Why I Like Trent Reznor

Reznor on religion:
"There are just some things that don't seem very fair in the world, like this fucking hypocrisy of organized religion. I just don't understand how people can blindly believe a bunch of the shit they're fed, to believe it so that they don't think too hard about other issues. 'Be a good boy and you'll go to heaven.' If it works for you, fine, but it doesn't work for me and that pisses me off because I kind of wish it did."

Reznor on music:
"It's like beating your head open and unzipping your chest cavity saying 'here are my guts - everything I've felt, including a lot of stuff I'm not proud of'. It's hard. It uses you up. I walk off stage sometimes and feel like I've just slept with everybody in the audience."

"To a large extent, my music is about me coming to terms with who I am...Sometimes that's a shocking thing because when you peel back the skin, sometimes you find that what you see is not always the person you originally hoped or thought you were."

"Today, musicians are complimented much more on their business plan than their talent. When I see an idiot like Fred Durst [of Limp Bizkit] spouting off about, 'I'm in it for the money, buy my record, buy two copies of it, I'm going to be the best business man, I'm just doing this till I get into movies' -- [he should] sell dish-washing liquid or something. It's damaged music. I don't mean him personally, but this climate has created a very unhealthy situation to spawn new creative acts."

Reznor on love:
"I do actually believe in love. I can't say that I'm 100 percent successful in that department, but I think it's one of the few worthwhile human experiences. It's cooler than anything I can think of..."

Reznor on George W. Bush's reelection:
"One step closer to the end of the world. The one-two combo of corporate greed and organized religion apparently proved to be too much for reason, sanity and compassion." (See related article on what Bush had to do with Nine Inch Nails pulling out of this year's MTV movie awards:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8010244/.)

Reznor on the John/Paul/George/Ringo:

In response to a question posed in Rolling Stone (RS 1127) about who Reznor considers a genius: "It's so obvious, but the Beatles. When I was growing up, the people who liked the Beatles I didn't like, so I didn't pay attention to them. Around The Downward Spiral I really started digging White Album-era Beatles, and it expanded outward from there. They were so far ahead of the game, it's just not fair."

Other reasons...
He's good friends with Tori Amos and Maynard James Keenan. He's close to his grandparents. He's not afraid to admit, "I feel uncomfortable because I'm insecure about who I am." And he writes lyrics like If I could start again/a million miles away/I would keep myself/I would find a way and cries every time he hears Johnny Cash cover them.

(Dis) Connection

Feeling a bittersweet pull tonight, a sort of loneliness. I think it's because I went down to the basement to look for a baby picture Sam needed for a school project. While downstairs, I came across an old photo album. In it was a snapshot of a friend I took when we were both nineteen. He's sitting on the ground behind my house in the mountains holding my nephew, Aaron, on his knee. Aaron was three at the time; now he's twenty-five. I can't believe it was that long ago: a lifetime ago. My friend's handsome, tanned face was so youthful, not quite yet a man's. His light brown hair was silky--like a baby's--and slightly disheveled. And his eyes were bright and clear as the mountain sky.

"Defined elementally, eros is the desire for connection," writes James Hollis in The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other.

I guess my feelings tonight are erotic--but in the elemental (Platonic) sense, not the sexual. My friend and I are still in touch; we reestablished contact almost four years ago. In fact, we're much closer now than we were at age nineteen. Which, I'm sure, is why I feel this tug of sadness. We haven't talked in a while, and I miss him. Miss the companionship, the connection. The mysterious, substratal connection only we older versions of those sun-kissed college kids could possibly understand--or endure.

"Once again," sings the ancient poet Sappho, "limb-loosening Eros shakes me, a helpless crawling thing, sweet-bitter."

Molly Peacock on Desire

Not long ago here on my blog I wrote that I wouldn't make a good Buddhist because I love desire too much. Part of me wrote that with regret because I envy the serenity and emotional/mental clarity many Buddhists seem to possess. And I felt a bit like a misfit: unlike some people, my interior life is kind of messy, cluttered, unsettled. Perhaps the clinical term for this is neurosis? Probably. After all, what's so hard about detachment, objectivity, sleeping with a Monarch butterfly or hungering without taking a bite?

For me, just about everything. I fall more into the categories of "she [who] couldn't marry well hurt and love and beautiful things" (Erica Check) or "she who [struggles to] reconcile the ill-matched threads of her life" (Rilke).

This morning, though, I discovered that I am not the only one who finds the so-called virtues of objectivity and orderliness both unattainable and, well, un-desirable. I found a fellow neurotic/artist in poet Molly Peacock. The following is from her latest collection, Cornucopia...

