Category Archives: Nihilism

What are Coen Brothers films all about?

Nihilists. Fuck me. I mean, say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude at least its an ethos. Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski

The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. (Is not this the reason why those who have found after a long period of doubt that the meaning of life became clear to them have been unable to say what constituted that meaning?) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

To write about the Coen Brothers is to confront, head on, lifes hardest problem. Im not talking about the problem of film criticism generally, nor of identifying why Joel and Ethan Coen are among our greatest living filmmakers. These problems, though they confront me presently, are not all that hard. But usually, when one studies a filmmaker, there emerges in the work a distinct perspective on life a philosophical point of view, which style and story jointly reveal. And although countless words have been spilled on the philosophy of the Coens films, no one has yet produced a summary that the Brothers themselves would endorse. Themes and motifs recur, but meanings are elusive. The most one can say is that the work is so meticulously well-crafted that it feels meaningful, even as conclusive statements of purpose escape us. Thus in a Coen Brothers film, as in life, were left asking: is all this meaning merely apparent?

Notoriously resistant interview subjects, the Coens have managed to ascend through the ranks of the cinematic canon without ever showing their philosophical hand. Theyve now claimed every accolade: Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and Adapted Screenplay; the Palme DOr, Best Director, and Grand Jury Prizes at Cannes; Best Director from the DGA; Original and Adapted Screenplay from the WGA. Their films have inspired multiple books, including one that explicitly claims to deal with their philosophy. But when pressed for insights about their work, they tend to downplay its significance. one that explicitly claims to deal with their philosophy. But when pressed for insights about their work, they tend to downplay its significance. Asked in 1998 about his philosophy of filmmaking, Ethan replied, I dont have one. I wouldnt even know how to begin. Asked in 2001 about his creativity, Joel quipped, I guess it beats throwing trash for a living.

So what are we to make of the fact that these masters of the craft claim, or at least imply, that they have nothing to say? One option is to let the work speak for itself. Beginning with their startlingly assured 1984 debut, Blood Simple, the Coens have produced three decades worth of highly distinctive work. Their films span many genres and tones, yet all retain the clear signature of their makers. That Coen style, such as it is, has more to do with rhythm, tone, and characterization than visual flair. Its a feeling of faint tragedy amid the humor or faint humor amid the tragedy. Consider Anton Chigurhs sardonic use of the word friendo for his future victims in No Country for Old Men, or the Folgers tin used to hold Donnys ashes in The Big Lebowski.

One topic about which the Brothers are forthcoming in interviews is the many influences that feed into their work. Although they dont consider themselves film fanatics of the Tarantino variety, their love of Old Hollywood noir and screwball in particular is everywhere on display. 2003s Intolerable Cruelty is an out-and-out screwball film, while 2000s O Brother, Where Art Thou? takes its title from Sullivans Travels, directed by the great screwball master Preston Sturges. Aided by longtime collaborator Roger Deakins, the Brothers elegantly revived the black-and-white noir in 2001s The Man Who Wasnt There. And just last year, they released Hail, Caesar! a noir-screwball film about Old Hollywood.

Though theyve made many period pieces, the Coens use the past in much the same way as their genre predecessors, as fantasy rather than historical reality. Its not about reminiscence, they have said, because our movies are about the past we have never experienced. Its more about imagination. Such fantasizing makes the problem of meaning all the more vexing because the Coens cant be accused of commenting on a history they never claimed to represent. Hail, Caesar! in particular, was accused of ignoring topics like race and gender in the 1950s altogether a critique that the Brothers rebuffed by claiming this is not how they think of stories. It often seems that the Coens wish their films could be seen in a vacuum, as self-contained pockets of meaning without reference to the larger world.

And yet their two greatest films (at least by award-count) Fargo and No Country for Old Men are also among their most realistic. Both films invite the viewer, in their opening sequences, to regard the films as more than mere stories. Fargo bears an opening placard announcing, This is a True Story a choice the brothers made specifically so that audiences wouldnt see the movie as just an ordinary thriller. And Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country concludes his opening monologue with the evocative phrase, OK, Ill be a part of this world.

No Country, in particular, is worth dwelling on, not only because its a perfect piece of filmmaking, but also because it provides insight into the brothers ambivalence about meaning. Ed Tom Bells speech at the films opening expresses a fear that the Coens seem to share: namely that, if he agrees to engage with the violence and tragedy of the world, it may overcome him. It may force him to say, as he does, I dont know what to make of that. Similarly, it would seem that the more of the real worlds senselessness they allow into their work, the harder it might become for the Coens to make meaning. Such meaning might not be there at all.

Of late, the Coens appear to be rebounding back and forth between addressing and ignoring this problem. No Country was followed by the farcical Burn After Reading. A Serious Man, the Coens most direct treatment of meaninglessness, gave way to True Grit, a downright pious film. And Inside Llewyn Davis, which directly mocks arts pretensions of meaning, was followed by Hail, Caesar!, which embodies that very mockery, by being (seemingly) meaningless itself. If the trend holds, we should expect the Coens next outing to tackle the question of meaning head-on once more, trying again to be a part of this world.

There is wisdom to be found, perhaps unsurprisingly, in The Big Lebowski. Many mistook that films sage ethos of acceptance for nihilism, but the Coens resisted this label. For us, the nihilists are the bad guys, Joel told Michael Ciment and Hubert Niogret in 1998, and if theres a preferred moral position, itd be that of Jeff Bridges, though its difficult to define! Though theyve grown to doubt it in recent films, the Dudes fluid perseverance his abidance, as it were might be a solution to the specter of nihilism that haunts the Coens. Not unlike Marge Gundersons down-home goodness in Fargo, it does not oblige one to make sense of the horrors of the world only to persist in being good despite them.

Jeff Bridges summarized it well: I think [The Big Lebowski]s a film about grace, how amazing it is that were all allowed to stay alive on this speck hurled out into space, being as screwed up as we all are. Like, Fargo had a moral resonance to it. This one, I think, does as well. It may not be apparent to most people at first. But working in it, kind of bathing in this thing, it rang for me. Its not a real clear thing that you can say, Thats what it means. Its a little different. Perhaps we can say, then, that the Coens philosophy is summarized in the Wittgenstein quote above (Ethan wrote his thesis at Princeton on Wittgenstein). Or, less pretentious, and more concise: the Dude Abides.

More:

The Philosophy of the Coen Brothers - Film School Rejects - Film School Rejects

The Sondheim finalists, reviewedand inching toward an art practice based in resistance by Rebekah Kirkman

In a drawing from his "Trump Regime Studies," artist William Powhida depicts a caricature-ish Steve Bannon (labeled as a "minister of nihilism" and also a "fucking sot"), Kellyanne Conway (the "minister of lies" and "Skelator"), Mike Pence (the "vice-chancellor" and "Walter White," a comparison that's far too benevolent in my opinion), and others including of course "the Chancellor," the Donald himself ("He IS capitalism"). The piece accompanies a short essay written by the artist for Hyperallergic, in which he notes that this drawing was sold for a couple thousand dollars to benefit a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that helps "emerging, under-recognized mid-career and women artists" in various ways, which Powhida says "feels like a small gesture."

