the gospel according to [insert bad country artist here]

For the longest time, I was sure that award for the worst form of musical torture you could submit a human to was far and away the country covers of r&b/contemporary Christian/anything else they have no business covering. However, last Sunday at a local Baptist church, a dark horse appeared.

After giving myself a week to process and ponder, I've decided that my conclusions are not reactionary cynical nonsense. Instead, they are logically thought out responses to this baffeling trend. 

I'm a person with high expectations. I know this about myself.  Bearing that in mind, my expectations for these "special music" situations that often arise on Sunday mornings are pretty high, but not unreasonable in my opinion. The soloist has hopefully selected this piece because it reveals something to him about his creator, that guy who has saved him from eternal damnation, fire and brimstone, weeping and gnashing of teeth, etc. and has provided him with a new life, the life that is truly life, the life that inspires him to sing. So you'd think something significant was going to come singing through those pipes right? Well not from where I was sitting a week ago.

No, this song, which after conferring with my wife and sister to ensure my cynicism wasn't in too high a gear that morning, was nothing more than a bad country song with an even worse accompanying track. If you're familiar with the concepts of mash-ups, think of the worst country song you've heard and mash in the most uninspiring lyrics and you're probably about half way there.

So, you're picky about your music, you may be thinking. Well, yes, I am, but that's not where I'm going with this.

In this situation, I'm left with two options, neither of which I like better than the other because I'm afraid of both of the implied answers. First, what's with the lame representation of the being we have gathered to worship??? If we believe (and I wholeheartedly do... more on my doubts with the church and faith in my savior in another post or several) that something is worth basing your life around, why can't we come up with some decent artistic representations of our feelings? Why are we singing songs that only require a little additional twang to become second or third rate country songs? Gr.. frustration... can you tell?

Secondly, what if that's really what he feels? And even worse, what if that's all he feels? I think that would scare me even more.

I could rant on for days and end up looking even more like a bitter, cynical old man, but I'll hold off for now. It just drives me crazy when I see things that matter to me represented so poorly. More and more, it seems this is all I'm seeing these days. I'll collect my thoughts a little more and revisit this or some of its underlying issues soon.

in defense of literature... a half finished post

This afternoon, during a conversation I was having largely with myself about my anger with Tom Sawyer (Why you might ask? He was completely enthralled in his efforts to write himself as the hero in the epic story of the rescue of Jim, a runaway slave and my newfound friend, while Huck knew what needed to be done to free Jim. Unbelievable right?), one of my more conversational students decided to change the course of our discussion by blurting out this little gem:

Student: "What do you care?" (but really more like "Whudda you care" muttered in a voice not loud enough to be full volume but plenty loud enough to let almost everyone hear what he said)

Me: "Wait, what?" (I really hadn't heard him well...)

Student: "Why do you care? So what about Tom? It's a book man, it doesn't mean anything. So, what are you so mad about?"

Me: *a long pause*

I broke the silence with a host of thoughts still racing through my mind. These thoughts ranged from questioning the effectiveness of my attempts to teach my students to approach the novel as more than just a little boy's adventure story, my desire to fight said student at that moment, and the always popular self-reflection, "What's this for?" Luckily, I have a core group of students in this class who were successfully indoctrinated with the expectations and standards of our outstanding department last year, and these students proceeded to put in their two cents on the issue. It was nice to hear a few unexpected voices enter into that conversation in defense of literature.

At first, I rationalized that at least this student had given this issue some thought, but now I've decided that he hasn't even given this book, or maybe anything we've covered this year, a chance for deeper meaning. Tomorrow, I'll finish teaching my first novel, and my students will finish reading their first novel of the year. It'll be interesting to see how this works out this semester. I can't imagine this student reading through two more novels this spring without seeing something of greater value in them, but I don't really believe that the upcoming books will be more appealing or approachable for him either. 

I can't figure out how to end this post, so it's going to be put on hold here. Perhaps it will be continued at a later date, I really have no idea.

Side note: The other explanation for today's unexpected discussion could be rooted in potential payback from a coworker for snide remarks I recently made online about several topics near and dear to his heart. If that's the case, and I find out, he'd better hide all those toys.