GET UP!

A few weeks ago I joined the beginning of a local chapter of a larger group, Singing Resistance. Born from the movement of locals in Minneapolis during the ICE disturbances, it has become a larger, more broad-based movement that seeks to make nationwide the differences made in that instance. 

I am not a good singer, not even much of a mediocre singer. My wife often tells me she can't tell what I'm singing even if she listens. But I was told decades ago I had a voice for protest songs, that I make up in volume what I lack in talent, and I'm content with that. 

We learned several songs which we will use when deployed. The one that stuck most with me is called "Sola El Pueblo, Salva El Pueblo," meaning "Only the people will save the people." Per Francis Russell, it is a phrase grown out of Puerto Rico after the disasters of Hurricane Maria and privatization of electricity and distribution. Perhaps the greatest symbol of the US response to this was the infamous photo op of trump tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd. 

A five man singing group called Peace Poets put it to an a capella tune and added another line; "And if one of us falls, we all rise up!" It's this image I want to focus on. 

One of my favorite punk songs is "Get Up" by Sleater-Kinney. Released at the very end of the millennium, it's come to mean more to me as the years wear on. That charge, "Get up!", strikes a chord in my soul time after time. The song's lyrics, credit for which is shared by the three members, cut through a miasma of despair with the refrain.

A large part of why it's remained so resonant with me is the video to it by Miranda July. Here is blogger Jovana Babovic running down the origin of the video. "The video for “Get Up” was a collaborative effort between the producer, the band, and their fans. The vision for the video, as guitarist Carrie Brownstein explained, “was Miranda July’s interpretation of our song.” The band invited friends and fans to star as extras and, on the day of the shoot, everyone assembled in a field outside Olympia. The band’s publicist Julie Butterfield remembered that filming stated early in the morning, around seven, while it was still cold and frosty outside. For drummer Janet Weiss, the experience was overwhelmingly positive. “It was fun,” she told the zine Rockrgrl. More than that, the band was pleased with the video because, as they described it, it was provocative rather than cliché."

The video, if you have never seen it, is simple in its execution, its effects, and its black and white coloring. Take a moment to watch it. See if you agree with Pitchfork's Julianne Escobido Shepherd who calls it Sleater-Kinney's best video. 

[It] is a black-and-white motif of women walking through a field, the evergreens of Oregon piercing the sky behind them. They are holding hands; as they walk through the grass, they pick Weiss, Tucker and Brownstein off the ground, as their warm notes and high-hat hits seem to cloak the specks of light in the lens. Shots of meteors flash in and out. The images are an evocative metaphor for Sleater-Kinney's career: leg-ups for downtrodden women; hope, promise, and humor through ingenuity and virtuosity; a coalition of ideas without bounds. The video ends with a hot pink cartoon supernova. Brownstein looks up in awe. Their impact fans out.

What would I add to that? That the image of women crossing a field holding hands and bodily lifting others off the ground, those others then joining the line, is a powerful and mesmerizing one. It's one of the best impulses of the Beloved Community, the act of lifting another and continuing forward. I would also add that the final shot reinforces that, in moving forward, we will always come across more fallen. There will always be people in the grass, and there will always be a need for helpers.

Try the Best You Can

 

Much of my time lately has been given over to reading rather than writing. But I did produce a service for my facility folks. It was initially meant to reference May 8th but because of misunderstandings at work among the chaplains, it will actually play this coming Sunday. As a result, I removed most references to the 8th being Mother's Day. That version playing at the facility also is a little different in that I produced essentially a slideshow for during the service that meant I didn't need to appear onscreen. (One of the changes I foresee in sermons is the lessening of the preacher's physical presence and the greater emphasis on his or her voice.) 

Service for May 8

 

Song (“Everybody Hurts”) 

 

Welcome. Welcome to this place where we have nightmares, but we also have dreams. Where we feel confused, but we also understand. Where we are afraid, but we also find courage. You are welcome. Together we make it a holy place.