Elsewhere in the essay, Powhida admits, "...I keep coming back to the contradictions inherent in art, such as its status as private property bought and sold in marketsincluding benefit auctions. The problems of ownership and the extreme disparity between profits from labor and returns on capital have contributed to the social conditions leading to Trump's election." Powhida's writing here focuses on artists in general, most of whom grow to accept that they are beholden to this hustle if they want to put their work into the world.

I keep coming back to those contradictions tooboth as a person who makes art and as one who writes about it. There is a Trump-shaped penumbra shrouding my critical writing abilities that sees the whole entire "art world" as something exploitative and unequal in which I sometimes don't want to participate by even writing about it, or at least not in a bland and uncritical and altogether cheerleader-y "review." There is a Trump-shaped ennui that (along with other factors, such as time) winds up halting me from making art at worst or lulls me into a complacency that keeps me from changing course with my own work.

I know I am not alone in this.

I have already intimated elsewhere in City Paper that it's a bit reckless to blame this all, this pervasive grief that I am trusting y'all readers are feeling with us collectively, on Trump, but it's even more foolish to pretend as if things haven't gotten markedly worse and scarier.

OK, got it, but how do we deal with it?

The complexities of the art market are not so prevalent in Baltimore as they are in New York and other cities that have been marketed as destinations or centers for art. But maybe we're getting there: In Baltimore, while there is much support for art and artists, organizations also use art as a tool for real estate speculation and development. We don't have a huge collector base here, though we do have a few commercial galleries with some big holdings that sell and travel to some of the major art fairs. Most visual artists in Baltimore can make their work in studio spaces that are relatively cheap. And some show their work in artist-run galleries and occasional college/university gallery shows and, even more rarely, in those aforementioned commercial galleries. Some travel elsewhere to show and sell their work, or eventually move away entirely. And we do have a lot of funding for the arts, with the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize (put on by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & the Arts, which I'll get to soon, stay with me, please), the Baker Artist Awards, the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance's Rubys Artist Projects Grants, The Contemporary's Grit Fund, and more, plus awards from the state, like the Maryland State Arts Council awards. These awards typically go to emerging or somewhat established adult individuals (and sometimes collectives), and are funded year after year by various local and national foundations, benefactors, and supporters of the arts.

Three of this year's seven Sondheim finalists have been finalists in previous years, too: two in 2015, and one in 2014which was also the year I started contributing to City Paper's annual coverage of the finalist exhibition. It's an odd feeling of dj vu, but it's not terribly surprising that the tastes and interests of out-of-town jurorsparticularly if they are more often than not based in New York, themselves working within a highly competitive environmentmight overlap. Usually established artists, critics, and curators, the jurors are different each year, and they do often hail from New York (some occasionally have a Baltimore/Maryland connection); this year all three are based in New York. The Sondheim prize is only open to applicants in Maryland, Washington D.C., and certain counties and cities of Virginia and Pennsylvania. BOPA estimates that since around the award's second year, no fewer than 300, and sometimes more than 400 artists have applied. So far, eight of 11 winners since the prize's inaugural year have been based in Baltimore City. Most of the winners have been white artists. A host of societal issues and factors keep the art world overwhelmingly white.

I'm sure it feels great to be chosen as a Sondheim finalist. I'm sure being a semifinalist feels pretty good toosomething for the resume and a chance to show your work in public. (The semifinalists exhibition, by the way, is up at MICA from July 21-Aug. 6.) Hell, I bet even just getting through the submission process alone is something you'd want to toast to. I'm not knocking anyone for doing the work, not saying we should get rid of the award. But back to ol' Trump. In light of everything now, I want to imagine an art world that's less of a capitalist nightmare and less of a hustle, that's less dependent on an expensive and privileged art education (disclosure: I am the recipient of one of those, as well as a lot of debt). There has always been so much rhetoric that artists are progressive, that they're on the vanguard, but of what, and how, and who says?

I am wondering what an art practice based in resistance (as opposed to the shit that got us to where we are nowcapitalism, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, holy god, everything) would look like, and since we do need money to do things in this world, how that type of practice might be funded. Maybe it would involve fewer art-objects-as-commodities, maybe everything would be more local and more affordable. Maybe there would be more recognition of the arts and humanities' value in society and thus more funding for it across the board (a preemptive RIP to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, whose deaths seem imminent under Trump). More quality arts education in schools taught by better-paid artists, who don't have to work three jobs in order to maintain a studio practice that often keeps them holed up alone. And I know y'all have better and more creative ideas than that.

When FORCE won the Sondheim last year, it was inspiring to me that an artist/activist group whose work aims to right a vast, seemingly insurmountable wrong in our society (rape culture and stigma surrounding abuse), to try to help shift the paradigm and support survivors, would be financially rewarded for work whose effects are tangible. Maybe the person who wins this year's Sondheim is several steps ahead of me and will have big, posi plans for that money. Maybe they won't; I don't know. It isn't up to me. I'm just a critic, spitballin' because I care about this shit, and I love art sometimes but mostly I love it when it hits me in the gut somehow, and when I can see it affecting other people in that way.

The winner of the 2017 Sondheim prize will be announced at 7 p.m. on July 15 at the Walters Art Museum. Jurors Ruba Katrib, Clifford Owens, and Nat Trotman selected this year's finalistsMequitta Ahuja, Mary Anne Arntzen, Cindy Cheng, Sara Dittrich, Benjamin Kelley, Kyle Tata, Amy Yeewho are all currently based in Baltimore. Trying to predict a winner for these awards has never seemed useful or wise to me. Nor does slapping a haphazard organizing principle onto this particular juried show, though last year (a year out from the Baltimore Uprising) the finalists' work was more overtly political, more in topic than in practice, than it had been in recent memory. This year, the work is markedly less so, and generally less moving, with a few exceptions. As a whole, it falls short of the idea that the Sondheim, one of the biggest local art awards, represents what it means or what it could mean to make art right now.

Mequitta Ahuja

MaryAnne Arntzen

Cindy Cheng

Sara Dittrich

Benjamin Kelley

Kyle Tata

Amy Yee

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

Mequitta Ahuja's paintings generously explore the selfthe artist's self but also, in a meta way, a painting's self, commenting on its own history, within a history. Seven large-scale paintings (the smallest is not quite a square, its shortest dimension almost 5 feet; the largest is also not quite a square, its shortest dimension almost 7 feet) work in a way that's somewhat reminiscent of Chicago painter Kerry James Marshall's paintings.

Ahuja seems to be working toward something similar as Marshall, in terms of addressing "the canon" of Western art history. Not seeing herself, a woman of color, painted by a woman like herself represented in most art history books, Ahuja carves out her own space. Stylistically, these paintings are similar to the ones she showed as a Sondheim finalist in 2015, in which she drew upon her African and South Asian ethnicity and the globalization of art and culture.

