I’ve jumped on the bandwagon for Sufjan in Indy on the 23rd. Also… while checking up on the Crank! website… I stumbled upon a show that I had no idea would be taking place in my lifetime…. luckily, I discovered it today and was able to order an online ticket (friggin’ service charges added almost $10 to the ticket price… but it is still well worth it).
Lies… all of that was lies… you can guess quite easily that it was all lies. Except that I am going to see Sufjan in Indy after all.
in two different ways.
The first is a trailer for the ‘documentary’ on certain Christian summer camps called Jesus Camp. The film makers follow a specific sectarian church in North Dakota that sends its youth to a camp where they learn how to become part of God’s army. The film is purportedly quite even-handed… but then again, as it goes there is no such thing as a documentary anyhow… choosing the radicals for a documentary on ‘Christian’ camps is already a move based upon bias. However, the very fact that such a camp exists and that there are mega-churches sponsoring youth getaways on par with being sent to a sunny children’s boot camp is unsettling. The film is not meant to cast the camp in a positive light, but watching the trailer does just give me a sinking feeling that the people in the film are just bringing it on themselves.
The second is Edmond, the latest film adaptation of a play written by David Mamet. Edmond, from the looks of it, tells the story of a man named Edmond (William H. Macy), who suddenly abandons his life as it is for the ‘dark vortex of the streets’. Descending as far and as fast as he can, Edmond comes to grips with the fact that every action he takes has a consequence he cannot escape. Macy was a student of Mamet’s in college, and his seething portrayal of a man frayed to the edges of himself looks spellbinding… and disquieting.
Of all the popular Christian tunes percolating through the airwaves… perhaps Sanctus Real’s latest single is the year’s best. The music video, now, that’s another story.
Itsbynne a while since I updated much of anything on this blog. I’m still alive, I’m still breathing, eating, sleeping, working, studying, making friends, talking, drinking (in moderation!), and generally being the quintessential Joel. I’m not alright. I’m broken inside. Yeah, so, fine, that’s the way it goes pretty much until Sheol claims my bones.
The existential dilemma grows more acute, though. Meh, I’m being thrust through empty picture frames lined up to make a tunnel, and the artwork is nowhere in sight. Shafts of light change color, and illuminate the dust that covers the holes… but doesn’t fill them. I’m wiping away snapshots of myself from long ago… barely recognizing my face in them… and dwelling a minute too long on how much time has elapsed since the yellowing pages of my childhood went into some scrapbook somewhere.
I’m different! I’m not the same anymore! I was a child… something croaked in me and certain childlike traits I had will never again return in this lifetime. I was a young person… and something within me snapped, like uncooked angel hair pasta bundled together and bent. Starting on the outside, some of them snap, while others remain intact. I do not shift my worldview very quickly or very lightly. Yet I’m different! I became something of a ‘young adult’ and certain features of myself came into sharper relief. What do I want? Why do I want it? What am I doing to realize the goals I have latent in the back of my skull? What do I do with sudden holes in leadership… suddenly I’m the expert… suddenly I have something resembling wisdom in certain areas. I want to cling to being young, vital, and popular… but I have to be me, and accept certain blissful ignorances to pass away when I embrace myself.
And how do I learn to be straightforward and truthful to the bastards who tread all over my nerves and make me foment on the inside while I shake their hands and smile on the outside? Okay, that last part is directed at a specific person who I know will never ever read this… but still, there is having grace for a person… and then there’s a person who really needs to be ‘tore down’, as it were, from their position and ‘put in their proper place’. And maybe I’m not the one to do that… but something nags at me and I wonder how I would do that. Bill Cosby said, “I don’t know the key to success… but the key to failure is to try and please everybody.”
I’m not going to go out of my gourd while trying to please some person who is only going to be recieving an indirect dose of disrespect.
Enough! Introspect: off. What have I merely been doing these past weeks?
I have also been seeing a decent amount of my wonderful friends, all of the Gents, a lot of my former schoolmates (in Kindergarten, no less!), and other fine human beings who I do not get the chance to chill out with too often. I’m a huge people person, I thrive in groups… and on conversation and hang-out time. I like to entertain, I like to be different, I like to hog the spotlight and draw attention to myself sometimes, too. Mostly, I just enjoy people, and I think that if I were merely alone for the rest of my life… that I’d be a sour person indeed.