Fantastic Beasts

Hey!  Remember that other blog I write for sometimes?  When I wrote for them!  An interesting piece about my past; many of you who read this blog know about this part of me.  Some of you don't...so go and check it out!

Games We Play

I did it again.  I wrote a post for The Post Calvin.  It's inspired by my recent "spring break" working at the Boys and Girls Club.  That spring "break" is another post for another time.

The Cycle of Grocery Stores

Yet again, I come here merely to point you elsewhere.  Specifically, I direct you to my post on The Post Calvin where I will attempt to woo you with elegantly crafted prose about the Dominick's down the street from my high school.

A Legacy of Song

Last month, some of you may have noticed my post at The Post Calvin that spoke about my experiences with hymns in church.  This present post relates to that, if only obliquely.

Music is uniquely powerful.  I think many, if not most people feel that power and celebrate it in little moments in their lives.  I'm not a rockstar singer--I dropped out of choir after eighth grade--and my Saxophone is gathering dust in my closet (and is probably also infested with mice, but that's a different story).  Nevertheless, I think I am one of those people for whom music means more than for most.

I'm told that this is because of my grandmother.

Jane Eileen on the Left, Jane Eileen on the Right, Jane Eileens all around, late into the night, ba da ba da

My maternal grandparents were both, I'm told, excellent singers: my grandmother, Jane, a soprano, my grandfather, Joe, a baritone.  When they stood next to each other in church, any number of their six children next to them, they filled those babies' heads with melodies and harmonies and a subconscious joy in the sound of a well crafted, well executed song.

Grandma spent much of her time cleaning, crafting, fiddling about around the house, and unless she was speaking, she was singing.  Sometimes, she would sing songs, but most times, she just sang notes.  I have a vivid memory of watching her in the kitchen in Barrington, Illinois, her soft, wordless singing floating to me over the sound of the rushing tap, the sun catcher on the window in front of her holding colorful images of the birds she loved so much, in part because their songs matched her own.

My mother, also Jane, continued the tradition of constant melodizing, and in fact got a bachelor's degree in vocal performance.  I remember nights as a child when I would wake from a nightmare and my mother would come in to comfort me back to sleep, and I would ask her to sing the Star Spangled Banner, which I called the star song.  I thought it was a beautiful song, and I loved my mother's voice, and the combination of the two soothed many of my frightened fits.  When I would listen to the radio or watch movies, I would sometimes hear a song so lovely, I felt the need to memorize it so that I could sing it to my own someday-children in their troubled moments.

When my mother and I would go to churches other than our home church--if we were out of town visiting family, or if we were attending a first communion, christening, or wedding--I would secretly hope that others around us would hear my mother's singing and be jealous of me because I got to hear it every day.  I got to wake up to my mother singing along to her hymns as she read her Bible in the morning before work.  I got to listen to her sing the harmonies to all the television theme songs.  I got to be serenaded on my birthday.  Everyone should have been jealous of me.

The moment I learned that not everyone sang as much as my matriarchs was, in fact, in a church.  I don't remember what church, or when, but I remember looking around during the congregational singing and seeing dozens of people merely staring up at the stage, some bobbing their heads, some standing with an emotional hand in the air, but none of them singing.  I remember that I tried it, right there.  I tried to just look at the words on the screen as they passed, tried to not sing and just to listen.  I enjoyed the experience of hearing all the voices around me raising up those words, but I did not enjoy not singing.  The words were there, the music was playing, I needed to sing.

The moment I learned that not everyone sang like my matriarchs was, also, in a church.  When I was in England, I weekly attended St. Thomas with St. Maurice with a large contingent of other Calvin students.  One of those students, a great friend of mine, Hope, often stood near me during worship, belting out the words to songs familiar and not.  Her voice, nothing like my mother's or grandmother's sweet sopranos, was, at first, jarring to my ears.  I wanted her to be more on-pitch.  I wanted her to be softer.  I wanted her to sing as beautifully as the women I'd grown used to.

