Queers, Whores, and the Kingdom of God (Religious Thoughts, Part Two)

As I mentioned in my previous post on my post-Christian experience, a lot of the Bible is about the way that looks can deceive. "Man looks on outward appearances, but God looks on the heart," we are told.

In my mind, this seems an improvement on pagan religion, at least for myself. The Norse adore Thor for his strength and courage. The Hindu Shiva is venerated as a destroyer and the standard of invincibility. Zeus sits and casts thunderbolts from Olympus. By contrast, the Hebrew and Christian Bible is full of heroes who glory in their weakness.

My favorite story when I was a kid was of David and Goliath. I had a picture book with a 7-inch, 33-rpm record that recounted the story. It mixed the actual words of scripture with some fanciful re-telling, but it was largely faithful. David was depicted as a young boy, sent by his father, Jesse, to take food to his brothers who were camped against the Philistines. I can still hear the sound of footsteps on gravel as David walked to meet them.

All of the Hebrews were terrified of the Philistine giant and David, full of piss and vinegar, is outraged that no one has gone up against him. He goes to King Saul and tells him that he is a shepherd, that he has fought lions and bears, and that he will kill the giant. Saul puts his armor on David and gives him his sword, but they are too heavy. David takes them off and opts instead for his trusty slingshot and five smooth stones from the brook. (Can you hear that trickling water?)

Their hero story is noteworthy, because the Jews, a Bronze Age people, tell us that leather and stone went up against the finest weaponry of the day. That shouldn't be lost in the telling.

Goliath predictably mocks the young man and tells him he will feed him to the birds of the air. David's response still sends chills up my spine:

Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand.

You know what happens next, right?

David is remembered as Israel's greatest king, and this story plays a large part in that legacy.  It's a variation on the theme I mentioned in my first post on the subject, but an important one. Tradition says that David's son later wrote: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong . . ." In an ancient world where battles had heretofore always gone to the strong, this was news.

David's not the only one, of course. There are very few Bible heroes noteworthy for their physical strength. The notable exception is the judge, Samson, who slew a thousand men using only the jawbone of an ass. Yet even in that story, his real strength is not known until he is humbled, bound to a post with his hair shorn. Only then is he used by God. (Interestingly, God chooses to use him as a suicide killer, something we claim to abhor as a culture, though I remember hearing Samson's tale at least annually as a child.)

The interesting thing about Jesus Christ in the whole tale is not simply his humble birth, although the feeding trough and attendant barn animals add to the rustic charm of the story. But many heroes have humble origin stories and we are drawn to that. It seems to promise us that, no matter how low our beginnings, we may go on to do great things.

Those heroes are usually noted for vanquishing armies or dragons or legions of demons, perhaps rescuing damsels or returning treasure to their people. By contrast, Jesus has a fairly nondescript tale. He walks about healing the sick and preaching that the kingdom of God is at hand. It's true that some of his acts can truly be called miraculous, but they are forever in service to mercy. He makes the lame to walk, because he pities them. He feeds those who are hungry. He brings the dead back to life to be with their loved ones again. He even changes water into wine to save a friend embarrassment at his wedding.

"This is what God is like," he says. And by extension, we are much more like the gods when we are merciful.

"I and the Father are one," he tells the crowd, and they put him to death for this. The ancient world was not ready for a god of meekness and mercy. He is led to slaughter and his only words are those of forgiveness. There is no oath to seek vengeance on his enemies, no wise final pronouncement, no regretting he had but one life to give for his country.

Now, lest I be misunderstood, I want to be clear: the Bible is not all meekness and gentleness. There is bloodshed and misery and ample doses of bigotry of all sorts. But the stories that bounce around in my head and help make meaning of my own narrative are those with the unlikeliest of heroes.

It is strange that Jesus' followers in our own time glory so much in virtues he seemed to abhor. No one is as righteous in his own eyes as the modern American Christian, it would seem, and no one admires the wealthy more than they do. Jesus broke bread with poor people, adulterers, crooks, drunkards, and prostitutes. His followers won't sell pizza to a queer.

"Crooks and whores will enter the kingdom of God before the religious," Jesus preached. Is there anyone who believes that any more?

I'm not into Jesus like I once was, it is true, but I still see the truth in those stories that tell me that our strength is perfected in weakness, that the first will be last and the last will be first. You righteous people can keep your own company. I'll be pouring bloody marys for whores and drunkards.

Daddy

Here's one of my father's favorite jokes:

This hotel chambermaid gets on the elevator with her cart full of cleaning supplies. After the doors close, she realizes she has to pass gas and decides to take advantage of the empty elevator to do so. The smell is awful and she sprays pine scent to cover it. To her horror, the doors open before she arrives at her floor. A drunk enters the elevator and immediately grimaces, saying, "Whew!!!" "What's wrong?" the maid asks. The drunk answers, "Smells like someone shit a Christmas tree!"

My father, Don Louie Deskins, Sr., probably did not learn that joke in classes he took during the semester he attended the University of Virginia.

He told me once that he took a train from Man, West Virginia, to Charlottesville to go to school. They assembled the freshman class for orientation and were addressed by the student body president, who informed them that while they were attending "Mr. Jefferson's University," they would dress with a white collared-shirt and and necktie, not in denim and flannel, "like some hillbilly." He looked around to discover that all of his classmates wore white shirts with neckties; he alone was clothed in denim and flannel.

He could be a dandy, though, especially for a farm boy who had grown up in Mingo and Logan counties in West Virginia.  I borrowed a pink cashmere sweater that he had once worn in high school. He told me he had to whip several members of the football team to wear that sweater.

He was born during the Depression, the fifth of seven living children of Robert Lee Deskins and Bertha Tate. They were Junior, Harold, Jack, Eldon, Daddy, and his sisters Awayn and Niawana.

