Derek Webb - Stockholm Syndrome

Every countercultural movement of the past century has its great, bald spiritual leader. The Indian independence movement has Gandhi. The Church of Satan has Anton LeVay. Gen-X, alt-rock-loving perpetual grad students have Michael Stipe. And Disaffected Hipster Cradle-Evangelicals Who Shun The Conservative Values Of Their Upbringing But Still Display At Least A Partial Interest In The Whole Christian Thing have Derek Webb. Webb's latest and perhaps most controversial album Stockholm Syndrome hit the stores earlier this month, and it's got many folks a-talking. Matthew was buzzing about it two months ago; he's much more of a Derekologist than I am. Tim recently put out this post which mentions Webb's highly publicized track "What Matters More", in which Webb vents his frustration about Evangelical obsession over homosexuality/bisexuality/etc. and, perhaps driven by the heat of the moment, uses some naughty words. Matt (other Matt) had another post about Christian culture's censorship of the Bible's grizzly passages, which really has nothing to do with Derek's new album, but is still very profound and I highly recommend reading it.

Now it's my turn to weigh in on Derek Webb's latest exploration, even though this album has been out for almost a month, which makes it old news by the oppressively high standards of this fast-paced modern world of McSalad Shakers and George Bush Jr.* But the album has had time to settle with me, and I feel I can make a much better judgment call on it now than the zillions of customer reviews that are typically splat-painted on the iTunes Music Store only hours after an album's release. My belated review will attest that I'm not very good at coming up with original ideas, which is why I'd probably make a great Free Software developer. (Ohhhh, snap!!!) But there are still plenty of folks out there who haven't heard the new release, let alone, know of its existence; so I hope my service proves to be helpful.

The first thing most people think of with Stockholm Syndrome is the controversy surrounding the aforementioned "What Matters More" track; so I'll start with the second most significant controversy: The style change. As underground rapper extraordinaire Talib Kweli once put it, "We don't live for hip-hop. Hip-hop--it lives for us." Replace the word "hip-hop" with "folksy, quasi-didactic, sensitive singer-songwriter, Dylanesque, predominantly acoustic alt-rock" and you basically have what seems to be Derek's artistic philosophy for this release: musical style as a means to an end and not the end itself. That's because, for this record, Derek switched from his signature organic rootsy stuff to synth-poppy, beat-heavy electronic, bringing out the ol' acoustic only a couple of times. You gotta give him kudos for not caving in to the nerdiness of the disaffected-youthful-folk subculture by making another folksy album just for the genre's sake. But, of course, a strong artistic statement like that doesn't automatically guarantee enjoyable music. This is a truly experimental album, as he flirts with all different flavors of electronic music. The breakbeats on "Black Eye" are quite nifty, think Radiohead during (one of) their electronic phase(s); and the drum-n-bass (with real drums, I think) on "The Spirit vs. the Kick Drum" are catchy. The dance-pop on "Jena and Jimmy" didn't quite win me over, especially the obnoxious falsetto "ooh-ooh-ooh", and the throbbing "nnts-nnts-nnts" on "What You Give Up to Get It" I found to be rather irritating, even after several listens. The laid back tracks like "Heaven" and "Freddie Please" are the most unique. "Freddie Please" is especially delightful. I'm told the song is sung from the perspective of Jesus toward Fred Phelps. The raspy vocals over the slowed-down '50's-style ballad are downright creepy--in a very beautiful way. This track alone more than makes up for the album's awkward moments.

