured this out and would simply rush the quarterback at the snap, bowling over me in the process. Over at the sideline, I mentioned to the coach that the quarterback should throw me a quick screen pass. He decided that wasn’t a good idea. One time, just one time, I wish I had gone into the huddle and told the quarterback to throw me a screen pass, ignoring whichever running play the coach had given me.
Even this example begs the unanswerable question: is it more beneficial to have lived a life having called an audible or to have determined (without concrete evidence) that an audible should have been called? That’s the beauty of regret; it can be a powerful motivator and catalyst for change. If I were to go back and fix a mistake from early in life, when would I have learned to not make that mistake on a subsequent occasion? Another way of addressing the issue is realizing the incalculable influence of our assumptions on our behaviors. Would my distrust of authoritarian demands be as strong today had I opposed them back then, or has the assumption that I should have acted to change the situation been necessary for building my character? (Perhaps I’d watched enough Twilight Zone that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.)
“Time and tide wait for no man.” There is nothing more calming than watching the ocean, I think in part because it conveys the realization that there is nothing you can do but watch it. In its presence, we are but another grain of sand. The waves are relentlessly unconcerned with where they will land, and both build and destroy with impartiality and impunity. We are not the ocean, but neither are we the sand, for the sand does not care what becomes of itself. Insurmountable obstacles and regrets notwithstanding, we must persevere through life or it loses all meaning. For many, being better off than others is good enough, but basing your successes on the relative suffering of others is demented.
Trying to change the past begs questions; working to change the future finds answers. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but too many people refuse to admit them. When we don’t acknowledge when we’ve goofed and then work towards improving our future behaviors, we remain stuck making the same mistakes over again and wondering why bad things keep happening to us. The only two ways of not having any regrets are by lacking self-awareness or being perfect. Admitting regrets demands humility and courage; qualities underrepresented and undervalued in our society.
Personally, not a day goes by where I don’t say or do something I regret. I’m constantly wishing I had given a better explanation, been more patient or empathetic, demonstrated more concentration, thought things through before acting or put forth more effort. I have big regrets too: ties with friends that I caused to be severed, work that I failed at, skills I should’ve acquired, relationships that I imprudently pursued, relationships that I ruined and places I shouldn’t have gone. I feel like I could list a thousand regrets before pausing to think. At the same time, I am also very grateful to have never made a truly idiotic move that got someone injured or arrested or whatnot. I am able to keep the perspective that the things I regret are relatively minor. Perhaps the most important aspect of making mistakes is minimizing the gravity of the consequences.
I dwell on regrets, too. Just yesterday I was thinking about the time I threw a vacuum cleaner part into the street and forgot to pick it up. That happened at least five years ago.
Often we say we regret doing something but then behave the same way the next time a similar situation arises. Sometimes we don’t regret what we did but regret getting caught. True regret involves understanding the direct consequences of your actions and wishing they had been different than what they were. I think they have to be specific actions, but maybe not. People will say things like, “That’s five years of my life I regret,” and that seems terrible to me. I realize that a regrettable decision on one day can lead to five years (or more) of turmoil, but if you regret the actions of one day and then the next day you regret those actions as well to a degree that you now have two days full of regret, it seems to me you really need to examine the choices you are making in life. Not everything is a mistake; forgetting the brilliant ideas and wonderful times just because there were lousy parts seems an unjust and unnecessary punishment to inflict on ones self.
Many things happen due to misfortune that no decision could have avoided. For example, someone might say, “I regret going to work that day because that’s the day I got into an accident.” That demonstrates a lack of perspective because there’s absolutely no correlation between the action and the consequence. This is the type of regret that there’s no point in having or pondering. Once self-pity is eliminated as an option, there is often nothing left but to accept your fate. It doesn’t make any sense to regret being born, because you weren’t given an alternative option.
I am of the opinion that criticism provides information to learn from while praise is essentially vapid. My main method for learning is by messing up. I’ve never been able or willing to take anyone’s word for anything. Anything everyone else says always seems nonsense to me until I discover for myself that they were right. I am a slow but thorough learner. I sometimes regret being stubborn, but I more often regret taking another’s advice instead of doing the research myself.
