Our Tree

Every year when I was a child, and even into my
younger adult years, my family would travel to my grandparent’s house of the holidays.  Depending on the year, we would be there during either Thanksgiving or during Christmas, and I believe the first recollection I really had was during Thanksgiving.  It was warm that year, and I had two male cousins, one older, one younger.  And right outside in grandma’s yard was Our Tree.

Our Tree was a special one.  No one but us was allowed to climb into its lofty branch.  No one but us was allowed to scare our parents to their last wit with our monkey-antics.  And no one but us was allowed to know the secrets that were shared in Our Tree.

Holidays came and went, and eventually I was old enough to spend part of a summer with my grandparents.  My older cousin moved on to more weighty things than tree-climbing, but my younger cousin and I remained faithful.  I doubt there was a single day that summer our adventures didn’t find us swinging from limb to limb, dashing across the decks of our pirate ship, blasting into space, and fending off the wild man-eating forest people from our tree house.

One day that summer, my younger cousin and I found a large pile of quartz in my grandfather’s store-room.  Why it was there we didn’t know, nor did we care to ask.  Snatching the largest of the pile, a beautifully white and clear specimen, we dashed off to Our Tree, and climbed to the largest crook, a place we routinely lounged and shared secrets.  Not a moment later we were being called to dinner.  Safely storing the beautiful quartz in the split of the tree, we clambered down, ran inside, and promptly forgot all about our newly found treasure.  The next day I traveled the three hours back home, never staying another summer at my grandparent’s house again.  The piece of my childhood weathered many storms, and many years, and I forgot all about it.

Many years later, with my oldest cousin getting married soon (it was near Christmas time, and he was engaged), we all became wistfully nostalgic for our younger days.  Just as we used to, we climbed the old tree limbs of Our Tree and talked about things we had done together.  We were men now; decisions had been made, good and bad, college had been done, and rings had been bought.  I’m not sure who remembered it first – he or I – but our little treasure of quartz was remembered.  Ah, the good ol’ days, where hiding a piece of crystal was our biggest concern.  The innocence of such games we played, the naiveté of the secrets we shared.  What had become of our treasure, we wondered…

Pulling ourselves up to the precarious places that used to strongly support us as children, we found the old V shaped limbs.  The rock the size of my hand wasn’t there.  I was sad; a part of me wished that it had somehow miraculously survived the many years of weather and wear.

At least we could carve our initials here like we used to, my younger cousin suggested.  Pulling out our knives we began to cut away the bark and a thin layer of wood, but almost instantly our knives were stopped.  Frowning, I tapped around the area with my knife, and cut more.  Could it be…?

Sure enough, the large piece of quartz had been preserved in the heart of the tree, being more and more protected each year by the thick bark and wood.

We did carve our initials in the tree, just above where the rock could barely be seen.  I visited the tree alone last year; both of my cousins were away on a different path of life, and I had made some difficult and foolhardy decisions of my own.  The heart of Our Tree could no longer be seen, but I knew it was there.  Even today, it comforts me knowing that piece of quartz, the innocence of my childhood, is sustained as long as the tree still lives.  In some odd way it gives me hope: others may not know, and even my family may not see, but I know that somewhere in this old tree, there is a Rock that will not be lost as long as I live.

Let There Be

Have you ever wondered what the first words ever spoken sound like?  Have you ever wondered why music can be found in nearly *everything* in nature?  Have you wondered why there are more non-Christian artists than "Christian?"  Have you wondered why there's even a separation between the two?

So have I.

So here ya go.  I haven't really wanted to fully explain all of my poetry like I usually do.  Maybe that's because Intro. to Lit. and Analytical Techniques delve so stupidly and unnecessarily deep into things that weren't intended to be delved in.

Anyway.  Newest poem.

First flash of light,

Songs of seduction,

Shouts of intense joy,

Cries of terrible lament,

The clash of bloody war,

The Harp of serene peace,

Saints' chorus in Eternity,

The damned singing their merry way to hell.

A bird searching for a mate,

The Great Canyon's Echo,

Euphoria's ringing high,

An ancient Bard's lay,

The crash of a dropped bass,

The largest mammal's hum,

The smallest creature's buzz,

An avalanche's roar,

Snowfall's quietest note,

The scream of life,

The sigh of Death,

Universe's first uttered words:

Let There Be...

Music.

The Intrigue of a Puddle

I was thinking about the transition of my life from where I was to where I've been on the short walk to music history this morning, and this poem resulted.  Take it at face value.

The Intrigue of a Puddle

It's odd the men who sometimes inspire, 

And today Springsteen comes to mind.

Reliving Glory Days and winding back time,

Ignoring decisions driving down to the wire.

Future career, struggles, and a ring,

But walking to class, a puddle calls.

Video games, for the first, numb grade's sting,

Responsibility stumbles; good health stalls.

Am I young or a decrepit old man,

Rushed through my prime years of life?

A constant fight for Purpose and Meaning,

But wondering if larger letters even matter.

No five-line message in this mess,

What you see is what you get.

What little sleep comes fraught with nightmares,

A mirror darkly reflecting mind and soul.

Come drown with Bruce and me,

Forget the toll of Death's bell.

We've Come Full Circle

This isn't Scarlequain, but I had to share it.  I attended the Senior Worldview class today for the first time, and pretty much all of my friends are there.  Some of them were even in my freshman worldview class oh so long ago, and one in particular inspired one of my favorite poems that I've written, Through the Stained Glass Window, which I wrote in freshman worldview.  Now, nearly 4 years later, we're together again, same topic, same professor.  But we're older, wiser (we hope), and have experienced so much.  Looking over at me today in class, she mouthed, "Creasy...we've come full circle."  And instantly I was inspired.  Here is the product of that inspiration.  Enjoy!

Circular Stained Glass

To Michelle, in honor of the full circle our college experience has undergone.

A tribute to things come full circle,

Most often falls short of the mark,

Set in stone in the literary canon.

The reflection in your eyes no less stark;

A twinkle dimmed, skin leathered with a dose of tannin,

The innocence of the windows to your soul tainted: stained.

The clear glass of the past colored with pain,

But artfully patterned in a beautiful shape.

We have grown so far from our first class,

We loved people, we have laughed and dealt with hate,

And all this contributed to the new stained glass.

