A Splendid Sparsity

Up until about 8 years ago, I fancied myself a songwriter.  Until that time, I was pretty happy about the songs I was writing.  They accomplished what I had intended for them to accomplish.

But then I started running into a series of songs that I perceived to be infinitely better than mine.  They were, for one thing, more general than mine.  This allows the listener to imagine that the song is about him.  But it wasn't just that.

As I began to dissect some of these songs, usually in order to learn to sing and play them, they seemed to fall apart in my hands.  When I wrote out the lyrics on a page, there seemed to be almost nothing there.  And yet, when sung, they gave me goose flesh.  They almost made my heart stand still.  I still don't really understand this type of songwriting magic very well.

But I can give you instances of it.  This is Good To See You, from Neil Young.  (I'll feature another song some other day.)

Good to see you
Good to see you again
Good to see your face again
Good to see you

I'm the suitcase in your hallway
I'm the footsteps on your floor
When I'm lookin' down on you
I feel like I know what my life is for

Good to see you
Good to see you again
Good to see your face again
Good to see you

I've been down on the endless highway
I passed on the solid line
Now at last I'm home to you
I feel like making up for lost time

Good to see you
Good to see you again
Good to see your face again
It's good to see you

Behold the economy of words used by Neil there!  My jaw just drops when I look at this.  Look how much room he leaves for the listener to do the work of putting together the story, instead of finishing every corner himself.  Here is just one phrase I love:

I passed on the solid line

Now, if I had written this line, it would have said something like: "I drove home real fast."  But look what he does:  He paints an entire picture of the driver as eager lover, taking the risk of passing when the line on the road tells him not to.  He badly wants to be back home to his beloved.  You can just see his car swerve out around a slow truck, blow past it, and fall back in line.  And Young tells us this, paints this entire scene, in six (6!) words.

And that is why I don't write songs any more.

My Version of Chesterton's "Double Spiritual Need"

In the first chapter of his landmark work Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton set forth a "double spiritual need" which is common among men and which, by his reckoning, only the orthodox Christian faith can adequately answer:

I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas.  I always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool.  I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.  This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?  How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour of being our own town?

To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and this is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance.

Lately, it has occurred to me that I also have a dual spiritual need, which has only been adequately fulfilled, really, since I have been Anglican.  I thought at first that it was separate from and parallel to the dual need expressed by Chesterton, but now I think it is merely a specialized case of it.

It is this:  I need to feel myself a rebel in some sense, and part of a conspiracy.  At the same time, I need to feel that my actions are righteous, and that I am fighting on the side of the angels.

This need is, of course, precisely delineated and answered in our Lord's command, recorded in the 10th Chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel:

... be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.

Because the world is currently captive to a usurper and his forces, we can easily get our fill of rebellion, insurgency, and adventure.  Yet, because we fight for the true King, we can be comfortable in the knowledge that our actions (if we are good soldiers) are ratified by Heaven.

I have felt this double need, simultaneously fulfilled, many dozens of times since becoming an Anglican.  I felt it particularly when I was still organizationally linked to that great Satan, The Episcopal Church.  We traditionalists were always embattled, almost always losing, rebellious to the death (if necessary) against the Zeitgeist, but at the same time, innocent as doves regarding the commandments of God.  I don't know any other feeling which satisfies me as much.

On Being Stuck at a Local Optimum

It seems that my seven years of engineering school were not a total waste.  For they have given me ways to think about life's problems that might otherwise not have occured to me, such as the distinction between global and local optima.  ("Optima" is the plural of "optimum", which means "the best" place.)

My contention (from looking at my own life and the lives of others) is that we humans often get stuck at a local optimum, and that we lack the faith or the initiative to seek for the global optimum.  There are reasons for this.

In the accompanying plot, the vertical axis could be anything you seek in life (e.g., happiness), or anything you wish to eliminate from your life (e.g., fear).  I have drawn the curve so that the lower you are on the curve, the better things are for you.  The horizontal axis indicates things in your life over which you have direct or indirect control.

Picture yourself at the point labelled "Local Optimum".  As far as you can tell, things are going as well as can be expected.  How do you know this?  You know it by sensing the gradient (or slope) to the left and right of your position.  If you move to the left, the curve goes up (meaning: your life gets a bit worse).  If you move to the right, the curve also goes up (your life gets worse in that direction also).  So, it seems logical to stay where you are.  Right?

