This Thursday will mark the six-year anniversary of Chris Cornell’s death, and I am still pretty messed up about it.
Apparently, his friend Alice Cooper referred to him as “The Voice,” a moniker that, as some students of pop culture might recall, was also given to Frank Sinatra, back in his day. It makes sense. Cornell was my generation’s Sinatra.
Actually, with his four-octave range, Cornell was my generation’s Freddie Mercury. Whoever you compare him to, he was a genius, not just for his voice but for his ability to make you feel something, to strike deeply at some hidden spot in the soul. Like the other two titans of the grunge era, Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder, Cornell’s singing made you feel unhinged, as if he was doing the hard work of going mad so that you didn’t have to. Only more so.
Anyway, here’s one of my favorites from Soundgarden…
I am continually amazed at how, even in my advanced middle-age, I still encounter perfectly reasonable words that I have never seen before. The latest is panentheism, which I ran into while reading an article on my favorite theological scholar, David Bentley Hart. When I first saw the word, I read it out loud to myself: pan-en-theism. Theism I knew. That’s the belief in a God who created the universe and who participates in its functioning. Pantheism I knew. That’s the belief that nature and God are the same thing. (I.e., the universe is God; this is pretty much the idea behind many Eastern religions.)
But panentheism? WTF?
David Bentley Hart
It turns out that panentheism is a pretty old idea, too, although the term itself dates only to the 19th Century. Panentheism states that God created the universe but also transcends the universe. Basically, the universe (heck, make that the multiverse) is a manifestation of the mind of God. It exists inside God, but it is not the same thing as God.
Unless you’re an atheist (which is cool), you might be scratching your head right about now and saying “duh!” If so, that means you were probably not raised in an orthodox Christian or Jewish tradition, which, in the mode of classical theism, states that God created the world out of nothingness, and that God is inherently separate from (external to) the world.
As modern, post-Star Wars (read: “the Force”) Americans, we tend to have a belief system much more in line with eastern traditions. Namely, that God is everywhere and everything. But that is not what classical, western, old-time religions teach.
Since I’ve learned about panentheism, I’ve found it an increasingly seductive idea. It merges the inclusive spirituality of pantheism with the belief in a personal, transcendent god that is more familiar to western theists. It also has implications to the concepts of God’s participation in time and to human free will.
Two mysteries lie at the heart of Rocky Hirajeta’s fine novel. The first regards the identity of a killer, whom the protagonist, high school senior Natalie, witnesses disposing of a body in the river. But there is a deeper one, too, concerning the emotional and spiritual rut in which Natalie finds herself stuck after the death of her father. Not only is Hirajeta’s book beautifully written, it also captures the sense of desperation and longing that many YA novels miss.
I’m only ten years late to the party, but I’ve just started watching the BBC series Shetland. Based on the mystery novels by Ann Cleeves (which I guess I’ll have to read now), the stories are smart, suspenseful, and engrossing. The acting is also first-rate. But what really makes the show stand out is its setting—the barren, brooding, rugged landscape of the Shetland Islands, which, as I learned from Wikipedia, is the UK’s northernmost territory.
Like a lot of American Southerners who’ve spent their lives in hot places, I’ve always longed to move to a cooler land. As a kid, I loved watching British TV mysteries, partly because the atmosphere looked so soothing in the rainy cities and wind-swept towns where such shows are often filmed.
Yeah, I know—try telling a Brit that they should be grateful for their weather. But I was envious. Being one of those bookish, introverted people who has too much stimulation going on inside the brain, I always felt like I would be happier in a region where there isn’t so much stimulation outside. Where the sun isn’t so strong, the heat so oppressive.
In keeping with my previous post about Voyager 2 getting a new lease on life, I thought I’d write one about a moment when an old band (well, old by pop standards) made an incredible comeback. Duran Duran, those darlings of the early days of MTV, did it in 1993 with the song Come Undone, which is by far my favorite of their works.