He was the descendent of colorful characters, to be sure. His maternal grandfather, Colonel Fawsburg Tate, who was not a colonel but had been named for one, had been sheriff of Knott County, KY, and may have murdered a man. He married his wife, Sarah Ann, and fled her father's wrath by living on a Cherokee reservation in Oklahoma. Daddy's mother, Bertha, named her two daughters for childhood friends from that time.

Bertha loomed large in my father's imagination. Her husband had lost his leg after it was crushed between two coal cars when he worked at the company store for Winco Coal at Winco Block. He didn't lose it immediately, but eventually had to have it amputated. Such was his prowess with women, apparently, that he "took up" with a nurse at the hospital during his stay there. The story was told that Bertha dressed her children in their best clothes, packed their bags, and took them to the woman's house. "If you take my husband, these come with him," she said. The nurse declined the offer.

Lee, as he was called, died of a heart attack at the age of 41, when my father was just 10 years old.

Bertha did what any savvy woman of the period would have done, if she had mouths to feed. She remarried a man named Pat Moore who owned a furniture store in Man, West Virginia, and packed up the children who were still at home and moved from the farm in Mingo County.

My father loved music. I remember him singing always when I was a child: "Paper Doll," "In the Garden," "Why Don't You Love Me," and "The Little White Cloud That Sat Right Down and Cried," by Johnny Ray. He had joined the band when he began attending Man High School, first playing the alto horn (the "peck horn," they called it) and then a proper "French" horn. He told me he had never seen any instrument before then other than a fiddle or banjo, and the organ and piano at church. He recounted to me more than once playing the solo from a piece entitled "In a Persian Market." It came time for the concert and the boy who sat second chair behind my dad pretended he was playing, too. Daddy just quit playing and sat his instrument in his lap, letting everyone see who had really been playing the sounds they heard.

His mother had wanted him to go to school when he graduated, to become a doctor. The one semester at UVA was enough to disabuse his medical notions and he enrolled at West Virginia University to study mining engineering. Then came another war, this one in Korea, and Daddy enrolled in the Air Force. Yet instead of heading to Seoul, he was sent to Kaiserslautern, Germany, where he worked in radio and communications. He also capitalized on post-war German life, living off-base in a house he rented cheaply, hiring a German couple to cook and clean for him, dating German women, and going to Oktoberfest in Munich. He learned German, put on thirty pounds, was promoted (and perhaps demoted), and returned home.

He dated women back home, including one he was so serious about he became engaged to her. In fact, he was with this woman when he met Dora Leigh Bassham. She attended high school with his sister Niawana. He broke the engagement and began seeing the woman who eventually became my mother. The two went to Mother's senior prom one month and were married the next. She was 17; he was 25.

It was 1956 and they stayed married for the next 58 years, though God only knows how. My mother quit college when she got pregnant the first time and they raised five children together: Don, Jr., called "Dusty" by most of us; Mark; Sandy Jo; Sarah; and me. I'm the baby of the family, following my twin sister by five minutes. He used to tell people that he had five kids because he'd read that one in every six children born was Chinese, and he didn't want a Chinese baby. It's remarkable to me at times that the same two people raised all five of us. I love my siblings, but we all turned out differently. I half-expect to piss one or more of them off just by writing this.

My dad worked primarily in coal, eventually becoming a preparation plant foreman, a "tipple boss" in the common parlance, as in "he cusses like a tipple boss" (which Daddy did) and "he has an ass like a tipple boss" (which he did not). They moved from Logan County and refer to that exit as the children of Israel undoubtedly remembered the Exodus in the years that followed. They were awhile in Richwood and then landed in Herndon, in Wyoming County, where they lived when I was born.

They came to Raleigh County when my father took a job for Eastern Coal at Affinity. He built the house that I grew up in from the foundation up, taking my two older brothers each day after work and school to complete a portion of it. When the basement was finished, we all moved in, and the house became my father's project for the next 40 years. The kitchen was in the basement until just a few years ago, something that never struck me as odd but seemed to perplex others. He tiled one hall with slate he brought from work.

Once he moved to Raleigh County, he was loathe to leave, even for a short time. The phrase "a man's home is his castle," could well have been written about Daddy. He resented family for infrequent visits, yet rarely traveled to see them.

As a consequence, we took few vacations growing up. My father seemed to resent being bound by plans, even when he had made those plans himself. The two vacations I remember taking both began when he announced at dinner that we were to go pack: we would be leaving for the beach that night. We would arrive with no reservations and were likely to leave just as abruptly when he'd had his fill of the place.

Likewise, he was likely to promise trips to the swimming pool or shopping, only to change his mind as the day progressed. It was really maddening as a kid, but I understand that impulse more now.

To say my father was an imposing presence in the house would be a great understatement.

We never ate anything my father disliked, so the only time we had beef stroganoff, my mother's favorite meal, was when he was away.

He had smoked from age 8 and my childhood memories are filled with Kent cigarettes and King Edward cigars. I was burned by both on multiple occasions, quite unintentionally, while playing at his feet.

He taught us that education was the most important thing there was, but got angry that my mother bought so many books.

He wasn't great with money, though no one ever went hungry. His standard farewell when anyone left the house was, "Don't go off mad and hungry."  In my experience, children of the Depression tend toward ascetic frugality or extravagance, and my father was certainly of the latter camp. We drank Pepsi colas like they were water and we frequently ran shy on room under the Christmas tree, as it piled higher and higher with gifts. He would spend any extra money that came his way on steak and shrimp for everyone and he was generous, to a fault. There was real joy in his eyes over the years as he bought me saxophones and guitars and whatever else I came begging for. I'm not the only one who has needed and received his help as adult, either.

He worked second shift when I was small and then took a job in Pike County, Kentucky, that kept him away during the week. As a consequence, I didn't know him well as a small child and probably lived mostly in fear of him for a long time.

He could be a very angry man and his physical presence was intimidating. When I was bullied in junior high school, he thought nothing of calling the bully's dad and threatening to kick his ass. He also sent me to school with a "monkey fist" — a steel ball bearing wrapped in rope.

