The Medicine (or: where have you been all my life Mr. McMillan?)

About a month ago a friend of mine suggested I check out John Mark McMillan's latest CD called The Medicine. I've been pretty disillusioned with the "Worship Music" genre generally these days (my glowing review of Downhere last August not withstanding), so I have to say I put it in my stereo with not a little skepticism.

But somewhere around the middle of track 2, I knew I'd found a keeper. Lines that stopped me dead in my tracks tumbled out of the speakers with a pathos and humility and honesty that spoke to the the heart and the gut and the head all at once. Lines like: "We want your blood to flow inside our bodies / We want your wind inside our lungs."

Or: "When you walk into the room you know we can't resist / Every bottle of perfume always ends up on the floor in a mess"

Or:

"Cause I'm a dead man now
With a ghost who lives
Within the confines of
These carbon ribs
And one day when I'm free
I will sit
The cripple at your table
The cripple by your side"

They once asked the poet Philip Larkin why he wrote poetry, and he said something like: "Because no one's writing the kind of poems I most want to read." I always felt that answer explained why I tried to write songs-- no one was writing the kind of songs I most wanted to hear. I guess I'll have to find a different answer, maybe, now, because there's something happening on this disc I've been looking for, musically and lyrically speaking, for a while now.

And if your curiosity's not yet piqued, I'll leave you with this small sample:

Snow in June

Relatively regular readers of terra incognita may have noticed that this month's "CD of the Month" is The Northern Pikes' classic 1990 album, Snow in June. I actually picked up this CD last year for 2 bucks at a church yard sale in Columbus Ontario; and the minute I saw it sitting there, scratched jewel case stacked along side some old AC/DC discards, some tattered Tom Clancey novels and a box of random stereo parts labelled 25₵, it was like bumping into an old High School friend, 20 years later.

And popping it into the CD player on the drive home was like sitting down with said old friend over coffee for one long catch-up session. The edge of Shotgun Morning wasn't quite as cutting as I recalled, but Love these Hands and Am I in Your Way still perfectly evoked that happy ache for good things gone.

For reasons that go far beyond musical tastes, this album is one of the few that I'd rank as an "Album of My Life." Taken objectively, it's a bit of a diamond in the rough. The song-writing is solid, and the musical ideas original, but the production is a kind of spare and often the energy of the music gets lost in the mix, so depending on the given day and the particular track, sometimes you get more diamond, sometimes you get more rough.

But taken subjectively, this album has been with me through it all; and that's why I was so ready to shell out two bucks at the yard sale for a happy reunion. My friend Tom and I first heard "She Ain't Pretty" on the radio back in the summer 1990, and we belted out lines like "her ego wrote cheques incredibly fast, but her personality didn't have the cash" with gusto. I actually purchased my original (cassette) Snow in June on my first date with the girl who would later become my high school sweetheart and later still my wife. It was one of the few cassettes I packed with me when I went to live in Quebec as an exchange student in my grade eleven year, and whenever I missed home (which was often) and especially my afore-mentioned high-school sweetheart (which was always), it would pick me up, with lines like "Did you ever know a place where nothing ever changed, a place you've maybe called your home?" Years after that, when I'd started my career as a teacher and was commuting an hour each day to a job that was draining the soul out of me, it was the only cassette in the car for months; and on that long drive home each day, as I wrestled with the worst identity crisis of my life, it would challenge me with lines like, "Oh just wait until you're dead, we'll see just how big you were (you weren't no Columbus, Rembrandt or a Mozart)." And later still, when I'd finally put that identity crisis down for the three-count, and had become a new Dad, I'd often rock my newborn son to sleep singing the words of "Love These Hands" over him.

Listening to Snow in June that drive home from Columbus Ontario, all these memories, and many more, rushed home to me with the opening riff of "Dream Away", and lingered, bitter-sweet, right to the fading outro of "Snow in June." And they've left me wondering if the best albums aren't always these: the ones that have sealed our memories onto our hearts, by singing just the right song at just the right time, asking just the right question in a moment of crisis or offering just the right answer in a moment of peace, in a way that only music can.

I'll leave you with a few of my favorite lines from Snow in June, but along with them this question: if you had to choose an album that's "been with you through it all," which would it be?

"My perfect life may deceive me tonight
forgive me, I haven't been myself lately
I may survive if I don't jeopardize
what you mean to me"

"Sharp is the razor that cuts the vein that feeds the hand
It isn't my hand so why should I feel the pain?
You've gotta know where your razor is and what it does--
Isn't it lovely?
Isn't it beautiful?"