Here, Ahuja again employs a bold palette, with methodical, thick straps of oil paint over a coarse canvas surfaceimagine loads of paint slathered over a rug, which I dunno why you'd ever do that, but Ahuja makes it look so satisfyingto construct paintings within paintings. 'Renaissance Woman' depicts a painting of the artist in a modest white slip sitting in a typical portrait pose from that time period. She holds a delicate chain from which dangles a prism, projecting rainbow light all around it. The wall label (each painting is accompanied by a short explanatory label; Ahuja seems to want to ensure her intentions are crystal clear) references Isaac Newton and that this woman is like a "lost, covered-up and recalled black character." Ahuja nods to the ways that, by and large, the scientific innovations of black and brown people are erased by a white and Eurocentric narrative of discovery and genius.

The paintings often reference each other, borrowing each other's compositions. In 'Sales Slip,' a figure (presumably the artist again) lifts up a red cloth to reveal this painting within a painting, and lets the painting lean against her body. Her arm hangs over the edge holding what, judging by the title, is safe to assume is a sales slip, partially concealing the face of the painted woman, as if taunting or shrouding; it's unclear. The painting within this painting looks like its neighbor 'Renaissance Woman' but perhaps an earlier or unfinished version, as if to hint at but not overstate money's effect on art, how it changes, directs, impedes, and motivates work all at once.

Erasure, mystery, and untold or unknowable histories are a few of the sturdy threads that Ahuja weaves, and nowhere is that more apparent than 'Border Distilled,' an abridged version of its neighbor 'Border'here, the environment of the latter becomes simple geometry, hard edges and an arch, and all that remains of the latter's seated woman are her two bare brown feet.

Another reading of Ahuja's work might find frustration in her search for inclusion into a history she has largely been excluded from. But through these paintings, as she invites you into her studio, her painting's space, and the realities directly around and inside of it, Ahuja evolves with this history, reckoning with it, breaking down from the inside that elusive, arbitrary position of "genius."

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

A pie of variegated blue and white and purplish triangles sits in the center of a large, shiny, black square void in Mary Anne Arntzen's 'Spider Moon,' one of 14 paintings on view. Five or six bright red, yellow, and blue-black thin, nervous lines separate some of the triangles from each other; a blurry yellow and reddish halo quivers into the surrounding darkness.

'Spider Moon's' smaller sibling, 'Aperture,' hangs across the space among a row of paintings that are all 14 inches square. Though 'Spider Moon' feels more person-sized and thus easier to beckon the viewer to come get lost inside of it, 'Aperture' is the more successful painting. The unelaborate hesitance of Arntzen's mark works better on a smaller scale; it feels quick and uninhibited rather than belabored and beleaguered as some of her larger paintings do.

Fence-like, ribbony shapes and interlocking, overlapping noodles and chutes abound in Arntzen's compositions, which are at times uneven. The color palettes are occasionally draba mustard yellow angular boomerang shape overlaps a similar grass-green shape, among green stripes on a fiery red background and a from-the-tube yellow in 'Boomerang.' In her statement, the artist intellectualizes a fairly rote, by-the-book painter's process within her paintings ("every mark is placed in response to the one before" and culminates in a space that's "ambiguous" and hops between "abstract form and illusionism") while also referencing freehand geometry and quilt squares.

Some sickly color relationships distract from more interesting and sturdy compositions and shapes, like in 'Poor Men Want to Be Rich, Rich Men Want to Be King' whose dynamic, balled-up brush strokes, bound by a spiral and a fury of thin stripes are beset by harsh yellows and sad beiges and a chalky orange, a dash of green and a couple purple triangles. Others work quite well, like how 'Ritual Magic's' overall harmonious but hot shades of red and violet wind around each other and make me think of a heating element. But it looks more like a screen, a sort-of-window or frame structure, whose view is obstructed by a continuous line that wraps tightly around it. Arntzen's openness to her process, content, and where a mark and a movement will lead her results in an arrangement of work that feels chaotic but constrained.

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

There is no other finalist this year who offers more visual rewards in their work than Cindy Cheng. Here, I'll list some notes I took while tiptoeing around the artist's visual jungle gyms: hamster tubes; special rocks; a carpeted, glitched-out table; koi pond accoutrements; clay donuts; a big bone/a little bone; ping pong ball; kinda like a toe separator but for some creature with like 20 toes at least; tiny blue dot (hello, wink, Carl Sagan?); things that recall marbles and mancala and Cracker Barrel games.

Though each of the three expansive sculptural pieces is overwhelming in its own way with so many tiny components and Easter eggs, a variety of handmade ceramic and wooden portions and structures along with found/readymade objects and possibly discarded materials, you should try to get up close to her drawings that are framed and hung on the walls too. The five drawings, from a series called 'Souvenir Room,' are delicate graphite and charcoal renderings of spaces with collaged elements. Some of them feel like galleries, which makes their titles all the more amusing'Souvenir Room #9' features a bewildering play of light and shadow across a high-ceilinged space in which multi-leveled and occasionally translucent plinths display blobby masses; a "Snake" (the game I played on my sister's Nokia cellphone in the early 2000s)-shaped window in the space is what's letting all that light in, I think, and outside something's oozing down whatever building we're inside of.

The titles of the sculptures provide tangential hints to the visual poetry she offers: 'Untitled (Straight and Narrow)' guides your eye toward the four distinct upright sections of the piece and the oblique and oblong objects within them, while the title 'Signal/Lookout' makes me see the objects on this semi-collapsed, carpeted table as alien aquatic elements and strange swimming pools.

Or that's how I'm seeing it. Cheng really has you frowning and incredulous throughout; there's so much room for narratives and associative logic it can be maddeningin a pleasant wayif you're the type of person who feels like they need to understand every damn detail. Though she gives you so much to pore over, she still builds up a boundary of formalism so that you may never know the exact referent for that ceramic thing that looks like a giant stick of incense, for the vaguely topographic map made of foam, for the egg crate foam, for the ceramic cone atop what looks like a bed of mangrove roots.

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

Wherever you're standing while looking at the Sondheim finalist exhibition, you might be startled by an unpredictable, strange drum rhythm. It stops for long, intermittent pauses, and then starts again, a pitter-pattering. That's coming from Sara Dittrich's 'Going/Staying (Walters Art Museum),' a kick drum outfitted with "various electrical components" that create a rhythm corresponding to the artist's footsteps (and stops) as she walked through the museum. The piece builds more anxiety on top of my already anxious homeostasis, which I weirdly enjoykeeping my toes on their toes, as it werea heightened state of awareness or consciousness. It's unclear why the steps were recorded at the Walters; it could have easily been anywhere else, and maybe that's where we're supposed to take it next, finding a way "into" all of the spaces we navigate, and what effects that attention brings.

Dittrich's other works on display here mirror that presence and absence and awkwardness in the body. In the middle of her portion of the gallery, large, white, goofy-looking (but also Goofy-looking) celluclay-sculpted hands and feet sit on low plinths, the tools of a performance that is documented by way of 20 photographs, hung in a neat row on the wall to the left. In this series, titled 'Arrhythmia of the Body,' the artist swishes and sways and flails her arms and lunges left and right in her cumbersome hands and feet. Most often whatever is in motion is blurry.