He took a great interest in my drug education program. He called me to the living room one day where he sat in his recliner. He told me I was likely to see "dope," his word for all drugs, at school. Then he asked, "You know I'd break your goddamn neck if I ever caught you doing that shit, don't you?" I never tested the veracity of this statement.

He was a lifelong Republican, though rarely showed favor toward any sitting politician. While he certainly was conservative, I think he was more of an iconoclast than anything. The state, and certainly southern West Virginia, has always voted Democrat, and a Republican in Logan County might as well have been a Whig or Know-Nothing. He owned guns, but thought that there should be limits on caliber and magazine sizes that were sold. He thought it should be illegal to burn the American flag, but was opposed to both invasions of Iraq. He watched Bill O'Reilly but thought creationism shouldn't be taught in school.

Daddy was one of the most irreligious people I know. He certainly wasn't an atheist. He'd grown up Methodist and "back-slidden," as they say. We spent a good deal of my childhood praying for Daddy to get saved, and he landed on the prayer lists of a dozen churches or more. I suppose all of Daniels Missionary Baptist Church knew he was going to Hell for about a ten-year period. He had a conversion experience of some sort when I was in high school, though the effects seemed to wear off in time. He'd been a Freemason, though was not active during my life, so I suppose he was a believer of some sort, probably of the Thomas-Jefferson/Egyptian-Illuminati/Benign-Hallmark-Greeting-Card-Deity type.

He did love the celebration of Christmas, primarily because he got to see his family.  When asked what he wanted, his standard reply was, "Seven smiling faces."  That number increased as the family grew.  He also read a poem every year called "Annie and Willie's Prayer," a story about a cold-hearted millionaire whose heart is changed at Christmas.  In recent years, there wasn't a dry eye in the house when he read it.

Part of his aversion to religion undoubtedly stemmed from his love of science, though in this, as in all areas, he has a rather mixed legacy. On the one hand, he firmly believed in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe and that human beings evolved from lower life forms. On the other, he held that aliens had built the pyramids and that the ancient civilization of Atlantis had been destroyed with a nuclear weapon. He would deny being superstitious, yet he refused to give or accept knives as gifts and would return a borrowed blade opened, so as not to severe a friendship.

If Daddy believed in sin, he thought the worst one was not working for a living. He despised those who failed to support their families and thought government entitlement was a plague in Appalachia. To my knowledge, he never missed a day at work. He valued himself largely — too much so, in fact — by the work he did.

He said he hated cats and shot at them with a BB gun, though he never seemed to hit one. He also kept a slingshot on the porch that he used to shoot at bluejays, but only because they chased away other birds. He claimed to hate the dogs we kept as pets, too, thought the first time I saw him crying while sober was when he had to put down our schnauzer, Pepper, after the animal was hit by a car.

He was a near-reckless driver.  I've ridden in the car with him when his speed exceeded 95 m.p.h. and seen him outrun police cars to avoid a ticket.  He managed to succeed in this until his old age began to diminish his eyesight, and he wasn't as good at spotting Smoky hidden in the bushes.

It was hard to know what to believe that he told you, not because he lied exactly, but because he was larger-than-life at times. Some of it was poor memory, some of it exaggeration, and some of it might be true.

He said our first ancestor with the Deskins' surname was an Indian baby who was called "Deer Skins," after being wrapped in such and left on a white family's doorstep.

He said he was named for Don Chafin, the villain of the Battle of Blair Mountain, and that Chafin had bought him a suit when he graduated high school. He said his middle named was taken from the song "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis," though the attending nurse misspelled it L-O-U-I-E on his birth certificate. He also said he was born at home because he wanted to be close to his mother.

He said he circumcised himself when he was a teenager.

He loved children and was uncanny with babies. When I brought my son Griffin Louis (spelled correctly this time and middle-named for both his grandfather and Louis Armstrong) home from the hospital, he was passed crying from one set of arms to another, but hushed the moment Daddy held him.

He was flawed, like all of us. Some of his flaws I can talk about and others I can't, partly because they are too hurtful to those left behind and partly because I do not know the statue of limitations on certain acts and don't wish to incriminate friends and family. I don't believe in sentimentalizing someone's life, but I'd prefer to stop at inflicting pain on the living.

He drank. At times he drank a lot. He wasn't an alcoholic, because he'd never been to one of those meetings. I've seen him wax nostalgically, spew vitriol, go driving, and abuse others while under the influence. He drank primarily cheap vodka, imagining that the smell was undetectable. He kept bottles under his recliner, in the garage, and behind the seat in his pick-up truck, but I probably only saw him take a drink two or three times in my life. I have seen him passed out in the floor, however, and I've also seen the blue lights of a police car in my parents' driveway.

He was a racist. Of every piece of my father's legacy, this one troubles me more than all the rest put together. He wasn't actively racist, I don't guess. He wasn't a Klansman or anything, though perhaps that was because he wasn't much of a joiner. He watched All in Family faithfully every week and failed to note the irony which the show intended. He even occasionally called himself "Archie Bunker." He used the word "nigger" casually, and the newsworthy misdeeds of any person of color were attributed to race.

Yet, I've never seen him be unkind to any African-American person. He was always warm and genuinely friendly to black friends of mine and never said an unkind word about them. I papered my bedroom walls with posters of black faces growing up, from Prince to John Coltrane, and he never protested. Perhaps he remembered hiding Nat Cole and B.B. King records from his own intolerant mother. He was also very supportive when I went to Africa during college and listened to me talk for long periods about the importance of the African experience in American music.

I've engaged in many long arguments with him about this topic and I'd like to be able to say that he was a changed man. He wasn't though. He was a complicated man who probably grew over the years in this area. It would be too easy to say he was a "product of his time." Racism exists at all times and that's just an excuse. Yet it was certainly not his defining trait.

If someone asked what that was, I'd say, "Being a Deskins." In our family, that's shorthand for thinking for yourself, being hard-headed, and doing your own thing in spite of public sentiment or the wishes of others.