Why I Am Not a Buddhist
I love desire, the state of want and thought
of how to get; building a kingdom in a soul
requires desire. I love the things I've sought
--you in your beltless bathrobe, tongues of cash that loll
from my billfold--and love what I want: clothes,
houses, redemption. Can a new mauve suit
equal God? Oh no, desire is ranked. To lose
a loved pen is not like losing faith. Acute
desire for nut gateau is driven out by death,
but the cake on its plate has meaning,
even when love is endangered and nothing matters.
For my mother, health; for my sister, bereft,
wholeness. But why is desire suffering?
Because want leaves a world in tatters?
How else but in tatters should a world be?
A columned porch set high above a lake.
Here, take my money. A loved face in agony,
the spirit gone. Here, use my rags of love.

On Stale Air

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ars Poetica

Last Thursday night in my literature class we began our unit on poetry. I forewarned my students that poetry is my first love, and I think about ten minutes into my lecture--after I'd chained the door shut and threatened with a Taser anyone who tried to leave--they had no doubts. We started by discussing their feelings about reading poems. Most said that they saw them as difficult, irrelevant, inaccessible--and thus rarely spent much time bothering with them.

But then something kind of wonderful happened. I passed out a poem that bore neither a title nor a byline. We spent a lot of time talking about it; my students seemed to be deeply affected by the word choices and imagery. They kept asking me what it was called and who wrote it, but I insisted that they'd have to wait and see. Then we watched two video interpretations of the poem, which, as they soon discovered, was really the lyrics to a song: Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt." We watched Trent Reznor's interpretation, which showed him in his early twenties lamenting not only his own drug use but the universal capacity for "hurtfulness" inherent in human nature. The video ends on a positive note; however. It shows the decay process of a fox--in reverse. So the corpse transforms from a pile of dust, bone and fur into a fully intact, bushy-tailed fox. The redemption/resurrection symbolism is undeniably Christlike--a detail of which I'm sure Reznor was acutely aware.

After the Nine Inch Nails video, we watched Johnny Cash's version of "Hurt." He filmed it not long before he died, as an aged, ailing man. His take is much more personal, filled with references to his career, family and religious faith.

See, I told the class, poetry is all around us. It touches us in our everyday lives. Most of today's songs contains lyrics, which are nothing more than poems set to music. So, sadly enough, are advertising jingles and television theme songs. Poetry informs our experience of the world much more than most of us realize.

Students began talking about how they've both hurt others in their lives and been hurt themselves. I had an agenda that included ten more poems, but the discussion became so engrossing that we only got to three. One student spoke about how he has spent most of his life hurting himself. He's a perfectionist, he explained, and he's always viewed himself as never good enough. When he was younger, for example, he exercised obsessively. He was driven not simply by a desire for physical fitness but by a need to be "the perfect athlete." I mentioned that I could relate personally to his story. Just that week, I said, I'd been perusing old journals from high school and college. I said I was amazed--and saddened--by how preoccupied I used to be with pleasing an impossibly hard-to-please God. My perfectionism was almost pathological, especially when it reared its head in the form of anorexia. Another student interrupted me and asked, "So how did you make such a dramatic turnaround? You don't seem at all like that now." I told him that it had been a long, slow, uphill process. I'd finally learned, I said, that God--if he or she exists in any comprehensible form--was big enough to handle all of my shortcomings, my doubts, my humanity. And I stopped projecting onto God all of the impossible expectations I'd internalized from my parents, siblings, church, Bible and self. "I also have a really good support system," I added. "I have the best friends in the universe." Others chimed in with their own reflections. I was surprised by our transparency, though maybe I shouldn't have been. Poetry tends to orchestrate these things. It dunks us below the surface, mines us down to our elemental layers, joins us at the spiritual hip.

We also listened to Bruce Cockburn's "Maybe the Poet." (I know, I know, my students don't stand a chance now that I've exposed them to Mr. Cockburn. Poor suckers.) The chorus of the song asserts, Male, female, slave or free / Peaceful or disorderly / Maybe you and he will not agree / But you need him to show you new ways to see / Pay attention to the poet / You need him and you know it.

Poetry is a human necessity--even if we deny its presence in our lives. If only we'd keep our ears open. As Cockburn puts it, Maybe the voice of the spirit / In which case you'd better hear it.

Letter From a Friend

I am so fortunate. I have a few really good friends who know me well and love me anyway. Here's a note Mechelle sent me the other day. I cherish it---and her. It's a response to an email I'd sent her containing a "contract" I'd drawn up in order to help me deal with some personal stuff. I thought it would help me commit on a rational level to some goals. And I wanted her to help keep me rationally accountable. But alas, she knows me better than I know myself...