Across from those photos is 'Variations on Listening #5,' a large square white canvas painted the same shade and slightly dimpled texture as the wall it hangs on. On the canvas, rows of tiny white polymer clay ears form a nearly perfect ring with a hole in the middle. We can intuitively understand the circle/ring as something that finds focus (like a lens), that locates a center, that places us right here, right now. Here, "listening" is looking too; our senses blur into one another just as the textures of the piece start to blend into the wall behind it. And then the kick drum steps start up again, jolting us back out.

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

Benjamin Kelley's display contains a stark three pieces that ruminate on time, discovery, futility, the body, and labor, and pretty much any other relative offshoot of those notions you might think of if you sit with them and let yourself wonder.

Though still somewhat murky, Kelley's explorations of objects and their preservation offer a clearer narrative possibility than the works he presented as a Sondheim finalist in 2015, which were intriguing but frustratingly obtuse. Here, in his piece 'Residual Evolutions,' a long, clear acrylic tube mounted to the wall contains a skillfully carved wooden skeleton of a right hand (plus part of the radius and ulna), a thin, long, flaky/corroded, tapering Tower of Babel-like structure, and the right-hand glove of astronaut Bonnie Dunbar's space suit. Kelley's statement notes that this suit was worn in the 1995 STS-71 Atlantis mission, which was the first space shuttle mission to dock with Mir, the Russian Space Station.

Cut into the gallery wall nearby is the piece 'Antlophobic Hymn,' a small display whose design looks straight out of "Star Trek," featuring two bolted portholes, one holding a temperature and humidity logger (such as you might find on the walls around any museum) that glows blue, the other with a pocket-sized journal with a series of dates and "weather conditions and temperatures" from 1843-'44 which Kelley says belonged to an unknown author from an unknown location. Antlophobia, by the way, is a fear of floods; in his statement Kelley alludes to the front page in this journal, in which the author wrote about a flood that destroyed their town and swept away a bridge, a mill, houses, and other structures. It is an abstracted exercise in empathysince the author and place are unknown, this recording of data has become utterly useless to us today. Except for the dates and times, the handwriting is truly hard to read; it's unclear what the author was actually trying to keep track of, and all I can extract from it now is a neurotic dedication.

Finally, hanging high across from the long tube piece is 'The Healer,' the dark blue lab coat belonging to the Walters' conservator Pamela Betts. Kelley's statement points to specific moments in time about different components in each of these works all to say ultimately that here, "within the confines of the museum, the objects become relics." That's all, and we're left to ponder who decides what objects are worth preserving, and who's doing the work to preserve them, and what is left or written out.

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

To my own horror, I find myself drawn to an image with a red, white, and blue color scheme first. It's titled '52001633_8_Bank of America.' But maybe it's less the colors and more the off-kilter zig-zag through which the colors shine; the rest of the composition is black. Oh, and there's the enticing mystery of the image itselflong, slightly wavy hair, maybe the hint of the person's face before the rest of it is obscured into darkness. The person is not the point.

Each of Kyle Tata's pieces employ certain tactics of advertisinga face, a hand grazing a surface, stand-ins for some kind of desirelayered and disrupted by the zig-zagging, blocked and dotted patterns found inside of security tint envelopes. There are a couple other Bank of America-related prints using those colors, as well as M&T Bank (whose charity foundation, incidentally, sponsors the $2,500 honorarium each of the non-winning finalists receive) and PNC.

With its focus on the banks' branding, pattern repetition and obfuscation, and people whose identities remain untouchable and nonspecific, this body of work is more cohesive than what Tata showed as a 2014 Sondheim finalist. Though it's still so formalist it almost hurts, he more or less owns up to that in his short statement while also alluding to a vague, underlying vein of consumerism and data and what those things might mean for us. The C-prints are beautiful in composition and color, and Tata transforms something as banal as a teller's metal coin tray into a playful exercise emulating maybe some elements of a Barbara Kasten piece and a Mies van der Rohe building.

Perhaps purposefully, I keep getting stuck on the surface here: the hot/cool glowing and colorful light, the sharp contrast, the magentas, the geometries, the wiggly shadows, and the security envelope patterns (that also resemble bus seat patterns to me). But the import of Tata's subject matter stays muddled, and I want it to say more.

(Reginald Thomas II/For City Paper)

On one of my visits to the Walters to see the Sondheim show, as I was looking at one of Amy Yee's other works on display, a woman walked through and apparently touched one of the tissues that peek out of 72 "off-brand Kleenex" boxes within the piece 'The Field (Expanded).' The square boxesprinted with what looks like a stock photo of tall grass, with a very subtle Giant logo in the cornerare set onto six simple, staggered wooden risers, like a choir. I had my back turned but I overheard the museum guard awkwardly telling the woman, "Yeah, everything in this space is actually art, so . . . " It ultimately wasn't a big deal, which was cool, and I got where the woman was coming from. I wanted to touch them too.

The title of that piece riffs on Rosalind Krauss' influential 1979 essay 'Sculpture in the Expanded Field,' in which the critic mapped sculpture's shift towards postmodernism as it had moved distinctly away from the monumental, from being held up on a pedestal, and so on, and became more enmeshed literally into the earth or the world more generally around it. Here though, Yee brings back the pedestal and, in a way, a ritualthe display feels church-like, but also like a grocery store endcap. We are meant to revere art, yet art remains a commodity, with no signs of turning back. So what is the difference?

Each of Yee's works in the show feels like a component of some larger whole yet to be developeda selection of head-scratchers. But as she says in her statement, she's "interested in the failure of art," and how the artist plays god, but all of her attempts wind up as petty simulacra and remain so. Like how that lady was reprimanded just for touching (maybe not even taking) a tissue. A to-scale photo transfer of a light switch, titled 'Wall Art,' on a wall almost goes unnoticed. Six laptop-screen-sized inkjet prints of screenshots of last year's Olympics in Rio, mostly of in-between moments where there is no action, where the track or field or winner's stand are empty, are beautiful compositions. In 'A Far-Off Country,' a silent video of a flagprinted with a cloudy blue skybillows in the wind against a cloudy blue sky, and that's all we're allowed to see of this mystery country. The clouds on the flag look like they're upside down, too: What kind of lazy jerks or creative geniuses let that go? Yee seems to want us to shoulder some of that weight, to do most of the work and the mental gymnastics to figure it out.

See the original post:

Staring at the Sondheim - Baltimore City Paper

Melbourne-born author Anna Kriens latest Quarterly Essay explores the debates on climate change policy in Australia and the ecological effects of not acting.

She interviewed farmers, scientists, Indigenous groups, and activists from Bowen to Port Augusta. She says climate change denialism has transformed into climate change nihilism.

Krien says the Finkel review provides another opportunity in a long line of proposals to take up the challenge of legislating clean energy. We just need to get that foot in the door. The door has been flapping in the wind for the past decade.

On a current frontline battle the planned Adani Carmichael coalmine she found the people who would be affected were being ignored and blindsided.

Meanwhile, the potential for exploitation of local Indigenous peoples through opaque native title legislation was high. Outsiders are not meant to understand it and to tell you the truth you get the sense that insiders arent meant to understand it either.

