Postmodern Toolbox- May 15, 2008 -- Entry 4

Gouge, gouge, gouge. This class isn’t anything like I thought it would be when I signed up for it! I thought it would help me deal with the relativism at ODU, but it’s obviously also conducting major surgery on the inside. I feel a lot is being dealt with, but it’s hard to know exactly what is happening. Something is stirred up, but I have no idea what this is leading to.

Anna spoke of going in for a job and then getting a much higher one which wasn’t creative, but that the Lord obviously wanted her to take. Once she did He showed her that her career would not be all about what she wanted to do, but what He wants her to do—and that she needs to learn how to take instructions. In the process, she was able to get to the next level.

She also talked about how the Lord shut the door on that project—not the board members. It was the Lord’s decision that the project not go through because Anna wasn’t ready- it would have done harm—maybe to her, maybe to others.. regardless of the particulars of why, the Lord said she wasn’t ready. That story made me think of that Pink Floyd project I turned down way back when. It was totally what I wanted to do—animate to music—and then the thing that surfaces was music I spiritually couldn’t handle at the time. There’s so much to that story but the bottom line is that I knew I could NOT take the job in faith. Whatever is not done in faith is sin.

I know I did the right thing, but what are the desires of my heart for unless they are a barometer which registers what the Lord would like me to do with my life? I give Him the right to change my desires—and sometimes He does. But music always comes back to me… England always comes back to me… Psychedelic music as well.

When Anna talked about Truth in music and doing music that comes from within, it’s obvious that much secular music is more truthful than much Christian music. Sure, the Lord can use it, but I don’t resonate with it.

What I hear in a lot of British psychedelic music is not rebellion and drugs, but rather a search for transcendence. A lot of the California stuff though has drugs, rebellion and odd spiritual connections that make me feel all garbled.

When Anna talked about working as a VP of Design and yet she wasn’t really doing the creative work, it made me think about my situation straddling the creative and the academic. For the past few years, I’ve been able to rise out of the spiritual problems I had with writing in the past and I’d like to continue. But my job would like me to get a PhD… and so I chose English, so I could study British concept albums (albums with longer-form narratives) as the texts to analyze. And now I find that ODU will be offering a PhD in Digital Media program which has a track specifically called “Culture, Sound and Narrative.” That sounds so perfect for studying concept albums, but I’m concerned about the academic papers I’ll have to write. I’d rather just boil down what I find in a script… But maybe the degree will get me special access.

Oh well—enough about that. I’m just going to proceed one course at a time.

As for “300,” it was a bit difficult to get over the overblown stylings. This was grand opera without the singing! I’m not a girly girl, but this film was so filled with testosterone that it was almost comical to me (what I saw of it anyway). But, of course that isn’t why we were watching it. There are biblical lessons to be learned from the scenes we saw. If we’re not fit for battle and we’re not built for it, then that must mean that the Lord has other things for us to do.

To be honest, I have a distaste for the idea of spiritual warfare and having to engage in fights. Granted, it has nothing to do with what I want to do, but how God has designed things to work. I’ve got to get with the program because there is no neutral position. I’m on God’s side or NOT. So instead of getting my butt kicked, I’ve got to get closer to the Lord. Holiness is required of a warrior-priest. There is no other choice.

“The Balloon” reading was OK… What I got out of it was that the balloon was a metaphor for a type of thinking or art or ideology (I’m sure it could mean whatever you want it to mean). The audience walks away with their own meanings from under its presence. What I found particularly interesting was that no one was really REALLY questioning the balloon’s presence in a way that I thought a more honest appropriate response; no one was trying to impact it, move it or even pop it. They initially found it a novelty, but just sort of looked at it, walked on it, touched it, and ultimately accepted it as usual. Yet it was obscuring their view of the sky in that part of town. Why did they do nothing about it? Especially since some “reported feeling, constrained, a ‘heavy feeling.’”

I thought it was funny where it said “The apparent purposelessness of the balloon was vexing (as was the fat that it was “there at all). Had we painted, in great letters, “LABORATORY TESTS PROVE, or ‘18% MORE EFFECTIVE” on the sides of the balloon, this difficult would have been circumvented--” As if an easy way to create a perceived meaning for the balloon would be to simply imply that the balloon had a commercial purpose.