"I love these hands so soft and strong
I love these hands they can do no wrong
I love these hands, they belong to you
and I will love these hands my whole life through."

Back (with a Book, a Flick and a Song (or two))

My hiatus from blogging ends today. Back at the end of June, the blog-well had almost run dry altogether, so in the last few weeks away from my posting post, I've spent some time deliberately doing other things: reading some books, watching some movies, listening to some fresh music, and generally letting the water come back up. I'm just about ready to start putting the bucket down again, but I thought, for today, I might start by sharing some of the other things I've been up to in the in-between-time.

Read a good book: The Year of Living Biblically

This book is a gem of a read, and I would enthusiastically recommend it to anyone, but especially to Christians who've grown up with phrases like "inerrant" and "authoritative" tinting their faith-coloured glasses, and want to see the Good Book through an unexpectedly fresh lens. A. J. Jacobs is a self described agnostic (he's actually Jewish, though he says he's "Jewish the way the Olive Garden is an 'Italian' restaurant"); he's also a witty and insightful writer interested in issues related to religious fundamentalism and its impact on culture. The premise of his book: to spend a year following the 1700 or so commands in the Bible as literally as possible, including the most obscure ones like not wearing mixed-fibre clothing, letting his clothing be always white, not taking a mother bird along with the egg, and playing a ten-stringed lyre. He writes about the Bible with an honesty, humility, affection, sense of humour and self-awareness that a good number of "Christian" books I've read never achieve, for all their Evangelical "high view of Scripture". And along the way, the fresh insights and spiritual discoveries he makes-- about this beautiful and baffling Book that has so shaped my life as a Christian-- are sometimes arresting, often challenging and quite refreshing (even the times he left me wanting to scream: "no, you just don't get it!", it was a refreshing impulse).

Saw a summer flick: Inception

I saw the trailer for this movie when I was on holidays, and right away I thought: that looks like my kind of movie. It's the first movie in a long time whose release date I've marked on the calendar. It didn't disappoint-- or mostly didn't disappoint. Thematically, there's a lot less going on there than the premise might have made possible. A "dream thief" who specializes in infiltrating the dreams of others to steal their thoughts is hired to reverse the process and plant a thought in another man's mind through a risky procedure known as "inception." With a plot like that, I actually expected a more Salvador Dali-esque exploration of the human psyche than I got. But, if not quite so surreal as Dali, the movie is at least M. C. Escher-esque, with its contorted dreams-within-dreams-within-dreams and its labyrinthine convolutions of time and space. And as an action movie, it's original and unexpectedly riveting. (While this is not normally pointed out for special mention in a review, I also want to add that the sound production on this movie was exceptional, drawing you into the action almost like an additional character.)

Listened to an inspiring song (or Two): Ending is Beginning (Downhere)

I saw this CD in the library about a month ago, when I was there helping my kids get some reading material. The founding members of Downhere, I knew, were Briercrest alumni, and though I'd never heard them before, I'd heard a lot about them in my time studying there, and thought I'd give it a try. It's been getting a lot of play time over the last month. Eclectic musical styles, hopeful but honest lyrics, engaging songwriting with creative arrangements and top-notch production: it's a CD that rewards repeated listens. And then there's lines like these:

.

I'm so far from what I want to be / Oh I really am my own worst enemy / Please don't let me get the better of me / Take this earthly thing and make it finally something heavenly

.

It's justice and mercy the old dichotomies / all along the front lines of my heart / in both doubt and belief /the sinner and the saint, the old arch enemies / all at war in me

Me 2?

Contrary to appearances, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth, though some exotic bronchial infection has been having a house party in my chest this last week, kicking my life into survival mode and leaving me with little left to give when it came time to blog. Meanwhile, the page has turned on October and it's time to pick a new "Disc of the Month." (See the sidebar.)

Lately U2's No Line on the Horizon's been getting a lot of airtime on the drive to and from work. Now, it hasn't been nearly as earth-shattering an aural experience as Achtung Baby (the best rock album of the 90s?), but I've really enjoyed this latest U2 effort. Lots of memorable moments: the weird cello on "Breathe," Bono's falsetto lunge on "Crazy Tonight," the rumbling rhythms of "Being Born." Even "Get on Your Boots," though it kinda confused me when I heard it as a single, somehow, in context with the rest of the album, makes perfect sense.