See the article here:

Politics podcast: Anna Krien on the climate wars - The Conversation AU

Kiev had an eventful week. On Wednesday, a global cyber attack, launched from Ukraine, spread like wildfire globally. While all of this was happening the head of the Kiev regimes counter-intelligence was blown to pieces as his car passed through an intersection in the center of the city.

The default reaction was that this was another episode in the Kiev-Moscow-US intrigue. Others on the ground say it was more likely linked to corruption related to arms sales. Will we ever know

The latest polls here show that the presidentwhom everyone here calls Porkyis at single-digit support. In comparison, Trump at 38% is doing rather well.

It is debatable, I suppose, and we likely will never know, but many here consider the current regime the most corrupt ever.

They are spending oodles on defense, and several persons have told me that it is common knowledge that the summit creams 7-10% off the top7-10% of a billion here, a billion there, another billion over thereafter a while it becomes real money!

They say that countries get the politicians they deserve. If that is true, you have to ask yourself, what the Ukrainians did to deserve what they have experienced for the last 27 years, indeed for much longer

A few weeks back, I re-read Bulgakovs White Guard. From 1917-1920, Kiev had no less than 18 governments.

Today, there is a vast sense of desolation, of resignation, among some of nihilism, and among others a view that there is nothing to do, no hope for anything, so live now, intensely, or leave.

At a museum of contemporary art, there is an exhibition which pretty much expresses these sentiments. A video that plays non-stop with the word FUTURE in big black capital letters across the screen.

Two of the letters of FUTURE have toppled over. What remains of the word is on fire. That sort of sums up how many here see their future.

In another room, there is an installation called Wasted Veteran. The room is entirely white, and empty, save for a few pieces of military gearso obviously obsoletestrewn about the floor, and a man, standing alone, wearing combat fatigues, and who is starring straight into the corner, into nothingness.

The sense of waste, of uselessness, of betrayal is crushing.

Then there is an entire room focused on Chernobyl; the photos and the texts are of pure desperation. The cyber attack earlier in the week, perhaps right on cue, shut down all of the monitoring equipment at Chernobyl

A few days back, the EU granted visa free travel to Ukrainian passport holders. Watch for a mass exodus of the young and the bright. And that cant be good for this place.

Meanwhile, the mob rules still over Odessa and its ports, distribution point to the West of some 90% of the heroin produced in Afghanistan.

After the United States has led the war there for a decade and a half, this year the poppy fields are at their most productive ever, with a record bumper crop on the cards. Odessa is also the plaque tournante of the illicit global arms trade

One has to feel for the Ukrainian people: The civil war, the vast corruption, the deep and ever more insurmountable divisions in the country, the flight of young people, the desperation of the armies of unemployed, the repeated devaluations, the crash of real income, the embezzlement of bank deposits, the fraudulent loans, the theft of state assets

It is estimated that over $1 trillion of state assets have been stolen, and there has not been one whimper out of the IMF, the EBRD, nor from the governments of Western Europe, the United States or Canada.

Not one peep, like setting a condition for IMF funding of recovering 20% of stolen assets.

It is said that a good place to start looking for the owners of some of these assets would be the Kiev government cabinet and parliamentary stand-ins for some of the coterie of vastly wealthy oligarchs who effectively run the country.

The cultural, political and social cauldron which is Russia-Ukraine is far beyond me to understand. A visit to the Bulgakov museum is expressive of this.

There is vast pride in the man and his work. Yet, he was Russian, wrote all of his books, plays, novellas in Russian, was born to an ethnic Russian family, was a descendant of a Russian orthodox priest.

Yet, none of that is mentioned, and only emerges when one probes the guide with questions

Yet spend but a little time, for example, in a Karaoke bar, or a caf, and virtually all of the songs which are belted out are Russian songs, or songs sung by Ukrainians in Russia. Complex, complex, complex.

Ukraines destiny would surely be very different it there was a mountain range somewhere between the Franco-German border and Moscow, and if Crimea did not offer the only all year ice free maritime port for the Russian navy.

One one hand, the geopolitics are what they are and point to a real politik resolution, similar to what Kissinger has several times suggested, and with which Moscow would likely be happy to accept.

On the other, there is a people, which have suffered so much, and continue to be trampled on by their own politico-economic oligarchic caste, as well as by their neighbours.

Today to some extent by Russia, yesterday with full military occupations by Germany, Sweden, Poland, France, Lithuania

But there is no doubt, Kiev is a European city, just as are Warsaw and Riga. The city continues to have one of the best ballet troops in the world, and a very active cultural life.

Kiev is such a pretty city, especially under the cloudless sky of today, as the dog days of summer begin.

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Ukraine's Downward Spiral - The Globalist

When Bob Dylan tells the story of Bob Dylan, he often starts at a concert by rock n roll pioneer Buddy Holly in the winter of 1959.

At least, thats where he started in his recent Nobel Prize for Literature lecture.

Terry Mattingly | On Religion

Something mysterious about Holly filled me with conviction, said Dylan. He looked me right straight dead in the eye, and he transmitted something. Something, I didnt know what. And it gave me the chills.

Days later, Holly died in a plane crash. Right after that, someone gave Dylan a recording of Cotton Fields by folk legend Lead Belly. It was like Id been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me, said Dylan.

That story probably sounded rather strange to lots of people, said Scott Marshall, author of the new book Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life.

What happens when somebody lays hands on you? If people dont know the Bible, then who knows what theyll think that means? ... Dylan is saying he felt called to some new work, like he was being ordained. Thats just the way Dylan talks. Thats who he is.

For millions of true believers, Dylan was a prophetic voice of the 1960s and all that followed. Then his intense embrace of Christianity in the late 1970s infuriated many fans and critics. Ever since, Dylan has been surrounded by arguments often heated about the state of his soul.

The facts reveal that Dylan had God on his mind long before his gospel-rock trilogy, Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love.

One civil rights activist, the Rev. Bert Cartwright, catalogued all the religious references in Dylans 1961-78 works, before the born-again years. In all, 89 out of 246 Dylan songs or liner notes 36 percent contained Bible references. Cartwright found 190 Hebrew Bible allusions and 197 to Christian scriptures.

Also, Dylan told People magazine in 1975: I didnt consciously pursue the Bob Dylan myth. It was given to me by God. ... I dont care what people expect of me. It doesnt concern me. Im doing Gods work. Thats all I know.

What does that mean? Marshall collected material from stacks of published interviews and has concluded that two words perfectly describe Dylans approach to answering these questions: inscrutability and irascibility. Plus, its hard to know when Dylan is being serious, cranky or playful.

Nevertheless, faith language always plays a central role. Marshall cites waves of examples, including a time when Dylan was asked if his raucous Rainy Day Women #12 & 35 with its everybody must get stoned chant was code for getting high. Dylan wryly noted that many critics arent familiar with the Book of Acts.

In his Nobel lecture, Dylan also stressed the role great literature has played in his life, dating back to grammar school days. Once again, there were religious themes.