And the lyrics? Well there's some style change in these, too. Derek Webb was never really preachy in his songwriting, but he's always been pretty blunt when it comes to issues of politics ("We'll never have a savior on Capitol Hill"), theology ("Nobody's good enough to save themselves") and middle-class America. ("Sell your house. Sell your SUV [...] Give it to the poor.") Here, aside from "What Matters More", it's rather abstract, whether he's repeatedly chanting, "I don't want the Spirit, I want the kick drum" or rambling about a "Black Eye" or chanting political slogans I'd expect to see on bumper stickers on Fiats parked in front of "independent" (i.e. failing) record shops. ("Please take your laws off my lover.") I needed a lyric sheet to follow along with a lot of these songs, and even then, I couldn't figure out what many of them were about, although themes of state-church relations, homophobia, pacifism, and poor people getting screwed over seem to pop up here and there. This ambiguity seems to be playing on the cognitive biases of quite a few theological conservatives, as evidenced by this critical review which chides the album for Derek's "disturbing theology" and seems particularly hung up on the song "Heaven" for not offering an exegetically correct description of the afterlife. (Was it supposed to?) The article mostly reviews Derek's apparent theological stance and his table manners (i.e. the use of profanity) rather than the album itself, and this I find to be really tragic. Derek doesn't give any definitive statement about sexuality or politics here, and that's what I find most appealing about this album! He's not interested in lecturing you about the doctrine of infralapsarianism** or rant about how unhip suburbanite Evangelicals should be more social justice-y. Instead he makes music that's vaguely topical but interesting and infectious enough to inspire you to do the talking. And the topics of foreign relations and sexual politics never go out of style. I can already see Webb 2.0 working its magic amongst my closest peers; just look at Tim's post (mentioned above) and its comments. Who knows what kind of dialogue Stockholm Syndrome will spark in the next few years? And as for Derek, where will the experimental path take him next? How about an album consisting entirely of cymbals clanging! It would be a minimalist concept piece based on 1 Corinthians 13:1, protesting the hypocrisy of contemporary Evangelicals who preach about "moral values" without displaying love in their actions. Steve Reich would be so proud.

* A tribute to essayist Jeremy Lavine, whose El Niño essay begot a mild Internet meme a few years back. On a personal note, Alex and I became fast friends when I e-mailed him that essay.
** I don't even know what that means.

"A Bag On My Head"

In the classic novel A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius Reilly, the narcissistic protagonist, gets a job at a pants factory to support his family. Ignatius is incredibly astute and should be over-qualified for such blue-collar work. But after caving in to his mother's demands to stop making excuses for his complacent laziness, he takes the low-skill job. He does somewhat well until ego gets the best him. In order to upstage his beatnik ex-girlfriend, he dabbles with the whole social activism thing that was hip in the 1960's; and where better to make his mark than in Civil Rights-era New Orleans, where he worked. He attempts to galvanize his fellow poor workers into an enormous protest for improved wages and working conditions. He asks them to sing Spirituals in unison. The protest fails monstrously, Ignatius gets fired, and hilarity ensues.

My first job was at Taco Bell. I was 16 and needed money to help pay for car insurance. Like many fast-food franchises, the lowly environment at Taco Bell is the last resort lunch option for the sharply dressed, upper-middle-class folk who describe their work as "market research" to young ladies they're trying to pick up at wine galleries. When they're behind on their payment for the loan they took out for the 115" 9600*5400 resolution HDTV, they can't afford the usual Greek place or even Panera Bread. So at about 12:15 pm, after they've finished preening and re-popping their collars in the bathroom, these well-groomed socialites venture from their pristine, naturally lit office building into the dreary fast-food dungeon, only to return an hour later to their idyll where they promptly resume reading Fail Blog. Behind the counters where they place their orders lies the metallic cavern lit by flickering fluorescent lighting. Here, minimum-wage-working single mothers, non-English speakers, and perpetually stoned high-school dropouts assemble wads of growth hormone-addled cattle carcass onto artificially flavored rubber sheets resembling tortillas. A trickle of scalding grease from the monolithic fryer splashes these hapless grunts as they deliver the barely edible concoctions to the aforementioned higher-skilled/paid workers to consume while conversing about the "stresses" of "work." This stark contrast is chillingly similar to Fritz Lang's epic dystopian film Metropolis.

My first week at Taco Bell, a co-worker trained me on how to use the fryer and prepare nachos and cinnamon twists. Or at least, he was supposed to. Most of the time, he stood around and made inane conversation. He showed visible signs of frequent marijuana use. He was often unresponsive and would get yelled at by the manager. He had a quiet, deep voice similar to that of Snoop Dogg. He also asked me if I had listened to Snoop Dogg. I lied and said I did. He was Caucasian. One day, as he was tasked with showing me how to prepare cinnamon twists, he opened a clear plastic bag of twists and dumped them into a bin where they would placed into individual paper bags. He then proceeded to place the bag on top of his hat. He adjusted the bag as it sagged to and fro. As he walked around holding the bag, he said nonchalantly, "I got a bag on my head, yo."

