![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tetsabSo it turns out that comment about a post "I started writing more than half a year ago" was generous because it conveniently mentioned in the 2nd paragraph a new single that happened to have come out in March 2019. It had started "I am still not doing super well. Right now I'm just tottering on the knife edge of better. I skipped yet another event I'd been planning to go to for weeks last night but may be able to make it out to one tonight if nothing comes up today to knock me to the other side of the edge. Rather like my last post [at that time] I can tell I'm on the knife edge of better instead of worse because of my reaction to music."
So the present day comment on that is I'm certainly doing better right now since I, personally, have had no additional catastrophfucks since November making the mere span of November 2017-19 a Fantastic Shitshow for me (previous Shitshow: 2013-14, which thankfully while Utter Shit had a less diverse arrangement of shit in it).
Right then, so what I said [and if present day me has anything to add to what follow here it will go in square brackets like this] a year ago was:
When I got home yesterday I found YouTube unexpectedly recommending a new single from Devin Townsend and was pleased, but when finding that led me next to the one from last month, I was thrilled. A large part of that is that I find that one offers a welcome call back to my favourite track of his because to "never fear love" pairs so very well with "receive this love" and "we all fall down if we fear love" with "all the world is in this together" and "we know that it's" with "let there be".
Too hippy? Fluffy? Maybe. But try listening to it: it's [a sort of] snarling love, which is a great kind from my perspective as it helps to cut the deeply dangerous sugar that typically gets served in outright choking amounts with that word.
(For the record, my second favourite song of his is from part 2 of his silly opus. I also deeply appreciate people who know how to handle the silly or absurd. Some dang past bio of mine some place I can't even recall used to say something like 'enjoys the seriously un-serious'... even if it's probably closer in practice to 'enjoys the unserious serious').
If you come from that sort of background, you might imagine with song titles like "Grace" and "Genesis" Townsend is some sort of Christian but he isn't (FYI, the most important part of that tweet isn't the first sentence, it's the second as he repeats that in the back in forth he then immediately gets into with a Christian [since deleted... wasn't when I 1st wrote this] where he also says two additional key statements of "I believe in love" and "I believe people should be kind to each other").
So when you get to Matthew 22:35-40: "Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." ...Townsend is all in on the second but quite out on the first.
It's likewise with me, who in a rare case of actually accepting an identity marker, certainly accepts agnostic (just the 'I have no knowledge' part and not any additional baggage others often pack in: just the literal word a/no gnosis/knowledge).
So part of the reason this is so thrilling isn't that I generally like the music but that right at a moment where I'm feeling desperately parched to be exposed to people who lead with this sort of perspective (and are willing to leverage the better parts of this culture as they do so to build on something bigger than themselves) was a like a great glass of welcome water.
I often feel badly out of joint in my perspective on the world with many others but I can see a strong fit in this with someone like Townsend. It's not a perfect fit because when I see a quote like this:
... I never needed a kid/family to get to that place, I'm mildly wary of folks who self identify as assholes even if I get what he's getting at, and while I agree firmly with the 700mph brick wall analogy saying I'm "not worried" isn't quite right and pairing the humour with "thinking we're so clever" is definitely off for me, and petering it down to "...all that shit" just makes me want to say TRY HARDER DEVIN, YOU WERE SO CLOSE!
***
I've talked about all of this sort of stuff before (the last time I was having An Awful Time Of It, actually) so this is just a different angle, but probably still a bit too obtuse as it's not an easy thing for me to talk about well, as I don't want it to become choking sugar either.
God knows (hyuk) what sort of religious background Devin Townsend came from 'cause near as I can tell he refuses to talk about it but my background is an exciting mix of God-condemning ex-Catholic via my Dad's Mum and community-oriented, committed Methodist via my Mum's Dad. I'll get into the former another day but for now I'm going to focus on the Methodism. When I say "community-oriented" I mean very much like this and like this. [So if you're a believer], 'saved though faith' yes ("thou shalt love the Lord thy God"), but created to do good works ("love thy neighbour as thyself").