 

Scripture passage

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. ² He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters, ³ he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. ⁴ Even though I walk through the darkest valley,^[a]  I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. ⁵ You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. ⁶ Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

 

Homily/Meditation

 

          Let’s take that video I showed you by the group REM as a metaphor for what most of us are experiencing. Gridlock. Impasse. Jammed up. For a lot of us, that’s the way life feels often, like just a moment ago we were cruising down the superhighway, windows down, enjoying the swiftly moving air and the excitement that comes with speed. And a moment later, Bam, we’re locked down in traffic. Nowhere we can go. Hundreds of cars in a single boundaried space, like we’re water in a hose and someone has his thumb on the nozzle, just a trickle leaking out so we move forward by inches, a foot an hour.

          The solution for the people in the video is to get out and walk. You see them suddenly, as one, opening their doors and walking together, alone, in pairs, holding hands some of them, in the same direction, like they all know where they’re going. Wouldn’t we give anything to solve our sense of gridlock like that? To just step out of what’s holding us back and walk?

          In reality, of course, even one person getting out of their car and walking away will only make it worse for everyone else. For a solution like this you need everyone deciding beforehand this is how they’ll handle things, and outside a music video there’s not likely to be many people who’ll do that.

          Psalm 23, which I read to you after the video, may be one answer to that. It’s said to be, after The Lord’s Prayer, the most recognized poem in Western literature. Surely its description of comfort resonates with most of us, a sense of bucolic ease and transcendence, imagining us as sheep looked over by a caring shepherd or parent figure, a mother who will refresh and guide us through the harshest, most dangerous terrain, and back into safety and food.

          Pastors often talk about the pastor as the shepherd in this and other psalms. To shepherd also means to guide, and in relation to today, to mother. It’s ironic that the word “shepherd”, has come down to us as a synonym for pastor. Shepherd comes down to us from Old English, as does sheep, two of the few words that have, and a thousand years ago shepherds were buried with wool in their hands to prove their vocation and explain why they hadn’t been to church on Sundays.

          And consider the use that the word sheep has come down to us to mean. Gentle. Oblivious. Obtuse. Stubborn. Most of us experience sheep behind a fence as we zip by on the road. There they are, chewing intently on grass, ignorant as cows. In fact, in the way the portmanteau term “sheeple” has come to us, meaning docile, silly, easily fooled or led, as a derogatory political term for voters on the other side, I don’t think any thinking person would want to have the word sheep associated with them. In a word, sheep are dumb.

          Minnesota sheep farmer Catherine Friend deplores my ignorance. She writes, “Sheep are just steady, reliable, unchanging. Today’s sheep is much like the sheep of 10,000 years ago. They do an excellent job of being exactly what they are…Sheep understand food. They understand danger. They understand caring for their babies…Sheep aren’t born with an understanding of gates or tractors or the knowledge that if they don’t get themselves into the barn right now the farmer will miss the kickoff for the Super Bowl.”

          I want to assert right here that you, by which I mean me too, all of us, can be sheep. Because this is what happens when sheep run into that gridlock I spoke of earlier.

 

Sheep have two flight zones, shaped like cones, that serve as brilliant protection. One cone spreads backward from its head. If you approach a sheep directly from behind or from slightly to the side, you’ll step into this flight zone and the sheep will surge forward…

The sheep has a second flight zone, this cone reaching from its head forward. If you approach a sheep from the front and step inside this zone, will the sheep turn around and run in the opposite direction?

No, she will not…That sheep is going to do the last thing you’d expect. If you step into that forward flight zone, the ewe will shoot straight toward you, a white blurred streak that passes within inches of your useless hands, leaving you standing there, mouth agape. You will both look and feel stupid. You will understand that even though you have more brain cells than a sheep, you have the reaction time of a slug.

         

          We’re all sheep. I don’t mean that as a put down. I’m not talking about sheep as passive but as squirming, lively, noise-making beasts in flight from the problems we’re experiencing, the issues we have, the fears chasing us. There’s no effective shepherd as we’re too fast, too agile, too often do the unexpected thing when we run.