Susan,

(Re:) the contract. I know you said today you don't think you can follow through. It's OK. The contract sounded like it would be hard to uphold. Reminded me of the letters you used to write to yourself about being a better wife, Christain, etc. I wish you could go easier on yourself, including not making contracts that are really hard. Love yourself, Susan, even love your longing. I love you and your longing. Love the stuff that hurts in you...

Mechelle

I think it's time to reread Letters to a Young Poet. I need to be reminded how to do the above and how to, as Rilke says, "always be beginning." I keep forgetting these things.

Post Script

The nice thing about blogs is that they allow you to spout as much ignorance and incongruence as you like without having your credibility challenged. At least blogs like mine---which no one reads anyway :) After thinking more about what I wrote the other day re: "leaps and descents," I need to reconsider--or at least acknowledge--a few things...

• Kierkegaard would have been the first to declare that few things in life are unambiguous. His "leap of faith" was complicated, intricate. He said that people may not find "ultimate meaning" in this life but that they could find something they valued and commit themselves to it. In his case, it was Christianity. His "leap" into such a commitment was not blind; it was taken after a lot of premeditation---as much as one can premeditate matters of faith. Which, as he understood well, is a paradox.
• My descent into the abyss also requires a large measure of faith. Who knows what they are getting into when they choose to descend? In the end, we all die anyway. Perhaps the real point is that we have a say in how we journey. This freedom of choice is, to me, what infuses life with meaning.
• Julian the Apostate was just as committed to his pagan gods as his Christian counterparts were to "The Galilean." So he, too, was caught up in magical thinking. However, he was not evangelical; he was a polytheist who was tolerant of most practices save intolerance. He inspires me because he was a free spirit who loved knowledge and delighted in being alive. I just bought Gore Vidal's novel, Julian. I can't wait to read it, to learn more about this ancient "man of the open hand."
• Trent Reznor may not have resorted to The Leap, but he's resorted to plenty of other abyss-avoiding mechanisms including drugs and S & M. Even so, I admire his honesty and ability to turn pain and terror into something art-worthy.
• Stephen Crane captures the essence of faith's complexity in the poem, "The Wayfarer:"
  The wayfarer,
  Perceiving the pathway to truth,
  Was struck with astonishment.
  It was thickly grown with weeds.
  “Ha,” he said,
  “I see that none has passed here
  In a long time.”
  Later he saw that each weed
  Was a singular knife.
  “Well,” he mumbled at last,
  “Doubtless there are other roads.”

Jackson Browne

Jeff and I saw Jackson Browne in concert the other night. He performed at Boulder's Fox Theatre, an intimate hole-in-the-wall that holds no more than a couple hundred people. We were ten feet from the stage as Leo Kottke and Mike Gordon (former Phish bassist) warmed up and Browne sang a two-hour set. It was wunderbar. There were many highlights, including a moving rendition of "Lives in the Balance," songs during which bluegrass band Nickel Creek came out and joined Browne onstage—and an extended acoustic version of "The Pretender." My favorite moment of the evening, however, was hearing the song, "Sky Blue and Black." It actually made me cry. I don't know why, but the older I get, the more I catch myself pausing in the middle of experiences and shooting mental freeze frames. I think to myself, "This hour here in this room with these people, this collective body heat, these rhythms, these lyrics and these sensations—like individual snowflakes—will never, ever occur exactly like this again. " Which is why I wanted to savor every word of "Sky Blue and Black"—along with certain memories and yearnings it conjures...

Sky Blue and Black

In the calling out to one another
Of the lovers up and down the strand
In the sound of the waves and the cries
Of the seagulls circling the sand
In the fragments of the songs
Carried down the wind from some radio
In the murmuring of the city in the distance
Ominous and low
I hear the sound of the world where we played
And the far too simple beauty
Of the promises we made

If you ever need holding
Call my name, I’ll be there
If you ever need holding
And no holding back, I’ll see you through
Sky blue and black

Where the touch of the lover ends
And the soul of the friend begins
There’s a need to be separate and a need to be one
And a struggle neither wins
Where you gave me the world I was in
And a place I could make a stand
I could never see how you doubted me
When I’d let go of your hand
Yeah, and I was much younger then
And I must have thought that I would know
If things were going to end
And the heavens were rolling
Like a wheel on a track
And our sky was unfolding
And it’ll never fold back
Sky blue and black

