Wednesday, December 8, 2004

Jesus Walks Okay, I'll admit it...I remember first listening to rap about 10 years ago, and I did not get it...at all. Not my thing, not my culture, not my world. Doesn't music need melody? So I thought. Since then, rap and hip-hop have taken up residence in mainstream pop culture, and though I'm still not an aficionado, the brilliance of the rhyming and the sheer force of its energy always draws me in, knocks me over with its anger, its brash in-your-face confrontational style, and its wide range of trunk-thumping beats. Eminem, hip-hop's self-proclaimed pied piper, is not my favorite pop star, pretty much poison for the thought life of the culture, if you ask me - even if he is one of the best wordsmiths in the land. He confounds me, but that's another blog entry on another day. But then there's Kanye West. I know little about him, but he managed to gather up 10 Grammy nominations the other day, and finding myself in the midst of my annual spin through popular music, I thought I'd check him out. "Jesus" in the title always catches my attention, so I clicked on a video link of Jesus Walks and several of the images immediately made me sit up, the most vivid of which was a Klu Klux Klan member chasing a rolling, fiery cross down a hill, and when he caught up to it, he caught fire himself. Then it began storm, and the rain but the fire out, as he stood looking up, I caught a glimpse of a fleeting frame...was that Jesus I just saw reaching down? To Mr. KKK? I thought, "Okay...better pay attention." Songs like this used to make warning bells go off in my head, as they did over at PlanetWisdom.com. The writer there openly says he's a bit on the confused side, though he passes off part of the blame on the whole notion of modern art, saying you're not supposed to understand it. But having listened to the rest of West's debut CD, The College Dropout, he has this to say: "The album itself reflects the new generation and new ways of thinking in which there are no contradictions: everything is true and nothing is true. Kanye can sing praises to God, fornication, drugs, and murder all on the same album and mean every word of it." Well, that's the postmodern conundrum, isn't it? But when you image Jesus hanging with the folks he hung with, these lyrics are hard to resist: (Jesus Walks) God show me the way because the Devil's tryna to break me down (Jesus Walks with me) The only thing that I pray is that me feet don't fail me now (Jesus Walks) And I don't think there is nothing I can do now ta, right my wrongs (Jesus Walks with me) I want to talk to God but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long To the hustlas, killas, murderas, drug dealas even the strippas (Jesus walks with them) To the victims of Welfare for we living in hell here hell yeah (Jesus walks with them) Now hear ye hear ye want to see Thee more clearly I know He hear me when my feet get weary Cuz we're the almost nearly extinct We rappers is role models, we rap we don't think I ain't here to argue about his facial features Or here to convert atheists into believers I'm just trying to say the way school need teachers The way Kathy Lee needed Regis that's the way I need Jesus West made three separate videos of Jesus Walks, which should make for great fodder to discuss in class. Go here to watch all three on Real Player. We get three very different takes on the overall meaning of the song, taking on separate arenas of black culture. The first sets the song smack in the middle of Black Gospel culture, following a prostitute, an alcoholic, and a drug dealer into the streets to witness divine intervention in each of their lives, drawing them finally into the church, looking once again to Jesus for healing. The second video sets the piece in the world of crime and punishment, images of a chain gang, a black prisoner being beaten by a white boss, and a family getting busted for hustling cocaine. This is the one with the KKK redemption, where even the flames of racism can be baptized and snuffed out by the One who sends the rain. The third has a fake-beard white Jesus follow West around the neighborhood, healing folks as he goes. By the time the final words roll over the last frame of the video - "Thank you" - I tend to think Kayne West must be serious about the questions he asking, and suddenly, he's not a rapper anymore, he's a guy who says he needs Jesus, just like me. Question of the day...do you believe him? Knowing how I might have answered that ten years ago, I think how we answer that says at least as much about us as it does about him. Yeah...I believe him. 10:53:05 PM    comment []

Going Jesus Man, lots of roaming on the net today: painting, Kenye West Videos (more on Jesus Walks later, and now I come 'round to find a parish administrator doing some fun stuff with pop culture kitsch. Just now she has a running series on nativity scenes that probably ought not to exist. Check out Going Jesus. Inflatable Nativity? 5:58:37 PM    comment []

Symbol Making, Making Life Reflecting this morning on the use of symbol in Medieval art, and utterly amazed at how deep the idea of symbol-making is in the human being. The first time I ever saw a "dictionary of symbols" I could not imagine why one was needed. But in trying to grasp the breadth of the medieval symbol system, it is truly the learning of a different language, a different way of seeing, of looking. I was standing at the door of my office, thinking about what I'd just read regarding Christ as the door in medieval Cathedrals, and all of a sudden, images of people throughout the centuries making decisions about making things with symbolic meaning flooded me. When we go to make a thing (anything, really), is there any way to not at least touch our desire to invest the thing made with some part of ourselves, our views on the good, the beautiful, and the real? Looking around my office, I began to see the choices I've made as to decor symbolifically, trying to discern what symbols were there, many perhaps chosen subconsciously, and I began to wonder how aware we are these days that we are, at heart, symbol makers. Metaphor makers. Symbol and metaphors are connectors, ideas associated with one thing traveling across a comparative road to line up with the other thing, and in that linking, new meaning, thought and/or feeling is found. (Certainly new understanding, whether that understanding be accurate or not.) Is this how the unseen meets the seen? Is this one of the bridges by which spirit becomes flesh? I am beginning to think that the symbol making tendency is at the heart of what it means to make the world. Is it too far to say that each action is a symbol of the inner life, in that the concrete now stands as a pointer to the inner, unseen thought that gives rise to it? This is the nature of art making, the nature of living artfully. Why this is so important to me to consider, I can't really say. It is an issue of awareness, I suppose. Thank God the postmodern church, what many call the emerging church, is responding to this idea of humanity as symbol makers. What symbols will our lives create today, and to what will they point? 11:14:37 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jeff Berryman .