          And boy, do we run. Always running, as babies we hit the ground running, like sheep. And while we may be unable to articulate it, and that’s legitimate because you’ve been running too hard to find words or a definition of what you’re running from or what safety you’re running to.

          Be patient with each other. Breathe. Focus. Be with other people as a nursing mother tending to her children. Walk away from the gridlock however you can and toward one another. Do the best things in the worst times. Try the best you can. But be patient. We are sheep and we are running to find where we belong.

 

 

Prayer

We pause in the stillness to rest for a moment, to quiet ourselves so that we can feel what stirs within us. Each breath draws us closer to the pulse of life and with each exhalation we make room for something new. May we find in this gathering the comfort of those who care. May we encounter patience along our growing edges and compassion in our most tender spots. Here may we find the inspiration and encouragement we need to face our challenges and nurture ourselves. And in the presence of suffering across the globe may we redouble our efforts to practice kindness where we are, with the hope that the light of our actions travels like the light of faraway stars. May our gestures of compassion and generosity seed possibility. May we travel humbly with one another, choosing reconciliation over resentment as we try to live right-sized. When life presses in and shifts us off balance, when pain assails us, when frustration mounts, may the rhythm of our breath steady us and bring us back to a place of gratitude.

 

Benediction

Take comfort, friends. The journey is long. The path is often difficult. And the future is uncertain. But take comfort. Deep down there is another truth. You are not alone.

 

Song (“Optimistic”) 

Under the Pressure

 Not so long ago someone asked me what songs helped me get through the past 4 years. This is one of them. It was released some 3 years before trump's ascension; nonetheless, the music and the video helped me cope. Particularly in the video, from the intensity of Adam Grunciel's staring out the window, to the near blissful looks on Robbie Bennett's face, it has given me some sense of the historicity of this moment, how it will not last, how we can transcend it. It's harder to explain than I thought it might be. That may be what art that helps you through hard times does, gives you reason to hope in unexplainable ways. 

258 candles-one week and one day

As we are coming to the end of waiting for our opportunity to decide this election, and for the wild conjecture and nastiness to be, if not over, then perhaps lessened, we should be looking further both inward and outward to others. This is a wonderful memory by an administrator, someone who most of us are inclined to think of as a bloodless bean-counter, about three victims of shooting violence that focuses on who they were in her life. We should all have such an effect on others.

258 candles-day 21

Sometimes you need to see nothing more than the sheer joy someone takes in the work he or she does to be heartened by humanity.

258 candles-day 74

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: In addition to being kind to one another, we need to be kind with ourselves.

258 candles-days 24-31 (video dump)

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: I have been remiss, I know. I was on vacation, which was lovely, and then returned to all sorts of work-related issues that required my attention. As a result, it's been a week since I posted and today I link to several videos that I'd been holding somewhat in reserve for the future but see the reason to link to now. You may argue that they are manipulative and unrealistic. My argument in return is "So what." Why do we pretend that by behaving badly we're being human?

the strawberry of memory

That's my friend Rich's voice on the soundtrack of this video.  He died earlier this week, a 37 year old victim of heart attack.  The story of the monk and the strawberry, while it has a lot of history behind it, particularly for Buddhists, also has tremendous import for me.  Decades ago, while still taking myself seriously as a bhikku in training, I determined I'd live my life by its lessons.  It held at least equal resonance for Rich.

This is a video he produced for an arts project at the seminary we attended together and I'd seen it twice, once as he prepared it and again in a class on Zen we took.  He is--was, I have to remind myself--an odd person even among the denizens of my congregations.  He had, even by my standards, an interesting life:  born (and, I think, baptized) a Mormon, converter to Unitarian Universalism, converter to fundamental Christianity, converter to Buddhism, graduate of Liberty University.  Volunteer in the military, veteran of the Bosnian Conflict and the First Iraq War.  Chaplain in training.  World traveler.  Learner of Japanese.  His first marriage ended very badly and bitterly and it was in chewing over the bitterness and learning to accept the hot taste of it that we bonded.  His second marriage to a Japanese woman five years his senior he met at a Buddhism conference.ended with his death. They were married a month.

