My IPOD and my saxophone

I found this article by Christianity Today's Andy Crouch to be a subtle and powerful explanation of the way our culture thinks about music.

He says this, "There is a big difference between playing a CD and playing a fugue. One is instantly rewarding, the other takes time and patience. One satisfies, the other requires a sacrifice. One is godlike—Yo-Yo Ma or Radiohead play flawlessly at your command—while the other reminds you just how small a creature you are. One is a purchase, the other is a practice."

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Does this apply to you?

Thoughts?

Discuss...

Music Monday: On the Road

My family just completed a road trip to Michigan, a seven hour drive. This road trip was unlike any I have taken before in that entirely different sounds emanated from the car’s speakers. The speakers that once loudly unfurled a wave of brain awakening rock and roll now eked out one corny children’s song after another, after another, after another. Monday, October 12, 2009. The day the music died.

It didn’t die completely though. My daughter likes Grizzly Bear, Phoenix, she likes some Radiohead, she likes Arcade Fire and Feist…she just likes Dora the Explorer more. Significantly more - much to my chagrin. Life is about compromises though, and seven hour roadtrips with two year olds even more so. Thus, I was left with a choice. I could try to block out the noise, play the sounds and thoughts I like in my head and have some peace. Or I could enter the fray, let go of my inhibitions and sing “The Wheels on the Bus” with my family while trying to do the motions without suffering a fatal automobile crash.
Yesterday I chose the latter. I don’t always. I wish I did more often.

I take a little bit of pride in considering myself a music snob, but I shouldn’t. I am simply hard to please. It isn’t just music either. My point is that there are many areas in my life that pride prevents me from fully participating with my family, with my community, with my church, and with God. I think that if you are honest with yourself you will find the same thing. It is so easy to come to the conclusion that a particular area of service in your community or church is simply not your gifting when in reality you are perfectly capable of the task at hand. It is for me at least.

The platitude says “The heart is willing but the flesh is weak.” I think that more often my flesh is willing but my heart is weak. Singing children’s songs at the top of my lungs is a small step in the right direction for me in this area. Joining an area of service with great needs at Riverside has been a big one. What is something your pride has kept you from doing in your community?

- jason

Music Monday

Music moves me. Where? Into segments and times in my life. Into memories good and bad. It moves me to tears when I am not sad and euphoria when I am just hanging out. I think that if it weren't for music and the power that it wields in my life, I would feel an emptiness, a flatness that would be unbearable.

I am listening to some old Crosby, Stills, and Nash and being transported into another realm, not good and not bad, just different than where I am now.
I remember watching Josh (our now 31 year old son) as a toddler in diapers run to the living room anytime a certain song by Steely Dan came on our stereo. He would bounce up and down and throw himself into the song and the moment. I realized at that point that we are all born with an inherent response to music and rhythm. It doesn't always translate into being a musician, singer, or even a person with the ability to stay on pitch. It does translate into a part of ourselves that is touched only by music.
Why does everyone have a favorite song, or make mixes that are all about a season. or event, or an era? Because music touches something deep and primal in all of us and captivates that part of our soul that lays dormant to be awakened only by the kiss of a note, a melody, a rhythm.

My first conscious memory of loving music and loving how it transported me somewhere was as a little girl. My dad would play Ravel's "Bolero" on our Hi Fi (yep that's what we called our record players back then, high fidelity:) I totally imagined the march into the stadium of the bullfighters in Spain. I had no idea what either of those really were at that time, but the music literally painted the picture and the emotion for me. I was hooked. "Stomp" was an amazing odyssey into rhythm and joy of sound and movement that turned my head and heart more recently. My dad always inspired me through playing the piano, and having an amazing well-rounded record collection. My mom, alas, was tone deaf, but that didn't stop her from loving music and dancing to it (my parents were amazing dancers!).

To me I saw music as something to love and find joy in even when hard times happened. Every relationship, every stage of high school and college and beyond has its musical score and when a strain of one of those songs hits my ears it hits my heart as well.
Our creator knew what he was doing. There is rhythm and melody all around us everywhere, everyday, for everyone.

What piece of music has moved you recently and why? What older piece of music draws you back to an earlier season in your life?

-Marsha Lang

Music Monday (Usually Tuesday)

I am going to let you guys in on a little secret - Zack Eswine loves Journey. As someone who began to love music - I mean REALLY love music - during the beginning of the 1990’s this seems like musical blasphemy. From my perspective, in 1991, Nirvana lined up Journey and all of their peers (G&R, Motley Crue, Ratt, any band with big hair) and instantly made them irrelevant. This probably says a lot more about me than it does about any of the bands listed above.
Why do I constantly try to take something so remarkably subjective like musical taste/context and try to force it into objective truth? I also seem to love to judge and categorize. I wonder if I do it to create a false sense of security for myself – of course only in regard to my opinions concerning music ☺.
Journey rocks – at least they did when Steve Perry was their lead singer. Nirvana didn’t change that. They probably were a better representation of what was happening in our culture during 1991, but that certainly doesn’t make it “better”.
In this space I hope to explore why music matters, at least in a subjective way. Sometimes that will be in the form of a review or suggestion, sometimes commentary, sometimes I might just ramble on and on. Upfront I would like to state that I do not come to judge but to discuss and appreciate. For reasons beyond current human understanding God has created for us a world in which bare melodies can transform our perception of the world. Nietchze said that “life without music is a mistake.” So let us not make that one.
The authors of Music Monday love comments, topic ideas, and sharp negative criticism... Or, just the first two!

-Jason Wilson

Be

In a welcome address by Karl Paulnack to the incoming class at Boston Conservatory he said, "The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks.  And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin.  Astonomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects.  Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and helping us figure out the position of things inside us."

Google Karl Paulnack, and you can easily find the whole speech.  It is VERY worth reading.

At Riverside we are assuming Jesus was who he said he was: mysteriously God and Man at the same time.  We view the Bible then, as a strange, long book of narratives, poetry, songs, some argument, and other genres that explains what it means to be truly human.  Therefore, one of our core values is simply to "be".  For this reason we work hard on our music on Sunday mornings.  For this reason we are trying to help local art and artists - because Art mirrors the side of us that wants propositional truths.  There is that side that wants to understand Jesus in light of Heaven and Hell.  There is also the side that is moved by images, or music, or when the wind changes the temperature just slightly.  There is a part of us that wants to know more than what happens to me when I die, there is a part that wants to know why I am moved by beauty...  And by tragedy and darkness.  

The Bible states that we are made very beautiful - Imago Dei, and yet we are bent by the rebellion that is written about in Genesis (did you ever notice the move from the exalted prose in the first chapter of Genesis, to the more earthy language in the second chapter?  For some reason it helps me to appreciate the vastness of the story, and then suddenly it is a not-so-vast story.  Amazing writing).  As a community, Riverside is dreaming about "Being".  What does it mean to "Be" a human being?  What does it mean to be a human being in light of Jesus of Nazareth, not simply a system but a man from a particular place, who lived in a particular time, taught a very compelling way of thinking about humanity and divinity?  He even went so far as to claim (ridiculous, unless somehow true) that he embodied both fully.  What does/will it look like for Riverside Church to be/become a community of people willing to embrace their "Be" ing-ness,  their beauty and their limits?  What does it look like for Christians to be appreciative and supportive of the arts which draw from us affection for the beauty and tragedy of existence?