Something from Wheatstone

While at Wheastone this past week, I wrote a poem. I am not a very good poet and am usually a formally structured one when I do write. So this is quite different from what I've ever done. If there are any critiques that you would like to give, please feel free to share them. Well, time to tak the plunge

Night descends and stars shine
People wander in
Words are said and thoughts expressed
A circle of community forms

Thinking. Sharing. Sharpening.
Ideas become more and more refined
Energies feed one another
And the clock ticks

The dialectic flourishes
Thoughts are pared and expanded
But today is now tomorrow
And day is dawning

Paradise Lost

Doom has come. What was forbidden has been taken. Now judgement must follow. The world is darkened by the entrance of sin. God descends in the company of angels to pronounce his sentence on the first of mankind. For their trespass, they are exiled from paradise forever. Raising his hand, God points the way for their exodus. Eve falls limply to the ground, having realized too late the consequences of her actions. She weeps and covers her face with her hand. With the other hand, Eve grasps her husband's forearm for comfort and support. But he offers none. Rather, Adam pulls himself inward as if he were still trying to hide what he'd done. He runs his fingers through his hair, coming to grips with the magnitude of his sin. His eyes gaze forward never straying to look at wither his wife or his maker. He simply looks straight ahead daring anyone to try to tell him of any good that had come of his disobedience. Up above, God waits for his beloved creation to leave his presence. Though He does not want them to go, He must send them out for His holiness and perfections cannot abide the presence of sin. So He, with will and face set sternly, commands man's removal from paradise. Yet in His mind, He already has a plan for their redemption. One of the angels waits at the right hand of his maker bearing a a flaming sword. He gazes upon the Creator till he should be commanded to guard the entrance to paradise so as to save man from further destruction. Still another angel, this one on God's left, stares at his maker in astonishment. It is known throughout creation that man is God's beloved of all He had made. Yet now He is banishing them from the home He had given them. Below God is the last angel of His retinue. Underneath and almost supporting the Creator, he looks upon the most unfortunate of all creation. These creatures, made in the very image of God himself, are a wonderment to the rest of creation. This last angel's look is one of neither sorrow nor gladness but of the most sincere curiosity and puzzlement of man's ability to reject Almighty God. Below both God and man is the ruiner of all. The once bright and morning star is now a dark, creeping thing. He flees the presence of God and goes into the underbrush. His eyes burn an unearthly red, full of malice and fury and hunger. Hungry for the next victim of destruction. As he escapes, his arms seem ready at any time to smite and grasp and drag with him anyone into the darkness in which he must dwell all his days. His serpent guise lies at his feet, discarded so that he may put on another. Even the earth feels the effects of what has just taken place. The sky goes grey and clouds cover the sun. All of Eden is falling into darkness. The only remmnant of hte former Eden is that above the first of mankind. The last of the sun's perfect rays shine gently upon the banished figures, giving them their last of paradise

Wheatstone was right!

My family is a subscriber to WORLD magazine, a Christian magazine on various issues. One of the articles caught my eye. It's called "Against Life" by Arsenio Orteza. Though the contents of this article are depressing in nature, I found it exciting that Mr. Orteza compared artists to canaries, just like we learned at Wheatstone last summer. It fascinated me that artists are the canaries of civilization, which makes sense because when one looks at how trends are set, one can usually trace it back to artists whether it be in movies or music. When the artists begin to disappear, it may be certain that the rest of the civilization may be in danger as well. I only hope that the rest of humanity will take notice and make changes in order to save ourselves.

Suicide and lesbianism among professional musicians are nothing new, but recently there's been a seeming uptick in both.

The suicides: Vic Chesnutt (who died on Christmas Day), Sparklehorse's Mark Linkous (March 6), and Will Owsley (who financed his power-pop solo albums by performing in Amy Grant's live band, April 30). Each was male, each was from the South, each was in his mid-40s, and each was a singer-songwriter with a track record of critical if not commercial acclaim.

The "coming outers": Jennifer Knapp and Chely Wright, both in their mid- to late-30s, both known for conservative-friendly music (CCM in Knapp's case, the pro-troops "The Bumper of My SUV" in Wright's), and both free of the unflattering masculine traits often associated with lesbians.

One of the aesthetic consequences for songwriters who commit suicide or embrace homosexuality is that their lyrics tend to be regarded as mere code for suicide or homosexuality. Chesnutt's "My New Life" (from his 2009 album Skitter on Takeoff) was depressing already; as a harbinger of his self-destruction, it's unbearable. Wright's "The Bumper of My SUV" was a refreshingly non-liberal take on the War on Terror; now one listens for hints about her position on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Worse yet, fans who once turned to certain songs for solace or empathy might now hear in them little more than permission to follow their composers into sloughs of despond.

Obviously, however, the eternal consequences are the direst of all. "The man who kills himself," wrote G.K. Chesterton, "kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world." "Homosexual activity," wrote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), "is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to . . . that form of self-giving which the gospel says is the essence of Christian living."

The ordinary explanations fail. Chesnutt was wheelchair bound, Linkous was bedeviled by depression, drugs, and drink, and Owsley was a divorced father of two, but many other men in similar circumstances still choose to be rather than not to be. As for Knapp and Wright, given the circles in which their music required them to move, it's hard to imagine either woman's giving peer pressure as a reason for her public commitment to same-sex living.

In his dystopian novel The Bridge, D. Keith Mano imagined a strikingly similar scenario. The setting: New York City and its environs circa 2035. The killing of all living organisms—animal, vegetable, and mineral—has been illegal for decades. Deer, bears, and dogs run wild and, due to overpopulation, die; grass and weeds grow unchecked; insects thrive. Meanwhile, the "termination" of the "human species" has been mandated by the government because human respiration has been determined to "destroy . . . microscopic biological life."

In response, men willingly swallow suicide pills and women form lesbian communes. It's a scenario that must have seemed far-fetched when the novel appeared in 1973. It seems less far-fetched now.

An article in the May 12 Daily Telegraph says that a forthcoming UN report will declare "one-third of plant and animal species" to be "at risk of extinction" and blame the "developing world's appetite for raw materials." "If the 9 billion people predicted to be with us by 2050 were to have the same lifestyle as Americans," says a spokesman for the Convention on Biological Diversity, "we would need five planets."

Translation: Human life is bad.

Death fumes are in the air. Our singers are the canaries in the coal mine.