The moment I learned that the beauty in singing comes not just in the sound, but in the act, was not in a church, but in my mother's living room.  At the time, this living room was furnished in thick, sound- and light-blocking curtains hanging in the doorways, several large plastic containers of towels and other hygiene products, and a heated hospice bed where Grandma lay for weeks, her Alzheimer's preventing her from sitting up or standing.  It was a hot July in Chicagoland, but the air conditioning kept my mother, my aunt, and I all comfortably cool as we stood around Grandma's bed, in which, after a few more long hours, she would die.  We held her hands, we ran our fingers through her still-thick, white hair.  We sang to her.

White coral bells, upon a slender stalk
Lily of the valley deck my garden walk
Oh, don't you wish that you could hear then ring
That will happen only when the fairies sing

My aunt began the round.  Like me, aunt Judith was raised with music in the air around her, and like me, she could not make it as beautifully as she wanted to.  Then my mother, with her practiced and wonderful voice, joined.  Their voices came together in a way families should, like at Christmas when Grandpa reads the nativity story to us, first from a rocking chair in the big Tree Room in Barrington, Illinois, and now from a television in my uncle's sitting room.  Their voices made magic, and it didn't matter that one was clearly stronger than the other, or that one had a quaver to it that kept it from hitting every little note in the arpeggio.

As the song is a round, I joined in third, coming in just in time to be in unison with Judith, though I didn't know the song as well as she did.  And now I was in the family too.  And it felt like Christmas feels, like church when everyone sings, even off pitch, like the dishes in the kitchen with the birds watching.  It really was a magic beyond explanation or description.  She gave us our voices, and as we sat there around her, we felt compelled to give them back.  We just couldn't not sing.

Hymn Sings

Once again, I invite you over to The Post Calvin to read my post there today.  I talk about hymns and my experiences with them and how they have shaped my faith experience.  It's all very liturgical...

The Old Q vs. Q Argument with a Lemony Fresh Twist

I haven't slept well the past few nights.  I think it's because of my unthinking untimely intake of tea (I can't help that I love tea and sometimes forget to go herbal after 3 pm) but it could also be due to my sudden enthusiasm for things that happen in my waking hours (a sort of new thing).  Whatever the cause, the effect is that my extended waking hours have, of late, potentially at my loopiest.

So, this afternoon, when I was in my car, driving home from lunch with some friends, and I heard a fascinating story on NPR, I maybe got a bit more excited than I would have on a regular, non-sleep-deprived-and-over-compensating-for-it Sunday.

Such a surplus of excitement, today, means a blogpost.

[End Intro]

The story was about a man who works very hard to make a living streaming music on Spotify.  If you know anything about how not-lucrative online music sales are for the artist, you're probably wondering how he does it.  Well, he does write about an average of 14,000 songs a year, so there's that.

Most of his songs are just catalogs of various nouns.  He's got an album about things he found in his house with a song about a door, and one hit about the hot water heater.  He's got an album of songs about transportation.  He's got a whole "band" dedicated to (ironically clean) songs about defecation.  The band's name is "The Toilet Bowl Cleaners" and "their" biggest hit is "The Poop Song" which...is exactly what you think it is.

Put the calculator down.  I'll do it for you.

An average of 14,000 songs a year, assuming he works 52 weeks a year, is about 269 songs a week.  On the radio program, someone mentioned that he records these songs in his basement 4 days a week, which makes an average of about 67 songs a day, which, assuming he works 8 hour days, is 8 or 9 songs in a work day.  That's written, recorded, mixed, and uploaded.

My brother is a musician who has been in the business for several years now, and he is just now putting together his second album.  I have a feeling he'd have a few choice words to say about Matt Farley and the quality of that music.

But I think both Dennis and Matt would say that two artists so different can hardly try to compare themselves to each other.  They don't have the same goals for their music, their outreach as musicians, or even their lifestyles and vocation, so why would their measurements of "success" be the same?

It's the old Quality versus Quantity argument...

...or is it?  Because, sure, Dennis works slower than Matt and his work is more fine tuned and probably has more longevity, and Matt has a volume that trumps Dennis' every time.  He writes songs four days a week.  He spends little if any time working on pre- or post-production stuff, he doesn't manage tour dates or book shows, and he never has to haul any of his equipment out of his basement.  All he does is just write, record, upload, repeat.