From being inspired by a pair of eyes,

To an ever-shifting inspiration of Poetry,

The sought-after goal has a new prize,

A new Face, a new salary, and a new maturity,

And the progress, though at times extremely woeful,

Has made our eyes a work of glorious Art/

This new phase of Life brings a new serenity.

And even when the way is hard, and perhaps we part,

Remember the Stained Glass, the prize:

And covet something more than the temporal:

Covet one more look into His Eyes.

Write in Your Books!

Write in your books?!  The act was nearly a sin for me when I was growing up.  Books are *special* and they should be respected, I was told, and back then, I believe it was true.  Books are indeed special, and as a child, I had no use for writing in them, as I do now.

When I was in highschool, one of my last two years, I took a Freshman English course (in which I met one of my best and dearest friends).  Ms. Alison Haupert was my instructor, and from the very beginning she required us to underline, write in the margins, and jot down our thoughts in between the lines of our books.  I remember the first time I put pen to printed page; I felt as if I was ripping a piece of my heart out.  I love reading, and so books were and are extremely dear to me.  Writing in them...just felt wrong!  But I followed the assignment, and before I knew it, I found that I began to understand and retain what I was reading far more than I ever had before.  I could articulate my thoughts and feelings about the literature on a deep level, and when I reread the books (yes...even in fiction books), I could see my old thoughts, expand on them, correct them, and look back on my old immature ways of thinking and smile.  Writing in books has become a way of life for me, and I love it!

Just the other day I began rereading The Small Bachelor by P.G. Wodehouse, a book that I performed in highschool as a humorous duo with a great friend.  Now, in my senior year of college, I write in every book I own, but this book gave me pause.  I started reading and, at first, I didn't want to write my thoughts in the lines.  There is so much memory and emotional stock in this book!  How could I write in it?  At that moment, I was pulled into a paradoxical conflict.  On the one hand, I felt affronted by the thought of "defacing" such a dear book...but on the other, I felt as if I was telling the book "I don't respect you enough to share my thoughts and feelings with you.  I don't want to invest in you so that when I look back later, I'll see my influence on you."

Well of course...that got me thinking.  Read my latest Scarlequain and an old quote I have to see what I mean.

Letters, Words,

Sentences heard,

Invest time,

Notes in the lines:

People books.

"There are two people you’ll meet in your life. One will run a finger down the index of who you are and jump straight to the parts of you that peak their interest. The other will take his or her time reading through every one of your chapters and maybe fold corners of you that inspired them most. You will meet these two people; it is a given. It is the third that you’ll never see coming. That one person who not only finishes your sentences, but keeps the book."

-Anonymous

The quote doesn't exactly cover what I'm talking about, but I think you get the connection.  To some degree, people are like walking, talking, feeling, emoting books.  We are a treasure trove of information that is begging to be interacted with, loved, and remembered.  And just as with books, if you actually invest your thoughts and feelings and time, if you underline the interesting areas, take note of them, and if you come back to those things later and see how you have grown with those things, your understanding and your relationship with that person will be just as deep and as meaningful as your deepening understanding of your literature.

Many of us are just going back to school after a long summer break.  Books and people surround us and saturate our daily life.  So here's something to think about.  Want to do better on tests and understand your work more?  Pull out a pen.  Do you want to understand and relate to those people around you to whom you never could?  Invest some time.  Pull out a "pen" and start taking note.  The world not only needs better students.  The world needs understanding people.

The Deadly Pen

Ink on a page,

Not soldier but sage,

Consequences of words,

That millions have heard:

The deadly pen.

Towards the end of this school year I was approached by a member of the staff of Bryan College who was in charge of the international affairs of the school.  Having lectured in one of my international relations classes a week or so earlier, he wanted to know if, based on my knowledge of international politics, I would be interested in going to Austria for an internship there with the Red Cross.  From the start I was skeptical about going overseas, as money has always been an issue for me.  I live on a summer-to-semester type lifestyle, spending everything I earn during the summer on school.  However, I felt as if I was at a point in my life where I needed something drastic to change my perspective on where I am, what I believe, and where I am going, so I told him I would go, even though my bank account had less than $100 in it at the time, and the flight alone was going to cost a minimum of $1,500.  I had a little over a month to find $2,000, but I had to say yes or no up front.

In total faith, I said yes.

Now here I am, nearly three months after that large personal leap of faith, sitting on a small bed in a Red Cross station in Neusiedl, Austria, having completed most of my project work.  Did this “simple project” change my perspective on where I am, what I believe, and where I am going?  Absolutely.  And it also changed how I view the condition of the world.  How could I not write about it?

I have been told that the spiritual state of Europe is drastically different than that of the US.  I admit that America isn’t exactly in a spiritually healthy state – far from it – but I had no idea how radical the difference actually was.

Having “officially” finished Visions of Vocation by Steven Garber about a week ago (I don’t count a book as finished until I’ve read the epilogue, acknowledgements, etc.), I came across a quote near the end that I hadn’t ever considered, and it spurred a train of thought that manifested itself in several circumstances throughout the next week that I find extremely insightful into the European way of life.

 

To say it very plainly, over the next century and a half, scores of millions lost their lives because of the misreading of the human condition and history at the heart of Marx’s critique, and the world as we know it has been radically and wretchedly affected by his misunderstanding the nature of vocation and therefore occupation, of what life is about and therefore what our lives are about.  In the early twenty-first century, there is almost global acknowledgment of this truth.

-Steven Garber

Marx himself never advocated violence as a means of accomplishing his visions, but still, his work was misinterpreted on such an enormous scale that literally millions of people lost their lives.  Marx’s pen was one of the most deadly instruments in all of history.  Words have consequences that are much more far-reaching than any of us could ever imagine.  They affect our way of living on such a grand scale that entire cultures will pattern their lives after the words of just one man.  It has always been this way.  Every great nation to rise and fall has seen a great artist rise up from its glory or ashes, and thereafter shaped the way that nation has progressed, and such artists of eloquence are inevitable.  Marx was one of the last, but there is a new culture rising.  Who will be next?  What will the words be that shape the coming generations?