And I’d have fought the world for you
If I thought that you wanted me to
Or put aside what was true or untrue
If I’d known that’s what you needed
What you needed me to do
But the moment has passed by me now
To have put away my pride
And just come through for you somehow

If you ever need holding
Call my name, I’ll be there
If you ever need holding
And no holding back, I’ll see you through
You’re the color of the sky
Reflected in each store-front window pane
You’re the whispering and the sighing
Of my tires in the rain
You’re the hidden cost and the thing that’s lost
In everything I do
Yeah and I’ll never stop looking for you
In the sunlight and the shadows
And the faces on the avenue
That’s the way love is

That’s the way love is
That’s the way love is
Sky blue and black

Leaps and Descents

Spiraling,
spiraling,
down,
down....

I’m thinking about the song, “Cold Water” by Damien Rice.

Cold, cold water surrounds me now
And all I've got is your hand
Lord, can you hear me now?
Lord, can you hear me now?
Lord, can you hear me now?
Or am I lost?

It aptly expresses my own current feelings. Sometimes I miss God so much—the God who, in my former, simpler faith, was so tangible to me. The God of the Bible, the Christian God, my Heavenly Father whose love was so accessible I could feel his spirit in my marrow.

Now, however, that god is the god of The Leap. Kierkegaard’s leap of faith. I’m no longer willing nor capable of making such leaps. In the above song, Rice laments his profound sense of isolation and disconnectedness. His anguish is palpable. He pulls me in with word and melody; I am there in the water, floating, treading, slipping under. But then the monks enter the atmosphere with their haunting, monotonic chant, bearing a message from God: “Don’t worry, you’re not alone. I’m here. I love you.” And there it is: the Leap.

I have a saying I often tell my kids, a twist on the Golden Rule: “Treat others the way you wish they treated you, not the way they necessarily do treat you.” In other words, model the ideal behavior rather than imitate the base. In a way, I think this is what we do when it comes to God: Envision the ideal and live as if it were real rather than face the real-ity of what is. This is probably a bad analogy; I guess my point is that the concept of God has become to me little more than a preferable illusion. Rather than drown alone in the icy water of what is, we imagine a fatherly figure reaching out to hold our hand. We are children, terrified of this immense, unpredictable, hostile world, and we long for arms, a hand, a lap, the enfolding of another around us. I completely understand this. Many days I’d rather return to the womb than face my life.

Yet…"How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born?" (John 3:4 KJV). How can we go back? In my opinion, we can’t. At least I can’t. I refuse to revert back to childish ways, to magical thinking. Even if I wanted to (which I often do, to be honest), I would not be able to. For how can a man (person)...?

In my literature class this week we’re reading Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” and discussing Existentialism. Kierkegaard was an existentialistic theologian who somehow managed to retain his belief in the Judeo-Christian God. From the little I know about him, he was brilliant. Still, he opted for hopeful imagination rather than reason when he confronted the abyss. I had a waking dream a number of years ago in which this Middle-Eastern-looking guy in a skull-cap and colorful burlap robe appeared to me on a grassy plateau. We walked together, then started skipping and laughing giddily. Then we came to a crevasse deep and wide as Colorado’s Royal Gorge. I couldn’t see to the bottom of it; it was pitch black. My companion sprang across the chasm like a gazelle and stood on the other side, smiling. “Come on!” he yelled. “Just jump!” I had the sense that I probably could have if I really wanted to; after all, my friend did it. Yet I knew I shouldn’t. “No,” I yelled back, “I’ve got to go through the abyss.” He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I wait at the edge of you.” Then I started down, down into the dark unknown.

I suppose I’m down here right now writing this. Often I want to reach for a hand, but there is no hand. Is the consequent despair worth it? I don’t know. I could probably imagine a hand and convince myself that it’s real and even begin to feel it on my skin. But would that make it real?

The God we’ve managed to envisage down through the centuries and record in sacred texts has given us both “a hand” and a crippled leg. More people have been killed in the name of this Hope Personified/Deified than for any other reason. And on those who haven’t been able to suspend reason and tacitly put their faith in this God, cruelty has been inflicted in countless ways. I think of Julian, the Roman emperor (and nephew of Constantine) whom the Christians nicknamed “Julian the Apostate.” He was an incredible man with a superb intellect who knew more about Christianity than most of his contemporaries yet couldn’t put his faith in it. He couldn’t take the Leap. Instead, he loved the pagan myths, the wisdom of philosophers and the ancient poems. Thus, he was demonized by the Church not only during his lifetime but by later generations.

