A Jest of God

Last week, on a whim, I picked up a two dollar copy of Margaret Laurence's 1966 novel, A Jest of God. Halfway through the book, I'm shocked at how much I enjoy Laurence's prose. In two brilliantly uncomfortable scenes, she presents a pair of contrasting church services. The first takes place after Rachel reluctantly accepts the last of several invitations from a fellow elementary school teacher. At this church, or, "the Tabernacle," as her friend Calla calls it, speaking in tongues isn't a rare occurrence. Rachel is on edge the entire time and, on this particular night out, things don't end well. 

Most reviews of the book focus on Rachel's inner struggle, her self-alienation. Rachel is a compellingly complex character with plenty of problems, many of them internal and many more derived from circumstance. But even with all her neuroses, I find Rachel's accounts of these services incredibly resonant. 

Singing. We have to stand, and I must try to make myself narrower so I won't brush against anyone. A piano crashes the tune. Guitars and one trombone are in support. The voices are weak at first, wavering like a radio not quite adjusted, and I'm shaking with effort not to giggle, although God knows it's not amusing me. The voices strengthen, grow muscular, until the room is swollen with the sound of a hymn macabre as the messengers of the apocalypse, the gaunt horsemen, the cloaked skeletons I dreamed of once when I was quite young, and wakened, and she said, "Don't be foolish -- Don't be foolish, Rachel -- there's nothing there." The hymn-sound is too loud -- it washes in my head, sea and waves of it.

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfilled the prophet's warning!
Heaven and earth in ashes burning!

I hate this. I would like to go home. Sit down. The others are sitting down. Just don't be noticeable. Oh God -- do I know anyone? Suddenly I'm scanning rows, searching. Seek and ye shall find. Mrs. Pusey, ancient arch-enemy of my mother, tongue like a cat-'o-nine-tails, and Alvin Jarrett, who works at the bakery, and old Miss Murdoch from the bank. How in hell can I get out of this bloody place without being seen?

Of course, Rachel doesn't escape before the end of the service and we're treated to more of her sardonic inner monologue, occasionally interrupted by the words of a zealous preacher. The next chapter finds Rachel attending church again, this time with her mother (the unnamed woman scolding her for her young superstition in the passage above). While the Tabernacle service is full of flare, the Presbyterian church service is as bland as the members of the town establishment who attend it. Rachel, again, sees the service for what it is: an expression of the neutered desires of its congregation.

Here we are. Mother flicks through the Hymnary to look up the hymns in advance. I wonder what she believes, if anything. She's never said. It was not a subject for discussion. She loves coming to church because she sees everyone, and in spring the new hats are like a forest of tulips. But as for faith -- I suppose she takes for granted that she believes. Yet if the Reverend MacElfrish should suddenly lose his mind and speak of God with anguish or joy, or out of some need should pray with fierce humility as though God had to be there, Mother would be shocked to the core. Luckily it will never happen. 

Mr. MacElfrish's voice is as smooth and mellifluous as always, and he's careful not to say anything which might be upsetting. His sermon deals with Gratitude. He says we are fortunate to be living here, in plenty, and we ought not to take our blessings for granted. Who is likely to quibble with that? 

The wood in this church is beautifully finished. Nothing ornate -- heaven forbid. The congregation has good taste. Simple furnishings, but the grain of the wood shows deeply brown-gold, and at the front where the high alter would be if this had been a church which paid court to high alters, a stained-glass window shows a pretty and clean-cut Jesus expiring gently and with absolutely no inconvenience, no gore, no pain, just this nice and slightly effeminate insurance salesman who, somewhat incongruously, happens to be clad in a toga, holding his arms languidly up to something which might in other circumstances have been a cross.

Whither Church Going?

I've had a long semester and blog entries have been sporadic at best. Apart from a few album reviews, I've had little time to give to writing and I'm hoping to change that. Schoolwork is responsible for sucking up most of my days and nights. Whatever time was leftover I gave to job/internship applications, and I'm happy to report that I have a graphic design job for the summer that will likely switch part-time when the Fall semester begins.

But despite my inactivity on the blog, there's been plenty going over the past month.

• The second issue of Guts Canadian Feminist Magazine has been published.
• The Truth and Reconciliation Commission ended here in Edmonton.
• I stupidly jumped down a flight of stairs in a Toronto subway and fractured my ankle. Yeah, really proud of that one.
• I won an award for some posters I designed.
• My gf entered the debate over unpaid internships at the Walrus.
• I've been doing a lot of freelance work, some of which is featured on my tumblr page.

