I can’t get enough of the latest Dave Matthews Band single. I’m really looking forward to the new album. I’m never disappointed when I go to read his lyrics and this line really stuck out to me today.
Funny the way it is how someone’s broken heart becomes your favorite song.
Check out the whole song below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZXgfAW0ak]
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned how much I loved the movie Coraline. The beauty of the stopmotion filming and effects was unmatched in any recent movie. The way Henry Selick brought this incredible story by my favorite author, Neil Gaiman, to life was amazing to watch. The 3D experience made it that much more mindblowing.
Anyway, while looking for information on the movie I found this interview with Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick. It was interesting to read how the whole thing came about. The interviwer asked Neil Gaiman about how scary the story can be, and Gaiman gave this really insightful answer:
In a good way. Honestly, I believe that you need your bad guy to be bad. You need your monster to be monstrous, you need something for a kid to go up against. Otherwise you’re in that bleak dull Disney Channel fiction in which somebody thinks that they weren’t invited to the birthday party, but at minute 18 they discover it was all a mix-up and they really were and there is not conflict and there is no evil and there’s nothing to fight and there’s nothing to win and nothing was ever at risk and everybody gets to hug! And that’s not what you send people out into the world with! You don’t arm them with that. Arm them with the idea that yes, there are monsters out there, but you can defeat them. In my experience, “Coraline” is so much more scary for adults. Adults are watching a film about a child in danger, kids are watching a film about somebody brave doing something cool.
I love G.K. Chesterton. N.T. Wright referred to him on a video I was watching today when being open minded came up. I searched for the direct quote and found this:
Merely having an open mind is nothing; the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
G.K. Chesterton
Skepticism is a valid intermediary position. One should be willing to examine evidence, and suspend judgement barring sufficient information. However, sufficient is the key word here. If you spend your entire life waiting to be entirely convinced of everything you will get nowhere. That is the trouble with walking around open-minded; your brains tend to fall out.*
*I realize that last sentence is not original, but I can’t find out who originally said it.
Yay!
I’ve never met the guy, but I can’t explain how excited I am to be reading new things from him again. If you haven’t read him yet you must. From his latest, on Europe:
Study much, and you’ll see: A sure sign a culture is finished is when children are viewed in cost/benefit terms, rather than a blessing from God. And guess what? Kids usually fail the cost/benefit analysis, when your Volvo is setting you back hundreds of Euros a month. Plus, they really cramp your Euro-cool lifestyle.
Americans who love Europe, who want to emulate Europe, who admire Europe, need to cram in all the love and admiration quick-like. Europe doesn’t work. It’s not going to be around much longer. This is not my guess, this is the simple math: They’re not having kids, folks.
No kids, no culture. And the math — they’re WAY below replacement rate, and have been – is the future. Last one out, turn off the lights.
This is why I love the guy. Brilliant analysis, but in other posts he can be bitingly funny. So now that he is blogging again, I recommend you read him.
I have nothing deep and meaningful so instead I’ll leave you with this, from my friend Matthew’s facebook status on Remembrance Day.
A world that does not honor its heroes does not understand its liberty.
That seems about right.
Love’s Apparition and Evanishment
An Allegoric Romance
Like a lone Arab, Old and Blind,
Some Caravan had left behind,
Who sits beside a ruin’d well,
Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell;
And now he hangs his aged head aslant
And listens for a human sound – in vain!
And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant,
Upturns his eyeless face from heaven to gain:-
Even thus, in vacant mood, one sultry hour,
Resting my eye upon a drooping plant,
With brow low-bent, within my garden-bower,
I sate upon the couch of camomile;
And-whether ’twas a transient sleep, perchance,
Flitted across the idle brain, the while
I watch’d the sickly calm with aimless scope,
In my own heart; or that, indeed a trance,
Turn’d my eye inward-thee, O genial Hope,
Love’s elder sister! thee did I behold,
Drest as a bridesmaid, but all pale and cold,
With roseless cheek, all pale and cold and dim,
Lie lifeless at my feet!
And then came Love, a sylph in bridal trim,
And stood beside my seat,
She bent and kissed her sister’s lips
As she was wont to do;-
Alas! ’twas but a chilling breath
Woke just enough of life in death
To make hope die anew.
L’Envoy
In vain we supplicate the powers above
There is no resurrection for the love
That, nursed in tenderest care, yet fades away
In the chill’d heart by gradual self-decay.
S.T. Coleridge
I just had the opportunity to see Jean Chretien speak here at St. FX. I have to be honest, he has what’s missing from Canadian politics these days: Charisma. He spoke with deftness and humour about his time, not just as Prime Minister, but also in various cabinet positions and as a junior MP. Though I probably never would have voted for him I can’t help but like him.
Here are some of the things he said tonight that I thought were great.
On Quebec:
“When you have equality you can’t have special status.”
On the arts:
“Artists vote for the Bloc in Quebec and the NDP in Ontario. Investing in the arts was not a great investment for me, but it was the right thing to do.”
On his longevity in politics:
“My trick was undersell and overperform.”
On Africa:
“Africa doesn’t need charity it needs investment and access to markets.”
“We don’t pay enough attention to Africa. If we pay more attention to Africa, Africa will have to pay more attention to what it does”
Here’s a thought that just struck me while reading this. Whoever a Christian calls his enemy he has to love. This is the basis of true revolution. The successful revolutions of the 20th Century, Be it Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement, Mandela’s anti-apartheid movement, or even Gandhi’s movement to free India were love revolutions.
People don’t know how to respond to non violence; people don’t know how to hate love. Someone asked Gandhi how he expected the British to leave India, he replied “as friends.” How do you respond to that? The paradox of the Death and Resurrection is the triumph of Love over Violence. The triumph of love over power.*
Instead of trying to win control of political systems, instead of trying to rule the world, perhaps we should be learning how to love our enemies. If people living in the slums of the Rift Vally weren’t hungry would they be killing each other?
How do we put our love in action? It isn’t enough to say the words, we need to act. We need to feed the hungry instead of indulging in our own gluttony. When we love those we despise we change everything, from how we perceive them to how they perceive us, and all the implications in between.
Turn the Rage Against the Machine song inside out: Know your enemy… so that you can love them. It’s harder to love, but sometimes that which is more difficult is more effective.
*for more on this read “Which Jesus?” by Tony Campolo
…and you’ll go insane.
The Madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The Madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.
-G.K. Chesterton
This is why editors matter
I just read an article talking about Obama making Canada his first international trip as President.
These were two of the top three comments.
I’m really not sure what this guy was trying to get across, clarity obviously was not his forte.
Thanks for that MSS-CA. Somehow Obama coming to Canada can logically flow into calling all conservatives dolts. That makes sense.
The sad thing is these people probably have blogs where they spew their unintelligible garbage constantly. And this is why the mainstream media will always have a leg up. It keeps us from having to read the morons as often as one does blundering around the blogosphere.