When we make a mistake affecting another, the first thing we are taught as children to do is apologize. As adults, we find apologizing excruciatingly difficult. We don’t want others to accurately accuse us of doing things we shouldn’t have done. We would much rather eschew responsibility, shift blame and make excuses. We do these things even when all another wants is an apology, because, ironically, we demand apologies all the time. We think that our shortcomings are justified: we boast of our phobias, using them to relinquish ourselves of duty, instead of using the opportunity to strive to overcome them. At the same time, we find the shortcomings of others ridiculous and inexcusable. We wonder why others are so inept at doing things we would never do ourselves. This is because we live in a society where we are wired to find opponents to destroy instead of relationships to build.
Some people are afraid of making mistakes. I really only have that problem when it concerns social interaction. Because of this, I have been forced (unless I wanted to become a crazy person) to ignore and overcome fear most days of my life. I suppose that is why I consider being afraid something to embrace instead of avoid. I’d rather regret doing something that I thought was the right thing to do than not doing something for fear of failure. Most of the time, I am over-confident and when I blow it am startled by the result, even when it should have been expected.
There’s a quote attributed to Theodore Roosevelt that goes something like, “The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.” People will mull over decisions even when there is literally no way of anticipating the outcome. I’ve witnessed others become completely overwhelmed by something as benign as choosing from a menu even though the only guaranteed way of knowing whether you like a dish or not is by eating it. One can either fight through this fear of the unknown or remain in a small, familiar world. For many, expanding knowledge and experience is less important than avoiding regrets, complications, embarrassment or disrespect.
Life can quickly become unbearable without maintaining our senses of humor and beauty. Your existence might be the most important thing there is, but you just can’t take it too seriously. Playing the “Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda” game gets tedious really fast. It’s prudent to remember that perceiving past mistakes is due to having gained an improved perspective- and improvement is a good thing. Hindsight is a bit like knowing the answer after it is given to you; it’s a lot easier than knowing the answer before it’s revealed but feels like you should have known it all along. It also gives the false impression that we know what the outcome would have been had we altered the past. The fact is we don’t actually know what might have happened had we done things differently.
I played football in seventh and eighth grades. Our team was terrible; we never won a game. There were twelve kids on the team, so another kid and I only had to participate in every other play. My job on offense was to go in from the sideline, relay the next play the coach had given me to the quarterback and then fill in as the weak-side tight-end. For two years, every single play was a running play. The other teams figured this out and would simply rush the quarterback at the snap, bowling over me in the process. Over at the sideline, I mentioned to the coach that the quarterback should throw me a quick screen pass. He decided that wasn’t a good idea. One time, just one time, I wish I had gone into the huddle and told the quarterback to throw me a screen pass, ignoring whichever running play the coach had given me.
Even this example begs the unanswerable question: is it more beneficial to have lived a life having called an audible or to have determined (without concrete evidence) that an audible should have been called? That’s the beauty of regret; it can be a powerful motivator and catalyst for change. If I were to go back and fix a mistake from early in life, when would I have learned to not make that mistake on a subsequent occasion? Another way of addressing the issue is realizing the incalculable influence of our assumptions on our behaviors. Would my distrust of authoritarian demands be as strong today had I opposed them back then, or has the assumption that I should have acted to change the situation been necessary for building my character? (Perhaps I’d watched enough Twilight Zone that it wouldn’t have made a difference either way.)
“Time and tide wait for no man.” There is nothing more calming than watching the ocean, I think in part because it conveys the realization that there is nothing you can do but watch it. In its presence, we are but another grain of sand. The waves are relentlessly unconcerned with where they will land, and both build and destroy with impartiality and impunity. We are not the ocean, but neither are we the sand, for the sand does not care what becomes of itself. Insurmountable obstacles and regrets notwithstanding, we must persevere through life or it loses all meaning. For many, being better off than others is good enough, but basing your successes on the relative suffering of others is demented.
Trying to change the past begs questions; working to change the future finds answers. Nobody likes to make mistakes, but too many people refuse to admit them. When we don’t acknowledge when we’ve goofed and then work towards improving our future behaviors, we remain stuck making the same mistakes over again and wondering why bad things keep happening to us. The only two ways of not having any regrets are by lacking self-awareness or being perfect. Admitting regrets demands humility and courage; qualities underrepresented and undervalued in our society.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
The Importance of Elliott Smith
When I was an audio engineer, I had a subscription to Tape Op magazine. Around 2000, I read an interview with Elliott Smith which intrigued me enough to listen to his latest album. I didn’t like it. Another whiny white male, I thought.
