To pick a favorite

This is actually a very difficult task. I have never once taken a class where I thoroughly, sincerely enjoyed everything we read (perhaps “enjoy” is too strong a term for Kingdom of this World). But I think my favorite was watching the documentary “Tocar y Luchar” about the orchestra programs in Venezuela. I am a music minor, and find it hard to articulate why I love music, but this movie did it wonderfully! As I was watching it, I had a Word document up, and would constantly pause the movie to type a cool quote. I struggled finding the best one for the blog post. But here were some of the other quotes that might illuminate why this was my favorite:

“Whoever creates music… begins to understand from within what essential harmony is… human harmony”

“Only music can communicate with human beings … that revelation is what transforms, is sublime and develops from within the spirit of man…”

“I imagine that God must like music, because something so beautiful can only be the work of God”

“Art implies a sense of perfection.. therefore of excellence, a road to excellence. ..a sense of harmony, order, rhythm, a sense of the aesthetic, the beautiful, the universal, and the language of the invisible”

“Is rhythm a musical phenomenon? No. Rhythm is a spiritual phenomenon. It is the internal pulse of the soul. Music sublimates the interior pulse of the soul and expresses it in a harmonious way. Subtly, invisibly, and transmitted, without words, to other human beings. It is the art of making will, souls, and spirits agree to generate a message, and to generate vaules that profoundly transforms the spirit of the child who makes the orchestra. … people feel a revelation. God reveals something ineffable. Something that cannot be penetrated by rationality; that is only penetrable by intuition. It is that a young person … challenged by the musical impulse and the tasks of the orchestra, begins a psychological transformation”

“We must let ourselves be invaded by that art that brings us together through music, plastic arts, literature, cinema, and begin to recognize ourselves in our essence, in our identity through art, which is the only world where we can find the true revelation of our being, the authentic being is revealed through art”

To all the artists out there: to all of you musicians, writers, filmmakers, and humanities majors; you’re doing good work for humanity. Keep it up. 

I hate you but I love you more!

In this scene from the movie La Misma Luna, Carlitos and Enrique obviously have some heated feelings toward each other. In our class my professor Dr. Mack related this scene to John Bolby’s attachment theory, and how when people fight, it is actually (often) attachment-seeking behavior. Seems slightly counter-intuitive right?  That in battling against, one is actually trying to become close. 

Why is that?

So many famous scenes of fantastically heated arguments turning into passionate kisses, right?! (The Notebook, in the rain; Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as they're blowing up their house; who could forget the Single's Ward, in the kitchen) Gosh darn, they’re entertaining! (and I wanted to post more, but some get a little inappropriate, and I don't know how to cut youtube videos) 

So one of the classics, just to get the idea (from Cheers):

or if you're a disney channel fan: 

What is it about passion that brings people together?

A friend of mine is taking a psychology class online. He told me in this lecture, his professor said that if a married couple never fought, there was probably something really wrong. If neither party had enough belief or care in his or her own opinion to disagree, they will wander through life together, but ultimately wander apart. But marriages that fight, and then make up, are actually closer. They care enough about the situation/other person to get emotional, to become unrestrained, and to want to fight for it.

I think this is my theory: If someone doesn’t care, if they are completely apathetic, they won’t take the time/energy to argue with you. So it’s subconsciously comforting to us when we’re throwing around heated words, because WORDS are being thrown around. Not silence.

You might think, “I’ve definitely argued with people when I didn’t care about them” Like group projects, perhaps? Me too. For sure. But even there—both parties have a strong feeling about how things should run. You both care about the project, and because of that—you’re linked together.

In “La Misma Luna,” It seems the more angry and annoyed Enrique gets at this little kid following him around, the more attached the two become. In the end, Enrique sacrifices himself in a big way, so Carlitos can have even the chance to find his mother. What a sweet attachment. 

well, owl be!

"The owl was my spirit, my bond to the time and harmony of the universe... My work was to do good" (Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima. p, 260)

In this book, the character Ultima is a seemingly omniscient figure. An older woman who has all the answers, but is full of mystery herself.  Her soul is intricately connected to an owl, a symbol of wisdom and power. Another famous character symbolized by an owl is the Greek goddess Athena.