So even though the car is barrelling toward the brick wall at 700mph and I don't actually believe it can be stopped I will nonetheless still keep up as much action as possible (and as the opening of this post indicates, if I get too damaged I have to stop for a bit and hope there are enough others in the car who share this perspective to take over the attempts) to try and stop it anyway because it is The Good And Right Thing To Do. It is the action that comes from the place of love. It is about the is and the be.
The "is" and the "be" is in direct contrast to the worst people in the car who want the "was". These are the ones who welcome the brick wall and are reaching in with their foot to get to the gas pedal. Many of these folks are apocalyptically-oriented religious types whose basic orientation is "hurry up what is over with to get to whatever comes next" some of them instead are "we're headed to the wall, we can't stop it, so let's just get it over with... as I make that decision for everyone else in the car with me" types.
Trying to stop a car you don't actually believe you can stop is exhausting but, for me, stopping and just looking out the window and trying to enjoy what I see until it hits would be demoralizing in every sense of the world: morale and morals come from the same root and that root is in conduct, behaviour, action.
This brings me to the another key feature of Methodism, which is actually partway baked into the name itself, of a strong emphasis on personal morality (and not just "don't! don't!" but "do! do!"). As far as I'm concerned the key word here is personal and that comes from my personal perspective where even though I grew up Methodist (meaning, I attended the church until we moved to this country and started attending the church that happened to be closest instead, which was Presbyterian, and was an act that deeply offended my "methodical" teenage self and was one tenth of the way to my creeping toward agnosticism... with most of the rest of it being that if you read the Bible God far too frequently comes across as a tremendous jerk... and, no, the Job 'puny mind' argument doesn't help the jerk case) I never felt surrounded by a fleet of moralizers. And yet, I'm just personally saturated by so much of that historical stuff to varying degrees of depth: debt bad, gambling bad, intoxication bad, etc... but it's the acts that are bad rather than the people who do them. The people who do them are the ones Jesus most wished to positively associate with (meaning... to hang out and have dinner with... not to wag his finger at). They are the 'sheep to be dearly loved' in contrast to those he went to whip. It's the actions (i.e. who gets dinner and cured vs. who gets thumped and scolded) that matter most. Thus, it's the ones that facilitate those acts from their positions of power that are the ones who should be condemned.
This means that I operate with a blazingly strong internal sense of morality but I don't think most people I just casually hang out with are aware (which is exactly as it should be if it's working properly!). The last thing I want to happen is for anyone who interacts with me to become paranoid that I'm pointing some sort of laser of morality at them as that is exactly the opposite of what I want to happen. In fact, the most difficult place to be is close to me because that's where the blazing morality can't help but be seen... because if you are close to me it's because I want you to see me for me because if you don't see me you cannot actually love me. This has had negative consequences where some people close to me have seen the blaze and hidden their actions, which is also exactly the wrong thing to happen as then they cannot be seen and, in turn, loved.
***
A few more quotes to help elucidate this, drawing on what I've already called "the better parts of this culture" (this time, Hugo's Les Mis & Dickens' Christmas Carol). I feel lucky I can be as I am because in large part it's not been taken out of me by bad actors:
"'Yes,' said the bishop, 'you come from a place of sorrow [a poetic way of say 19 years hard labour for breaking a window to steal bread for 7 orphaned children and then trying to escape 3 times]. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tearful face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred virtuous men. If you come away from that place of sorrow with thoughts of hatred and anger against mankind, you're deserving of pity. If you come away with benevolent thoughts, of kindness and peace, you're worth more than any of us.'"
[and:
"'What Idol has displaced you.' he rejoined.
'A golden one.'
'This is the even-handed dealing of the world.' he said. 'There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.'
'You fear the world too much,' she answered, gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not.'"
***
... as you can see, the Dickens quote started with a square bracket, which means I didn't actually already have captured in this draft the one I wanted! I'm using this one out of the one of many I have noted, though, as it works: each are about figures, presented by their respective authors, as clear about what is right but not insisting the person they speak to change in any way shape or form until they come to their own understanding through their own lived experience].
So the present day comment on that is I'm certainly doing better right now since I, personally, have had no additional catastrophfucks since November making the mere span of November 2017-19 a Fantastic Shitshow for me (previous Shitshow: 2013-14, which thankfully while Utter Shit had a less diverse arrangement of shit in it).