In a week my seminary will hold a memorial for his memory.  We are very good at memorials, fitting for people whose primary purpose, no matter what we tell ourselves, is to comfort the dying and the surviving.  I am trying not to mourn Rich's death but merely, as I think he would express it, to accept it.  He was a good man who got on my nerves at times--he talked too much at times, pressed his presence on people at times, made too much of his Buddhism at times, refused to observe his own faults at times--but do we know anyone (besides ourselves) who don't get on our nerves at times?  That, as much as dying, is a part of life.

The story of the monk and his strawberry doesn't mention anyone acknowledging the monk's death.  But like the rest of us monks need a community; a monk may live a solitary life but one isn't a monk by oneself.   That's what distinguishes her from a hermit.  Someone notices the monk's absence.  Someone has a moment of silence or a brief word for his life and death. Someone recollects the monk's life.  This reflection may be the sweet part of someone's life, the strawberry plucked, not by the monk but by the monk's survivors, enjoyed in contemplation.

If I could play the guitar or sing I would play this for Rich.  But as I can't do either I'll go to the original.

basho & thoreau mashup

UPDATE:  unfortunately, the quality of the size of the video needed in order to make it possible to upload to the net precludes being able to read the copious information and quotes.  for most people, that won't be important, but I'm obviously going to need to learn to do this in another format (or find another way to size videos like this) if what I intend is to make this sort of thing academically presentable.  in the meantime, the music and pictures are pretty.

the past week and a half has been productive for working at various projects, few of which would interest anyone beyond the teachers they're intended for.  but this is the latest and holds a general appeal.  I'm proud of the start.  it's an integrative project comparing basho's and thoreau's status as "zen walkers" and tying that comparison into the uniquely human activity of wandering (at least on 2 feet) with little goal in mind.  I was astonished, in collecting material to use, that there were only 2 videos on google and youtube that had what I wanted--which was video of barefeet walking along a forest path or a paved road--but weren't obviously fetish vids (easily discernable by the person walking stopping every few seconds to arch his feet or show the soles slowly and fully to the camera or stretching her toes luxuriently before the camera as if it was someone's face) so I ended up making my own.  in my ever-evolving quest to make mashups as an academic alternative, I also cited all my quotes; but there's noplace to do such a thing on a mashup, so they appear in a document below the video.

“No One on the Road, No Traveler Crossing the Bridge: 

Basho and Thoreau”

Resource List

Quotations: 

[Format:  Approximate minute—Author Page Number]

1.      1:01:57—Solnit 10.

2.      1:15:80—Quoted in Solnit 33.

3.      2:09:57—Solnit 32.

4.      3:32:17—Solnit 40.

5.      4:54:60—Hass 15.

6.      5:24:47—Thoreau Loc. 18[1].

7.      5:30:23—Hass 11.

8.      5:35:97—JazzoLOG.

9.      7:24:63—Solnit 35-6.

10.  7:31:87—Hass 16.

11.  7:37:33—Thoreau Loc. 17.

12.  8:12:60—Aitken xx.

13.  9:10:87—Thoreau Loc. 7 & 10.

14.  9:58;53—Hass 36.

15.  10:23:33—Thoreau Loc. 20.

16.  10:34:77—Hass 13.

17.  10:48:57—Thoreau Loc. 92.

18.  10:54:70—Hass 45.

19.  11:21:37—Thoreau Loc. 242.

20.  11:31:57—Hass 16.

21.  12:03;20—Thoreau Loc. 430.

Works Cited

·         Aitken, Robert.  1978.  A Zen Wave:  Basho’s Haiku and Zen.  Washington, DC; Shoemaker and Hoard Publishing.

·         Hass, Robert.  1994.  The Essential Haiku:  Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa.  New York, NY; Ecco Books.