This character is repeated throughout history, so there must be something about this type of character that we are drawn to.

Athena is the goddess of wisdom. She is also associated with War, but she’s not the goddess of WAR, she is the goddess of JUST warfare. She is specifically a woman who only wages justified wars using intelligence. Athena is often depicted in ancient art with an owl nearby, or as an owl.

For the ancient Greeks, war and wisdom are interlinked. The two should not be separate. A leader in deciding the fate of other men should be incredibly wise, perhaps above all else. Both Athena and Ultima are these leaders.

These two women are linked by the way they use their power: Ultima wages a just war against a curse, against evil.  She defends Antonio’s family with sagacity, after they plead, just like Athena would use her powers for a good hero who called upon her for help.

These two characters are from wildly different cultures, across hundreds of years in time, and geographical locations, and yet repeated.  Something about the human spirit wants to connect to a character of perfect wisdom. We yearn for relatable, human characters on whom we can call rely for answers. There is a desperate desire, a hope, and maybe even a faith that our leaders be infinitely wiser than we. We make decisions based on our knowledge—which we know is limited and flawed—and maybe that scares us.

Both these women are powerful and strong, not because of their physical strength, but because of their wisdom. They use their knowledge to justly resolve conflict. What better characters to place our trust in to lead us at the forefront?

Magic Beyond Religion

“So I must work the magic beyond evil, the magic that endures forever” (Rudolfo Anaya, Bless Me, Ultima p. 94).

In this novel, Antonio is searching for answers between two religious mediums: devout Catholicism and a mysterious pagan-like power. His mother is strictly, piously Christian, and his La Grande, Ultima, is something else entirely, but she obviously has a strong power.

A friend of mine once told me that people created religion because it is comforting. (i.e., once we die, there is something more; there is someone more powerful than we are, who’s actually in charge, and He has a plan. And He’s on our side… etc. comforting notions right?) His theory was that man made up religion for his own peace of mind. I agree on some level, but for different reasons. I think there is divinity in this world, and we organize ourselves with beliefs so we can try to wrap our brains around the things we cannot fully comprehend.

It’s Jaques Lacan’s theory of the real and the symbolic order: we order our world of chaos and emotion with language and symbols. So with regard to religion—we give boundaries, laws, rules, and structure to try and grasp the ineffable reality of truth.

Ultima works outside of these boundaries: she works beyond “good vs. evil” beyond “black and white” beyond “Christian vs. Pagan” - she uses magic beyond any of these.

I took a world religions class (at my Catholic high school) and we visited a Buddhist temple. I distinctly remember not understanding a word the small old man was saying. But I also remember feeling something very powerful in this service. The incense and the atmosphere were entrancing. Even though it was very far from my own Christian beliefs, there was something tangibly…otherworldly. In a good way.

I truly believe that my church was founded by God Himself. But I also have no doubt that there is truth and divinity outside  my church’s doctrine.

Maybe God gave us confines so that we can wrap our brains around a tiny piece of the universe? Maybe we really couldn’t handle every truth without some sort of structure curtailing it slightly. Maybe one day we’ll know it all—and we won’t need “religion.”

Deal with the Devil

“For man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him.  But man's greatness consists in the very fact of wanting to be better than he is” (Alejo Carpentier, “Kingdom of this World” p. 179).

The characters in this novel go through awful difficulties. They live through a revolution where some are tortured, tossed aside, and eventually turned back over to slavery.  This book of incoherency and complete lack of structure, ends with a long paragraph of entirely lucid brilliance.  After experiencing this mad, upside-down, reversed, jumbled world, the author wanted the readers to know that through all the nonsensical aspects of life, you have to keep going, you have to keep progressing.