I blaming my reaction on Coldplay, who had just come out with a terrible song called “Yellow,” that was wildly popular for some reason. The lyrics are stupid, trite and unironically nonsensical. Here’s a sample:
I take issue with people and things that are disingenuous. Males have established a long tradition of trying to get in girls’ pants by telling girls what they think they want to hear that really annoys me. The annoying part is that girls actually fall for that crap. So did he jump or did he swim? Obviously he’s flat out lying. When a guy is trying to woo you and instead accidentally calls you a coward and then gives an ultimatum, which he admits is cowardly on his part, my advice is to run away from him. But what do I know. I suppose being a songwriter with no grasp of language doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.
Another thing I don’t understand is chronic depression. What are so many people so sad about? Obviously there are a lot of bad things in life, but they are either within our ability to change or they aren’t, so your options in life are to be confident you can change and hopeful others will. See? There you go- I was just able to solve everybody’s problems with one sentence. With that attitude, it is understandable why white males sobbing over their presumably posh lives tend to annoy me. I am usually a very rational and objective thinker, so I tend to be incredulous that people can’t just get over their petty selves and strive on.
A few years after first dismissing Elliott Smith I heard him again, after moving in with a roommate whose two favorite musicians were Smith and Syd Barrett. I didn’t get the appeal of Barrett when I first heard him either, but just last year I was challenged to listen to the debut Pink Floyd album. I’ve never liked Pink Floyd- pretentious drivel is what I’d call it. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was actually pretty good, though, which caused me to revisit Syd Barrett and find him much more interesting than I’d remembered. It was through this circuitous route that I decided to give Elliott Smith another try.
Smith’s style fits snugly between late Beatles and John Lennon solo. He probably spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (1975). He doesn’t seem to be someone with an extensive musical library, but rather someone who has spent a lot of time shut up alone writing, rewriting and practicing. And that’s the thing about Elliott Smith- after listening to his music, you automatically assume you know everything about the guy. It’s funny to realize that, perhaps, he’s never broken up with a girl he loves; it’s just a topic he enjoys writing songs about. Smith’s songs are so utterly heartfelt, personal and convincing the proposal that they could be just stories seems preposterous.
I’ve had my heart broken by my fair share of girls, but would like to think I’ve never whined about it as much as this guy. In fact, I hope nobody’s taken a break up as hard as Elliott Smith. Holy Christ, dude, get it together. He alternatively blames self for his own inadequacies and spews anger towards his ex. Running together the lyrics from “I Didn’t Understand” and “A Question Mark,” both from XO (1998), makes it pretty obvious that Smith has some maladaptive coping strategies:
…
Even though the subject matter and instrumentation are the same, these two songs have completely different vibes- one is a cappella and the other features a full band, including a peppy baritone sax. It’s almost as if he’s cursed to keep writing on the same topics despite his uncanny ability to write songs that don’t sound derivative. Smith is not oblivious to how extreme his inability to let go and move on comes across. He not only perceives this, but responds to this criticism in a couple songs, including “Southern Belle,” from Elliott Smith (1995):
Smith tends to drown his vocals in either a sea of close harmonic overdubs or a Leslie organ speaker, giving the impression he must be uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice. One wonders whether he is insecure with his talents or in revealing the subject matter. Wrapping the words into this almost surreal cloud forces the listener not only to want to understand the lyrics but pay close attention in order to do so. In the end, the vocal effect provides an honest, distressed and soul-bearing atmosphere that effectively creates contrast on the rare occasion he reveals his actual naked, lonely voice.
The production sensibility is one way in which Smith informs the audience that the words must be personally meaningful. Another is by the unembellished frankness of the lyrics themselves.
This song in particular reads to me very much like a Charles Bukowski poem. Bukowski is the type of poet who can convince you the only solace in life is at a horse race, even though you’ve never been to a racetrack. One thing Bukowski is masterful at is putting details into poems that wouldn’t really make sense to be there unless they were true, and this is a concept that Smith also exploits. But while Bukowski is resolute and defiant, Elliott Smith is obsessed with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. He is a staunch pessimist.
I, on the other hand, am an optimist. Some might think I’m not because I tend to be overly critical, but that is precisely because I seek out the best of the best. I am wired to value productivity, and neither negativity nor dwelling on the past are useful. I dislike time-wasting and have never understood procrastinators. I’m easily amused and can entertain myself effortlessly. I'm a pretty normal guy. I don’t have much in common with Elliott Smith.