It’s lonely down here. However, I take comfort in the fact that others like Julian have passed this way before me. And I’m convinced that I’m doing what is right for me: descending and climbing rather than vaulting across the here and now toward some illusory wished-for.

[Just thought of another song that has to do, like the Rice song, with loneliness. In this song, though, Trent Reznor--like a true, angst-riddled existentialist (and fatalist?)--does not resort to The Leap. I'm not sure who the "you" he's addressing is. Could it be God? I don't know.]

"All The Love In The World"

Watching all the insects march along
Seem to know right where they belong
Smears of face reflecting in the chrome
Hiding in the crowd I'm all alone

No one's heard a single word I've said
They don't sound as good outside my head
It looks as if the past is here to stay
I've become a million miles away

Why do you get all the love in the world?

All the jagged edges dissapear
Colors all look brighter when you're near
The stars are all afire in the sky
Sometimes I get so lonely I could die

Why do you get all the love in the world?

--Nine Inch Nails

Book recommendation: Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. I don't agree with him on every point--he's blunt and outspoken--but his arguments are extremely compelling (and well-documented). He effectively exposes the insidiousness of fundamentalist religion, especially modern-day Islam. Here's a quote: "Islam, more than any other religion human beings have devised, has all the makings of a thoroughgoing cult of death" (p. 123). A frightening reality. To read an interview with Harris, go to http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/542154/002-5665840-8513608.

"Art" by Herman Melville

In placid hours well-pleased we dream
Of many a brave unbodied scheme.
But form to lend, pulsed life create,
What unlike things must meet and mate:
A flame to melt--a wind to freeze;
Sad patience--joyous energies;
Humility--yet pride and scorn;
Instinct and study; love and hate;
Audacity--reverence. These must mate,
And fuse with Jacob's mystic heart,
To wrestle with the angel--Art.

Landslide

I woke up this morning to Stevie Nick's rich, gauzy voice singing "Landslide." I was reminded that a few years ago I started thinking about the "you" in line 11 as both Jesus and my extended family. It is hard to grow up (spiritually, anyway) when so many of those around you (and within you) beg you to remain a child. Part of you feels apologetic, as if you've somehow wronged them in the shedding of your old skin. Did Adam and Eve feel it? From the Genesis account, it sure seems so. Suddenly, in their fallen (a.k.a. enlightened, independent) state, they understood that they were naked--and they felt ashamed. They tried to hide from God. But maybe they presumed wrongly about God's reaction. Maybe Moses or whoever jotted the account down got it wrong. God sent them on their way from Eden (childhood?) clothed in animal skins he tailored for them. This sounds to me as if he was interested in equipping them against the elements, not punishing them for growing up.

Last night Sam asked me why I didn't resort to tactics like guilt or fear on him and his siblings in order to motivate them to do chores.

"Why would I want to do that?" I asked him.
"Well, I've seen Aunt Nancy do it with Evan and Lexie..."

Sam had just spent several days at my sister's house. My sister is very good at housekeeping and organizing. Sam loves structure; he thrives in such environments. Yet, earlier yesterday he'd said, "I don't think Evan and Lexie obey their parents out of love but out of fear. Their parents have taught them that disobeying your parents is the same as disobeying God. So they're always afraid of getting punished." (He'd also asked several questions about hell, so I assume he'd heard about that delightful concept while at his cousins,' too.)

I explained to Sam that, while I had been well-acquainted with guilt and fear as a child, I refused, "to lay those trips on you guys. I want you to do your chores because you love me, not because you fear punishment."

Of course, fear often gets you more efficient results than lovingkindness--especially for laid-back types like me who value revery over housecleaning.

But I don't care. In my opinion, efficiency and results are overrated. After Adam and Eve vacated the garden, God stationed an angel bearing a flaming sword at the entrance. He didn't want anyone else to enter. Not only did he want to make sure that no one ate of the Tree of Life, but I like to imagine that he also had decided to let the garden grow wild. They say that Eden is located somewhere in modern-day Iraq. No one has found it, though, because it's overgrown with weeds, wildflowers and, perhaps, derelict fruit trees. Now it's just an unremarkable patch of terrain.

When people change, landscapes change. There is alteration--sometimes even upheaval, overturned earth. But there is also renewal and growth and creation. Maybe God is in the unpredictable movement, the quake and the shiver and the wind rustling through leaves--not in the greenhouse.

Landslide (1975)
I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
'Till the landslide brought me down
Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life
Well, I've been afraid of changing
'Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too
Oh, take my love, take it down
Climb a mountain and turn around
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down
If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well the landslide will bring it down.