One Christmas Day, my uncle Paul and cousin Billy were watching the fireplace that comes on public access channels during the holidays. My Uncle Paul makes random erudite observations on everyday things just to be funny. His deadpan humor is often underrated among the rest of the family. He and Billy came up with a postmodernist deconstructive analysis of the scene of the fireplace. On the right side, the firewood was level and the wood was vibrant; but towards the left of the fireplace, the wood was charred and drooping. The bulk of the wood was on the left side. Uncle Paul speculated, "The wood on the left is a representation of those disenfranchised by the 'fire' of the ruthless capitalist system; yet one can clearly see that they make up the majority of the wood, collapsing under the weight of the wealthy few, that being the level wood on the right." Billy added, "And the sturdier wood is on the right. That wood must represent the Republicans."

I wonder how we can deconstruct this workplace scene of a young man placing a bag on top of his head. Is it a helmet that he has chosen to wear as a result of the stress brought on by the endless demands of an unrestrained mega-corporation who sells the meat of factory-raised animals to impressionable children and makes rapacious profits? Or is it a bag of apathy, like what so many people his age demonstrate towards important societal issues nowadays. Notice the music of Snoop Dogg appeals to him. Why not a more cerebral, conscious celebrity in the rap genre, like Mos Def?

In case you're wondering, I just finished reading all three of James Finn Garner's Politically Correct Bedtime Stories books. My awareness has been raised tremendously. What a shame these books are out of print!

Practical Application

Next time you start your car, scan the radio dial. Eventually, you will come across the Christian station. You'll know you've found it when you hear a mid-tempo power-ballad with acoustic guitars gently strumming C-major chords and seething Eddie Vedder-esque vocals singing about being fondled by the Spirit. And maybe they'll throw in some synthesized strings into the final chorus to make it sound more majestic. After a few minutes of rockin' out and feeling guilty about throwing away your purity ring, you'll hear the station identify itself and advertise some of its programming. In one of these program advertisements, as a nameless oboe/piano duet belts out saccharine mood music, a calm yet stern 40-something male voice announces, "Join us for Exploring the Word with Pastor So-And-So, and learn how the teachings of Scripture apply to your life."

Every time I hear a religious broadcast, peruse a Christian book store, or just do a Bible study with friends, it's always about applying things in the Bible to my life. It seems that that's the only way people can read the Bible nowadays. Why don't we see what application we can milk out of this passage? Here's Jesus commissioning his disciples to preach the Gospel. It's a direct command; there's gotta be some application here!

As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.
- Matthew 10:7-8 (NIV)

Wonderful. Now let's find some corpses.

Apocalypse Whenever

Religious school. For most people who grow up there, it invokes memories of being paddled in the buttocks by French-speaking nuns. But my family just couldn't afford those prestigious Catholic private schools. Or even the Lutheran ones. So how did we avoid the cistern of the public school system? With a more inexpensive, non-denominational but pre-millennial, quasi-fundamentalist leaning alternative. Enter: My elementary school. We didn't have paddle-wielding nuns. Nor did we have groin-choking overalls and long, "modest" mini-skirts; we had Chapel every week. And at least once a month, the subject of the Chapel sermon was the impending Second Coming of Jesus. Yes, the talk about spending eternity in hell stopped scaring me when I figured I could live a life of Earthly pleasures, but I could eat healthy and stay in school so as to minimize my chances of dying before I had the opportunity to drum up a confession speech to God for all my sins. But Jesus is one slippery rascal. You see, he's going to return to Earth some time in the future, possibly in my lifetime! And when he comes, the world will end and all those who haven't yet died will be escorted to heaven or hell, same rules apply. The news made me pee my pants, and I want to make it abundantly clear that I was young enough for that to be an acceptable response.