Figure 8 would be Smith’s final studio album. The first track from it makes us acutely aware that his mental issues may be far worse than we imagine:
This song, which is played in a haunting minor key and includes disorienting bridges, is downright frightening, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I like to read about serial killers because their mindset is fascinatingly unfamiliar. This distinguishes "Son of Sam" from perhaps my favorite Elliott Smith song, "Between The Bars," from either/or (1997). In this song, he makes the first person character a sort of tragic, desperate wanna-be hero trying to save the wrong person and making unkeepable and ill-advised promises.
I like this song because, unlike most of Smith’s work, I can actually relate to it. I bring this up specifically because I think one of the most wonderful things about art is also something we need to be wary of- we tend to embrace art we can relate to and reject art we can’t. And that’s why Elliott Smith is important- he is a veritable window into mental illness. He acts as a voice for millions of people battling depression especially and mental diseases in general. Despite the fact that I have a BA in psychology and have dated a couple crazies, I don’t know much about mental illness. As un-hip as it is to admit it, I’m relatively sane. While those of us that don’t struggle with these issues tend to imagine them not dissimilar to how we feel upon finding expired milk in the fridge, Elliott Smith tells us how it really feels- and we should all be taking notes and learning from him for the betterment of human kind.
People who feel like Elliott Smith have lost access to perspective. Programs utilizing psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers trained to help these people regain an undistorted viewpoint are severely under-funded in America. In fact, our mental health care system ranks last among first world countries. In many ways, we have simply written off mental illness as an inevitable and unavoidable part of our culture. As a result, millions suffering from mental illness end up becoming homeless, abused or violent.
Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest on October 21st, 2003. They were probably self-inflicted.
I blaming my reaction on Coldplay, who had just come out with a terrible song called “Yellow,” that was wildly popular for some reason. The lyrics are stupid, trite and unironically nonsensical. Here’s a sample:
I swam across
I jumped across for you
Oh what a thing to do
'Cause you were all yellow
I drew a line
I drew a line for you
Oh what a thing to do
And it was all yellow
I take issue with people and things that are disingenuous. Males have established a long tradition of trying to get in girls’ pants by telling girls what they think they want to hear that really annoys me. The annoying part is that girls actually fall for that crap. So did he jump or did he swim? Obviously he’s flat out lying. When a guy is trying to woo you and instead accidentally calls you a coward and then gives an ultimatum, which he admits is cowardly on his part, my advice is to run away from him. But what do I know. I suppose being a songwriter with no grasp of language doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person.
Another thing I don’t understand is chronic depression. What are so many people so sad about? Obviously there are a lot of bad things in life, but they are either within our ability to change or they aren’t, so your options in life are to be confident you can change and hopeful others will. See? There you go- I was just able to solve everybody’s problems with one sentence. With that attitude, it is understandable why white males sobbing over their presumably posh lives tend to annoy me. I am usually a very rational and objective thinker, so I tend to be incredulous that people can’t just get over their petty selves and strive on.
A few years after first dismissing Elliott Smith I heard him again, after moving in with a roommate whose two favorite musicians were Smith and Syd Barrett. I didn’t get the appeal of Barrett when I first heard him either, but just last year I was challenged to listen to the debut Pink Floyd album. I’ve never liked Pink Floyd- pretentious drivel is what I’d call it. “Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was actually pretty good, though, which caused me to revisit Syd Barrett and find him much more interesting than I’d remembered. It was through this circuitous route that I decided to give Elliott Smith another try.
Smith’s style fits snugly between late Beatles and John Lennon solo. He probably spent a lot of time listening to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks (1975). He doesn’t seem to be someone with an extensive musical library, but rather someone who has spent a lot of time shut up alone writing, rewriting and practicing. And that’s the thing about Elliott Smith- after listening to his music, you automatically assume you know everything about the guy. It’s funny to realize that, perhaps, he’s never broken up with a girl he loves; it’s just a topic he enjoys writing songs about. Smith’s songs are so utterly heartfelt, personal and convincing the proposal that they could be just stories seems preposterous.