Moby-Dick, for example, combined all the myths: the Judeo-Christian Bible, Hindu myths, British legends, St. George, Perseus, Hercules theyre all whalers.

All Quiet on the Western Front mixed politics, nihilism and horror, and Dylan noted that he has never read another war novel. In that book, Youre on the real iron cross, and a Roman soldiers putting a sponge of vinegar to your lips.

With The Odyssey, he said readers have to live the tale, wrestling with gods and goddesses. Some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies.

In the end, said Dylan, a songs impact on each person is what matters. I dont have to know what a song means, he said. Ive written all kinds of things into my songs. And Im not going to worry about it what it all means.

Marshall believes one thing should be obvious: If Dylanologists want to understand Dylans life and art, they will have to wrestle with all of his songs, including those drenched in God-talk. Biblical literacy is an essential skill in that work.

The bottom line is clear, according to Hollywood director Scott Derrickson, writing in the books foreword: Dylan has never recanted a single line from a single song.

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Wrestling again with the Gospel according to Bob Dylan | Features ... - Bristol Herald Courier (press release) (blog)

In graduate school, a friend and I, both Hemingway aficionados, would try to stump each other by quoting lines from the famous writers fiction. I had a bit of an advantage because I was a few years older than my rival and had already taught Hemingway to high school students. And so, familiar with even obscure works like A Man of the World, which adolescents enjoyed, I never lost one of our good-natured contests. Yet despite my devotion to the Nobel Laureate, I never thought two decades later I'd be praying for his soul.

My devotion influenced my first published story, The Man Who Thought He Was Hemingway, and the summer after graduate school another friend and I made a pilgrimage to northern Michigan, retracing the steps young Ernest would have taken when vacationing with his family. We went to Walloon Lake in Petoskey, to Horton Bay where he loved to fish, and then on to the Upper Peninsula, to Seney and the nearby Fox, a.k.a. Big Two-Hearted River. After visiting Hemingway shrines during the day we would spend our evenings in the local taverns, and then around 2:30 a.m., back in the tent while my poor friend tried to sleep, I would turn on a flashlight and read Hemingway stories aloud as if they were Compline.

I was not Catholic then and had never heard of Compline; I did not know the Scripture verses prayed at night were selected by the church to encourage peace in the soul. Yet in my own fumbling way I sought this peace through what I was reading. And to some extent, I succeeded. For it is impossible to encounter the best of Hemingways stories, Indian Camp or Now I Lay Me, The Undefeated or In Another Country, without being soothed by their transcendence. Fiction is not divinely inspired, but Ralph Ellison thought so much of In Another Country he could recite its opening paragraph verbatim.

A few years after that pilgrimage I converted to Catholicism, and as I tried to move closer to God I found myself moving away from Hemingway. For a long time, before, during and after graduate school, I did not have any faithin spite of having been blessed with a solid Lutheran upbringing. In retrospect I partially blamed the man who, in The Sun Also Rises, taught me a bottle of wine was good company. I knew my atheism had been a response to my mothers rheumatoid arthritis, which struck her at 55 and turned her into an old woman overnight. I had watched her exhaustingly take care of her own mother, afflicted with the same disease, and the irony of my mothers suffering, commencing just a year after my grandmother's death,could not be reconciled with a loving God.

Still, hadnt Hemingway also played a role? In addition to the lousy example he set as a hard-drinking womanizer, hadnt he, in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, penned the nihilistic and blasphemous lines of the old waiter? They are as sharp and clear as anything he ever wrote:

It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and lightwas all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it andnever felt it but he knew it all wasnada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.Ournadawho art innada, nadabe thy name thy kingdomnadathy willbenadainnadaas it is innada. Give us this nada our daily nada andnadaus ournada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada butdeliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing iswith thee.

As a writer, I understood a characters words and actions cannot be ascribed to their author. The old waiter is a fictional invention. He is not Hemingway any more than the Misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find is Flannery OConnoreven if the Misfits lament, I cant make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment, might well have been echoed by OConnor or my mother and grandmother. More importantly, the old waiters insomnia could be viewed as resulting from his nihilism, and a reader could interpret the tale as a condemnation of that philosophy. Nonetheless, those lines from A Clean, Well-Lighted Place haunted me.I felt guilty for having taught that story to impressionable students.

So I avoided Hemingway like the other fishermen avoid Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. Now, however, roughly a decade later, I realize I did so out of ignorance. I had bought into the myth of Hemingway propagated by our culture and, indeed, many of his biographers, rather than the truth revealed in his life and work. Far from being a nihilist, he had an interest in Catholicism even before his 1927 marriage to Pauline, and though he practiced the faith imperfectly, to say the leastfour wives, several affairsit always remained important to him and permeates much of his fiction. Santiago, after all, means St. James, and in 1954 Hemingway formally presented his Nobel Prize Medal to Our Lady of Charity, the Patroness of Cuba.

Yet I do not pray for Hemingway because he was Catholic, butrather because through his writing he has been a friend of mine, and in 1961, two years before I was born, he put the twin barrels of a shotgun against his forehead and committed suicide. He had received electro-shock treatments to combat depression, and these, combined with the serious concussions he had previously suffered, left him unable to think clearly, much less pursue the craft for which he won the Nobel. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that psychological factors like this can mitigate ones culpability. Furthermore, it says: We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives (No. 2283).

In short, there is hope for Ernest Hemingway, for all suicides, and this hope is rooted in Gods timelessness as well as his mercy. Our prayers are effective because everything stands before God in an ever-present now. God has always known that I would offer prayers in 2017 for that terrible moment in 1961. He can, therefore, assign the grace of those prayers to Hemingway in that moment, in the final millisecond of life after the trigger was pulled. My petitions before God, even 56 years after Hemingways death, can foster a disposition of the writers soul that will lead to salvation.

Dorothy Day understood this and prayed frequently for suicides, and we should do the same. These are souls on the margins, spiritual outcasts in need of our compassion.We should have Masses said for them, pray the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet for them and offer up our trials so they may attain the beatific vision. And whether we are tied to them by kinship, friendship, admiration for their brilliantwriting, or just the metaphysical bond of our shared humanity, we must trust in the boundless love of God whom we know desires all men to be saved (1 Tim 2:4).

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Praying for Hemingway | America Magazine - America Magazine

Materialists believe that, in the end, we are only so many carbon molecules, signifying nothing. Hence, mostdeny human exceptionalism, arguing essentiallty that we are just another species in the forest when they arent castigating us as the enemy of the earth.

Comes now materialist Nick Hughes a self-declared disenchanted free-thinking atheist to declare while it is true from the Universesperspective that humanity is utterlyinsignificant never mind that a materialistic Universehas no perspective that doesnt mean we should despair. From, Do We Matter in the Cosmos? published in Aeon.

For the disenchanted, it is hard to deny that our causal powers are insignificant from the point of view of the entire Universe. But should we be troubled by this? Should it lead us to nihilism and despair? I dont think so. To see why, we need to go back to the issue of value and draw another distinction.

Some of the things that we care about happiness and human flourishing, for example areintrinsicallyvaluable to us.

