Mike Z. Williamson, author of Better to Beg Forgiveness, and other novels, sent me this link to a tongue-in-cheek analysis of the saga roots of Star Wars.
Great fun for you saga geeks and, let’s face it, who among us isn’t a saga geek?
"The heart that has truly loved never forgets…"
Speaking of enjoying music, and in honor of the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day holiday, I offer one of my own favorite Irish songs, one considered quaint today, but which I find deeply moving, “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms.”
The lyrics were written by the Irish poet Thomas Moore (1779-1852), who also wrote “The Minstrel Boy” and “The Last Rose of Summer.” I believe there’s a story that Moore wrote it to reassure his wife, after she contracted a skin disease, but I don’t put a lot of faith in such tales. Let me know if you have verification.
The idea of life-long love seems to me to have fallen on hard times in the 21st Century. Does anybody write love songs anymore (as opposed to sex songs) outside of Country music? (Not that Country doesn’t count. I just find it remarkable that a large segment of popular music seems to be devoted to songs that aren’t devoted—songs about booty calls and hotness.)
The clip above isn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it’s nice and the singer does both verses, with the words roughly right. I note that his last name is McLarsen. I wonder what the story behind that is. I know of a family named McCarlson, whose ancestor came to America and added a “Mc” to his name to a) differentiate himself from all the other Carlsons in a Norwegian town, and b) be more American. My own great-grandfather did something similar, but changed his last name altogether.
Some Things Can't Be Summarized
I heard Ken Myers talk to a guest about time and experience in what I believe was one of last year’s issues of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. He referred to the creation account in Genesis, saying that regardless of one’s interpretation of the days and events, we can’t deny that God took time to create everything. That must mean time has value, and the time it takes to do some things is good, even God-honoring. Music, for example, takes time to perform and enjoy. Solitude soaks in slowly over an afternoon. The love and loyalty of friends takes years to mature.
When we talk about an artwork, we often ask people who experienced it to summarize it for us. We ask them, or even ask ourselves, what the music or poetry or movie was about and what it meant. We ask what its point was. Sometimes understanding that point is a natural part of the work, but perhaps more often than not, summarizing an artwork down to its gist is impossible. To attempt to do so is to completely miss the value of the work.
Who asks for the point of Dvorak’s “New World” symphony? That’s ridiculous, because the music itself, all 40 minutes of it, is the point. Maybe a theme can be verbalized for it, but saying it’s about the wild beauty of America doesn’t capture anything of the music. This goes for good poetry too. A poem may be about the pain of betrayal or the wonder of a bird in flight, but if someone were to ask us for the gist of the poem, our best answer may be to encourage them to read it themselves.
A good work of art isn’t a vehicle for its gist. It is a man walking on his own feet. It may have plenty of themes or meanings which can be summarized and plenty of quotes with stand-alone value, but the work itself is something to experience over time.
Continue reading Some Things Can't Be SummarizedAre They Good For Anything?
Philip Christman reviews What Are Intellectuals Good For? by George Scialabba. He summarizes it. “One thing they’re not good for, argues Scialabba, is constructing secular substitutes for religion. Whether they’re Marx’s, Kant’s, or someone else’s, accounts of justice, human nature, or rights that try to specify once and for all the nature of human life are doomed to failure.”
In vain, men set themselves up as the mouths of god.
Wake Up to a New Day
Great New Look, Just As Healthy As Before
Go see the new look of Hunter Baker’s blog. I like it, and you should too. It’s new, improved, and doesn’t have any high fructose corn syrup. What’s not to like about that?
Movie Title
This is going around the net, if you haven’t seen it already. Not only the greatest movie trailer ever made, but a short course in everything you need to know about current movie cliches. Well done, whoever did it.
Guinness Company Begun by Christian Businessmen
“Guinness was a Christian who thought that by brewing beer he was doing God’s work,” according to author Stephen Mansfield in his book, The Search for God and Guinness: A Biography of the Beer that Changed the World. Bob Smietana reports:
The Guinness family, especially in the company’s early days, was known for the Christian faith, which had been shaped by John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Wesley encouraged his followers to work hard and to give as much money away as possible. The Guinness family took that challenge seriously, Mansfield said. They paid their workers more than other brewers. Their company offered generous benefits — often sending employees’ children to private schools, and having doctors, dentists and a masseuse on staff.
That’s Christians living out their faith in the marketplace. I love it, but I’m not going to try another Guinness for St. Patrick’s Day. I may stick with something safe, like green cookies.
Old Slang and Disdain for Tea
Here’s a long list of old slang words which the Art of Manliness bloggers think are “beyond awesome,” but still not appropriate or applicable enough to include in their book. (Thanks to SB for the link.) Words like these:
Muckender or sneezer: a handkerchief
“An idle and useless person is often told that he is only fit to lead the Blind Monkeys to evacuate.”
Barking-Iron or barker: a pistol
Bunch Of fives: a fist
Earth bath: a grave
Scandal-water: tea, meaning gossip is often discussed with busybodies over tea.
Wait, I have to look this up. Google has a dictionary of slang, jargon, and cant, edited by Albert Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland, published 1890.
Scandal-water, according to this dictionary, is a derogatory word for tea devised by heavy drinkers who thought it was effeminate. It comes from the days “when it was fashionable to get drunk, when ‘drunk as a lord’ was a proverbial expression, when a man was accounted the best in a convivial company who first fell senseless from his chair by excess of liquor, and ‘a three-bottle man’ was considered a king of good fellows.” Barrère and Leland write, “the vulgar bacchanals exerted all the ingenuity they possessed to invent feebly contemptuous names for [tea], among others ‘cat-lap,’ ‘scandal broth,’ ‘water bewitched,’ ‘tattle water,’ ‘kettle-brandy.'”
An almost unbelievable threat to free expression
Our friend Daniel Crandall, over at The American Culture, writes about “Libel Tourism,” the frightening strategy by which reputed terrorist supporters use the libel laws of Great Britain to censor books (both British and foreign) that report facts they don’t like.
He embeds a video which is a couple years old, but informative:
A bill called the Free Speech Protection act, Crandall reports, is now before Congress. It deserves the support of every lover of books and free expression.