·         JazzoLOG.  2008.  “Flag Day.”  Last accessed May 15, 2012, at http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v63/__show_log/_p5/

·         Solnit, Rebecca.  2000.  Wanderlust:  A History of Walking.  New York, NY; Viking Putnam.      

·         Thoreau, Henry David.  2012.  “Walking.” Kindle Edition. 

In addition, I’ve quoted liberally from my sermon “Evolution and Revolution” available in three separate posts on my blog, Too Long in the Wasteland.

·         Sneakers, Bobby.  2011.  “Evolution and Revolution.”  Too Long in the Wasteland. Website. Posts from February 13, 16, and 19.  Last accessed at 2longinthewasteland.blogspot.com on May 15, 2012. 

---

[1] Kindle quotes are found by choosing the “Table of Contents” option at the bottom of the screen, choosing “Location,” and entering the numbers.

 

eight cows: sangha

this is a mashup I made for my class on buddhism.  it's grainier than the original which is apparently a consequence of a 20-minute video being converted to a size suitable for uploading.  we're expected to do a dharma talk on a topic of our choice and I determined mine would be on sangha, mostly because I'd already done a sermon on that about 6 years ago and still had the research.  but when the crunch came, I opted to do a video rather than a sermon and the message of the dharma talk also changed.  I'm rather proud of the outcome, although as I let the class know last night if I'd had my druthers I'd have cut some of the more sensational images out of the iranian sufi video clip since the sufis represented include the more extreme member who expect their faith makes their flesh impenetrable to pain.  thus the hammering of daggers into heads.

still, I like it and I'd have to call it a hit among my classmates who seemed somewhat agog at the presentation.  that may have been amazement at my accomplishment or it may have been astonishment at my gall, I never can tell.  

vagabondage

this is a mashup I've created as part of the worship service during my site visit tomorrow at my CPE facility. my didactic is about homelessness, a condition several of the people on my floor and my site have faced or are afraid they'll face once the move from the current building to a smaller one is begun, and while I've tried and failed to secure a guest speaker on the topic, my supervisor (and my group) argued that, as I had been homeless, I could be a persuasive expert on the subject. I'll emphasize to them, of course, that even within the broad definition of homelessness I was a particularly advantaged individual and that my experiences can't be taken as either the norm or anything like universals. however, as they have pointed out to me, I can speak to the emotional, psychological, and spiritual elements of what it's like to be homeless, and that's a step beyond what they know. I'm looking forward to this with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, as I guess I look forward to everything I suspect I'll enjoy.

worship service mashup

this is a mashup I made both for a teaching presentation for my xian education class and for next monday's CPE worship service. by that time we'll have reached the midpoint in our experience (which ends mid-january). what I wanted to get across was the sense that this is tough but it's an effort we, and our future congregants, will be the better for.

day after labor day

the author of the blog vagabond scholar did a good job yesterday of posting a labor day commentary, better than I might do (although I would connect too to this list). because I was involved instead in shabbating for the weekend, I'm taking the easier way out of simply linking to it. but as a way of making up for this lazy practice, I am reposting 1 of my favorite mashups from a year and a 1/2 ago.

psalm 22 imagined

this is a mashup I've done for worship in tonight's older testament class. it took me roughly 2 hours to do it, a little longer than I'd expected, but I'm happy with the result.

common as mud

I was asked to lead worship for my internship class by presenting a mashup I'd done previously, but I decided at the last minute yesterday that as I had a few hours free I would make an entirely new one focused on the topic for last night's discussion about the difficulties of being a leader during change.

the mashup needed to be about 10 minutes and I had completed the first half by the time I left inver hills for the afternoon, expecting to complete it at united seminary. unfortunately, the wireless system there is always in a state of flux and I was unable to access the internet for new images (I had already uploaded the clip from do the right thing that morning since I knew I would use it), and as a result I was left using a few images and final video already saved to my hard drive. still, I am very happy with the result. not bad for an eleventh hour puttogether whose message was essentially created on the spot.