Artists--musicians, writers, painters, and all the rest--often talk about that process as a form of discipline.  Just write, just paint, just play: it's not about inspiration, it's about sitting down and working on your craft, not neglecting your skills, your voice, your practice.  It's about breaking through barriers like, "I don't know if I'm good enough," or "I have bad grammar," or "Am I tone deaf?  I mean seriously, have you heard me?" and just get anything down.

It feels to me sometimes like we feel we have to go through periods where all we're doing is Quantity in order to get to the moments of Quality that will sustain a career, legitimize our talent, and/or bring meaning into the world through our art.  It feels to me sometimes like we believe that the things we create in our periods of Quantity-Only are worthwhile only as part of a journey to the Quality we produce later.  They don't have inherent purpose.

But Matt Farley doesn't think that.  I mean, I guess I don't know what he does think.  But I know that PJ Vogt thinks that Matt Farley's 14,000 songs a year do have merit on their own.  They perform a service to the world beyond just getting Farley to a time where he can create fewer, but better overall work.

PJ tells the story about how he asked Matt to write a song for PJ's step-parents for a Christmas presents.  He gives Matt five bits of information about his stepmom, Nan, and PJ thinks about it for a minute, comes up with some chords, and, BAM, records a song right there.  PJ then takes that song around to his friends for the next few days and is clearly more excited than they are, and begins to worry whether his gift is going to flop.  But then he gives it to Nan on Christmas day and she is over the moon.  She listens to it multiple times, asks him twice to email it to her, and then sends PJ a note about how much she loved it, and how it touched her that he gave it to her.

PJ makes the connection that most of Farley's music does nothing more than acknowledge the existence of things--"This is a door," or "Poop is a thing," or "You're part of the family"--and step-parents often seek that simple acknowledgement without often receiving it.  "[The song Farley wrote for Nan] uncomplicated a complicated situation."  

It took seconds to write.  It was based off of extremely little knowledge of its own subject.  It made two people's Christmases.

If that's not Quality, What is it?

I wanted to write this post without sitting on it or editing it, in one swift action, in the spirit of Matt Farley.  When I was composing it in my head on the way from the curb where I parked my car, it sounded perfect and important.  The bit about Quantity-Only-creations having value all their own really spoke to me on a deep level as I danced out of my coat and skipped into my dining room to sit down and write this.

But as I try to round it out at the end here, I realize that the message is tried and true: quality is everywhere, and quality is what you make of it.  You don't have to be the next J.D. Salinger to write a novel that is great and American to someone.  You don't have to use your passions to pay your bills.  You can Just Write, or you can write sporadically.  There is no one, cookie-cutter right way.

Everyone has said that sometime in the past fifteen years, though, so now this post feels incredibly less perfect and important, even if it still speaks to me in my crazy, sleep-deprived-and-trying-too-hard mental state.

But damn me if I don't post it anyway.

EDIT:

@PKsDancingGirl Thanks for writing about me! Well done. (But, it's 14,000 songs since '08, not yearly (though now I have a new goal!).
— Motern Media (@MoternMedia) January 22, 2014

@PKsDancingGirl I google my name all the time! Check out my movie sometime: https://t.co/AymNwP0bNf
— Motern Media (@MoternMedia) January 22, 2014

It's the 19th! You know what that means...

That's right!  Today, The Post Calvin posted a blog of mine that muses about the strange complexity of photographs that both capture and save a moment in the past, and yet most often have as short a shelf-life as their subjects.  I also briefly mention flowers, in case that interests you.

What is the best policy, again?

This morning, I read a blog post about modesty, and I have been musing about it in the back of my mind all day.  You should read it and then come back to this post so we can discuss it together.

If you don't want to do that, I'll tl;dr it for you.

1) Women's bodies are policed in frustrating ways from both ends of the spectrum: in magazines, TV shows, movies, etc, women are told to be thinner, fitter, more pleasing to men in visual and sexual contexts, and in churches (as well as other, non-Christian arenas) across the world, women are told to cover up, to strive for plainness, to please men by not leading them into sin.