We spent an awfully hefty portion of our Chapel and Bible studies on the End of the Age. There were many facets to our eschatology, strange signs allegedly predicted by the Bible. Earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, Sinbad getting his own sitcom. There are many conflicting theories as to what will happen in the years immediately prior to the End. One of the more popular ones we visited was the Rapture. For those not in the know, this is the theory that at some point near the end of time, all the Elect will be levitated from the Earth, relieved of their physical bodies and responsibilities and whisked away to the Pearly Gates boogie down with St. Peter. I envisioned it would look something like the Power Rangers as they teleport to the Command Center for their mission briefing from Zordon. Those unfortunate souls who remain on Earth drink the acrid wine of God's wrath, and their misadventures are chronicled in a sadistic book series that was unsurprisingly popular at my old stomping grounds.

The scariest part of all of this was that "no one knows the day nor the hour" (Matt 24:36) when Jesus would return and judge the world. But that didn't stop some folks from guessing. With the unspeakable horrors of the apocalypse described in the Bible, who wouldn't want to have an idea of at least when they'll happen? Those who grew up in the quasi-fundie circuit probably remember when everyone was sure that the world would end in 1988. That one came before my time, but I do vividly remember the Second Coming Scare of 1994.

My favorite End Times speculations were the ones that tied in the Y2K hysteria. Surely Jesus would have to come and rescue his people from the supposed great computer crash that would send the world spiraling into anarchy. Jesus said in the discourse about his Second Coming that "(t)wo women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left." (Matt 24:41, NIV) One of my classmates came up with her own theory that beautifully tied this snippet in with Y2K doomsday predictions. At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, electricity, water, and anything that can power our modern conveniences would be shut off. People would revert back to less technological ways of living more akin to Bible times. And in all this, there will have to be at some point at least two women having to use a "hand mill" (whatever that is) for their daily tasks. At which point, the archangel would see this from heaven and say, "Okay, Jesus. That's the signal. You're on." At my elementary school, you could graduate with the conviction that you knew exactly how the world would end. How many of your public-schooled friends could get to do that?

With all the emphasis on making speculations about vague passages of Scripture, you're probably wondering if anyone at my Christian school did anything practical with their spirituality. Actually, quite a few of them did! One sunny Friday, we took a field trip to Lutheran mission in downtown Annapolis. The lady working there showed us around the various services they had for the city's poor: the homeless shelter, the soup kitchen, the rehab center. It was a field trip designed to inspire us munchkins towards living selflessly and working to restore broken lives. And get our feet wet in the realities of poverty and injustice.

But my mind wandered the whole time I was there. I was too busy thinking about how I wanted to beat MechWarrior 2 before Jesus comes back to crash the party. It was always the cataclysmic aspects of the faith that stuck with me.

Photo credit: Flickr

Heaven & Hell

"Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens."
- David Byrne

I'll never forget a sleepover party I attended when I was roughly 10 years old. We camped out in my friend's backyard on a muggy Friday night. It was well into the wee hours and the conversation had wandered long past the boundaries of coherence. One party guest (someone I had never met before) told about a dream he allegedly had in which he visited both heaven and hell. "Heaven was very boring," he said. "People just floated around on clouds and played harps. But hell was cool! Man, I almost got boiled alive in a pool of lava. And there were dragons and scorpions, man!" This upset many people at the party. Most, if not all, of us went to private Christian school, and talking playfully about hell was about as wise as downing the whole bottle of Flintstones vitamins at once. Yet his case was very convincing; For most of us, hell was associated with things that we young males actually found quite fascinating, like fire and creepy mythical creatures. Heaven, on the other hand, was a modified nirvana where people were "rewarded" for their fidelity by being compelled to pluck assigned harps ad nauseam as they glided about an endless ether. Sound of crickets chirping, please?

My mom used to read to us from a book of illustrated Bible stories. My brother Jordan had a few favorites: The story of complaining Israelites in the wilderness being swallowed into the ground, the story of the Flood that drowns all life on Earth except Noah and his kin and some animals, the story of Elijah calling down fire from heaven and then slaughtering the prophets of Ba'al (in a children's book!). He loved those grisly tales of divine retribution.

Is the time-honored Christian practice of indoctrinating your kids with the fear of God's judgment backfiring? The aforementioned stories are supposed to scare the bejeezus out of impressionable youngsters so that they'll pretty much leave themselves no choice but to pipe down and finish their veggies, yet they're always the ones that young Y-chromosomed folk remember most fondly. Meanwhile, the images of heaven that are ever present in our society are hardly worth a mention. Chubby, rosy-cheeked angels levitating across the Windows 95 background? Is this the only alternative to eternal damnation?