Well, perhaps not.  There may be some much better point (the Global Optimum) where your life would be much happier.  But there are two problems:

(1)  You probably cannot see the Global Optimum.  You may only be able to see for a short distance in either direction from your present location.

(2)  Even if you know it is there, your life has to get worse (or at least, harder) before it gets better.  There will be sacrifice (moving far up on the curve) before things begin to improve.

Of these two problems, I think that the first is by far the worse.  Without a vision of a better place, it is not easy (and, perhaps, not advisable) to set off to find it.  This calls for faith, and for the vision of another, who can see both your position and the Global Optimum.  The second problem is still daunting for some.  One knows of and believes in the existence of the Global Optimum (or even some better Local Optimum), but one seems unable to gather the required strength to climb the hills necessary to reach it.  This part calls for courage.

Maybe you fancy yourself to be at your life's Global Optimum; I do not.  Today, let us catch a vision of how our lives could be better, more glorifying to God.  And let us start climbing.

Reimagining Ezekiel's Wheels

I was driving down 8 Mile Road, which I do every weekday afternoon, and I saw one of these very popular "donk" vehicles:

You see them all the time in Detroit, of course, but this time something was sparked in my mind, because it had that kind of "spinner" wheel, the kind that looks stationary even when the car is moving.

I was suddenly reminded of this passage from the 1st Chapter of Ezekiel:

This was the appearance and structure of the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a wheel.  As they moved, they would go in any one of the four directions the creatures faced; the wheels did not turn about as the creatures went. Their rims were high and awesome, and all four rims were full of eyes all around.

So, clearly, what Ezekiel seems to have (fore)seen is one of these donk cars with 22" or 24" rims.

Battle of The Rowans.

I wanted to do an experiment to determine who has had more impact on the world:  Rowan Atkinson (probably known to you as "Mr. Bean"), or Rowan Williams (the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury).

So, I went to Google, and typed "rowan" into the search field.  The "suggestions" that Google automatically displays are arrayed in order of popularity, with the most popular searches first.

These are the results:

rowan atkinson
rowan university
rowan miranda
rowan tree
rowan williams

The implications are clear:  People deem Rowan Atkinson to be of more importance than Rowan Williams.  Why is this?

I'm sure that there are several reasons, but one of them may be this:  That Rowan Atkinson, the comic, stands for something clear and definite, while Rowan Williams does not.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, Rowan Atkinson:

My Anti-Serenity Prayer

You all have heard of the Serenity Prayer, the short form of which is:

God, grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

But looking at the Psalms of David, I have to believe that God wants us to say what we really feel when we pray.

Therefore, I have composed my own Anti-Serenity Prayer:

God, I find that almost everything needs change.
I confess that I find much in Your world to be intolerably bad.
Therefore, grant that today I can be such a badass (God being my helper) that I can change anything and everything.

Two Other Poems of Mine

These poems are three years old.  I hadn't published them on this blog before, however.


Adam's Joy

Our protoplastic parents ventured east,
And said farewell to Eden at the gate,
With fresh-named animals in vast array
(Those newly undomesticated beasts).
They wondered at this young world's future fate,
And Eve and her mourning were the ninth day.

Though outwardly his brow was dewed with sweat,
Young Adam's visage shone with inner light,
Because the very God who bade him leave
(Whose property is never to forget)
Remembered his petition in the night:
Take Eden, gracious Lord, but leave me Eve.

© 2007, Paul Erlandson



This one, I wrote for my wife:

Attraction

When other poets (e.g., Shakespeare, Donne)
Compare their brilliant lovers to the sun,
'Tis heat they feel and blinding light they see.
But I would praise my lover's gravity.

A foolish planet wandering away
I've traced unruly orbits of decay.
But even when my homing sense is dull,
No other star can lure me by her pull.

I strain her faithful satellite to be,
Though every planet has his apogee.
But perigee returns, her strength still there.
I find it to be more than inverse square,

Rewarding always my proximity
With body fixed and fair and heavenly.

© 2007, Paul Erlandson