2) This is baffling to the Christian woman who wrote the blogpost (and to me) because nowhere in the Bible does God or Jesus say that women are are fault for their brothers' lustful stumbles, nor does the Bible ever lay the onus on women to prevent the sinful thoughts of others.

3) We, as Christians and a Church turn modesty into objectification by blaming women for the sins of their Christian brothers, and by making women ashamed of their bodies, telling them that their physical form has been corrupted by Satan into an instrument of sin.

4) The blogger finishes her post by saying "Dress for yourself in a way that is glorifying to God, not men. ... Prioritize strength, dignity and good deeds, and then dress accordingly.  Find something that makes you comfortable. Find something that is ethically made. Find something that gives you the freedom to run with abandon into those incoming waves—and revel in this body and this world God gave you to enjoy."  In the earlier version of the post that I read, she also included something along the lines of "Wear what makes you happy."

This, my sort-of response post, is something I've been writing in my head for many years, my thoughts on this topic that have been simmering for a long time, and are now coming to the surface because I think I've finally formed an opinion worth standing on.

-=-=-=-=-=-

First of all, I should preface this to all the non-Christian or not-religious readers I may or may not have.  I realize that this whole argument may seem pretty dumb to you.  The more I study Christianity and faith from the inside, the more I've come to realize how utterly ridiculous it must seem from the outside.  I can appreciate the struggles non-Christian people have with both the Church and its faith.  I've heard a lot of off-hand summarizations of Christianity that go something like, "A bunch of people who rely on a centuries-old text to dictate their every day life and hold way too much stock in a guy who asked them to drink his blood and eat is body."  Our rituals, our beliefs, and our culture are hard to stomach, and I've even spent a lot of my Christian life struggling to get to the bottom of them.

That said, if you disagree with what I say here and would like to have a discussion about it, please remember that, if we come from different foundational beliefs, that discussion is going to be heavy and intimate, and will go deeper than just the words in this post, so maybe we should find a better place to have that conversation than in the comments section or on my Facebook.

-=-=-=-=-=-

I've always had a problem with the "Modesty is the Best Policy!" speeches that we got in church as kids and teenagers.  For one thing, the youth group leaders would separate us into two groups--boys and girls--as if our trials in the arena of sexuality and self-expression were too different, and moreover, needed to be kept secret from one another.  I always wanted to know what was going on in the boys' conversations about these issues, and I always wanted them to know what was going on in the girls', but that wasn't allowed for some reason.

I don't really think that men's and women's struggles with lust and objectification are vastly different, and I definitely don't think they should be trade secrets that separate us.  It's that separation and miscommunication that leads to statements like, "Women shouldn't be allowed to be church leaders or pastors because their bodies will lead the men in the congregation to sin."  The truth of it is that both men and women can be distracted by men and women's bodies.  If I had a nickel for every girl whose crush on a male pastor or worship leader distracted her from the message of the church, I could probably pay for all the Christmas gifts I bought this year and get myself a little something extra, too.  That fact would be more widely known and accepted if men and women in church talked together about things like sexuality and attraction.

The reason the idea of modesty has been on my mind a lot recently (more recently, anyway, than the Sunday School sex talks I got in high school) is because, in college, I became really gung-ho about feminism and gender equality, and it has since changed my view of myself and my role as a woman in Christianity.  A lot of topics come into play with the discussion of women in the Church, and modesty is one of them that pops up quite frequently and in rather inconspicuous ways.

For instance, when I was 18 and younger, going to church with my parents or friends, I felt convicted not to wear tank tops.  I felt uncomfortable with my shoulders uncovered, not because I didn't like tank-tops in general, but because I didn't think they were something a Godly woman should wear, and I didn't want people at church to think I was anything but Godly.

This attitude persisted for some time into college, but eventually, a fundamental change occurred, and I stopped thinking that showing off my shoulders was unGodly, but I still worried about what people at church would think of me if I did it.  I worried, not about men lusting after me, but about women and pastors and indoctrinated children passing judgements about me and my faith because my skirt was too short or my cleavage was too exposed.