I have always been one to consider deeper questions about life, especially after I joined a speech and debate team.  The question “Why?” is one that I am very interested in, but for a long time, it was just a matter of intellectualism.  I wanted to ask “Why?” until I understood the theological implications of any belief, because, at the very root, even if it is buried very deep, every human being has some theological view.  That question used to be one for debate and argument, but after being in Austria for some time, my perspective on that one simple word has drastically changed.

When one of my gracious Austrian friends heard that I was soon to finish my last book I had brought with me, Visions of Vocation, they generously brought me a whole stack of English books they had used to learn English earlier in life.  Gulliver’s Travels and Treasure Island were among the pile, as was the book The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman.  Being intrigued by the title and the short description on the back of the book, I started reading.  From the beginning, it was obvious to me what Weisman believes: we are the result of a huge cosmic accident.  Somehow the evolutionary chain altered 3.9% of our DNA, slightly altering us from chimpanzees.  The entire book wrestles with the question of whether or not the world will miss us once humanity is inevitably obliterated.  “Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?”  This question, whether Mr. Weisman intended it to be or not, is inherently one that rings deeply of a search for Purpose.  It is a question that asks “Why are we here?” and “will anyone care once we’re gone?”

With Weisman’s philosophical questions still ringing in my ears, I set off for volunteer duty at a local festival in Gols, Austria.  My only job there was to collect monetary donations for the Red Cross at the entrance of the festival, and so for four hours I got to do one of the things I love best: people watch.  I saw all sorts of people, as one is apt to do at any festival, but one young man stands out in my memory.  He couldn’t have been any older than 16, and he was wearing a plain blue t-shirt that, on the front, said in big, white, capital letters, “WHO AM I?”  I’m not sure he spoke English, and so I’m not certain that he even understood what his shirt said, but in my mind, that made the entire scenario even more heart-wrenching.  At our very core as humans, even if we are totally unaware of it, we are programmed to ask and to wonder: who am I?  Why am I here?

The next day, I was brought by the President of the Burgenland Red Cross to the national headquarters of the Red Cross in Vienna.  Another student from Bryan joined me, and both of us considered the day a time for our superior, the President, to show us off to his superior: the General Secretary of the Austrian Red Cross.  The meeting went well, from what we saw, and after we were finished, the President showed us into a room that housed the Director of International Affairs for the Red Cross, as a special favor to us, as both of us are interested in International work of some kind.  The Director had prepared for us a 45 minute presentation on his work, and towards the end, he gave us the opportunity for questions.  At this point, after reading and seeing the things I had, I knew that very few people in Austria take religion – specifically Christianity – seriously.  Almost always there is only one church, usually Catholic, per town.  There might be one Protestant church for every five towns, and attending the after-church social at the local coffee shop is nearly more important than actually attending the service itself; I know because I experienced it.  With these facts swirling around in my head, I asked the Director of International Affairs, “Why?  Why do you do this?”  The fact that many of the staff at the Austrian Red Cross volunteer countless hours was not lost on me; there had to be a reason that was more insightful than “helping people feels good.”  I was not disappointed.

The Director told me that religious help had always angered him.  He told me that he had traveled all over the world – to India, Africa, Haiti, and many other impoverished areas, and he told me that seeing people live in squalor made him want to do something about it.  He could work elsewhere, but always those people were in his mind.  It was at this point that the President spoke up.  “You see boys,” he said, “I have volunteered at the Red Cross for forty years not necessarily because it is always fun.  I don’t need to work at the Red Cross because I have another job that supports me.  I need to work at the Red Cross because it gives my life some sort of purpose.”  That is all he said.  The Director nodded in silent agreement, and then turned the conversation elsewhere, as if my question of Why was something that he perhaps thinks about every now and then, but isn’t totally reconciled with his answer.

During my stay in Austria, I made many new wonderful friends.  I love my new friends so much, but I also ache for them.  Many of the young men my age who work in Jennersdorf will do what they are doing for the rest of their lives: work as grocery men for money, volunteer at the Red Cross to fulfill civil service and feel as if they have some sort of Purpose, receive a pension, free healthcare, and a free education, get married, and live their lives just as countless people before them have lived their lives.  To some degree, this simple life is a relaxing one, but even being here just one month, my mind constantly screams at me: BUT WHY?  Why do you do what you do?  Do you only live, work, and die?  What is it that gives your life Purpose?  Why will your life matter once you are dead?

The Austrians and Germans have a great respect for Rainer Maria Rilke.  His work is often read at celebrations, and no wonder.  He asks and provides obscure answers to questions that people wonder about but do not vocalize.  “…be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  What a sad way to live.  Why live your life hoping that you will one day stumble across the Answer to Why?  That is the beauty of the world we live in.  There is an Answer.

There are two options for our life.  1) We live, we work, and we die.  There is nothing else to life; we are merely a cosmic accident that has no Purpose to pursue.  No vision to our vocation.  If this is the true option, then dear reader, I urge you to logically live: party hard, for tomorrow we die.  This isn’t true only in Europe.  Today, one of my favorite actors, Robin Williams, committed suicide.  He was depressed beyond all logic because he believed his life had no purpose.  But something deep inside of me and inside of you screams to us that there is more to life than that.  Why else do we search?  Why else do we long for more?  2) There is an Answer that desperately needs to be found.  Now.  Not one that can be gradually lived into, for our lives are but a breath: here today and gone tomorrow.  Your life needs a Purpose, and it can have one that reaches even beyond the grave.

Each generation has an artist of eloquence that shapes the way our culture progresses.  Marx’s pen was one of the deadliest weapons our world has ever seen.  His position of power is just waiting to be filled, and honestly, there are millions of aspiring authors who would love to fill it.  It will be filled by someone; it is inevitable.  I would be lying if I said I do not want my words to have the same weight and power as Marx’s did, but I would also be lying if I told you that my words are the Answer.  The wonderful thing is that the true Artist of Eloquence has been among us for as long as we have existed.  There is much greater Purpose waiting for you than volunteering for an organization.  There is answer to Who you are and Why you are here, and if you honestly and actively search for it, it will find you.

So perhaps, dear reader, you have gained a small amount of knowledge in the last few minutes.

Knowing what you know, what are you going to do?

Realistic Romantic: The Need for Dreamers in a Real World

"Bad books always lie.  They lie most of all about the human condition."

