There Is No God Debate

I used to be fond of arguing with Christians, until I realized that there is no God debate. There simply aren’t any serious arguments in favor of God’s existence. This applies to any conception of God as a thinking agent.

I used to repeatedly demonstrate why arguments for God fail, but debate never proceeded. I now realize this is due to the fact that faith is not held up by reasons, and is therefore difficult to dispel through argument.

Faith can exist in thoughtlessness, in error, or actively despite reasons. The latter is often touted as an achievement of devotion; the process of willfully deluding oneself into believing fantasy is posited as 'overcoming doubt'.

Of course, clever people have argued for God. But these inevitably fail, or stalemate on the absurd. I could talk about essence and existence, about Plotinus, and Avicenna, and Aquinas et al. I could talk about the unmoved mover and intelligent design. But the truth is so much simpler: all thoughtful, reality-based people know that we have no more reason to believe in God than in the Tooth Fairy. It’s really as simple as that.

Now, if we were to encounter a group of adults who firmly believed in a winged nymph administering an international tooth-for-cash exchange program, we’d rightly think them insane. And yet we give Jews, Muslims and Christians a free pass. Just something to think about.

Fuck Buttons - Ribs Out

Really good percussion (I'll babble more later)

Gil Scott Heron - New York is Killing Me

Really good percussion (I'll babble more later)

Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

When it comes to goo-laden psychedelia, I’m assuredly ‘pro’ – particularly when coupled with Persian horsemen and a lupine gaggle of naked dunesfolk venerating a crystalline fist. But when I first encountered this video for Ambling Alp back in ’09, I felt a bit underwhelmed.

The problem was that the song comes from the album Odd Blood, which is Yeasayer’s follow-up to one of my all-time favorites, All Hour Cymbals. I’ve kept the latter on heavy rotation for probably 18 months now. I understand the sprawling structure of each song; every piece is so familiar that I can drift into its rhythm as my mind effortlessly anticipates every kick, lick and howl.

Now, when some (most?) people adore an album, they clamor to hear the band’s next effort. I don’t. When I know an album so well, and like it so much, I feel obliged to learn the follow-up with equal erudition. But the thought of doing so seems like a Herculean effort, and so I avoid it. It’s like bringing yourself to watch a sad movie that's supposed to be ‘rewarding’; Hotel Rwanda and Schindler’s List have been sitting on my hard-drive unwatched for five years and counting.

In addition to being lazy, I was also aware of the disappointment that usually accompanies follow-ups to favorite albums (I’m looking at you, Wolf Parade. To my mind, Apologies to the Queen Mary was near perfection, but where the frack is Mount Zoomer‽).

Anyways, I digress. I originally set out to say that, finally, I’ve listened to Odd Blood and think it’s pretty snappy. The move towards a pop format – that is, shorter and structured with a verse, bridge and chorus – nowise restricts the songs from being interesting. And I like the premise of this diddy: what Joe Louis’s father would have said to him prior to becoming a prizefighter. If you don’t know, “Ambling Alp” was the moniker of Primo Carnera, one of Louis’s early victims. “Max Schmeling” was Louis’s first professional victor and  pre-war arch-rival.

P.S. It was I who updated Joe Louis’s Wikipedia page!

P.P.S. The punctuation near the end of the fourth paragraph is called an 'interrobang'. I hope its use eventually becomes common.

P.P.P.S. I still say the previous album was better (watch this).

Arthur Russell - This is How We Walk On the Moon

I really like this song. The video's a bit literal.

Song by Adrienne Rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is,
that knows it's neither ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

Marita

Marita,
Please find me.
I am almost 30.
--Leonard Cohen

I read sheer desperation in those lines. As the first third of his life comes to a close, the romantic anticipations that brought optimism to his listless adolescence remain familiarly dreamlike. What was hoped for has not yet come; much is expended on the question of whether it will.