I’ve had my heart broken by my fair share of girls, but would like to think I’ve never whined about it as much as this guy. In fact, I hope nobody’s taken a break up as hard as Elliott Smith. Holy Christ, dude, get it together. He alternatively blames self for his own inadequacies and spews anger towards his ex. Running together the lyrics from “I Didn’t Understand” and “A Question Mark,” both from XO (1998), makes it pretty obvious that Smith has some maladaptive coping strategies:
Thought you'd be looking for the next in line to love
Then ignore, put out, and put away
And so you'd soon be leaving me alone like I'm supposed to be
Tonight, tomorrow, and every day
There's nothing here that you'll miss
I can guarantee you this is a cloud of smoke
Trying to occupy space
What a fucking joke
What a fucking joke
I waited for a bus to separate the both of us
And take me off, far away from you
'Cause my feelings never change a bit
I always feel like shit
I don't know why, I guess that I just do
You once talked to me about love
And you painted pictures of a Never-Never land
And I could have gone to that place
But I didn't understand
I didn't understand
I didn't understand
…
I got a question mark
You got a need to always take some shot in the dark
I don't have to make pretend the picture I'm in is totally clear
You think that all things have a way they ought to appear
'Cause you know you know you know you know
You know you know you know you know
You know I don't
I dream
Don't know what you mean
Panic called you out and took you in
Giving you an easy game and letting you win
Giving back a little hatred now to the world
'Cause it treated you bad
'Cause you couldn't keep the great unknown from making you mad
'Cause you know you know you know you know
You know you know you know you know
You know I don't
I dream
Don't know what you mean
Said your final word, but honesty and love could have kept us together
One day you'll see it's worth it after all
If you ever want to say you're sorry you can give me a call
Even though the subject matter and instrumentation are the same, these two songs have completely different vibes- one is a cappella and the other features a full band, including a peppy baritone sax. It’s almost as if he’s cursed to keep writing on the same topics despite his uncanny ability to write songs that don’t sound derivative. Smith is not oblivious to how extreme his inability to let go and move on comes across. He not only perceives this, but responds to this criticism in a couple songs, including “Southern Belle,” from Elliott Smith (1995):
Killing a southern belle
Is all you know how to do
That, and give other people hell
It's what they expect from you too
But I wouldn't have you how you want
I don't want to walk around
I don't even want to breathe
I live in a southern town
Where all you can do is grit your teeth
But I wouldn't have you how you want
How come you're not ashamed of what you are?
And sorry that you're the one she got?
Ain't nobody looking now
Nobody nothing's said
No one's about to shout
Nobody's seeing red
But I wouldn't have you how you want
You're killing a southern belle
Killing a southern belle
Killing a southern belle
Smith tends to drown his vocals in either a sea of close harmonic overdubs or a Leslie organ speaker, giving the impression he must be uncomfortable with the sound of his own voice. One wonders whether he is insecure with his talents or in revealing the subject matter. Wrapping the words into this almost surreal cloud forces the listener not only to want to understand the lyrics but pay close attention in order to do so. In the end, the vocal effect provides an honest, distressed and soul-bearing atmosphere that effectively creates contrast on the rare occasion he reveals his actual naked, lonely voice.
The production sensibility is one way in which Smith informs the audience that the words must be personally meaningful. Another is by the unembellished frankness of the lyrics themselves.
"Clementine" from Elliott Smith
They're waking you up to close the bar
The street's wet, you can tell by the sound of the cars
The bartender's singing "Clementine"
While he's turning around the Open sign
"Dreadful sorry, Clementine"
Though you're still her man
It seems a long time gone
Maybe the whole thing's wrong
What if she thinks so but just didn't say so?
You drank yourself into slow-mo
Made an angel in the snow
You did anything to pass the time
And keep that song out of your mind
"Oh my darling
Oh my darling
Oh my darling Clementine
Dreadful sorry, Clementine"
This song in particular reads to me very much like a Charles Bukowski poem. Bukowski is the type of poet who can convince you the only solace in life is at a horse race, even though you’ve never been to a racetrack. One thing Bukowski is masterful at is putting details into poems that wouldn’t really make sense to be there unless they were true, and this is a concept that Smith also exploits. But while Bukowski is resolute and defiant, Elliott Smith is obsessed with missed opportunities and unfulfilled potential. He is a staunch pessimist.