There is a German legend where a man named Dr. Faust makes a deal with the devil. There are many different versions of the legend (but the one my Classics professor likes is Goethe’s rendition). In the story, Faust exchanges his soul for unlimited knowledge and pleasure of the world. The deal is, as soon as Faust says (something to the effect of) “I could stay in this moment forever” then the devil gets his soul. So the devil gives Faust everything he could possibly want, in hopes that in any given moment, Faust won’t want to change his circumstances.  But Faust never says it. In the ending twist, Faust describes a time in the future where he is constantly changing. And says, “I could stay in that moment forever,” the moment of constant striving, moving, progressing, is where he could stay.

Different versions have different endings, but here, Faust tricks the devil and with a little help from God, Faust is saved from hell because of his desire for an unchanging state of always changing.

In the words of one of my favorite hymns, If You Could Hie to Kolob:

The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression have one eternal round…

There is no end to wisdom

There is no end to light…

There is no end to truth

There’s something innately necessary about progression. Maybe Faust or Carpentier are trying to say that somehow we’ll be protected from the devil if we keep moving forward?

But stagnancy is not an option.

something about the beat

(Marc Anthony "Valio La Pena") 

When you were listening, could you sit still?!

Neither could I!

There’s something about this music that just makes you want to move your body, right?!

Talking about music is like dancing about architecture (ie very difficult to describe) but there’s obviously something powerful here that should be acknowledged.

Let’s compare this to a minuet, or a waltz:

It might make you sway a little. (Or maybe, as I found myself doing, make you conduct an invisible orchestra.) But it doesn’t instill the same instinctual pulse, the same carnal desire to move to the beat as that salsa number.

I recently attended an open forum where Dr. Paul Kerry led a discussion on how our (U.S.) society of courtship and dancing has disintegrated from the controlled, statuesque technique of European ballroom, into the base, carnal, sexual movement of our modern social dance (mostly through rock and roll).

In the book “The Closing of the American Mind” by Allan Bloom, the author says that Music is the medium of the human soul. He says, “Music is the soul’s primitive and primary speech and it is without articulate speech or reason…. Even when articulate speech is added, it is utterly subordinate to and determined by the music and the passions it expresses” (71)* So how you use this very powerful medium, hits something in the very soul. 

Dr. Kerry’s theory was that the change came in the percussion. He said there’s something about a drumbeat that innately drives the listener to move their hips. This, of course makes the dance more sexual. But I think it’s more than just the drums. It’s the rhythm—the syncopation, the pulse…

So should everything with a beat be banned from a wholesome campus such as BYU? To prevent urges to break the honor code…? Maybe.

Because obviously there’s something so powerful about this force that needs to be acknowledged.  Something human about this release of tension, this thrust into a world with no rules, with just passion, emotion, and desire: maybe it puts people in Lacan’s realm of the REAL. 

Listen to that song again, just try to stand still. I swear it’s impossible.

*I only have a copy of the chapter, not the citations for the book, but if you wanted to find it, the quote is found in the chapter entitled “music”

Eve and Existence

“…he could expect nothing from those pupils who accepted his doctrine passively, but that he could expect something from those who occasionally dared to oppose him. The former group… could not ascend to the level of individuals” (Jorge Luis Borges, “The Circular Ruins” 58-59).

This story shows a man who dreams up the existence of another man. With meticulously careful constructing, he finally makes one worthy enough for existence (even if it’s only in his dreams). But he cannot bring to “life” a being that is passive, or completely obedient. Only in doing something original, different than the generation before us, can we progress, move forward into a stage of being an individual. 

Back to the very beginning of human history: Adam and Eve could not live in a state of ignorance forever. They obeyed every word of doctrine that was given to them. The moment that they disobeyed the authority before them, is where their story—and human history—begins. They needed to eat the fruit that gave them a knowledge of good and evil, of opposition. They needed this perfection to be challenged; without it, they would not have been able to produce life themselves.

Before their “fall,” the world lived in a perfect state, but it was never progressing. Nothing could die, but nothing could become. 

Scriptures tell us that God said, “For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so…righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad… wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility” (2 Nephi 2:11).

I don’t think one needs to completely disregard every order or every teaching. You just need to be able to question. To “ascend to the level of an individual,” you need to fight for the real truth, for the best answer, for the knowledge of your own.

I wonder if I fight enough for the right to exist.