Anyways, still convalescing a bit, I don't have much to say, except to share some of my favorite lines from this Month's CD of the Month:

1. I gotta stand up for faith, hope, love/ but while I'm getting over certainty / stop helping God across the road like a little old lady

2. I found grace inside the sound, / I found grace, it's all I've found

3. I was speeding on a subway/ Through the stations of the cross

4. Every day I die again and again and reborn / Every day I need to find the courage / to walk out into the streets

5. It's not a hill it's a mountain / as you start out the climb

6. The roar that lies on the other side of silence / The forest fire that is fear so deny it

7. Listen for me, I'll be shouting / Shouting to the darkness / squeeze out sparks of light

Listen Local, Save the Planet?

Those of you who stop in at terra incognita on a somewhat regular basis may have noticed that September's CD of the month was this one: Wide World Crashing by tripmeter.

Never heard of tripmeter? CDBaby describes their sound as "up-tempo melodic rock with soaring vocals, rich guitars and creative rhythms. In short: well-conceived songs in captivating and clever arrangements."

Recommended, they say, if you like: Foo Fighters, Mute Math, Nine Inch Nails.

Well, I don't really know Foo Fighters, Mute Math, Nine Inch Nails (in the words of Grandpa Simpson: "I used to be with it, but now what's 'it' seems strange and scary to me... it'll happen to you...").

But I've really grown to love the energy and edginess of this album. From the tintinabular peals of "My Addiction's" opening riff, to the pedal-to-the-metal drag race of "Drive to the Sun," to the ominous-but-hopeful vision of "Somewhere" (Somewhere, you can find the heart to beat this... no one gets left behind without good reason...), there's a lot to feast on, aurally speaking.

But it's not just that.

The thing is: I know these guys. They were all students at Briercrest college during my days there. Took Greek exegesis with the drummer (the guy parsed irregular Greek verb forms with as much flare as he syncopates the down-beat). Was in a small group for a while with the lead guitarist. Even the guy on the cover-art was my next door neighbour (helped him when the waterlines of his trailer froze one 30 below morning on the prairie).

And it's this human difference that makes me love this CD. It's the same difference that makes me love home-made soup over Campbell's Chicken-by-Product Noodle: the difference between what's bagged and canned and mass-produced for anybody and nobody, and what comes to us as a gift from hands we know, have shook, have helped to jump-start their frozen car (another 30 below prairie morning with my neighbour).

It's why I love independent music. And I'm not talking about the kind of "independent" music that's really just a niche-market genre gimmick out of Nashville or L.A. or where ever it is that "indie rock" comes from. I'm talking about music that grows out of the lives and hearts and heads of the people next door, down the street, in our communities, in our neighbourhoods, in our lives.

In his book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben develops a pretty cogent argument in favor of making economic choices that promote small, community-oriented, human-scale thinking over the more/massive/mass-market world that we've grown to expect and accept. He argues (again cogently) that the more/massive/mass-market world is pretty de-humanizing after all, and unsustainable anyways, and if we're really serious about building a durable future, we're going to have to start thinking locally.

You know: buy locally-grown food and locally-produced goods from the hands of real people that you can actually shake. McKibben doesn't stop there, though. He goes on to argue (still cogently) that part of building a durable future will include community-oriented, human-scale choices about our entertainment. If we can build community and a sense of place by supporting local entertainment (like our music, theatre, sports, and so on) we might discover a world where words like "more," "massive," and "mass-market" are no longer synonyms for "better."

And this world, he argues, is the kind of world we'll need if we want to build durable and sustainable economies in the coming years.

Well. I don't know if I'll really save the planet by listening to tripmeter, but it's nice to muse. And there's still this: whenever I hear Wide World Crashing, suddenly I'm strolling again along that back alley behind the Sparrow Gardens arena where so many Briercrest bands have had rehearsal space, savouring the muffled sound of rock-dreams thumping through the walls- and whenever I listen to my friend Dale Dirksen's These are the Days, I'm sitting with him again in his office, musing about music and minsitry and life together- and whenever I listen to that rough-around-the-edges worship CD we produced at my old church, I'm there again trading chords and words and laughs with people I love.

I'm grounded. I'm anchored. I'm home.

And the Musik Biz doesn't produce a can of alt-rock-indie-fusion-pop that you could open for this kind of aural experience.