When I was little, I remember Daddy telling me that if I was walking behind a group of a hundred people and the road split in two, and 99 went one way and one person went the other — follow that one person.

It hasn't always served me well, but I suppose I am likely to pass the same advice to my son. I'm certainly not "brave" in any conventional sense. I don't go thrill-seeking or volunteer for dangerous work. On the other hand, I'm not afraid of bucking convention, of being my own person, and of thinking for myself. I suppose that is Daddy's greatest legacy to me.

The first time he seemed small to me was just three years ago.

My mom had called my up and asked if I could drive him to Haymarket, Virginia. He'd purchased a wheelchair on eBay but the shipping would cost more than the chair itself. "What's wrong with his chair?" I asked. "Nothing. He just saw one that was like his on sale for $500 less on eBay." "Is he going to sell his?" "No, I don't think so." There are about eight powered wheelchairs at their house right now because of this logic.

The trip began very warmly. I was going through a difficult personal time and wasn't in the mood for any argument. I told my mom that if he said a word about my tattoos, I'd turn the car around and leave him in Raleigh County. Instead, he began recounting his own childhood, friends he'd known, and changes he'd seen in his life that he could never have anticipated. It was exactly the sort of thing I needed to hear to clear my mind and think about my own life.

Then about an hour in, he said, "One thing we'd never have imagined was that we'd have a Muslim for president." Ugh. That quickly, all the warm-fuzzies evaporated. I told him that President Obama wasn't a Muslim, he was a Christian, and that it didn't matter anyway, because the Constitution didn't say we couldn't have a Muslim president, and since when did he get religious anyway, and if he was religious he would know that Augustine distinguished between the "city of man" and the "city of God" and that Luther wrote it was better to be ruled by "an honest Turk than a dishonest Christian." Daddy countered by quoting Fox News. It was a long drive.

We picked up the chair at an elderly woman's condo. She lived alone, no one came to see her, her kids lived far away, and she needed the money. She was doing alright, but it was a sad place anyway.

On the way home, Daddy asked to stop at a restroom. I pulled over at the first rest area, parking in the handicap spot. He surveyed it and said, "Let's go to the next." I was puzzled. "Why?" "Because I can't make it to the door without the wheelchair." The distance was about 200 feet.

In that moment, I realized just how frail this man was that I had feared all my life.

I used to joke with friends that Daddy was too mean to die.  I was wrong.

Don Louie Deskins, Sr., died peacefully in his sleep on January 27, 2014 around 1 AM.  

He smoked, drank, worked in the mines, and lived an all-around hard life. He had suffered three heart attacks and had quadruple bypass surgery. He spent his last few years using a wheelchair and an oxygen tank.

I am now 41, the same age his father was when he passed away and the same age Daddy was when I was born. I've now become a father at 41 and Daddy was twice 41 — 82. I'm not sure of the significance of all that numerology, but it reminds me that we are all connected, for better or worse, and that we all belong to one another in some way.

My father was a very complex person. He was a bigot and he was big-hearted. He was tender and he was hard as nails. He was coarse and he was worldly. He was rational and he was illogical. He was mean-spirited and he was generous. He was strong and he was weak.

Whatever legacy he has lives on most in the family he has left behind. We love you, Daddy, very much, and will miss you.

Sirius Black and the Brothers Johnson

I'm sure you remember the early days of Facebook, yes?  Those halycon days, some two years past, before "unfriending" became common and before our parents were familiar with social media?  Do you remember all those quizzes?  I loved the "Which ______ Character Are You?" quizzes.  Thanks to Facebook, I learned that I shared much in common with Darth Vader, Dylan Thomas, and Dr. Frank-n-Furter from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I remember one for Harry Potter characters, and I've found that this makes interesting conversation with others.  I was working in Morgantown this summer and having lunch with a group of friends.  The last movie had just been released and conversation drifted to that all-important question: which Harry Potter character are you?

There was unanimous agreement about me and interestingly, it was the same character Facebook told me I was: Sirius Black.  Sirius, for those of you who have been living under a rock since the mid-nineties, was Harry Potter's godfather.  He was wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to Azkaban prison, where he escaped after 12 years to join Harry in the fight against Voldemort.  He was killed in a battle with the Death Eaters by his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange.

So how, you may ask, do I resemble this wizarding hero?

I would like to be able to tell you that it has something to do with the dark good looks of Gary Oldman in the movie portrayals.  Alas, that is not the case.

The thing about Sirius is that he's not easy to understand.  None of the HP characters are, really.  He has two sides.  Actually, this is almost literally true.  You see, Sirius is an animagus, a shape-shifter who takes the form of an animal.  In this instance, Sirius can change into a large, black dog.  What are the chances?!  "Sirius Black" means "black dog" and he is a black dog.  He became an animagus so that he could accompany his friend, Remus Lupin, when the latter became a werewolf during the full moon.  (And again - how fortuitous: "Remus" being one of the co-founders of Rome, who was suckled by a she-wolf, and "Lupin" being Latin for "wolf.")

Many of the primary characters in the story have this sort of dualism: Harry, Remus, James, Severus Snape.  Even Voldemort.  In Sirius' case, he is unstable at times, having been driven to the brink of madness by his years in prison with the dementors.  He is sometimes immature and irresponsible, and often demonstrates poor judgment.

I was thinking about this recently because my friend Rachel H. was telling me about Churchill's "black dog."

I mentioned to her that my head gets weird sometimes.  I've been reading a lot about issues surrounding mental illness and creativity.  For those of us in the arts, it comes as no surprise that large numbers of "creatives" might be identified (formally or otherwise), as manic-depressives.  There is a fantastic book about the topic by Kay Jamison called Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.  I think it also explains, to a degree, why those in the arts seem more susceptible to substance abuse than others.