-Walker Percy

If you have been following my blog the last couple of posts, you will have seen several references to Steven Garber's book Visions of Vocation, specifically to the fact that we as humans are responsible for the knowledge we have about the world – to sum up in a short quote, "Knowing what I know, having heard what I have heard, having read what I have read, what am I going to do?  Being smart isn't good enough...always and everywhere, the revelation [knowing] requires a response."  

Ever since January 9th of this year when I first published "romantic, Romantic, Romanticist," I have been intending to write this follow up post, due to its failure to address the human condition, and due to criticism of my outlook on life as a Romantic, specifically because, in my critics’ view, merely being a Romantic isn't practical: humans need more than just a good story and an avant-garde vocabulary as a solution to life.

In my previous post on this topic, I began by quoting Lewis Carroll, and I shall do so again. "Who in the world am I?  Ah, that's the great puzzle."  In my post I presented an aspect of who I am as a person: I am a sappy romantic, I enjoy being a Romantic writer and musician, and I am a Romantic in my outlook on life; that is, I believe there is always a deeper story with wonderful vocabulary that is waiting to be pursued.  I admit this is a rather positive outlook on life; at first glance it may seem that I am lying about the human condition.  It may seem that I believe all life is about is pursuing who we are as individuals, and pursuing a good story.

In an effort to fully tell the Truth in my writing (which is, to be honest, the only reason I even began writing in the first place), I wish to convey to you the human condition.  We are Broken.  Humanity has been broken for many, many years, and there is no possible way that we can fix ourselves.  The world in which we live is also broken, and so it is often full of wounds that seem incurable (Hitler, Stalin, the Israel/Gaza Conflict, Ebola outbreak, disease, and death).  At first glance, the world is not a positive place.  Indeed, at first glance, the world is a terrible place.  At first glance the best possible outlook on life is to live large today, for tomorrow we die.  This is the human condition.  This would be my view if the story ended there.  However, it is not the end of the Story.

The God who created us also gave us a solution to our willful brokenness.  He sent his Son to repair us in a way that we cannot do on our own.  Without Him, we are destined for eternal brokenness, but He gives our meaningless lives a Purpose that we only have to accept by his grace through faith.

Art is something that I discuss and think about quite often.  Art is, if you think about it, a direct expression of the current human condition by people who think deeply about it and project their ideas into the future by words, paint, canvass, paper, stone, lyrics, music, you name it.  William Barrett sums this up perfectly in his Irrational Man: “Every age projects its own image of man into its art.  The whole history of art confirms this proposition, indeed this history is itself but a succession of images of man.”

So artists are the closest thing to real life “prophets” that we have today?  That’s not entirely what I am saying.  It is important to realize, however, that artists tend to have insight into the future based specifically on their understanding of the human condition.  Think about this:

To understand this cusp of a new century – marked as it is both by the sociological reality of the information age and the philosophical movement we call postmodernism – we have to pay attention to the novelists, filmmakers, and musicians who are culturally upstream, as it is in their stories, movies and songs where we will feel the yearnings of what human life is and ought to be.  Whether staged or celluloid, in print or on computer disks, they are fingers to the wind.  Why?  Artists get there first.

-Steven Garber

This quote sheds light on another facet of my life: if you were to look at my movie collection, or my music selections, or the books I read, you will not always find material that is, on the cover, “Christian.”  As an artist, something I haven’t been able to put into words until now, I believe that I should keep a finger to the cultural winds of my time to be better able to understand which way it is blowing.  But I suppose that’s another topic for another post.  For now, let’s focus on the story-tellers themselves.

Steven Garber quotes Bono in his book Visions of Vocation.  He quotes Smashing Pumpkins.  He references movies and articles and books and people on a fantastic scale, and it is evident to me that he believes “stories with legs” – stories that tell a tale and then live that tale out in real life – these stories are the most effective way to convey the human condition and hint at a solution to it.  As I read his book, I keep feeling myself grow in that “haughty without being so...proud, but humble about it” attitude of being a Romantic.  I keep reaffirming in my mind that “I am most certainly not afraid to pitch my tent in the Romantic crowd.”  I reiterate to my critics that “Here, to be famous is to be dead.  But I'd rather it be that way.”  However, Mr. Garber opened my eyes to the facet of “romantic, Romantic, Romanticist” that was incomplete.

“Epistemologies have ethical implications . . . ways of knowing are not morally neutral but morally directive.”  Mark Schwehn, quoted by Garber, put this reality into perspective for me.  In simple terms, Schwehn is saying what Mr. Garber has been advocating for his entire book, and what I wrote about last: knowing must mean doing; in fact, that truth is so strong that it carries moral implications: knowing without doing carries dire consequences.  Even if we don’t see those consequences today, they will carry themselves out somewhere, somehow, bringing with them more of the broken condition that we are so vehemently striving against.  Therefore, I acknowledge that we cannot view the world merely through Romantic lenses: we need Realistic ones too.  Think about it; you feel this way all the time:

“Why else do we care about what someone knew when?  Our newspapers, courts, even family conversations are full of the assumption that if one knows, then one is responsible.  If you knew, then why didn’t you do.”

Visions of Vocation

Reading this quote for the first time, I realized something that, perhaps, my critics didn’t even realize they were touching on: I have found words for a new, small, area of my life, but my post was, in a way, lying because it didn’t take that knowledge and apply it to the human condition.  It didn’t practically put my new knowledge to work.

“Very, very bright people do not always make very, very good people.”  Yes, I think Mr. Garber is correct.  Just writing about bright ideas does not make a person good, and I think I may have been taking too much satisfaction in just philosophizing and not actually applying these philosophies to my life.

The fact still remains however, that I am a die-hard romantic, Romantic, Romanticist.  I am a Dreamer, and this is evident in nearly all of my writing.  To some degree though, I do think that two authors Mr. Garber reveres were dreamers too, and the world would be far worse a place if they hadn’t been: Vaclav Havel and Albert Camus.  If you have read nothing about or by these two men, you should.  They were dreamers who saw the human condition, wrote eloquently about it, either in fiction or lecture, and then applied that writing to their lives.  They gave their ideas legs.  This is what I was missing: a good Romantic isn’t one who merely invents immortal heroes for pleasure.  A good Romantic invents immortal heroes and then physically demonstrates with his life why those heroes matter.

