His Banner Over Me Is Love

I have fallen in love with this band...they are called Danielson Famile(y). And then there's Danielson. And Brother Danielson. Trust me, each name has a point. Anyhow, I felt inclined to post a video of the Danielson Famile that has encouraged me over the last few days. I love Daniel Smith's frequent use of the Song of Songs in many of his songs (here quoting Song of Songs 2:4)...of course a musician would quote a book named "Song of Songs". Hopefully, it will bury Scripture in your subconscious as it has done to me this week. Enjoy!

(if you cannot understand Daniel Smith's squeaky falsetto...this is the chorus:)

"His banner over me is love
A certain day has been set
And it's called Today
Today with a capital T"

I might be wrong...

As many who know me know (and those who don't might notice by my moniker), I am a Radiohead fanboy, so I present you with one of my favorite songs from the uber-experimental period...I might be wrong.

Although Radiohead refuse to reveal any single meaning to a song (and I truly believe that single meanings don't exist for Radiohead songs), this is one of the few songs from this period that expresses a clear direction. While not necessarily an apology for a certain faith, this song sounds an awful lot like Thom Yorke's leap of faith in a higher being.

"I might be wrong...but I could have sworn I saw a light coming on...I used to think there was no future left at all..."

As Yorke dabbled in heavy vocal editing at this point in Radiohead's tenure, he decided to douse his voice in reverb on this particular track. In doing so, his sometimes whiny (e.g. You and Whose Army?), sometimes overbearing (e.g. Electioneering) voice is humbled into introspection. Note that his revelation does not assert itself in a demand, but whispers to him in obscurity. He is left with hope...and doubt.

"Open up...let me in...lets go down the waterfall...have ourselves a good time, its nothing at all...cry, then begin again"

I admit, during this period (and in the midst of his writer's block) Yorke followed Ed Burrough's occasional method of writing, which involved writing choppy statements on bits of paper and drawing them randomly from a hat. However, these statements still seem to express a new found faith coupled with a healthy dose of skepticism. If anything, I appreciate that Yorke does not sensationalize, or oversimplify faith by assigning to it a wholly positive result. While hope lingers, faith seems a complicated thing to bear. The feeling of free fall...letting yourself go...a moment of pain before inception...and yet, even after his moment of revelation, there is still the doubt that it is "nothing at all". As the guitar lick breaks for the electronic interlude, we hear a distorted wave resolve, followed by Yorke's ethereal falsetto, and then the return of the guitar lick. As soon as we feel resolution, tension reenters the scene. Is this not an accurate picture of faith?

Jimmy Eat World...circumstances

Kelley and I recently attended a Jimmy Eat World concert in Asheville, and I was reminded of how much I enjoy this band's lyrics. Take the bridge from the song Futures:

Hey now, the past is told by those who win
My darling, what matters is what hasn't been
Hey now, we're wide awake and we're thinking
My darling, believe your voice can mean something

The lyrics here are straightforward in their message: even though we can't control our current circumstances, we can control the choices we make in light of our current circumstances. Rather than dwell in the world of the powerless, we should make choices in our present before it slips away. This is a great album if you have the chance to check it out!

Messiaen: the art of experience

I wanted to post an innovative modern classical composer whose faith profoundly influenced his work. Briefly, Olivier Messiaen wrote on themes of joy and hope, as well as what he called the "marvelous aspects of the faith" (he was a devout Roman Catholic). His music depicted theological ideas such as death, resurrection, time and the afterlife. He also composed one of his more profound works, "The Quartet for the End of Time", while in a POW camp after the fall of France to the Nazi's in 1940. Finally, and my favorite tidbit about this composer...he created a musical notation, a code, embedded within his late works, which cited texts from Thomas Aquinas. Awesome! He has influenced artists both classical and contemporary, from Karlheinz Stockhausen to Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. This is a video of one of his later pieces written for an early electronic instrument, the ondes martenot. Enjoy!