A Break from the Weight of Things -or- My Blog Seems Too Sad and Serious Lately and Needed Something to Cheer it Up

I just finished Dave and Hogan’s book, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven but Nobody want to Die or (the eschatology of bluegrass). You must read this. It articulates some deep life things that need conversation and need to be discussed.

I still do no understand this life. How can so much good and so much bad coexist? Crowder and Hogan discuss this as “the weight of things”. Given my predisposition for the extremes of sadness and joy, I could (and have) fill(ed) many pages and pieces of blogging web space with reflections on the sadness and the joy of life. In fact, the last post (prior to starting Dave and Hogan’s book) reeked with the same “weight” of things. I think it is good to think about this and talk about this, but I also believe in taking breaks, and that is what this post is. Inspired by Craig Nash’s blog of songs playing on his ipod, I want to recommend some songs that I am loving right now. This is just fun and a great waste of the platform that internet blogging provides, and I believe in sometimes wasting things, particularly time. So take a moment to let your time be wasted, and mine, and take a gander at this list of songs that I can’t help but turn up loud and enjoy.

The following entries will be in the following formula:

Song – Artist – Album – Commentary

Gone – Kanye West – Late Registration – “We strivin’ home, we ride on chrome…” I dare you to not nod your head.

Drive Slow – Kanye West – Late Registration – “If you ridin’ around the city with nowhere to go, drive slow homey, Live today because tomorrow you never know…” This, plus H-town’s Paul Wall throws in a little Dirty South love. It will literally make you want to drive slow… and turn on hazard lights.

Roses – Kanye West – Late Registration – “I smile, the roses come to see me, and I can’t wait for a sunny day (I’m seeing it through your eyes), can’t wait for the clouds to break. Oh, who brings the sunshine?” This song is about family, community, disease, death, and hope. If you’ve been there, you get it.

Tock Tick – Kurt Vonnegut & Simon Heselev – Tock Tick CD Single – Basically Kurt Vonnegut reading an excerpt from Slaughterhouse Five to some contemplative music. It’s about being unstuck in time and watching World War II bombing raids backwards… it is absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite parts of the book. “German fighter planes flew at them backwards and sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen…”

Mathematics – Mos Def – Black on Both Sides – “Push too hard and even numbers got limits. Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: the million other straws underneath it. It’s all mathematics.” For the “fight the power” in us all.

D.O.W.N. – Dead Prez – RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta – “We comrades we struggle, through any trouble. Sacrifice my life in combat for ya. So you know I gotta love ya, I’m down for my brothas and sistas.” Some of you will understand this. You know who you are.

Pavement Tune – The Frames – Set List – “So let me take you by the hand, and lead you through this troubled mind…” One of the best live songs I’ve ever heard… recorded.

You Got Me – The Roots – Things Fall Apart – “If you were worried ‘bout where I been or who I saw or what club I went to with my homies, baby don’t worry you know that you got me.” Welcome to the Roots. You are addicted.

How’s It Gonna Be – Third Eye Blind – Blue – Third Eye Blind still kicks ass. Every song. I don’t know why.

Chicago – Sufjan Stevens – Little Miss Sunshine Soundtrack – “You came to take us, all things go, all things go, to recreate us, all things grow, all things grow…” I’m new to Sufjan, and I think his name is ridiculously funny. So far I love every song I’ve heard.

How It Ends – Devotchka – Little Miss Sunshine Soundtrack – I’ve written a whole blog on this song several months ago, complete with lyrics. I just want to reiterate how amazing it is.

Sick and Tired – Nappy Roots – Wooden Leather – “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” An anthem for all those who have no money or are sick or frustrated or stressed or tired. They say what you want to.

Turn these on and listen to them at ridiculously high volumes. Even if they sound crazy, give them a try, you may find out you like them. Thanks for wasting time with me.

The Battle in Our Bones -or- Please God, Give Us Another Chance and Make Things Like They Were At The Beginning Again, Like It Was For Adam and Eve

If you watched TV yesterday, you saw images of towers falling, dust clouds, weary people, and warfare. You were bathed in these images, for better or for worse.

One look at these images and we see the amazing tension of being human. In those images, and in the minutia of our days we are confronted with a complexity that we have yet to be able to fully explain, despite our best efforts, and our more entertaining efforts (thanks Freud! You make learning fun!).

Somewhere in this mass of bones and flesh is the capacity to do something heroic. For me, there is no more powerful image from September 11th than the heroism that sent regular people made of flesh and bone into falling buildings made of rock and metal. All of this for strangers; other piles of flesh and bone. These are some of the most powerful images in human history. “No greater love has a man than this; that he would lay down his life for his friends.”

Somewhere inside of us, we resonate with the deepest capacity of love. There is some primordial thing that builds up inside of our chests and stomachs that tells us to love at all costs. Love selflessly and foolishly. Love so much that you would run into falling rocks and metal. Love so much that you cease to exist in flesh and bone. And when those ideas and those words cause us to hold our breath and close our eyes, we feel something. We can reach back through our blood to the first man and first woman, and know that something in that blood was around when all was right in the world. When love was the only law. There is some strand of DNA, some cell structure, some splice of some gene in our bodies that knows that all of this is so close to being right.

We want so badly that real, first Love. Not the shadows of love, but the Love that was our first law. We die for the idea of that love. We die for each other.

But we are sick. Our bones ache. Our bodies fail. Tired limbs longing for rest.

Things are not how they were then, in the beginning. Our own bodies, bones and flesh, betray us. We are a world full of decay and disease. We can never be settled, and we can never breathe easy.

Complications come in waves. How can we love selflessly and freely when our own bodies will not be well? Or when we must dig and sweat and work in order to fill our stomachs? Or when we must pay bills and fulfill obligations? Or when we are faced with the reality that our flesh and bones are fragile, and always threatened by the reality of death?

This is the tension we must live in. A tension between the way things should be still, and the way things are. We try to do our best. There is hope, if we choose to have hope. There is hope that it won’t always be so hard and one day the complications will fade away. There is hope that there is an eternity offered to us that invites us to love selflessly and complication-free always.

For now, all we have are moments. We must do our best with these moments, We must mimic our eternity as best we can. We must try to listen to that thing deep within us that makes us love selflessly, and try to ignore the pain in our bones, and all that isn’t right.


God, we are slaves to bones and flesh. Our bodies are fragile, sick, and weak. Death is always present, threatening and mocking us. Help us to listen to that part of us that is right and good, the part deep within us that tells us to love with all we’ve got. Remind us of our hope, and help us to live in it. Keep our bodies from sickness, and make us well again. And may we all be heroic and selfless with our love no matter how much it may cost us. Amen.