I'm off to Toronto tomorrow morning for a brief visit before I start my job. I'm also looking forward to a summer full of personal projects. Some of these probably won't happen but listing them here might help.

• a month of studio time at SNAP (which hopefully results in a chapbook)
• working through John Ruskin's Elements of Drawing and Walter Crane's history of illustration
• conference design for the Marxist Literary Group's annual Institute on Culture and Society
• a couple zines, comics strips, etc.
• a series of musician portraits to build up my illustration portfolio and as well as some concert posters for local venues
• several book reviews on art and aesthetics (I've been meaning to write on Jacques Ranciere's The Future of the Image and Jean-Luc Nancy's The Ground of the Image)
• condensing the final chapters of my thesis into an article
• more focused writing on music

Religious, but not spiritual

I'm not alone in feeling a bit jaded by recent attempts to engage the topic of religion over at the SpecTrib. First, there's the tired "Theist vs Atheist" debate, which is as unproductive and boring as it's ever been; then there are several worthwhile editorials on conservative Mennonites in Manitoba; and, finally, there's this piece, which nicely illustrates nearly everything that I find unconvincing and moronic about the "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) identity-marker. Perhaps it's becoming increasingly popular to adopt this kind of apolitical view, but it's nothing new or profound, or even interesting (that is, unless you were totally into Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love!). You know the routine: religion is exclusive and repressive but spirituality is for everybody.

When we look at most religions, we see they are often defined by their institutions and the specific beliefs taught there within. In order to be a part of a religion, one is encouraged to accept those beliefs as the one and only truth. This is where religion tends to breed separation – “this religion vs. that religion” or “my God is the only real God”. Spirituality on the other hand, is allowing oneself to define their own truth and understanding that everyone else’s truth may be different. By contrast, spirituality breeds unification as there is an understanding that we are all in this together and we all have the ability to discover our authentic selves.

Whoa. Consider my mind blown.

What we have here is something that's not so far off from right-wing evangelicalism, where religious experience is socially isolated and defined by an intensely personal relationship with God (not to mention the fact that these SBNR things usually come in a testimonial, my-life-is-so-important, format). As much as I love having "an intimate relationship with [my] own unique reality," auto-affection gets boring pretty fast.

Meanwhile, religion, with all its institutional strictures and rituals, seems more attractive than ever.

"Secret Xtians" - Unknown Mortal Orchestra

From the New Zealand band's second album, II, released last week via Jagjaguwar.

Churchin' up with Chad VanGaalen

One of my favorite Canadian musicians offers a few comments on the fact that more and more indie shows are happening in churches. It's a weird trend, but a good one. The feature--a promo for VanGaalen's third album,  Soft Airplane (2008)--is done by CBC Radio 3 and just so happens to be set in Edmonton; I'm pretty sure that the building featured in the opening shot is a United Church that I've attended.

Fragments from an Occupation

Posted below is a collection of concerns, questions, and reflections generated by a recent round-table on the global occupy movement that took place at the University of Alberta. I was involved in planning the event and I'm still hoping that I'll be able to post a recording of the discussion on this site; for now, I've assembled some thoughts (my own, as well as those of other participants) both on the movement more generally and on its current manifestation in Edmonton.

Although a significant action took place today (a march calling for governments to introduce what's been nicknamed "the Robin Hood tax") and our camp at the corner of Jasper Ave and 102 Street is still functional after nearly two weeks of occupation, there has a noticeable decline in participation, both at a day-to-day level (a small number of volunteers are doing all the work to maintain camp infrustructure) and at our regularly held general assemblies. There are ongoing discussions about the future of the downtown camp: none of us are so naive that we think this can continue (at least in its current form) through an Edmonton winter. There have been also been an increasing amount of concerns regarding the homeless individuals who frequent the camp, many of whom are intoxicated or seeking a fix. Thankfully, most of us are of the opinion that the participation of the disenfranchised is just as (if not more) important to this occupation as our own, not least because they had been "occupying" this harsh and unwelcoming environment well before we arrived with our tents. However, many of the problems that currently plague the camp are due to decreased involvement and attendance, and so it is all the more imperative that we think through ways of continuing what we've started that don't sacrifice momentum but are still realistic about the movements material limitations.

It's with those immediate concerns in mind that I turn to some reflections that emerged from last week's discussion at U of A.

First, the global occupy movement is based around local attempts to build permanent zones of autonomy that stand in contradiction to the processes of capitalism that determine our lived condition. Proof of this contradiction can be seen in the violent responses from the state in places like Oakland, Rome and elsewhere.