TW said that life is a fairly well-written play except for the third act. Well, perhaps the first act seems well-written once time wedges itself between activity and memory. But TW’s nostalgia likely betrays our inability to recall our own lives with their full, naked unremarkability. Certainly, the hero dies in act three. Act one is now closing. As act two begins, age and its unique ambitions have spread to his once-blithe peers. Weekends are now characterized by boredom and fatigue. As the routines of daily life crawl predictably onwards, he is anxious to start running.

Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto

Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara

1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.

2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.

Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.

3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

My Brightest Diamond - Golden Star

Holy Crap, I'm Published!

Click here for Bioethics journal homepage.

Covers

I first encountered the concept of one band covering another's song in seventh grade when, rifling through my Dad's dusty LP collection, I noticed that both Jimi's Monterrey Pop and Woodstock finales were written by Dylan. The concept bothered me, it seemed a form of theft. My dad explained that the singer-songwriter aesthetic only emerged in the late-50s, and that it was more the exception than the rule. To my horror, he then explained that most of my rock heroes -- typical 12 year old heroes like the Stones and the Beatles -- began as mere imitators.

In early high school I came to appreciate how a song could be totally reimagined, though I found most covers to be slight variations on superior originals (e.g. Red Hot Chili Peppers' Higher Ground). Others simply improved the vocals without offering anything novel (e.g. Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah). And so it was thrilling to come across genuine reinventions. I remember being amazed by how Dave Matthews' All Along the Watchtower (Listener Supported version) managed to depart from all previous incarnations (yes, Dave Matthews, I stand by that). The Dirty Dozen Brass Band's version of the blues standard, John the Revelator, as well as number of White Stripes tunes, were similarly impressive to me.

As my musical lexicon expanded and became more refined, I started to appreciate unexpected covers like Johnny Cash's Hurt or Patti Smith's Gloria. More recently, I've enjoyed Grizzly Bear's He Hit Me, Feist and Gibbard's Train Song, or Jose Gonzalez's Heartbeats and Cello Song. I find these particularly interesting because, to some extent, they reveal the coverer's musical personality. That a dying Johnny Cash was open-minded to the extent of using Trent Reznor lyrics as his epitaph still shocks me. My Brightest Diamond's sizzling cover of Feeling Good not only reveals their old-school influence, but also a sensitivity to how Nina could express world's of emotion with a slight quiver, and her knack for slowly and subtly nudging a song up to it's full brass-wailing climax.

In any case, for these and other reasons I've always made a particular effort to note covers (did you know Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares to You was penned by Prince?). When writing this I tried to think of a recent favorite. Radiohead's Reckoner came to mind. Note how, even live, Thom York's siren-like falsetto tinges the song with a kind of panicky uneasiness. Thomas Callaway's soaring gospel voice, on the other hand, sounds more like a harbinger of, well, something epic.

The Avalanches

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

CTFPA's previous albums were generally characterized by somber, albeit clever, lyrics winced and moaned to grainy, under-produced keyboarding. The extreme to which he pushed his anguish shtick was certainly tongue-and-cheek. And, to be sure, the shtick produced a few gems (see: this, this and this). But even the most tortured of souls eventually needs a breath of optimism. And apparently CTFPA is no exception, given his recent concept album about the prospect of having children. Fittingly, he has put together a band and hired a proper producer to deliver the gospel.

I can think of a few songs which fantasize about starting a little family with a dog and white-picket fence. But this is easily my favorite incarnation because of it's hilarious hermeneutic (in the Dilthean sense): written from the perspective of one of two fleeting bank-robbers, whose clearly enamored with his confederate, and hopeful of a clean getaway. Enjoy.

Dusty Springfield

She's awesome. The White Stripes' version is also good.

I posted the song because I love it. But, in retrospect, it's also funny to watch her balance the sheer power and passion of her voice with the 1960s expectations of female performers. She had to play the role of the traditional, elegant, wholly non-threatening female, while also belting her heart out. For some reason she was not allowed to express with her face and body what she was made famous for expressing with her voice. So you get this incredibly athletic and emotional vocal performance, pushed through forced smiles, awkward head tilts, silly choreography, etc, etc.