I think Hughes misses a big point. Even if we are merely thinking carbon, our existence itself is inherently valuable.Indeed, only we have the capacity in the known universe to understand much less contemplate the concept and importance of significance. That is one of the things that makes life worth living.

To put it another way, we are the only true moral beings (again, in the known universe). That which also implicates our unique rationality is one of the distinctly human attributes that make our existenceitselfexceptional.

But Hughes cant see that. He just gives readers an empatheticpat on the back, telling us not to despair because, well, well always have art:

Whether or not they are objectively valuable, the ends that matter to us, the things that we care about most our relationships, our projects and goals, our shared experiences, social justice, the pursuit of knowledge, the creation and appreciation of art, music and literature, and the future and fate of ours and other species do not depend to any considerable extent on our having control over a vast but largely irrelevant Universe.

We might be distinctly lacking in power from the cosmic perspective, and so, in a sense, insignificant. But having such power and such significance wouldnt make much of a difference anyway.

To lament its lack and respond with despair and nihilism is merely a form of narcissism. Most of what matters to us is right here on Earth.

No. Its not about power. Its not about cosmic perspectives. Only we understand there is such a thing as the cosmos.

Its also notwhat we can do, the art we can create creativity is another uniquely human attribute but about who we are inherently. We think, therefore we are. We contemplate meaning, therefore the universe itself comes to have meaning because a species exists that can find it.

Hughes bemoans the authoritarianism that sometimes befouls our thriving. But authoritarianism can only exist whenhuman exceptionalism our unique and equal individual value, coupled with our duties to each other (among others) is denied. Thats when those with power feel free to exploit and oppressthose they falsely denigrate as being without it.

In his proud disenchantment, Hughes tells us not to despair because there are aspects of life to enjoy until we are snuffedinto non-thinking carbon.

Thats a dangerously nihilistic viewno matter how much Hughes strives to whistle past the graveyard.

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Human Exceptionalism: We Understand Significance - National Review

If you give us your fucking heart, well give you ours, declares Arcade Fires Win Butler to the thousands of devotees with arms outstretched into the Belgian sunset. Its only the opening day of Rock Werchter 2017, and Butlers promise perfectly captures the spirit of the occasion an unbridled display of passion from music fans who just want to lose their minds, regardless of whats on stage.

Is it loud enough? snarls Savages Jehnny Beth earlier on, Christening the main stage, I know its early, but its about to get a little louder. Back on stage together for the first time in seven months, the band actively lead punk away from nihilism and towards an energetic celebration of life, unity, and defiance. Beth spends just as much time walking over the crowd as she does stalking the stage like a predator, her every move an inflammatory invitation for the crowd to lose their shit.

That same mood lingers as the crowd swells for the Rage Against The Machine, Public Enemy and Cypress Hill supergroup Prophets Of Rage with punk power and politics out on parade to make Belgium rage again. Theres no thrill comparable to the primal reaction of hearing Testify, Sleep Now In The Fire and Killing In The Name played by the three metal pioneers themselves, but the vocals of Chuck D and B-Real with the backing of DJ Lord make the aggression much more streetwise and allows for a wider allowance of diversity. Throwing in covers of Fight The Power, Jump Around and How I Could Just Kill A Man destroys the boundaries of genre, and creates a reaction nothing short of feral.

Savages at Rock Werchter 2017

Were from a country very, very far from away from here, a visibly humbled Lorde tells the packed out Barn stage. It would take me a day to get home right now.

Introducing the tender Liability, she opens up: This is a song about being alone and learning how to be alone for the first time, because its something you have to learn. Its one thing to go Im going to go to a restaurant by myself. Youre sitting there, youve looked at everything you could possibly look at on your phone, and you think shit, have I missed something? For me, I was always scared to be alone because I felt like I was kind of a loser and when I was by myself I was way more aware of that.

I think everyone knows how it feels to walk into a room and be scared that youre too much for everyone, or that everyones just going to leave, she starts to stifle tears. But I want you to know, its going to be OK.

Its a rare privilege to see one on the finest performers of the planet in such a setting. Stripped of the huge perspex box set-up that dominated the stage at Coachella and Glastonbury, Lorde stands before us with a much more direct and intimate performance. Shes a stones throw away, dancing like nobodys watching, treating the audience like friends. Theres a warmth saved for the invertedanthemics of Tennis Court, Team and a deafening sing-along of Royals, while theres nothing quite like the sheer abandon that overtakes you for Supercut and Green Light. Everything feels heightened in here, but ultimately human.Theres no persona, no gimmicks, its just us and Ella. She could make anywhere feel like home.

Lorde at Rock Werchter 2017

Theres a rush to the main stage where the crowd stretches on into the horizon awaiting Arcade Fire. The disco instrumental of Everything Now whirrs up and Werchter is at once lost to dance for an unrelenting 90 minutes. Anthem follows anthem as Win Butler and co create a carnival with 16 songs. The choral call to arms of their early material with Rebellion (Lies) and Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) inspires the same religious fervour as it did back in 2004, but the full journey of the setlist shows a band highly evolved and at the peak of their powers.

Sing this one for David Bowie, says Butler of their late friend and collaborator, introducing The Suburbs. David, we miss you so fucking so much. Lets pray that somewhere, a child is born with David Bowies soul.Save your prayers, as it is Arcade Fire who have picked up his torch and are charging with it into the distant future. While Reflektor, Here Comes The Night Time and Afterlife from the previous record saw the band move from antiquity into the space, the adventurous dance-driven new tracks Creature Comfort and Signs Of Life are among the best received this evening an acknowledgement of that chameleon-like swagger into new terrain that they inherited from the Thin White Duke.

Closed with a seismic sing-along of Wake Up before Butler awards his tambourine to a young girl in the crowd who spent the entire show on her fathers shoulders, Arcade Fire couldnt possibly have given much more.Kings Of Leon ended the night with a set loaded with the arena friendly warmth of their latter days, but sadly lacking in the danger that first made you fall in love with them. Theyre a band built for festivals and can do little wrong, but it was the magic of Arcade Fire that will remain the enduring memory of the day. They just had it every member performing as if it was the last night on Earth, and the audience giving the love back in spades. To see them in 2017, is to watch Arcade Fire reaching a career high. That is how you win hearts, and they have ours.

Arcade Fire at Rock Werchter 2017

Everything Now Rebellion (Lies) Here Comes the Night Time Signs of Life No Cars Go The Suburbs The Suburbs (Continued) Ready to Start Month of May Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) Reflektor Afterlife Creature Comfort Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) Wake Up

Excerpt from:

Arcade Fire honour David Bowie and Lorde gets emotional with ... - NME.com

Christopher Eccleston (left) and Carrie Coon in The Leftovers

Watching the three seasons of the TV series The Leftovers is like taking a short course on William Jamess The Varieties of Religious Experienceexcept richer and more entertaining. The Leftovers imagines a world in which 2 percent of the worlds population has suddenly vanished, Rapture-like, with no rhyme or reason governing who is taken and who is leftover. In the absence of all scientific and religious explanations, human meaning-making systems begin to collapse.