Rachel told me it reminded her of Winston Churchill's black dog.  I'd never heard about this, but a little research (i.e., I Googled it) revealed a familiar pattern: long periods of dark depression, alternating with manic episodes characterized by great productivity.  He slept little during those times, wrote prolifically, lost normal inhibitions, was belligerent, and was singularly opinionated.  And he "self medicated," which is doctor code for drinking scotch and water.

When those periods of depression would come, Churchill called them his "black dog." I learned that there is a long mythology around black dogs in the U.K. There are a few dozen stories about various dusky canines on the island, but they have some common characteristics: menacing growls, glowing eyes, portents of death, servants of the Devil, hanging around church graveyards or crossroads.

My mind naturally went to Robert Johnson.

     I got to keep movin' . . . blues fallin' down like hail,

     Ummmm . . . blues fallin' down like hail,

     And the days keeps on worryin' me, there's a hellhound on my trail . . .

Johnson had his own black dog. Story goes that he sold his soul to the Devil to learn to play the guitar, at the crossroads of highways 61 and 49 in Clarksdale, MS. He was haunted by something for the next several years, until he was poisoned to death at age 27.

The story is told about other blues men, too, including Tommy Johnson. And not just blues men. Everyone from Niccolò Paganini to Nikki Sixx is supposed to have made that Faustian deal. West African griots and West Virginia fiddlers all have stories about trading their souls with Mr. Scratch in exchange for talent, fame, riches, etc.

Let me get one thing out of the way.  I do not suppose to compare myself to Winston Churchill or Robert Johnson in terms of talents or accomplishments.  You don't need to point out that I haven't changed the course of music history or won any world wars lately.  But in some sense I do relate to the connection between this personal disposition and feeling creative.

I'm certain there are those who are very creative who lead balanced, normal lives.  In fact, because this is often the case, it is hard to explain sometimes why one isn't willing to give up the "abnormal" life.  I mean all of it.  It's easy for others to see the up side to mania.  You feel energetic, ideas come quickly, sleep is unnecessary, nothing gets you down.  It's more difficult to explain why you wouldn't trade the depression for "normalcy."

The thing is, when I feel most creative, I'm usually tapping into an emotional well that goes pretty deep.  I don't mean to suggest that I am particularly profound, but something of my understanding of art comes from knowing my shadow side well.  Jung opined that our shadow is the seat of both the things we wish were not true about ourselves and our creative impulses, and that we explored these most often in dreams.  

I realize this view may fly in the face of contemporary opinions regarding psychiatry, psychology, and pharmacology.  I've also been told by people who've gone to school more years than I have that my opinion is a dangerous one.  I get that, too.

To me the choice is between living an aesthetic life or an anesthetized existence.  The choice is not always an enjoyable one.  It's not always easy for those around me, and I'm sorry for that.  And it's not easy to understand why, like the "creature" in Crane's poem:

     In the desert,

     I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

     who, squatting upon the ground,

     Held his heart in his hands,

     And ate of it.

     I said, "Is it good, friend?"

     "It is bitter - bitter," he answered;

     "But I like it

     Because it is bitter,

     And because it is my heart." 

Like that other archetypal canine, the werewolf, changes may seize one in ways that seem outside of one's control.  (Little wonder the werewolf changes with the lunar cycle, tied as it is to mental illness, e.g., loony, lunatic, lunacy, and even Luna Lovegood.)

On the whole, I know I have little external reason for these cycles.  I've had my share of disappointments, but no more than the next person, and I have much to be thankful for.  It's when one turns inward and reflects on what is there, there where others do not see, that the black dog comes trotting down the road.

He may not be much of a pet, but he is my dog.

Christmas Time is Here

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

"Now they are all on their knees,"

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

"Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,"

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

(This is going to be hard to write.)

I used to love Christmas.

I realize that I am not exceptional in this. I know others. It is a special kind of disease to love Christmas, I mean to really love Christmas. You may wonder what the symptoms are, in case you or someone you love has this disease.

Ask yourself a few questions. Have you ever made goose or plum pudding for Christmas dinner - even if you're an American? Do you have an Advent wreath in your home, which you light faithfully and appropriately? Is there a poem you simply must read every Christmas Eve? Do you know all the verses to "The First Noel"?

If you answered yes to any of the questions I've just asked, you may be infected. You may also be infected if you understand the allusions in the poem above by Thomas Hardy without having them explained to you.

The poem refers to a folk tale, still told among some, that on Christmas Eve the beasts of the farm, like those who attended the birth of Christ in the stable, kneel down at midnight to honor the newborn king. Some even say that they speak with voices like men.

Like almost every poem that I know well, I learned this one set to music. I forget the composer, but it was a really lovely setting, one that helped you understand the import of the text. We sang it in high school chorus. It's really a marvel in terms of craft, isn't it? "So fair a fancy few would weave . . . " Let that roll from your tongue a dozen times.

The story about the oxen is not in the Bible. It would hardly be out of place, though. The birth of Jesus is extraordinary, as recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Divine messengers. The virgin conception. The prophetic utterances of so many characters. The birth in a stable. The appearance of the hosts of heaven to shepherds. The search for the baby by mystics from Persia. The bad king's murder of children. The flight into Egypt.

Of course, all of that pales in comparison to the central fact of the story: the infinite power and majesty of God, incarnate in a small child, to redeem a wicked people. The Word made flesh. Even as I type those words, they bring chills to my flesh and tears to my eyes.

There are stories like that all through the book. Fish swallow men whole. A nation is fed from bread that falls from the sky for forty years. Sticks turn into snakes. Rivers become blood. A shepherd boys kills a giant with a slingshot. Men are cast into a furnace and are unharmed. The dead come to life. And a prophet named Balaam does, in fact, have a donkey who speaks.

For those of you who have never truly believed these stories (or ones like them), it may all be very difficult to take in. The atheist compares them to the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, but they are something different.

One of my favorite stories is about the prophet Elisha. He angers the king of Aram, who sends an entire army to encircle his home. Elisha's servant sees the army and is terrified, and asks, "What should we do?" So the prophet prays that his servant's eyes may be opened to see things as they truly are. Then the servant looks, and the mountain behind the army is filled with the entire host of heaven, standing to protect Elisha, riding chariots of fire.