I want to speak for a moment to the photo of bill and hillary clinton dancing. the emphasis on his muffintop and her cellulite suggest to me that it was not intended to be a flattering picture, but it strikes me as exactly right in its composition and in the attitudes on their faces that these are 2 people who love and respect 1 another and so are a good example of a pair of leaders in the midst of great change. as with mlk, their flaws make them identifiable. leaders involved in great change are seldom plaster saints.

demons

in preparation for an online meeting this afternoon I've prepped a new mashup.
this began life as a compilation of still photos and video clips but I swiftly decided I wanted to use all video. the difficulty I'm running into is how to determine whether a video will be smooth, like most of the clips I use, or jerky, like a few end up. I can't see any difference between them when looking at them online or as they download--it's only after I use them that I discover they jump from frame to frame, almost as if the speed is slowed or a few frames get tossed out between them. not a dilemma I've figured out.

master-and-servent

I've been reading sharpe's porterhouse blue since thursday and I'm nearly done--about 80 pages left. it's not the worst example of a campus novel I've read--that would have to be prose's the blue angel--but it doesn't really have a lot to recommend it. it's a snapshot on a moment in british academic history when the old public (by which are meant private) schools shifted from the way they'd done things for centuries to reflect the changing tastes and mores of the younger generation of the late 20th century, if for no better reason than that that was where their future monies lay. it's a bit like watching an old bbc sitcom from that time, the good neighbors or fall and rise of reginald perrin or only fools and horses in which the older generation comes rubbing up against the new and neither comes off looking well.

but it's not a bad book and here is a section from almost midpoint that makes my point. zipser, as the only graduate student at the college, has discovered that he's developed a mad passion for the widowed mrs. biggs, his "bedder"--a term I've never come across before but who seems to be someone who cleans up his bedroom in the mornings. he's taken his problem to the chaplain who suggests that the solution to this unfortunate situation--seeing that mrs. biggs is older, fatter, more caustic and of a lower station than he is--is for zipser to find and have sex with a swedish girl. this being the early 70s, the chaplain of course is under the impression swedish girls are sitting around with their panties off and their legs up waiting for virginal graduates.

zipser goes off in search of a condom first because you can't reliably expect a girl to have sex with you without having the right accessory. his search through the town for a condom is kind of funny, and through a series of misunderstandings he ends up with two gross of condoms. on his return from town he has a run-in with the dean of the college, and afraid he'll be sent down for the combination of the run-in, having the condoms, and the certainty that he's committed some felony by appropriating them, zipser decides to destroy them. he first tries flushing them down the toilet, but prophylactics have a preternatural passivity against being disposed of this way.

"twenty minutes later he was still searching for some method of disposing of his incriminating evidence. he had visited six lavatories on neighbouring staircases and had found a method of getting the things to disappear by first filling them with water from a tap and tyng the ends. it was slow and cumbersome and above all noisy and when he had tried six at a time on j staircase he had to spent some time unblocking the u pipe...it was one o'clock and so far he had managed to rid himself of thirty-eight. at this rate he would still be flushing lavatories all over the college when mrs. biggs arrived in the morning...put [the remaining foil and plastic packets] behind the gas fire and burn them he thought and he was just wrestling with the gas fire and trying to make space behind it when the howling draught in the chimney gave him a better idea. he went to the window and looked out into the night. in the darkness outside snowflakes whirled and scattered while the wind battered at the window pane...a moment later he was kneeling beside the gas fire and undoing the hose of his gas ring and five minutes afterwards the first of 250 inflated contraceptives bounced bouyantly against the sooty sides of the medieval chimney and disappeared into the night sky above. zipser rushed to the window and gazed up for a glimpse of the winsome thing as it whirled away carrying its message of abstinence far away into the world, but the sky was too dark and there was nothing to see."

this goes on for another 3 pages of closely-written exposition involving much moving of a desk and minute description of the look ceilings get when sooty balloons waltz across them. the paragraph I've quoted from above begins near the top of page 94 and peters out near the top of 97. zipser reckons without the effects of ice on the condoms, so that they don't float much beyond his chimney before dropping to the ground where the dean and others find them. more importantly, he doesn't reckon with the effects of gas. many of the prophylactics become enbedded in the chimney and sharpe doesn't say it but a charitable reading of his adventure might be that zipser's decision to go to bed with the condoms still stuck in the chimney is a result of his having sat over a hissing gas ring for hours.

meanwhile, the dean and another enemy have discovered the bobbing condoms in the courtyard and are trying to collect them all without much luck until they begin poking at them with pins. mrs. biggs, far from being insensate to zipser's interest, has decided to act on it and comes to visit him in his room at 3:30, where she undresses and lights the fire before slipping into zipser's bed with him.