I can't attest to whether or not anyone at any of my previous churches actually did pass such judgements on me, but I can say that I was no longer trying to please God.  I was trying to please God's followers. I was not even trying to protect men struggling with lustful thoughts; I was trying to protect myself from the scorn of anyone struggling with a judgmental nature.

And I think that was the sin I committed.  Not only was I passing judgment prematurely on my brothers and sisters in Christ by assuming that they would think so poorly of me so easily, but I was also putting their opinion of me above God's.

I think the blogger from the above post said it well when she emphasized that women (perhaps specifically Christian women) should not be dressing for men--whether it be to please them sexually or to please them spiritually--or other people in our church congregations.  We should be doing everything for the glory of God, and that includes the way we dress.  That is different than wearing whatever makes you happy (which may be the reason she has since retracted that statement) because God doesn't think that our purpose on this earth is to merely be happy.  But that is also different than policing our bodies or anyone else's bodies and making the argument that one person can prevent another's sin.

If, as we search through our closets in the morning (or, in my case, the pile of semi-clean clothes strewn across the floor...) we are too preoccupied thinking about how we are going to serve our Lord today, or about how our clothes are or are not going to get in the way of our worldly worship getting accomplished, isn't that more important than thinking about how many eyes we will or won't turn with our scoop neck top or our short shorts?  This should also be true of men, whose bodies can also be distracting to those who see them.  Shouldn't a man be more concerned with whether his T-shirt will be thin and breathable enough for him to do his work at Habitat for Humanity, than with whether the way it accentuates his shoulder blades may lead a fellow volunteer down the path that leads to destruction?

Most importantly, if a Christian does catch themselves objectifying someone who is made in the image of God, shouldn't they do whatever it takes for their own heart to undo that, rather than turn the sin and shame on that person who might not have had any malicious intent, or may have come from a culture where their chosen dress is the norm and is completely socially acceptable?  Perhaps, when we catch ourselves in the act of objectification, we should pray to God for wisdom and clarity, to relearn to see that person as a unique individual who fits into God's cosmic plan for the redemption of the world.  Perhaps we should find an unobtrusive way reach out to them, to have a conversation or share a meal so that we might come to know and see beyond their bodies.  Or perhaps we should just remove ourselves from the situation, quoting scripture to ourselves and our inner demons, as Jesus did during his 40 days in the wilderness.

I think churches and Christians should focus as much or more of their energies on teaching their congregants how to avoid objectifying human beings as they do on teaching women how to cover up their sex-appeal. And I think that pastors and church leaders could make much more headway in the Biblical modesty department if they taught women and men fiscally and morally responsible ways to purchase, make, and wear clothing and bodily adornments instead of telling women that tank tops and mini dresses are the devil's playthings.

Reading Makes me Question Myself

I have, once again, written somewhere else instead of writing here.  I apologize (a little) and I hope you will check out the post instead of hating me forever.

The Post Calvin

Just a reminder to check this blog on the 19th of every month to see an update from Yours Truly, if you don't feel like you get enough of those.

A 30-Day-Quest

Over at that other blog, I wrote a post today about NaNoWriMo.  You should check out both my post and NaNoWriMo, if you haven't done so already.

Inaugural Video in my New Apartment!

In which Fudgiechu and I are best friends in a world we must defend.

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/PKsDancingGirl

Tumblr:
holyquotablesbatman.tumblr.com

That other blog

As always, I have a new post over at The Post Calvin.  If you like mild conspiracy theories, unofficial psychological studies, and analyses of my eccentricities, check it out.

I like to keep my issues drawn...

In which I do some serious battle with iMovie in order to bring you what my computer considers to be my most complicated video yet.  Wuph.

Just a heads up!

For those who are interested, I posted a blog post over here today.  It's about community in the age of the internet.

The blog itself is pretty cool and I suggest you check it out.  I write a post here every month on the 19th.

And I'm Back in the Game

Sorry for the long absence!  Here's a quick explanation and a plan for moving things to infinity and beyond...

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/pksdancinggirl

Tumblr:
holyquotablesbatman.tumblr.com

Also, 5,000 monkey points to the person who can correctly guess the pop-culture source of the title of this video