Right then, so what I said [and if present day me has anything to add to what follow here it will go in square brackets like this] a year ago was:
When I got home yesterday I found YouTube unexpectedly recommending a new single from Devin Townsend and was pleased, but when finding that led me next to the one from last month, I was thrilled. A large part of that is that I find that one offers a welcome call back to my favourite track of his because to "never fear love" pairs so very well with "receive this love" and "we all fall down if we fear love" with "all the world is in this together" and "we know that it's" with "let there be".
Too hippy? Fluffy? Maybe. But try listening to it: it's [a sort of] snarling love, which is a great kind from my perspective as it helps to cut the deeply dangerous sugar that typically gets served in outright choking amounts with that word.
(For the record, my second favourite song of his is from part 2 of his silly opus. I also deeply appreciate people who know how to handle the silly or absurd. Some dang past bio of mine some place I can't even recall used to say something like 'enjoys the seriously un-serious'... even if it's probably closer in practice to 'enjoys the unserious serious').
If you come from that sort of background, you might imagine with song titles like "Grace" and "Genesis" Townsend is some sort of Christian but he isn't (FYI, the most important part of that tweet isn't the first sentence, it's the second as he repeats that in the back in forth he then immediately gets into with a Christian [since deleted... wasn't when I 1st wrote this] where he also says two additional key statements of "I believe in love" and "I believe people should be kind to each other").
So when you get to Matthew 22:35-40: "Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." ...Townsend is all in on the second but quite out on the first.
It's likewise with me, who in a rare case of actually accepting an identity marker, certainly accepts agnostic (just the 'I have no knowledge' part and not any additional baggage others often pack in: just the literal word a/no gnosis/knowledge).
So part of the reason this is so thrilling isn't that I generally like the music but that right at a moment where I'm feeling desperately parched to be exposed to people who lead with this sort of perspective (and are willing to leverage the better parts of this culture as they do so to build on something bigger than themselves) was a like a great glass of welcome water.
I often feel badly out of joint in my perspective on the world with many others but I can see a strong fit in this with someone like Townsend. It's not a perfect fit because when I see a quote like this:
"I think for years when I was doing heavy music there was all this sense of intimidation that went on with me like, “We better do this because the heavy metal community… whatever… insists on it.” Or the people you're with insist on it. And for a long time it was very hard for me to say, “But I don't want to do that.”
And I think that once I had a kid and family and all that kind of stuff, it was easier for me to say, “No, fuck no. Go do it yourself.” I think that extends to a lot of things, like drinking or partying or being an asshole or whatever. Not to say that I'm not an asshole still—but at least not in the context of what I used to be involved with.
I think “Planet Of The Apes” in the beginning is about that and I think that the title refers to the fact that we’re living in a world right now with a planet full of people who continue to do unbelievably stupid things, environmentally or personally or spiritually or whatever. It seems to be the current state of evolution that we’re at, we're headed towards a brick wall and, what’s the old quote? “Everyone's in the back seat arguing about who's going to drive.” Well, we're headed for a brick wall at 700 mph.
And I'm not afraid of that, I'm not worried about it. I just think it's kind of humorous that we tend to think we’re so clever with our computers and what have you. But at the root of it what we're really missing is nature and family and all that shit."
... I never needed a kid/family to get to that place, I'm mildly wary of folks who self identify as assholes even if I get what he's getting at, and while I agree firmly with the 700mph brick wall analogy saying I'm "not worried" isn't quite right and pairing the humour with "thinking we're so clever" is definitely off for me, and petering it down to "...all that shit" just makes me want to say TRY HARDER DEVIN, YOU WERE SO CLOSE!
***
I've talked about all of this sort of stuff before (the last time I was having An Awful Time Of It, actually) so this is just a different angle, but probably still a bit too obtuse as it's not an easy thing for me to talk about well, as I don't want it to become choking sugar either.
God knows (hyuk) what sort of religious background Devin Townsend came from 'cause near as I can tell he refuses to talk about it but my background is an exciting mix of God-condemning ex-Catholic via my Dad's Mum and community-oriented, committed Methodist via my Mum's Dad. I'll get into the former another day but for now I'm going to focus on the Methodism. When I say "community-oriented" I mean very much like this and like this. [So if you're a believer], 'saved though faith' yes ("thou shalt love the Lord thy God"), but created to do good works ("love thy neighbour as thyself").