"As the poet Bob Dylan once sang, 'Everything is broken.'  Yes, everything, and so we must not be romantics.  We cannot afford to be, just as we cannot be stoics or cynics either."  I will disagree with Mr. Garber on this one point.  Some of us must be Romantics.  It’s in our daily life, our chemistry, our DNA.  We have been called to be Romantics, and that is extremely important.  The world needs artists to put their fingers to the pulse of culture to measure where it is going.  The caveat is that we must be Realistic Romantics.

Artists see first,

Humanity's worst,

We Romanticize the Story,

To create hope and glory:

A Realistic Romantic.

As a Realistic Romantic, I want to know the human condition for what it is.  I want to constantly observe the catastrophes that pervade our history, Romanticize them in ways people will remember forever, and then remind them why it all matters.  Why are we drawn to the knight in shining armor who slays the dragon of Evil?  Maybe it is because we are daily fighting our own dragons that desperately need to be slain?  Maybe because we are not the knight ourselves?  This is a small responsibility of my life.  I may not be good at it, but I know about it, and I thereby have a responsibility to use it.

“Whether it is kids in Brooklyn or political complexity in nations scattered across the glove, [we want] the work of [our] hands to matter, to be part of ‘tearing a corner off of the darkness,’ in Bono’s poetic image.”

So, dear reader, knowing what I know, I am striving to satisfy my implicated responsibility because of that knowledge.  I am a Romantic, but not just.  I must also be Realistic, both in my stories and in my life.

What corner of the darkness are you tearing off?

Knowing What I Know, What Will I Do?

Dearest Reader,

I felt I would be amiss if I failed to write to you from where I sit at the moment.  There is only one light on in the room in which I sit, and I am writing to you from Neusiedl am See, Austria.  In just one week, I do believe I have experienced more new culture and worldview than I have in nearly half of my life.  I traveled to the Musician's Mecca of Mozart's birthplace, I experienced the wonderful German food and drink that is so well known in the this part of the world, and I have met so many different people from many different walks of life.

I assure you that my summer, even though it has been sorely lacking in Scarlequain and deeper blogging, has not been without deep thinking and musing, of which this blog is so accustomed to.  I have recently finished reading The Great Gatsby for the second time (any of you who know me understand that Fitzgerald's writing always stirs something deep inside me...it seems to me that he briefly glimpses larger portions of the Canvas of Life on which we are all specks of color than the rest of the world does, and as I try to wrap my mind around such large ideas of humanness, I am oftentimes lost in wonder), and I am halfway through with a book entitled Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good by Steven Garber, a gentleman whom I had the pleasure of hearing lecture at the American Enterprise Institute this summer.

Before I go off on the rant I have been mulling over, let me present you with a Scarlequain that inspired this brief musing in my mind.

Sea of faces,

Cliffs of spaces,

A kingdom of air,

God's personal stair:

Above the Clouds.

I wrote this poem around 32,000 feet in the air on my way to Washington DC.  It was the first time I had ever flown anywhere before at all, and the first major trip I took all on my own.  Seeing my world from this grand new perspective pushed me to write for the first time all summer, I believe, and it has stayed in the back of my mind ever since.  This summer has been one of the new: my family and I drove to Colorado together, I worked on Coach busses (learned something new every day there), I fly alone to Washington DC for a conference with some of the country's most brilliant minds, and finally I am interning with the Austrian Red Cross.  I've never been to Europe at all, I don't speak German, I've never had any experience with European trains or travel, and yet here I am.

This summer has taught me that it is possible to truly know who someone is, and have them truly know who you are, and still love and be loved by them.  I believe now that it is really possible for me to hold no dirty secret about myself back and yet still be loved.  To be Known, and even still, to be Loved.  This is a strong theme Mr. Garber explores in his book in reference to the world.  Each of us are entering into some form of vocation: teaching, raising children, policy making, driving ambulances, fixing Coaches, working at Chickfila...all of us are Called by the Lord to work in His service, and every job is worthy in His sight.  Oftentimes in our job, we will find out terrible things about the world in which we live.  People starve every day in Hungary because the culture is poorer there.  Older people die of stroke in Austria because there aren't enough hospitals to treat them.  Malaysian planes are shot down; innocent (and guilty) people are brutally killed in Israel and Gaza.  The world in which we live isn't a lovely place at times, and as it's inhabitants, we Know it.  We are faced with a choice, then.  Since we Know it, including all the awful people and thing terrible things that happen, will we Love it?  Mr. Garber says, "There is not a more difficult task that human beings face."

A new Austrian friend of mine, Mario, said today "History is made right here, right now."  Mr. Garber tends to agree with him.  It is not the heroes that Know and Love our world, necessarily.  It is the ordinary people who choose on a daily basis to say "It will not be like that here."

I suppose my point is this: each of us are placed in the life we are in for a specific reason.  I am in Austria learning how to care for people in an ambulance (even though I have no interest in the medical field) for a specific reason.  I am daily Knowing things about the world.  You live your life everyday.  You go to work.  You care for your children or your siblings or your parents.  You go to school.  The small choice you make every day exponentially multiply upon themselves to determine whether or not the Known world is Loved and changed (My world will not continue to be the ways I see that horrify me), or if it stays the same.  Perhaps we should be reminded of that more often.  Do not conform to our culture of Whatever.  The responsibility for our world rests in your hands.  Do you wish to see another Tienamen Square?  Another 9/11?  Another Rwandan genocide?  Another Holocaust?  Love today, in the smallest things.

We are constantly learning - Knowing.  Ask yourself this question of insurmountable weight:

Knowing what I know, what will I do?

Truly answering this question cannot leave you unchanged.

As I was flipping through my little leather book looking for the poem I included in this post, I stumbled across a quote by James Joyce I found appropriate.  Perhaps you can join me in applying this to the question of knowing and loving.  The world waits to be Known.  The world waits to be Loved - and thereby, changed.

"Welcome, O life!  I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

Standing with Stravinsky: Defining Good Art

You know, there is very little that gets my blood boiling more than a good clash over something I feel strongly about.  More often than not this clash happens with my peers - over a cup of coffee, sitting in the cafeteria - you know, the stereotypical college student conversations.  This time, however, it took place around 9:23am in my first class of the morning: Expository Writing.

