Ladies and Gentlemen, my tribute to Merle Haggard
Exiled Adam needs a music that, while it doesn't relish or glorify life east of Eden, at least acknowledges its complexities, a music that owns his complicity for his miserable state.
Bowie, Rickman, and the end of virtue
Celebrities are our secular saints. So when a celebrity dies, especially unexpectedly, there is a strange murmur that runs through our culture.
Who do you want to be?
Who we vote for, and who we elect as a society, may not be the most important thing, but it does say something about how we see ourselves, and who we want to be.
Sufjan blessed my year
I was a big Sufjan fan about ten years ago, but I forgot about him for a while. I was called back to my senses with the release of Carrie and Lowell.
Postscript: fides ex auditu
The proliferation of popular I am hurt and wounded style songs is itself sobering, having moved well beyond the pathos of, say, Patsy Cline in their stark descriptions.
Henryk Górecki and the surprise of religious art
What audiences hear or feel in the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs may simply be the presence of a spiritual dimension in the work, like a door deliberately left open.
The Blues run backwards: Girard, mimesis, and Doug Burr’s Pale White Dove
Burr’s musical archaeology unearths the bodies buried beneath the floorboards of the American cultural edifice.
Analog Christianity
Convenience is sometimes overrated. It can even obscure what is good, holy, and true.