Unlike the many institutions of collectivity that have become complicit with or have developed out of Western capitalism, the occupy movement is not interested simply in the performance of community and actively resists its commodification. As has been noted, the movement is characterized by a strong negative impulse which draws it into opposition with the political-economic apparatus as it functions today; people are increasingly recognizing that our system has enabled the consolidation of wealth and power by an indifferent upper-class. Despite the reactionary criticism perpetuated by mainstream media outlets, the movement has a clear target in its aim.

There is a conscious effort to privilege local struggle while recognizing its relationship to and solidarity with the larger global struggle. Here in Edmonton, we have begun most of our meetings with an acknowledgment that we are living on Treaty 6 land: once a place of flourishing for the Cree, now a place of alienation and embarrassment for many indigenous peoples due to the first occupation of this land by British settlers. Can we understand our current occupation as a conscious effort to reorient ourselves to a land that was never ours to begin with? Are we participating in the prolongation of colonial structures, or opposing them with and on behalf of the disenfranchised? Does the language of occupation (which has drawn fire from numerous participants) not reflect and produce the very logic of private ownership that we oppose? In addition to the creation of new forms of social relation (not premised on capital), it is also up to us to imagine new possibilities for discourse and representation.

Perhaps one of the most important characteristics of this movement is that it has proceeded without any serious acknowledgment of what today falls under the name “politics.” Our choices in the political establishment offer no substantial choice or change, but instead give us slightly different ways of maintaining untenable lifestyles. In short, the official institutions that claim to embody our democracy have been treated as the ineffective sideshow that they are.

It has been pointed out repeatedly that there is a frustrating lack of collective demands. Our unwillingness to identify or hand over specific demands arises from a fear that those demands will be perverted and co-opted by the powers we seek to oppose. This is certainly a weakness of the movement, but it is also one of its great strengths. Many of the social movements of the late twentieth century had their basis in identity-politics and, consequently, were grounded by an axiom of equilibrium that sought to establish a basic equality of rights among exclusive groups. Such movements were therefore mobilized by a certain degree of self-interest that could easily be put into the service of capital; it seems, in contrast, that the global occupy movement is mobilized by a collective hunger for justice that looks beyond individual needs, not to some universal projection of identity, but to a universal that is necessarily open, but is equally opposed to privatization.

Bob Mould on church going

I was recently sent this excerpt from Bob Mould's newly released autobiography, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody. For those unfamiliar with Mould's significance, he's considered one of America's post-punk greats--the abrasive, absolutely relentless frontman of Hüsker Dü: a band that brought hardcore punk music into a head-on collision with arena-sized ambition and pop melody. Although I'm not very familiar with Mould's solo work, Zen Arcade (1984) and New Day Rising (1985) are among my favourite albums to blast when my mood is particularly volatile. In his memoir, Mould shares about his battles with substance abuse, coming to terms with his homosexuality, his ambivalent Catholicism, and his ongoing music career. Here's Mould on a recent church going experience:

It was a late-afternoon Mass on Saturday, and St. Matthew’s is one of the biggest Catholic churches in DC. . . . I walked in, went up the stairs, dipped my hand into the water, and motioned the sign of the cross. We went in, found Steve’s usual pew, knelt in the aisle before entering, and I again crossed myself. We lowered the altar bench, and for the first time in thirty years, I knelt in front of God. I hadn’t been to church since confirmation.

Down the aisle comes Father Caulfield, thirty-something, handsome, tall, inspirational—the kind of person who believes so hard that, when he looked up to the top of the cathedral, I feared he would shoot right through the roof. He’s that close to God, speaking in measured words, and we people begin singing again.

The routine comes back to me, the whole drill; it didn’t change one bit. It’s not like they start with the sermon and then put a Sun Ra song in the middle—everything stays exactly the same. The set list doesn’t change. I’m up, I’m down, I’m kneeling, I’m standing, I’m singing, I’m praying. The service lasted an hour.

Mass was a levelling and humbling experience that gave me a different perspective on life. There was music, there was readings, there was community. There was the moment in the service when you greet your neighbour, someone you’ve probably never seen before in your life and may never see again outside of the church. Everyone is united around one thing—the religious experience. It brings many different kinds of people together into one room, which is the opposite of living in the gay ghetto.

I realized I was going to be a ‘cafeteria Catholic,’ picking and choosing the parts that worked for me. Instead of rebelling against or wholesale dismissing the Church, I tried to find the goodness in what the Church had to offer. And I tried to find a point of compassion in the experience that I could build from. (348-350)

Bob Mould, with Michael Azerrad. See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody. New York: Little, Brown, 2011.