Today in class, we were not discussing our up-and-coming paper (I think it was our journal review, and, being the music major I am, I was comparing two articles on the opera Don Giovanni); instead, we were discussing whether or not one can define "good art."  (Random aside...I love semicolons.  I kinda do a little celebratory fist-pump when a good sentence featuring a semicolon comes together.  I guess I owe that to a friend of mine.)  From my professor's perspective, we can judge whether or not art is "good" by comparing it to the standard of accepted material (let's call it the "canon" of art, because that's really what a canon is): for example, we can judge physical art (sculptures, paintings, etc.) by people such as Picasso, Van Gogh, or da Vinci, or music by people such as Bach, Stravinsky, or Mozart, or poetry by people like Frost, Longfellow, Shakespeare, etc.  By comparing the material to the accepted standard set by the canon of each field of art, we can determine if it is good.  After all, Something gave these artists immortality in some form or another.

I disagreed with her method of defining good art, but I wasn't exactly sure how to put my disagreement into words.  The position she held left no room for changes away from the accepted canon, and it left no room for artists whom immortality avoids for one reason or another.  Being a musician, I could not help but think of the first time Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was performed: the escape from traditional orchestration and Tonality was so immense that vegetables flew, riots broke out in the theater, and Stravinsky was denounced by the Russian government for being a "decadent artist."  Now, however, Stravinsky is revered as the greatest composer of the 20th century, and his works are performed in his memory yearly (I recently saw the Rite of Spring for the first time two days ago - I forgot to breathe for much of the performance).

Being a young artist myself, and having created (I think) a form of poetry that cannot be compared to any of the great poets of the canon of art, I shrink from the idea that my art cannot be considered good.  My form is new, and just like Stravinsky's leaving of tonality, it has the potential to be ignored and even ridiculed for branching off in a new direction.  I was at a loss - I knew of no one in the "accepted canon" who supported my views, until I read Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet for the second time (which, if you haven't read, you simply must), and stumbled across a series of quotes that perfectly illustrated what I was trying to verbalize in class (and contrary to my professor's desires, I will not try to summarize the quotes - I will directly quote Rilke.  He says what needs to be said in a tongue far more elegant than mine).

Rilke prefaces his defense of art by saying, "[Art] is not immaculate, it is marked by time and by passion, and little of it will survive and endure.  But most art is like that!"  Art surviving Time is not necessary?  Immaculate art is not necessary?  And on I read, wondering if Rilke would mention the Immortal Bards and their accepted Standard, until I saw:

"Even the best err in words when they are meant to mean most delicate and almost inexpressible things."

Ah, even those who maintain a mastery over words that I will never achieve err.  Be aware, therefore, dear reader.  If the best err, so much more shall you and I.  But reading on, I wondered if there is any hope for finding the standard I have been searching for, and suddenly, Rilke spoke directly to me.

"Nobody can counsel you and help you, nobody.  Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write.  If you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple 'I must,' then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it."

Expectantly, I read on, not daring to completely digest what Rilke had just told me, until I found what I was looking for.  According to Rainer Maria Rilke, "A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity."

Must you write?  Then do it.  Do not worry about the critics; do not worry about the standard.  Good art is yours, dear reader.  Filled with passion and life, your life, good art is art that you feel you must create.  Stravinsky knew this.  Rilke knew this.

"Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer.  It does come.  But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide."  Sometimes patience is the hardest thing to achieve, especially in art.  As young artists, we wonder if what we are creating is worthwhile, and I believe in some senses that worry is justified.  We know that there is a canon, and a part of us, large or small, wants to be accepted.  But that isn't what truly matters.  What matters is that we continue to create, just as those who came before us.  Our art may not affect many people, but be assured, your art will have an effect.  You may not see it, but it is there.

Practically speaking, Rilke gives two more pieces of advice that I think need to be taken to heart by budding artists such as you and me.

"Read as little as possible of aesthetic criticism - such things are either partisan views, petrified and grown senseless in their lifeless induration, or they are clever quibblings in which today one view wins and tomorrow the opposite."  The critics may persecute you and your work, but it is important to remember that they are not the final authority on your art.  Perspective is everything.

And finally, "You cannot disturb [your artistic development] more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer."  Live your life in pursuance of Truth first, and then create as our Creator did.  Fill your work with your life.  You Were Born, your life has value endowed upon you by our Creator, and your art, the expression of that value, is Good.

I guess the moral to this lengthy blog post is this: keep creating.  Immortality and fame are both unkind, but unnecessary for your work to be "good art."  And be careful how harshly you judge other people's art; do not become the critics Rilke spoke so lowly of: you could end up mocking the next Igor Stravinsky.

Necessary; from the heart,

Not "classic," but apart,

Let heartstrings sing,

Into Immortality spring:

Defining "Good Art."

To Rainer Maria Rilke, for reminding me that I do not create and I am not an artist for fame or immortality.

This Petty Pace

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day."
-Macbeth

Currently, I am sitting on a wonderful couch in my best friend's house 11.5 hours away from my home.  Two of my best friends sit with me.  One is writing music, one is writing a paper, and I am sipping Harmony House coffee (...yes...I am...), reading P.G. Wodehouse, musing on life (dangerous, right?), and Monk is playing in the background.

This is the first year of my entire life that I haven't been with my family for Easter, and I miss them dearly; however, I feel so much older now.  I feel as if a storm is looming (summer, specifically, as I didn't get the DC internship I wanted, so much is in the air, and it's possibly the my last summer at home before...whatever is next in my life...), but at the moment I don't care.  I'm completely ignoring it, and it feels great.

I rode a 4-wheeler today for the first time in years.  I recently got my hair cut, but it's getting back to where I like it: shaggy (in fact, a professional bassist I played drums with called me Shaggy for quite some time after we first met...he still does, and I love it).  Anyway, the wind throwing my Ginger mane straight back felt wonderful.

According to Josiah, you can't sing the blues if your only woe is not finding car insurance.  I'm sure DW would agree.

Also according to Josiah at 3am last night (he woke me shaking my leg saying "bro...bro..."), motioning towards the ceiling of the room we're staying in, he dramatically says to me "Bro...this is Luke Smythe."  After which he pulls out his phone and appears to take a selfie (...sadly, he didn't actually take the picture...), before letting his arm drop, falling back into "real" sleep.  Because...apparently...he was asleep that whole time.