"'wants to spare me,' mrs. biggs thought tenderly and climbed into bed...grasping [zipser] in her arms she pressed him to her vast breasts. in the darkness zipser squeaked frantically and mrs. biggs's mouth found his. to zipser it seemed that he was in the grip of a great white whale. he fought desperately for air, suraced for a moment and was engulfed again."

we are led to assume that mrs. biggs is in the act of taking zipser's virginity when we're treated to this abrupt scene:

"[skullion the porter] had just run a small but agile [balloon] to earth in the rose garden when a dull rumbling noise at the top of the tower made he turn and look up. something was going on in the old chimney. the chimney pot at the top was shaking. the brickwork silhouetted against the morning sky appeared to be bulging. the rumbling stopped, to be succeeded by an almight roar as a ball of flame issued from the chimney and billowed out before ascending above the college. below it the chimney toppled sideways, crashed onto the roof of the tower and with a gradually increasing rumble of masonry the fourteenth-century building lost its entire facade. behind it the rooms were clearly visible, their floors tilted horribly and sagging...a bed on the first floor slid sideways and dropped onto the masonry below. desks and chairs followed suit. there were shours and screams. people poured out of doorways and windows opened all round the court."

in the next chapter we are told that zipser, whose book we have taken this to be or at least the book is partly about him since we have been following him about every other page and are privy to his confusions and concerns as if they were our own, and mrs. biggs have been killed in the explosion and that somehow the investigators have discerned they were caught in flagrante because we are treated to the discussions of the faculty about how more satisfying it might have been had zipser been committing suicide and been on drugs, but at least they can take comfort in the fact he had been a subversive since "anyone who could go to bed with mrs. biggs must have been either demented or mativated by a grossly distorted sense of social duty and to have launched two hundred and fifty lethal contraceptives on an unsuspecting world argues a fanatacism..."

to this point the novel has been a kind of early peter devries kind of thing, the humor being belabored and almost underlined by sharpe (the pages devoted to zipser's maneuvering of his desk back and forth in a vain attempt to get at the condoms that leave those sooty marks on his ceiling is indicative of this) as if we might not have got it. but this sudden explosion changes more than the fates of zipser and mrs. biggs, who we are to suppose were the only victims of the situation since no one else's injuries or deaths are remarked on, and after this both zipser's name and mrs. biggs are never spoken of again. it takes a dark turn here as if sharpe had decided he needed a sacrifice of some sort to make a point that may well have been understood by his peers, but the rest of the novel reverts to the slapstick of people whacking their heads against pipes and falling off of stools and the play on words and counterexpectations I ascribe to brit comedy. but it also serves to reinforce the presumption of classicism, that little tossaway line about mrs. biggs apparently being out of bounds to members of the campus, as if there hadn't been several centuries of people playing master-and-servent previously.

rainbow mashup I've come across

I have been working on a mashup of short vids I took at the gathering this year, but I'm just mindblown by this one. there are a few things I would change to it, but the music is absolutely spoton and the images are so much more vibrant and lively than anything I've got. you should simply enjoy this like a fine summer day...

a mustard seed of violence

this is a video mashup for my theology and film course on which I spent last weekend working. I ought to warn you that its theme is violence and thus its imagery, much of which is devoted to films we studied in class, is violent (including a scene from m.i.a.'s "born free," on which I've written). also below is the short theological statement I wrote for it.

this is the sort of thing I do nowadays, consider the mashup of theology and reality. tonight I begin work on an essay about the mestizaje future of american religion. all this is very different from any of the scenes I ever imagined in my life over the past half century. that is a plus.