So even though the car is barrelling toward the brick wall at 700mph and I don't actually believe it can be stopped I will nonetheless still keep up as much action as possible (and as the opening of this post indicates, if I get too damaged I have to stop for a bit and hope there are enough others in the car who share this perspective to take over the attempts) to try and stop it anyway because it is The Good And Right Thing To Do. It is the action that comes from the place of love. It is about the is and the be.
The "is" and the "be" is in direct contrast to the worst people in the car who want the "was". These are the ones who welcome the brick wall and are reaching in with their foot to get to the gas pedal. Many of these folks are apocalyptically-oriented religious types whose basic orientation is "hurry up what is over with to get to whatever comes next" some of them instead are "we're headed to the wall, we can't stop it, so let's just get it over with... as I make that decision for everyone else in the car with me" types.
Trying to stop a car you don't actually believe you can stop is exhausting but, for me, stopping and just looking out the window and trying to enjoy what I see until it hits would be demoralizing in every sense of the world: morale and morals come from the same root and that root is in conduct, behaviour, action.
This brings me to the another key feature of Methodism, which is actually partway baked into the name itself, of a strong emphasis on personal morality (and not just "don't! don't!" but "do! do!"). As far as I'm concerned the key word here is personal and that comes from my personal perspective where even though I grew up Methodist (meaning, I attended the church until we moved to this country and started attending the church that happened to be closest instead, which was Presbyterian, and was an act that deeply offended my "methodical" teenage self and was one tenth of the way to my creeping toward agnosticism... with most of the rest of it being that if you read the Bible God far too frequently comes across as a tremendous jerk... and, no, the Job 'puny mind' argument doesn't help the jerk case) I never felt surrounded by a fleet of moralizers. And yet, I'm just personally saturated by so much of that historical stuff to varying degrees of depth: debt bad, gambling bad, intoxication bad, etc... but it's the acts that are bad rather than the people who do them. The people who do them are the ones Jesus most wished to positively associate with (meaning... to hang out and have dinner with... not to wag his finger at). They are the 'sheep to be dearly loved' in contrast to those he went to whip. It's the actions (i.e. who gets dinner and cured vs. who gets thumped and scolded) that matter most. Thus, it's the ones that facilitate those acts from their positions of power that are the ones who should be condemned.
This means that I operate with a blazingly strong internal sense of morality but I don't think most people I just casually hang out with are aware (which is exactly as it should be if it's working properly!). The last thing I want to happen is for anyone who interacts with me to become paranoid that I'm pointing some sort of laser of morality at them as that is exactly the opposite of what I want to happen. In fact, the most difficult place to be is close to me because that's where the blazing morality can't help but be seen... because if you are close to me it's because I want you to see me for me because if you don't see me you cannot actually love me. This has had negative consequences where some people close to me have seen the blaze and hidden their actions, which is also exactly the wrong thing to happen as then they cannot be seen and, in turn, loved.
***
A few more quotes to help elucidate this, drawing on what I've already called "the better parts of this culture" (this time, Hugo's Les Mis & Dickens' Christmas Carol). I feel lucky I can be as I am because in large part it's not been taken out of me by bad actors:
"'Yes,' said the bishop, 'you come from a place of sorrow [a poetic way of say 19 years hard labour for breaking a window to steal bread for 7 orphaned children and then trying to escape 3 times]. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tearful face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred virtuous men. If you come away from that place of sorrow with thoughts of hatred and anger against mankind, you're deserving of pity. If you come away with benevolent thoughts, of kindness and peace, you're worth more than any of us.'"
[and:
"'What Idol has displaced you.' he rejoined.
'A golden one.'
'This is the even-handed dealing of the world.' he said. 'There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.'
'You fear the world too much,' she answered, gently. 'All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not.'"
***
... as you can see, the Dickens quote started with a square bracket, which means I didn't actually already have captured in this draft the one I wanted! I'm using this one out of the one of many I have noted, though, as it works: each are about figures, presented by their respective authors, as clear about what is right but not insisting the person they speak to change in any way shape or form until they come to their own understanding through their own lived experience].