Fire and Knowledge

Dear _________,

I see you’ve posted your latest played songs on your website. It’s interesting to know someone has found satisfaction in listening to David Hasselhoff and Bubba Sparxxx, but I could have lived not knowing it was you.

Your entire music history is at last.fm – every song you have listened to since you signed up. Neat. Unfortunately this makes it horribly tempting to make fun of you, seeing you’ve listened to “A Whole New World” from Aladdin 350 times this month. (Yes, you forgot to check the “private” option for that song. I see you’ve remedied that now.)

Why are you posting this to the world? Does it make you feel cool? Elite? Seriously, what’s the appeal? Why give this information to everyone? What’s the benefit? When you want to listen to something that isn’t cool, do you make those songs private? Or do you just not listen to them? Does it excite you to know that someone visiting your website knows the last five songs you listened to? Do you realize they don’t care?

If you want to recommend music to others, please do so. I’m sure you know some obscure indie math-rock emo-core band nobody but you knows about. (Probably because it consists of you, your mom and Garageband.) By all means, introduce us to cool new music to find our identities in. But we don’t need — don’t want — to know your entire music history or even your latest played songs.

Best,

Josh

Unless all ages and races of men have been deluded by the same mass hypnotist (who?), there seems to be such a thing as beauty, a grace wholly gratuitous.

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974), p. 7

Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked (and like) the organ least.

–C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (1955), p. 234

Modern Christianity generally has cut itself off from both nature and culture. It has no serious or competent interest in biology and ecology. And it is equally uninterested in the arts by which mankind connects itself with nature. It manifests no awareness of the specifically Christian cultural lineages that connect us to our past. There is, for example, a splendid heritage of Christian poetry in English that most church members live and die without reading or hearing or hearing about. Most sermons are preached without any awareness at all that the making of sermons is an art that has at times been magnificent. Most modern churches look like they were built by robots without reference to the heritage of church architecture or respect for the place; they embody no awareness that work can be worship. Most religious music now attests to the general assumption that religion is no more than a vaguely pious (and vaguely romantic) emotion.

Modern Christianity, then, has become as specialized in its organizations as other modern organizations, wholly concentrated on the industrial shibboleths of “growth,” counting its success in numbers, and on the very strange enterprise of “saving” the individual, isolated, and disembodied soul.

—Wendell Berry, “Christianity and the Survival of Creation,” in The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry (2002), p. 318

As the unmusical listener wants only the Tune, so the unliterary reader wants only the Event. The one ignores nearly all the sounds the orchestra is actually making; he wants to hum the tune. The other ignores nearly all that the words before him are doing; he wants to know what happened next.

—C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism (1961), p. 30

A good tune should not excuse bad theology.

—Gene Edward Veith, Jr., State of the Arts, p. 203

Not only do rock lyrics denigrate reason, but the way rock is usually experienced discourages any kind of careful reflection. Much of the time, rock (like most popular music) is used to cover over silence. Whether in a car, on a bus, or when walking, rock music serves for its listeners as a kind of personal sound track, enlivening tedious activities with excitement, much the way that film and television scores enliven boring passages with exciting music. Time that could be spent thinking is thus spent listening and daydreaming.

—Kenneth A. Myers All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes: Christians & Popular Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1989), p. 149

Have you noticed it? The iPod earplugs sticking out of everyone’s ears as they walk down the street, ride in their cars, shop at the mall, sit at their house. The best term I can think of for this is iPodaciousness (from the latin acious meaning “full of”), but feel free to email me your better word. I am no master of linguistic lore.

This iPodaciousness is beginning to bother me for a variety of reasons. One reason is that it is simply rude. Someone walks by and you call their name. No answer. Oh, they must be listening to music. You beep at someone, they don’t hear you. Oh, they must be listening to music. Someone walks right in front of you. No big deal, they must be listening to music.

But really all that is secondary. The real problem lies in that people are completely filling every idle moment with music—and not just background music. Music that takes over all other sounds and thoughts. When do these people think? Well, you usually think when you are alone and either 1) don’t have anything else to do or 2) make time for it. For many throughout history this thinking time has been morning time, through reading, praying, and walking. But not many of us make time for any of those anymore. We read book summaries or listen to abridged audio books instead of reading. We almost never think to pray. And of course, when we do walk, we must listen to music. It would be a waste of time simply to just walk and think. So we habitually slip on the headphones and walk, hoping we don’t step right in front of a semi.

However, there is, as I can see it, one advantage to all of this. Silence. In my neighborhood, the locals spend (literally) much delight in their loud bass car systems. However, yesterday I saw one of those locals have a car that was completely quiet. I stared in shock. Then I realized why it was silent—he had iPod earbuds in! So he can now blow out his own eardrums and not mine. Yes, that is quite an advantage–at least for me.

My point in all this is to exhort myself—and you—to think about when we give ourselves time to think and meditate. Do you do it in the morning, when everyone else is sleeping? Do you do it in the evening? Lunch break? Weekends? Or is all your time spent filling yourself up with music, entertainment, frivolity? Do you read good and thoughtful books? Do you give yourself time to think about spiritual things? Do you talk about important topics (other than current news events) with others? Have you considered that the reason you don’t know what to think about an issue is truly because you never have really thought about it? It is my hope and prayer that we will consider these types of questions and strive to be a thoughtful people.

[On a related note, I would highly recommend the articles "The Age of Egocasting" and "Our Cell Phones, Ourselves" by Christine Rosen. They are both thoughful, informative, and helpful.]