“No Name No. 5” from Figure 8 (2000)
Got bitten fingernails and a head full of the past
And everybody's gone at last
Sweet, sweet smile that's fading fast
'Cause everybody's gone at last
Don't get upset about it
No not anymore
There's nothing wrong that wasn't wrong before
Had a second alone with a chance let pass
And everybody's gone at last
Well I hope you're not waiting
Waiting 'round for me
'Cause I'm not going anywhere, obviously
Got a broken heart and your name on my cast
And everybody's gone at last
Everybody's gone at last
I, on the other hand, am an optimist. Some might think I’m not because I tend to be overly critical, but that is precisely because I seek out the best of the best. I am wired to value productivity, and neither negativity nor dwelling on the past are useful. I dislike time-wasting and have never understood procrastinators. I’m easily amused and can entertain myself effortlessly. I'm a pretty normal guy. I don’t have much in common with Elliott Smith.
Figure 8 would be Smith’s final studio album. The first track from it makes us acutely aware that his mental issues may be far worse than we imagine:
"Son of Sam"
Something's happening, don't speak too soon
I told the boss off and made my move
Got nowhere to go
Son of Sam, son of the shining path, the clouded mind
The couple killer each and every time
I'm not uncomfortable, feeling weird
Lonely leered, options disappeared
But I know what to do
Son of Sam, son of a doctor's touch, a nurse's love
Acting under orders from above
King for a day!
Son of Sam, son of the shining path, the clouded mind
The couple killer running out of time
Shiva opens her arms now to make sure I don't get too far
I may talk in my sleep tonight 'cause I don't know what I am
I'm a little like you, more like Son of Sam
This song, which is played in a haunting minor key and includes disorienting bridges, is downright frightening, and I don’t quite know what to make of it. I like to read about serial killers because their mindset is fascinatingly unfamiliar. This distinguishes "Son of Sam" from perhaps my favorite Elliott Smith song, "Between The Bars," from either/or (1997). In this song, he makes the first person character a sort of tragic, desperate wanna-be hero trying to save the wrong person and making unkeepable and ill-advised promises.
Drink up baby, stay up all night
With the things you could do
You won't but you might
The potential you'll be
That you'll never see
The promises you'll only make
Drink up with me now
And forget all about
The pressure of days
Do what I say
And I'll make you okay
And drive them away
The images stuck in your head
People you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
Drink up baby, look at the stars
I'll kiss you again between the bars
Where I'm seeing you there
With your hands in the air
Waiting to finally be caught
Drink up one more time
And I'll make you mine
Keep you apart
Deep in my heart
Separate from the rest
Where I like you the best
And keep the things you forgot
The people you've been before
That you don't want around anymore
That push and shove and won't bend to your will
I'll keep them still
I like this song because, unlike most of Smith’s work, I can actually relate to it. I bring this up specifically because I think one of the most wonderful things about art is also something we need to be wary of- we tend to embrace art we can relate to and reject art we can’t. And that’s why Elliott Smith is important- he is a veritable window into mental illness. He acts as a voice for millions of people battling depression especially and mental diseases in general. Despite the fact that I have a BA in psychology and have dated a couple crazies, I don’t know much about mental illness. As un-hip as it is to admit it, I’m relatively sane. While those of us that don’t struggle with these issues tend to imagine them not dissimilar to how we feel upon finding expired milk in the fridge, Elliott Smith tells us how it really feels- and we should all be taking notes and learning from him for the betterment of human kind.
People who feel like Elliott Smith have lost access to perspective. Programs utilizing psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers trained to help these people regain an undistorted viewpoint are severely under-funded in America. In fact, our mental health care system ranks last among first world countries. In many ways, we have simply written off mental illness as an inevitable and unavoidable part of our culture. As a result, millions suffering from mental illness end up becoming homeless, abused or violent.
Elliott Smith died from two stab wounds to the chest on October 21st, 2003. They were probably self-inflicted.
“Oh Well, Okay" from XO
Here's the silhouette, the face always turned away
The bleeding color gone to black, dying like a day
Couldn't figure out what made you so unhappy
Shook your head to say no, no, no
And stopped for a spell
And stayed that way
Oh well, okay
I got pictures, I just don't see it anymore
Climbing hour upon hour through a total bore
With the one I keep, where it never fades
In the safety of a pitch-black mind
An airless cell that blocks the day
Oh well, okay
If you get a feeling next time you see me
Do me a favor and let me know
'Cause it's hard to tell
It's hard to say
Oh well, okay
Oh well, okay
Oh well, okay
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