It is one of the great themes of the book: things are not as they appear. The climactic story of the Bible is, in many ways, centered on that theme. "Do you see that man there, nailed to that tree, naked, broken, bleeding, dying and being mocked by thousands? He is, this very moment, conquering death and Hell."

If you are a believer, it runs deep. C.S. Lewis wrote that every single person we see will some day, at the end of time, be transformed into something either so glorious and radiant that we would be tempted to worship, or else so hideous and wicked that we should have nightmares forever thinking about them. Paul, writing to the church in Corinth about some very nuts-and-bolts matters, says in passing, "Do you not know that you will judge angels?" He doesn't go on to explain it, he just says it. I remember sitting in church once, looking at the man in front of me, who had arrived late that morning because he had a sick cow, thinking, "This man will pass judgment on God's angels."

It's an extraordinary way to live. Believing that oxen should kneel at the stroke of midnight every December 25 does not seem ridiculous in comparison.

So, I used to love Christmas. It represented to me all the hope that I had. It represented my hope that at the end of days, all would be made right, like in the last verse of that carol:

Then louder pealed the bells more deep,

"God is not dead nor doth He sleep,

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, goodwill to men."

It represented hope that I could be different, that I could be better, that though I was beset by my own native sin, I was not what I appeared to be. I bore the imprint of God's image, the imago Dei. More, I was changed, I was a new creature. I had been raised from spiritual death, as surely as Jesus had raised his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb. I counted God my friend and death as gain. I had hope both here and hereafter.

I've always found arguments against the more fantastical elements of religion completely unconvincing. That the omnipotent God should speak worlds into being was nothing. That He should save a wretch like me was more unfathomable. Armchair agnostics sit at their laptops and ridicule the virgin birth, but they completely miss the issue. The power of the Creator of the elements to manipulate them to His will is a trifle compared to the mystery of grace.

The problem is that I know my own heart. I've known it since I was very young. I know its uncomfortable places and dark corners. I know what's under the floorboards and in the closets. Paul wrote that for those who are in Christ, old things have passed away, all things are made new. Yet my heart tells me I am just a man. Better than some, much worse than many. Son of Adam, to be sure.

I think that others would describe what has happened to me over the last couple of years as a "loss of faith." It seems like much more than that to me, much more than those three words can express. It is as though I awoke from a dream, only to discover than the world was waiting in all its ugliness and pain.

There are those, even some I count as friends, who think nothing of belittling religion and the religious. I forgive their ignorance, but it is ignorance, nonetheless, sometimes a very cruel type of ignorance. To mock that which is the very ground of being of fellow traveler in this world is callous. Strangely, I find it more painful now than when all those things were mine.

I suppose I've lost faith. I've also lost Christmas, or at least, I've lost what Christmas was to me. Tonight we're having friends for cocktails, a Christmas party. I am thankful I have that at least. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we may die," says the fool.

Thomas Hardy wrote another poem about Christmas called "Yuletide in a Younger World." He writes of remembering how it used to seem to him, then concludes thus:

We heard still small voices then,

And, in the dim serene

Of Christmas Eve,

Caught the far-time tones of fire-filled prophets

Long on earth unseen . . .

- Can such ever have been?

I miss those still, small voices and wonder the same. Maybe I'll make a trip through the gloom this Christmas Eve, and see the oxen kneel. Or maybe I won't and simply hope it might be so.

The Arts & Meaning in Pain

Today I watched a setting of Euripides' Medea with 500 high school students. It was a re-imagining of the tale by the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, set in an early 20th century tea house, styled in a quasi-Kabuki manner and performed entirely in Japanese, with English subtitles. It was deeply affecting and brilliant, a perfect example of 21st century "remix" culture: the sex-roles of the patrons and geisha of the chashitsu were used to comment on Medea's frustrations as a woman in Greek society, and the uncomfortable intersection between East and West was continually highlighted, as Medea is repeatedly referred to as "Asian." Under different circumstances, this is probably what I would blog about right now.

As it is, life has chosen to interrupt art to a great extent and my experience of the play this week is probably much different than it would have been otherwise.

Although the performances were profoundly different in many ways, my mind naturally wandered to school performances by the West Virginia Dance Company, which I have seen many times. I suppose it's because they, too, often blend cultural elements to achieve a greater artistic impact. Or maybe it's just because they have performed in more West Virginia schools than probably any other arts organization in the state.

I've thought a lot about how young people respond to art. When they are very young, there is an openness that is enviable, even among those of us who spend a good deal of our time in the arts. The youngest of children have not yet learned to mask emotion or to hide with pretension and they respond to the thing itself. It's really beautiful and it's one of the reasons artists like to work with younger students.

Once students reach middle school, they're expected to behave certain ways. They are not allowed to have pure emotional responses, for any number of reasons: they are viewed as inappropriate by adults, as unsophisticated by their peers, and as unnatural in our educational system. To top it off, the arts community (and I'll include myself in this guilty number) bombards them with all these rules about how to experience and respond to art, what to wear, what to do, not to talk, when to laugh or cry, when to applaud . . . and the rules can vary widely according the whether you're watching theatre or dance, whether you're in a concert hall or a jazz club, even who else is in the audience.

Coupled with the truly limited experiences many of them have, most students are pretty uncomfortable watching a performance by the time they reach high school. I suppose it's the years I spent teaching, but I've come to expect this response and to accept it as the general order of things.

Here's something particular I have noticed: when a work of art touches a group of students on a particularly deep level, they get nervous. Just when you know they are feeling the thing the artist is giving them, they act "inappropriately." They fidget. They make disarming comments. They giggle. I've seen it time and time again, and it used to make me angry. "Why the hell can't these kids just go headlong into what is happening? Why do they have to act so damn goofy?"