One time when Jordan and I were very young, I asked him what he thought about God. "God's yuck!" he exclaimed shamelessly. Mom, hearing our conversation, was flabbergasted: "How could you say such a thing?! Did you know he can strike you with a lightning bolt?" "Yeah!" I retorted. "What do you think of God now?" "God's yuck!" he said, undeterred.

For Your Drinking Pleasure: Apple Smash

Every so often I'll be posting recipes I come across that I think should be out there on the interwebs. This one is a variant on the hot cider-alcohol tradition: a good comfort drink for a cold winter's day, so not all lines of latitude can enjoy this one. My parents' next-door neighbor came up with this drink which he calls Apple Smash, and I'm posting the recipe without permission. No patents pending; as a good anarcho-capitalist (at least, according to Wikipedia, this is where my economic philosophy tends to lean. No, I'm not an anarchist; I'm about as far away from social anarchism as possible, but I think it would be cool to adopt a viewpoint with the prefix "anarcho-" in it, as it would make me seem more extreme than the clean-shaven, preppy-clothes wearing, corporate-world Windows programmer that I am. More like a pony tail/goatee-donning Linux user with an ironic T-shirt and a laptop built from scratch who takes a bunch of odd jobs at various non-profits. And I'd look like a rock musician, but I'd speak in complete sentences. And I'd listen to world-class psytrance dub from Bangladesh on Internet radio. Oh man...so cool!) I would not stand for such measures.

This recipe makes one gallon of Apple Smash. You'll need a large pot or preferably a plug-in crock pot. It takes about 3 hours to prepare from scratch.

Ingredients:
1 gallon real apple cider
1 glass orange juice
2-4 cinnamon sticks (Do not use ground cinnamon. It will make the drink sludgy.)
10 whole cloves (Again, don't use ground, as that will make sludge.)
10-12 pellets allspice
1-2 tablespoons brown sugar
4 tablespoons butter (Butter alternatives such as I Can't Believe It's Not Butter work fine. And may cause Fabio to show up at your gathering.)

Directions:
1. Combine cider, orange juice, cinnamon sticks, cloves, allspice, and brown sugar into pot. Stir well.
2. Heat mixture on high heat or highest crock pot setting.
3. After about an hour, the mixture should be warm. Reduce heat to low-medium setting.
4. Add butter to mixture as it is heating. The butter will melt.
5. When mixture is sufficiently hot, serve each cup with 1-2 shots Canadian whiskey or Kentucky bourbon. Other liquors may work, don't be afraid to experiment. Enjoy responsibly.

Word Up!

My brother and I drove up to the Friendly Inn last Friday to hear my mom and dad play music. They play in a bluegrass band called the Annapolis Bluegrass Coalition. The title sounds very important, like it's THE coalition; but I digress.

My brother had recently received a new mattress. He told me that his sleep had much improved since buying the mattress and that he woke up every morning feeling revitalized. I asked him he had ever been just vitalized.

And that's when our venture into the lexical maelstrom began. The underrated cult classic Pootie Tang excellently points out the English language's tendency to leave word roots out of the limelight. In one scene, a character Trucky describes Pootie Tang, the protagonist, as being rejuvenated and that "he was juvenated before, lost it, and got juvenated again. Rejuvenated!" What would it be like to just get juvenated? Well, rejuvenate means to make young; the root of the word comes from the Latin word juvenis, meaning young. And the prefix re- implies that the young-being is happening again, made artificially contrary to the assumed process of aging. So your juvenation would happen at the point of your birth.

What about regurgitation? Is it possible to just have gurgitation? When you throw up something you ate, you regurgitate it. When an uneaten piece of food hits your mouth, are you gurgitating it? I gurgitated a nice crab dip and a Blue Moon at the Friendly Inn; my brother gurgitated an order of wings. Don't worry; neither of us regurgitated it!

I'm always conflicted when I see my parents play music. I love to support them, but I'm not really into bluegrass. I was whelmed by their band's performance that evening--not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed, just whelmed. Nevertheless, I neged on my commitment to see them and my brother, and in spite of the rich food, I'm still feeling cuperated.