Today I'm letting my mind wander everywhere.  Macbeth, 4-wheelers, poetry, Wodehouse, best friends, blues, football, flowers in the lap, blue eyes, Russian studies, grad school, cramped legs from car rides, cramped abs from laughter, new albums from obscure favorite bands, tango music...

I have no new poetry for you.  Perhaps you should write a Scarlequain instead of reading mine.  Yours will probably be better than mine anyway.

Smile today.  Don't ignore the petty pace; tomorrow creeps in faster and faster as we age.

First Word Incantation

I find myself in the early mornings (in my sub-conscious state; I'm not a morning person) thinking very little, and saying the same.  As a rule I wake up at least 30 minutes earlier than my roommate on any given day, and as such I don't say anything.  In fact, since he isn't a morning person either, we rarely say anything to each other anyway if we're both awake at the same time.

We still love each other though.

At any rate, one of the random thoughts that tend to cross my mind during those hours is this: what were the first words I said yesterday?  What are the first words I'm going to say today?  I often wonder how much power or sway those first words spoken hold over the rest of our day.  People speak of "waking up on the wrong side of the bed," and I do think that sometimes we just wake up in a poor mood (bad dreams, stress, too much work, whatever), but sometimes the words we utter affect us more than those random circumstances.

Fair enough, right?

Yup.

What if you accidentally say something without thinking?  What if you want your first words to be positive ones, but someone starts talking to you about rain, or a bad grade or something?  And you simply respond "sadly" or "bummer" or "that's just awful"?   Kinda puts a bad vibe on the day, from my perspective.

First word of the day,

Holds power and sway?

Hello Monday,

Dreary and grey:

Sadly.

Superstitious sounding?  Maybe.  But the potential energy we have as humans (decisions to be made, directions to be walked, certain people to smile at) is ridiculous.  Perhaps even those first words hold some potential energy?

So...think about those words.  How will they shape your day?  I think I'm struggling to shape mine now.

Sadly.

"To the Unknown...Pokemon?"

Well hello there culture-lovers.  Today, I am writing to you on perhaps one of the most nerdy topics I have surmounted yet: Twitch Plays Pokemon.

I can't tell you how many have asked me over the last month or so, "What the heck are you watching?  Thousands of people attempting to play one video game at the same time?  Why on earth do you like that?  What makes it entertaining?"  And for the longest time, I'll admit that I had trouble answering that question.  (For those of you who don't know what Pokemon is, but are interested, check this out.)

At first, my standard response to the incredulous looks was merely, "Nostalgia.  We all played as kids, and this is helping relieve some of the mid-term stress we're under."  But by the time Twitch got the attention of some magazines, school newspapers, etc., and was up to 52.7 million views, I began to wonder if the attraction was something bigger.

As you can imagine with several hundred thousand people telling one server what to do all at the same time, the Pokemon characters are (and I say "are" because Twitch is actually still going right now...) erratic, to say the least.  A better word is absolute anarchy, to use one of the popular phrases of Twitch.  Every command was inputted at the exact same time, but the game was eventually beaten (with a little help from Democracy mode, in which the most popular command in a 20 second time period was implemented instead).  The lore that has grown from the struggle against Fate in the Twitch world has been extremely entertaining to keep up with.

"Lore?"  You ask?  Why yes indeed.  And this is where Twitch begins to Dig(TM28) a little deeper.

In Pokemon Red, certain Pokemon were looked upon as gods due to the miraculous ways they survived battles, training, and were randomly referred to.  It was the classic story:

Good VS. Evil

Pokemon Red saw the rise of Lord Helix, a fossil that was constantly being referred to as the Savior (due mainly to the fact that it was merely a rock that, due to the thousands of commands being inputted at once, was looked at uselessly more times than any of us care to mention).  It gave rise to memes such as the one on the right, and websites like this. Obviously, if there is an all-powerful Poke-god in the lore, there must be a "son."  Enter Bird-Jesus, seen in the meme upper left.  And of course, if there are two such good beings, there must be an evil, seen in the Pokemon upper right (the Helix's opposite character in the grand scheme of things).  With the Helix's guidance, the thousands of voices finally overcame the Elite Four and became the greatest Pokemon trainers in all the land, and went on to rule the land, overshadowed by the Helix.

Believe it or not, thousands of people overcame insurmountable odds, and beat a video-game together.  But the social experiment was far from over.  Shortly after Pokemon Red was defeated, Pokemon Crystal was undertaken, and the popularity of Twitch was at an all time high (with about 121,000 players at one time).  But everything was happy-go-lucky no more.  Horrid things happened to AJ, the avatar of Crystal; Pokemon were forever released, and true anarchy and chaos prevailed.  People began to doubt whether or not Crystal could actually be beaten, and it seemed as if the goodness wrought by the Helix was just a fairy tale; the only true power in the world was found to be a human construct.  And so began the outcry: no gods, no kings, only 'Mon.

Backed by Brian the Bird and Eevee, LazrGator joined AJ's side and set out to take down the Pokemon killer god and his puppet Red.  And, after much pain and doubt, LazrGator did indeed overtake the previous generation to prove once and for all the only true power in the world of Pokemon was not a god, but Pokemon themselves.

Have you had enough?  See where I'm going?  Well hang on just a second.  After the 16 day battle of Crystal, the stream was delayed for 2 weeks to make way for Pokemon Emerald.  After some technical difficulties starting, Emerald is now underway, as you've probably seen, lead by May (the "M" is silent...yeah, it's just "A").  But now, having momentarily celebrated the end-all reign of Pokemon, the voices begin to ask: what is the point?  If there is no god to govern the Pokemon...is there a reason to play by the rules?  Is the game just pointless chaos?  (After having played 94 hours up to now, and having made *no* progress, I tend to ask the same question.)  The following of Twitch has rapidly declined (although about 4 of my friends and I still religiously...hahah...follow it), and we are no closer to progressing than we were two days ago.

Now.  *Heaves a huge preparatory breath*  Let me just give you some things to think about.