I don't get angry anymore. I think I understand it somewhat better. Most of them - maybe 80% or more - aren't used to feeling this deeply. They do not have the mechanism to respond.

Most adults don't either, by the way. It's just that when teenagers feel insecure, they joke. When adults feel insecure, they just pretend they know more than they do.

I don't mean this as a judgment in any way. I think the need is clear. We need more art. The arts give us that emotional language to respond to those deep places. Some of those places are transcendent. Listening to Bach helps us feel the divine. Watching Shakespeare helps us fall in love. Some of those places are dark, part of our shadow side.

Medea, especially the production I saw today, was one of those pieces that helps us make meaning of those dark experiences in life. I'll recap the story briefly.

Medea, a princess from a foreign land, is brought to Greece after she kills her brother and helps Jason steal the golden fleece. She marries Jason and has a son by him, but the king of Corinth offers his daughter to Jason, who decides to leave Medea. Creon, king of Corinth, banishes Medea and her son because he suspects that she has powers of witchcraft. Medea hatches a plot to seek her revenge. She makes a gift of a robe and comb to her ex-husband's new bride. The bride puts both on, not knowing that they are poisoned. She dies violently and when her father, the king, comes to rescue her, he is killed, too. Medea completes her revenge by murdering her own son, leaving Jason without an heir.

The setting I saw today was performed in kabuki style. The "readers" of the play were Japanese officials visiting a tea house, while the silent "players" were the geisha who served. The subordinate role of the women is emphasized throughout, with the geisha objectified, silent and serving. The play-with-the-play shows the male officials sexually harassing the women even while they read the angry words of Medea against dominant men. The play concluded with the geisha slaughtering the male officials just as Jason discovers Medea's deeds.

It was brilliant and affecting at the deepest level. Medea's pitiable situation was presented without sentimentalism. There was real pathos and fear as she stabs her own child to death.

The students giggled.

I could feel their discomfort. For most of them, death is presented casually in video games and many films. Now, this is not a "back when I was a kid" diatribe. I actually don't think that these casual portrayals necessarily desensitize children to violence. But they do not portray the powerful emotional impact of violence the way that art does - with color, gesture, pitch, rhythm, movement, drama. You could not watch the action onstage, though it was not graphic in any way, and not feel the horror of the moment.

If we are to make meaning of all of life's experiences, we need art. The universe seems ruled by chaos. The arts - along with religion, philosophy, mathematics, science and the rest - help us make meaning of the chaos. The special role that the arts play are in making meaning of the emotional tumult of our lives.

This is the other reason I was thinking of my friends at the West Virginia Dance Company while watching the play today. One of their dancers, a beautiful young woman named Cyan Maroney, was violently murdered this week. Several of them were witnesses; all of them were a second family to her. I cannot imagine the profound pain they are feeling right now. I find myself hoping that I never know the type of psychic turmoil they have experienced in the last three days.

I only knew Cyan casually from a few introductions. I had seen her dance, though. She was dancing Anne Frank in a piece that the company was currently touring. She knew the power of the arts to bring order to all the darkness there is in the world.

How are the other dancers coping? Today, they are dancing. To those who are not artists, this probably seems strange. For those of us in the arts, we can imagine no other response. Their dance is catharsis, I am sure. But more than that, it is one way they can fight against the occasionally unbearable awfulness of the Universe, a way to scream out, "You haven't beat me yet, dammit!"

There are those who imagine that education is merely to prepare young people for a life of work, so they may go home and anesthetize themselves in the face of life's tragedy. But rather than an anesthetic life, I would suggest an aesthetic life, one that embraces the pain with the joy, knowing that it is all part of our common experience. Such a life is unimaginable without the arts.

My thoughts are with Cyan's family, along with everyone at the West Virginia Dance Company and those in the Beckley arts community who are hurting so much. I hope they find solace.

Credo

This was originally written in September of 2010.  I have revised it several times.

1. All of us are on a continuum, a “journey,” and our understanding should evolve as we go.  Although it is a cliché, I realize at this point in my life that I know a lot less than I thought I did, so everything on this list is subject to change.  As Notorious B.I.G. may have said, “A motherfucker’s a work in progress.” 

2. An idea is the most powerful thing in the world.  Consider Plato, Paul, Copernicus, Martin Luther, or Ornette Coleman.

3. New ideas are threatening to those in power.  Consider Socrates, Jesus, Galileo, Martin Luther King, or Shostakovich.

4. Almost all American music has its roots in the South.  Even Motown.

5. Colleges are great places because there are big libraries and free concerts, plays, exhibits and lectures.  The problem is that no one goes to any of those things.  As Frank Zappa wrote, “If you want to get laid, go to college.  If you want an education, go to the library.”

6. New Orleans is the most interesting city in the United States, probably the world. 

7. Politics are important. Art is more important.

8. Demand more art.  Demand it from our political, social, and cultural institutions, but demand it most of all from yourself.

9. Music is better than just about anything else.  Art, the theatre, dance and books are tied for second.

10. It is much easier to love someone when you hear their story, and it is nearly impossible to hate someone when you eat with them.  

11. Travel makes people better.  

12. If you’re not trying to make life better, more comfortable, or hipper, you’re wasting your time.  In the words of Hugh MacLeod, “Change the world or go home.”

13. Eat and drink whatever you please, whenever it pleases you. The only people who are impressed by what you eat or drink are the types of people who are impressed by what others eat and drink.

14. The idea that wisdom comes with age is bullshit.  Death comes with age.  There are lots of old fools walking around.

15. If no one thinks you’re hip, you probably aren’t.  If everyone thinks you’re hip, you definitely aren’t.

16. Small talk is for people who have nothing worth saying.  Most conversations should broach religion, politics, education, or art.

17. If no one has ever threatened to hurt you for something you’ve said, you probably haven’t said much worth hearing.

18. Human beings are inherently artistic and the urge to create cannot be suppressed by your despotic religion, political party, school or family.  Some people think this is the image of the Divine in us, while some believe it is an evolutionary impulse – but either way, it is there.