A MUSTARD SEED OF VIOLENCE
A Theological Statement to Accompany
A Multi Media Statement
By Bob Bledsoe

Americans are less a people of violence than we are a people who love violence. Especially when it is done by or to our factotums. Like the mustard seed of Luke 13:18-19, violence “is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air perched in its branches.” It is this tendency toward metastasizing rather than a love for violence itself that betrays something uniquely American.

From the beginning, Americans enjoyed violence. The Great Train Robbery (1903) features a lethal gun battle at midway; similarly, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1915) often speeds up its plotline with war battles and gunplay, including a reenactment of Lincoln’s assassination. What may be noted about both is their lack of realism: in Train Robbery the actor who is shot throws up his hands as if in frustration and spins several times before falling; Lincoln is shot at close range from behind but there is no blood and no observable damage to the actor himself beyond his slumping. If Griffith’s take on violence is accepted, being shot in the back of the head merely leads to poor posture. This neatened violence reaches its apex in the epic but apparently harmless kung fu battle between Neo and hundreds of Agents Smith in Matrix Reloaded (2003).
Spiritually more honest is the violence of movies like Kids (1995), Transamerica (2005), and Hustle and Flow (2005). The violence is short, spontaneous, and people bleed. Their violence has consequences. Whether the violence is directed outward at strangers, as in these films or allegorized against an ape in The Hunger (1983), or in the direction of loved ones, personally as in Brokeback Mountain (2005) or the representational Daughters of the Dust (1991), or in the direction of the self, as during Virgil’s nightwalk with The Brother From Another Planet (1984) or the recitation of Venus Xtraveganza’s suicidal behavior in Paris is Burning (1991), it is not inconsequential. Quotations from the Psalms and Micah suggest the same thing: violence is real and expressed not for our entertainment but against us (the video “Born Free” [2010] and American History X [1998]).

The violence need not be physical. It can be social, systemic, and endemic, against a class of people (as shown in The Soloist [2009] and Addressless [2007]). We cannot dissociate from it: the violence is in the best and the most innocent of us (for instance the children in the opening to The Wild Bunch [1969]).

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say violence in American movies are often played as a game as suggested by the girls’ dance sequence from Daughters of the Dust. Proverbs encourages us to be aware we are remembered by what we do. Violence, correctly employed, can be cathartic. The lesson of Rudy Yellowlodge in the final moments of Skins (2002) reinforces that what we do matters.



Bibliography
• Addressless: Homelessness, Problems, and Solutions. [Documentary] (2007) Directed by Gino Salerno.
• American History X. [Film] (1998) Directed by Tony Kaye.
• Birth of a Nation. [Film] (1915) Directed by W.D. Griffith.
• “Born Free.” [Video] (2010) Directed by Romain Gavras.
• Brokeback Mountain. [Film] (2005). Directed by Ang Lee.
• Brother From Another Planet. [Film] (1984) Directed by John Sayles.
• Daughters of the Dust. [Film] (1991) Directed by Julie Dash.
• Great Train Robbery. [Film] (1903) Directed by Edwin S. Porter.
• Hunger. [Film] (1983) Directed by Tony Scott.
• Hustle and Flow. [Film] (2005) Directed by Craig Brewer.
• Kids. [Film] (1995) Directed by Larry Clark.
• King of Jazz. [Film] (1930) Directed by John Murray Anderson.
• Matrix Reloaded. [Film] (2003) Directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski.
• New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha. NRSV. (2007) Oxford University Press.
• Paris is Burning. [Documentary] (1991) Directed by Jennie Livingston.
• Skins. [Film] (2002) Directed by Chris Eyre.
• Soloist. [Film] (2009) Directed by Joe Wright.
• Transamerica. [Film] (2005) Directed by Duncan Tucker.
• Wild Bunch. [Film] (1969) Directed by Sam Peckinpaugh.