If there’s one kind of story I’m a sucker for, it’s the has-been-makes-a-comeback. You know the formula: a once-great hero (i.e. athlete/cop/musician/artist) is down on his luck. They’re disrespected, lonely, and all but forgotten. But then, with the help of a much younger and optimistic (or older and wiser) companion, the hero gets a burst of inspiration. They discover that they still have vast, untapped powers, and through great discipline, courage, and sacrifice, they focus those powers on a new challenge. Then, at the climax of the tale, they face that challenge and triumph.
I have, of course, just described every single Rocky movie (yes, even Rocky II) as well as 10% of all the Hollywood movies ever made. My favorite cinematic example is a little movie from 2005 called The World’s Fastest Indian, starring Anthony Hopkins. But I tend to like any variation of the formula, even the most banal and overused variety.
Well, another summer is about to begin, and, once again, I don’t plan on seeing any of the summer “blockbusters” that are coming out. I just can’t work up much enthusiasm for the big summer debut. The problem is that now, in my 50s, I have seen so many movies that I recognize the same characters over and over in an endlessly repeating loop. Don’t believe me? Check out the list below…
The Dark Prince
Brooding, sexy, and smart, the Dark prince is often caught up in a hopeless battle against a larger system that is both impersonal and oppressive. These guys don’t smile a lot.
Famous Examples:
Errol Flynn
Robert Redford
Nicholas Cage
Leonardo Dicaprio
Matthew McConaughey
The Vixen (with a Brain)
This archetype is reserved for actresses whose sex appeal is so strong that it blasts off the screen like a blowtorch. But the magic comes when the viewer realizes that there is much more to these women than just a pretty face. Often portrayed as a scarlet woman or a femme fatale, this archetype always has a troubled past and is unable to sustain a genuine relationship.
One of my favorite sites on the internet is openculture.com. As the name implies, it’s a curated collection of the best permanently free culture on the web, from free college courses, movies, images, audiobooks, and history lessons.
Here’s a recent post that I found weirdly fascinating. It’s about how the ancient Romans had fewer cavities and dental problems than we might expect. What was their secret? (Hint: it has to do with less sugar.) I think I liked it because it ran contrary to the tendency most modern books and movies have when it comes to dramatizing the past. Usually, it’s portrayed as unremittingly violent and brutal, or (even worse) nostalgically sweet and winsome.
My guess is that most people in the past lived lives that, while not exactly happy or carefree, were not that different from our own. (And, no, I wouldn’t like to trade places with them.)
As I get older (and older), I begin to suspect that I will, eventually, become nostalgic about literally everything in my past. Right now, I am feeling nostalgic for old TV commercials.
If you grew up in the 1970s and 80s, like me, you watched a lot of TV commercials. Like, thousands and thousands. And as much I hated most of them, at least they were flogging products that I could…you know…actually use.
Since I cut the cable-TV cable a decade ago, most of my TV consumption has been via YouTube, and I have found myself bombarded with ads for various IT groupware products, web hosting sites, industrial-grade machines, religious groups, and exotic home decorations. WTF? How did the vaunted algorithms, in all their wisdom, pick this menu of irrelevancies to inflict on me.
Don’t get me wrong. I love YouTube, and I am grateful that it exists. And I know that they have to pay the bills somehow, so I try to watch the ads. (Yeah, I know, there are ad-blocker plugins out there, but I find myself morally opposed to them.) Still, these ads suck.
So, yeah, I am sentimental about old-world commercials. Here is a classic, landmark ad that I remember from 1977, the same year as Star Wars was released.
I could write a whole post on the various covers of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451 that have come out over the years, as other people already have. My favorite is this one from the 1970s (the time of my childhood). It’s by a great illustrator named Barron Storey.
I like it because it shows the main character, Montag, immersed in a kind of hell, which is a great metaphor for the authoritarian dystopia that he finds himself in. Also, Montag looks kind of like a bad-ass.
Ash Clifton, Writer 