19. There is real evil in this world.  Anyone who says otherwise is either deluded or lying.  There is a reason we have nightmares from the time we are babies.  Most of us carry it around with us all day long.

20. Anyone who mocks American culture is an idiot.  In music alone America has given the world blues, country, bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll, soul, funk, disco, hip hop, punk, grunge and more.  None of those things could have happened anywhere else.

21. About 80% of the world’s great cultural achievements were a result of human misery and oppression (see #4, #6 and #20 above).  The other 20% happened in Florence.

22. If all of your friends think like you do, it probably means you’re dull, a bigot, or both.

23. Everyone should own a recording of Beethoven’s 9th.  I mean, there are “great” recordings and all, but even the bad recordings are usually really good.  And cheap.

24. Racism is still one of America's biggest problems.  This falls under: “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”

25. You shouldn't wait until you are 37 to get a tattoo.  But if you do, you should try and make up for lost time very quickly.

26. You should ignore most life advice from friends and family, unless it resonates with you.  They are often motivated by their desire to keep you safe, which paradoxically may keep you from being happy. Ignore about 99.9% of advice given by teachers, pastors, school principals, and politicians.  Most of them aren't thinking about your future happiness at all.

27. A lot of people say they believe the Bible and even quote it to support their opinions.  Almost no one has actually read it.

28. Don't selectively quote others to support your opinions. Anyone who has said anything worth hearing has left a body of work and anything they said should be understood within that conext.

29. If you can’t stand what you are doing, do something else.  No one can make that decision for you.  Stop being a cliché.

30. Singing is central to the human experience.  If you don’t sing regularly, you are preventing yourself from being fully human.

31. About 90% of the things people do are motivated by their insecurities.  This is just an average.  It’s actually 93% for me.

32. Life is absurdly angular, irregular, messy, complicated, and mysterious.  I've stopped listening to anyone who offers linear narratives to the universe: all the evidence points to something contrary.  There is birth and death and love and hate and joy and pain and fear and boldness and just plain weirdness in myriad combinations, and we try to use the tools we have to make sense of it.  Sometimes we can. Other times just leave us puzzled and hoping for the best.

33. “Plan B” is usually better than “Plan A.”  We’re typically forced into “Plan B” because something in our life or experience or personality doesn’t resonate with our current path.  This doesn’t necessarily mean we made the wrong decision to begin with, it’s just that circumstances – and people – can change.  It also doesn’t mean that it is not exceptionally painful.

34. Plans C, D, E, F, G, and H can be pretty good, too.

35. Everything that happens to us makes us who we are.  To wish away our pain is to wish that we were someone else.

36. Love comes in lots of ways.  We should be open to it every time we encounter it.

37. Each of us has different faces we show – to friends, family, colleagues, children, authority, and lovers – and they are all true. It is at times most difficult to show your true self to family, for fear of disappointing them, causing them pain, or invoking their anger.  Paradoxically, they are the ones most likely to accept us when they see our true selves.  

38. Most cultural institutions – schools, governments, churches, etc. – are committed to the express purpose of suppressing in us what comes most naturally.  Sometimes these “natural” urges are destructive and merit suppression.  Sometimes they just violate social mores and are a threat to those in power.  

39. Those who hold power over others rarely, if ever, relinquish it willingly.

40. America is a police state.  The police in this country are overwhelmingly corrupt and committed to the violation of the rights of her citizens. This, coupled with the increasing militarization of our police force has led to an untenable situation.

41. Our government is, by and large, completely corrupt. For some it is "hard corruption," the sort of thing you imagine when you hear the word: vote buying, extortion, perhaps even murder. For most it is "soft corruption," however: serving at the behest of PACs or party bosses, corporate interests, or others, rather than citizens.

42. Socialism is the most underrated and the most reasonable form of government there is.

43. Our ancestors committed the self-same sins we have, though the accepted narrative may lead us to believe otherwise.  

44. There are lots of ways for things to be true.  Scientific truth is not the same as artistic truth, mathematical truth is not the same as metaphysical truth, and so on.

45. Stories help us understand the world.  This is why books are so important.  No one will end their life thinking they’ve read too much.

46. Most people believe that they are not creative.  This is not true.  Our educational systems lead people to this conclusion through the systematic suppression of the creative urge and the express teaching that creativity is the realm of the exceptional or the super-gifted.  Many of the problems we face as a culture could be solved if we cultivated a creative disposition in students.

47. Our educational system has also done an exceptionally poor job of helping us learn to weigh evidence and make decisions.  We give lip service to “critical thinking,” but if we are not prepared to challenge our own presuppositions and biases, there is nothing “critical” about it.

48. Most people believe the things they do without any evidence that they are true.  Maybe it's just that our beliefs reinforce our own prejudices, or maybe it's just laziness.  Much lip service is given to questioning received wisdom, but not many of us ever will.

49. The smartest people in the world read constantly, experience life fully, travel frequently, and talk to everyone they can.  A few of them have college degrees. 

50. Everyone should dance more.

51. If you ask someone what the best of day of his life was, he usually will say something like, "The day my son was born."  It makes me wonder what sort of terrible children they raised.

52. Human beings have enormous capacities, though we suffer on the one hand from romantic notions about those and on the other from crass cynicism masquerading as wisdom.  We expect too little from ourselves and others, and we are worse as a race for it.

53. Everyone is the central character in his or her own life story.  We like to imagine that others play supporting roles and that there are occasional cameos, but this is just arrogance.  If we could just stop and listen more . . . life can be really wondrous at times.

54. There is a great deal of wisdom to be had from the world's books of religion and mythology, if read correctly. If read literally and in an ethical vacuum, they may be the source of bigotry. Read with imagination, they may be liberating. It may be that Satan is the chief hero of the Bible.

55. Jesus is dead. It seems incredibly irrational to believe otherwise.

56. Ain't nothin' better in this whole wide world than rock-and-roll music and a fat-bottomed girl.