During the Middle Ages (let's say about 12-13 century AD), people were completely dependent on the Church.  Everyday life hinged on it, and any progress that was made was generally tinted by the Church in some way, for better or worse.

When the Renaissance hit around the 15th-ish century AD, there was a radical shift away from the Church in favor of human intuition and capability.  No longer was the Church needed as a societal prop - Man was seen as supreme.

Now here we are in Modern/Post-modern era.  After years of humans celebrating our humanity and our dominance and independence, we search in vain for a purpose in ourselves.  People pursue possessions, a better job, a better car...for what?  We're not sure.

...Interesting, isn't it?

So yes, I still sit nervously at my computer watching the chaos unfold.  Yes, I do occasionally yell at the screen in frustration.  Yes, I nostalgically remember smaller parts of my childhood.  But I suppose, in the end, the important thing to remember is that, despite the anarchy and the chaos that pervades life, there is a greater Purpose out there for all of us.  We just have to find Him.  Maybe that is the true reason so many people have latched on to Twitch Plays Pokemon - because like the avatars of the games, we are all searching for a purpose in the midst of chaos.  Maybe Twitch hints at something Deeper.  And we want to know what it is.

P.S. If you're interested in following the Lore, this is the best way right here.

Combating Reality in Grinder and Grains

Dear Reader,

I can't tell you how much I've missed writing you.  So much has been on my mind of late, and I haven't found the words or the poetry to express what this vortext is doing to my upper grey matter (yes, I did invent a new word; do you like it?  Yes, "grey" is better spelled that way.  "Gray" just looks too harsh.).  However, let the record show that, talks with fathers (mine), wonderful authors (specifically F. Scott Fitzgerald), and a surprisingly pleasant change of atmosphere do me wonders.

I had the good fortune to realize through someone (my mother, I think), that the location that my favorite coffee-shop in my hometown used to occupy was again filled, and it was taken by a mom-and-pop cafe.  I was deeply saddened when the coffee-shop had left its previous home (a 100 year old house), in exchange for a larger, warehousey building (there he goes again with the weird words...).  The coffee's quality suffered, and the atmosphere there took a change for the worse, in my opinion.  However, I am currently sitting in the very corner of Grinder and Grains Cafe (where, if I ignore the windows looking outdoors to my TN home, I feel as if I'm in a lodge in the Swiss mountains), and I am one of two patrons currently frequenting the quaint establishment.  The coffee here is satisfactory, and the chicken tortilla soup is exquisite.  I feel quite safe here, much as I do at Harmony House back on the Hill; for, as far as I know, this little cafe has yet to be found out by a large amount of people. I think I have found a treasure, and I revel in that fact.  A painting of a couple embracing under an umbrella adorns the wooden wall near me, typical coffee-shop music floats softly through the age-old house, and here I write.  Alone, but with my books, words, and thoughts to keep me company.

Lately, I have been feeling extremely...lost.  I know this sounds like the same words over a different tune (I suppose that would be an inverted form of strophicity?  For those of you wondering, I did just modify the word "strophic" to fit my needs), but I guess being at home, countless engagements of people younger than me (some of those old friends, an ex, or just people I used to consider much less mature than myself), my drawing near to the completion of my time on the Hill, and just a general lack of preparedness (or so I feel) for the future has amplified those feelings even more than normal.  For those of you who understood that previous sentence on the first try, I commend you.

At any rate, I have been wondering recently whether or not I am a child of the millennial generation, and how that will affect me in the near future.  I attribute much of the faults of that generation to a complete immersion in technology for most of their life (specifically feelings of entitlement and narcissism), and while this may not be completely accurate, from my experience it has had a large role in their upbringing.  While I generally do not think that I have been immersed in technology my entire life (I barely knew what the internet was until I was 15, and never had any type of phone or gaming system until at least my 16th year), I do feel as if I am an extremely immature person surrounded by people of a maturity unknown by most people in my generation.

I have friends in college about two years younger than me who are married and awaiting their first child.  And here I am watching/playing Pokemon (I even ordered Ash's hat), playing Legos, dressing like I'm still in my early teens, and relying on my parents for a lot of my livelihood while I'm in college.  And I can't help but ask myself if I'm somehow behind...if I've done something wrong.  Is it wrong to have the kind of fun I'm having at my age?  Should I grow up and move on to more serious things?  I have sworn most of life that I'll be wearing Converse from now on out, and I'll be a goof even when I'm old and white...but...why am I here and they are up there ahead?

I read The Great Gatsby (a MUST read...I don't care if you've seen the movie) and I read things in it like, “The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself…he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.” and I wonder (because that is exactly how I am...constantly Romanticizing everything, just as Gatsby did) if it is indeed possible to form a Platonic version of me: to forget my past on such a level that I can become the man I've always dreamed I could be.  That vision is nothing like Gatsby's in physical grandeur.  I don't want the house, the wealth, or the people...but to be a man that is worth remembering.  I want to do that as a Christian, and I know I should be constantly tempering what I think and desire by God's Word.  And I do.  I guess I don't feel the comfort a lot of people say they have in it.  I think God requires of us the blood, sweat, and tears that worldly people shed on their own personal ambition.  I think service for Him is the end goal, but we are still required Gatsby's ambition if we want to be truly successful for Him.  I feel like I have shed quite a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, but lest you think I'm feeling entitled, I do not say I deserve anything; rather, I query to the void what those wounds, labors, and tears have accomplished.  Who am I because of my past?  Or should I shed my past and become my own man?  ...some questions that are probably best left to hindsight.  Yes, it is 20/20...but it sure takes a long time getting here.  I guess growing up takes a lifetime.

Pokemon and pranks,

But to be frank,

Immature and irresponsible?

Is growing up logical?

Combating Reality.

Here I sit, comfortably musing in a new favorite place of mine.  I am listening to Pavarotti's rendition of "Nessun Dorma" from "Turandot" for the 12th time since I've been here, and I refuse to look up the lyrics.  

Why?

"I have no idea to this day what [he is] singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think [he is] singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, [his] voice soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free."

I may feel like I'm institutionalized in Shawshank right now.  But regardless of the circumstances I'm in, and no matter that I feel as if I'm in a pond but pining to be in the ocean, I'll keep doing my best to be who I want to be, and who He wants me to be.  Join me?  I really could use the company.