When I wrote about the series halfway through its first season, I wondered how religion would be engaged going forward. At that point, religion mostly seemed to be a coping mechanism, and not a very good one. The only Christian, Matt Jamison (Christopher Eccleston), is an Anglican priest on a smear campaign to defame all the Departed. The main cult in town, the Guilty Remnant, refuses to let people get on with their lives. The season has an austere beauty and many rich character portraits, but also nihilism, confusion, and despair.

In season two, the action moves from Mapleton, New York, to Jarden, Texas, also known as Miraclethe only place on earth with no Departures. The town has become a national park and a hotbed for every form of religious experimentation. This season offers a primer in big philosophical questions: What is religion? Where does it come from? Can we live without it? This might sound didactic, but the show is so narratively and formally creative that it feels more like a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Flannery OConnor than a philosophy of religion textbook.

About midway through the second season, one of the protagonists, Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), seeks help from his ex-wife, Laurie (Amy Brenneman), because he is seeing visions of the former leader of the Guilty Remnant, Patti Levin (Ann Dowd), who died in his presence. Laurie, a psychiatrist, explains to Kevin that he is having a psychotic breakdown. She gently explains that the human brain is a clever and defensive organ. In the face of chaos, it reaches for any system of order or meaning. It reaches, in other words, for religion, which is glossed by Laurie as the longing for security, comfort, and narrative cohesion as found through magic, visions, portents, prophesies, dream states, charismatic leaders, and ritualized behaviors (all on abundant display in season two). Laurie has some personal experience with this; she herself destroyed her marriage to Kevin when she joined the Guilty Remnant for a few years.

Lauries speech offers one interpretation of the entire show: the Sudden Departure is an instance of human fragility in an indifferent world, which prompts some people to make a therapeutic turn to religion. If Lauries view is correct, then religion can be explained in scientific terms. It is a defense mechanism of the fragile human mind.

Laurie proposes that Kevin go on medication and seek therapy. But Kevin chooses instead to do spiritual battle with Patti. Under the guidance of a guru, Kevin drinks poison, dies (or appears to die), and wakes up in (or is reborn into) the apparent dream world of a corporate hotel. He assumes the role of an international agent who must assassinate Patti. She has become a senator running for president. I told you it was a wild ride.

Scattered through Kevins visions are clues that his quest is happening in some way in the real world of the show, not just in his own mind. But if that is true, Lauries therapeutic secularism is not the final word on religion after all.

In season three, news of Kevins death and resurrection is taken up by the Anglican priest from season one. Matts faith has been tested by more than a few plot twists, but it is a testament to the shows sympathetic interest in traditional religious belief that the episodes centered on Matt are some of the best in the series (and theres a laugh-out-loud moment for theological education nerds when were told Matt is a Berkeley Divinity School alum). Matt becomes convinced that Kevin is a new messiah, a harbinger of an unspecified reconciliation to unfold on the seventh anniversary of the Departed. He even writes a new book of scripture to explain his theology.

Through the eyes of Matt and his small band of disciples, including the skeptic Laurie, who plays a self-described Judas to the group, The Leftovers offers many different perspectives on how faith is made, formed, and lost. If the strangeness of the Departure allows the writers to explore religious belief and practice with verve and sympathy, the show ultimately connects the Departure to the experience of loss and griefreligion does not so much explain the mysteries of life as provide a framework for living within them.

The final scene is a conversation between Kevin and his erstwhile lover Nora (Carrie Coon), who is also Matts sister, many years after the Departure. Nora offers the best explanation for the Departure that we are going to get, one that reframes her life as caregiver rather than victim. Her story doesnt end her grief so much as help her live into a new life. This is the kind of religion The Leftovers finds most interesting, and it makes the viewer interested toono small feat for a show that begins with the end of meaning.

A version of this article appears in the July 19 print edition under the title A wild ride with The Leftovers.

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The Leftovers and the end of meaning - The Christian Century

Cynicism is the best defense when graft and injustice hold sway. If things get worse than that, nihilism is the next logical step. Oakland-based singer-songwriter Greg Ashley, formerly of the psych outfit the Gris-Gris, opens his fourth solo offering, Pictures of Saint Paul Street, by bringing listeners up to speed on the rules of a world in which to play is to lose.

In just over three minutes, the upbeat Sea of Suckers details every awful step in the descent from an unhappy relationship to the humiliation of a stint in detox. My crazy junky bunkmate, he would puke and piss and gyrate, and the pills they gave us made us crazy bored, crazy for more, Ashley sings with sneering glee, accepting that there is no escape from the destructive forces that beset him from outside and within. Pictures is Ashleys strongest statement to date. By examining both societal and personal failings, he delivers a pitch perfect encapsulation of a political moment in which every pretense of order and justice has been laid bare and embracing oblivion is the only sensible choice.

His self-deprecating, deeply confessional approach places him in the company of lonesome bedroom brooders like Vic Chesnutt and East River Pipe. However, Ashley, a skilled engineer and producer in his own right, eschews their minimalism for a well-rounded musicality that is more in keeping with artists from generations removed, such as Lou Reed, Hank Williams, and Leonard Cohen (Ashley covered Death of a Ladies Man in full in 2012).

Though Ashley portrays himself as a misanthrope, the accessibility of his songs, which are given to snappy tempos, bright keys and joyful sprays of electric organ, drawing upon elements of blues, jazz and country paint a more conflicted picture. While he may find himself at odds with the world at large, hed rather live in it and suffer with self-awareness than cloister himself away. Journalisms dead, so propaganda does me the favor/its giving me the news, Im just an idealistic sucker/Im giving up on dreams, Im through with you worthless motherfuckers, he sings on Goodbye Saint Paul Street a meditation on gentrification in which Saint Paul Street is a stand in for the San Pablo Avenue of Oakland, where he has long resided. The only thing respected is violence and greed, he concludes by the end of the verse.

For all his musical proficiency, Ashley shines brightest in his lyricism. His thoughtful and understated vocal delivery underscores his status as an everyman, put upon by both circumstances of his own creation and the values of a square society. He is clever and crude in equal measure, but always cutting. On the whole, his words are carefully measured and long on poetry, so when he opts for bluntness, he does so to great effect, as on Bullshit Society in which he pleads: Its a police state! And youre a debt slave! Its a police state! You pray for class war, class war, class war, class war!

Ashley succeeds by connecting the dots between the microeconomics of the interpersonal and the macroeconomics of the sociopolitical. The self-justifications and bargaining that enable chemical dependency are really not so different from the compromises that allow greed and corruption to thrive. The only way to salvage some dignity is to acknowledge the inherent and inescapable unfairness.

In Ashleys estimation no one is innocent, everyone suffers as a result and, given human nature, there is no alternative. To participate in society is to compromise and whether you accept or reject the rules on offer, suffering is always the result. On the album closer, Six A.M. at the Black and White, he sums his argument up masterfully. We know Americas insane/Became an alcoholic for the pain, he sings. But Ill never join them as a slave/With a bullshit degree that doesnt pay/The worlds an ashtray anyways/We couldnt have it any other way.

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Greg Ashley: Pictures of Saint Paul Street Review - Paste Magazine