David Bazan, Agnosticism, and Naming Blogs After Yourself

I should have just named this blog after myself. One: It's easier to market that way. Two: I never would have mentioned routine.

I just listened to the new David Bazan record. It's super good. You should get it. And enjoy. And listen. He used to front (and basically be, I guess) Pedro the Lion, which began as a sweetly indie Christian band that actually got as much attention from secular press and audiences than Christian. (Side note: Pedro was the first of many 'indie Christian' bands that I was introduced to by my completely non-Christian buddy Rob) (Side Note #2: I don't believe in Christian art. I believe in art. And I believe in people. And people have all kinds of different ideas. And the minute we start sectioning off art based on people's believe systems we have a problem. I mean, if you'd like to live in an imaginary bubble, that's your prerogative and you don't have a problem with this set up. I just think you're wrong. I think God lives in good things and lots of people make good art. For me, it's like saying, I don't like suicide, so I'm not going to read Hemingway or listen to Elliot Smith. You will miss out on amazing and beautiful things.) ANYWAY, Bazan has recently come out on the agnostic side of the argument (if, in fact, there is an argument and agnosticism can be considered a side). I love him and always have and he probably bleeds through my music more than anyone else I listen to. I used to liken him to Jeremiah; I thought he was the prophet weeping in the wilderness. He wrote these sad, heartbreakingly sad songs about infidelity and murder and alcoholism and he sang terrifically stark melodies and I thought the songs were amazing. I still think they are. And I think the new songs are great too. They're brief - and if brevity IS the soul of wit, then I suppose they're witty. They are less stark and it could be argued that they're overproduced, but they're still brilliant. I actually think he and Hemingway would get along really well, what with their minimalism and drinking and sadness. Bazan has always been sad, for me anyway, but he has never made me sad. And this record does; somebody described it as his breakup record for God, which I suppose is as sad as it gets, if you are a believer. The thing is - and I'm not sure if this makes me an eternal optimist or not - I don't think it's a breakup record. Sure, he's angry and terse and sad and a little melodramatic - but I don't think he's done. I'm not saying that he'll be back, in fact, I'm fairly certain he will not be. But it doesn't FEEL like a breakup record. It feels angrier than that. Like God broke up with him and he's stomping mad about it. And I understand that I think; I mean that would be the deepest rejection ever, wouldn't it be? I may listen to the record a thousand more times and in the future have an entirely different idea about it. But that's what I have now. He's not snuffed God out like a candle - the record is devoted to God in it's entirety.

I'm not sure any of that made sense. This is the innate problem with blogs - to keep them fresh and real it's best not to edit them. My whole idea I guess was that I appreciate agnostics. I mean I like to think I appreciate everyone, but I used to think agnostics were more or less cowards. At least atheists have the gall (and the faith) to say that God does not exist. It always pissed me off a little that agnostics got to say, "You know, maybe He does or maybe he doesn't (capital/noncapital on purpose) and who am I to say anyway? Anybody want to just hang out and take it easy?" As if agnosticism was the easy way out. And I suppose it can be - in the same way that Atheism and Christianity and Hinduism and Islam and a whole host of other belief systems can be the easy way out. But good Agnostics (you get a capital A this time) are not slackers. They throw history and tradition and a lot of other things to the wind and say, "You know what? I can't say either way." Which is not cowardice. It's not necessarily even a lack of faith. It's a love of questions; it's straddling the fear of the unknown and the safety of the known (or believed). And I don't think it's easy. Listen to David Bazan and tell me if it sounds like he's having a nice, relaxed, good ol' time. I don't believe he is. He is shouting at God and himself and hearing no good answer back. And I love him for it. And tonight (and this may not be always) I think he's braver than me for doing it. And I'm inspired to ask harder questions. And live with fewer answers.

Songs vs. Novels

I started a novel a few years ago. Actually, I've been telling people for a few years that I started a novel a few years ago, so in all actuality I started a novel sometime when I was in college. Approximately 2002. If you've been reading this blog, then you know I have little experience with discipline and routine, so writing a novel was an interesting undertaking for me. It's not at all like writing songs. That is a process that somehow comes fairly naturally to me. I usually only spend about an hour on a song. The previous sentence is not entirely true. I usually spend about an hour actually writing the song, like putting the words on paper and setting it to music. I like songwriting because I can sit on an idea or a line or a chorus for a long time. And the same with the music. I can (what's the musical approximate for doodle?) play around on the guitar or piano or banjo or whatever for a long time and work up different riffs and chord progressions, without ever having to commit to a song. So in all reality, it takes me longer to write songs. I sat on this line - "He rode out of town on the most convincing horse around" - for like three or four years before I ever used it in a song (aptly titled "The Most Convincing Horse").

But herein lies the problem of novel writing. Even if songwriting involves keeping a few things in your head - a line, a chorus, a riff - those things should never add up to more than four minutes. Once you've hit four minutes, you should be able to put the song down. And in fact, if you have pieces of multiple songs in your head, you can mix and match - maybe riff A actually fits in song B better than in song A. Does this make songwriting sound easy? I might be exaggerating some - and I will agree that setting up the skeleton and fleshing out the body are two different processes - but the skeletal process is a pretty easy one. And if you're like me and long-range vision is not your forte than songwriting is the way to go. But writing a novel is entirely different. First off, for the most part you lose your interchangeable parts. You can change scenes around in within the novel or rearrange the timeline, but it would be strange to take a scene from one novel and place it in a different novel. Secondly, you have to keep the entire skeleton in your head - which runs a little longer than 4 minutes. Songs usually don't run more than 200 words, while novels (according to the perfect resource of Wikipedia) are classically any work over 40,000 words (although if you're working on one, it's apparently impossible to get your first one published if it's longer than 100,000 and you're best working under 80k. One hundred thousand words in typeset is 480 pages. Long.) And you're not working with music. This may seem like it would make a novel easier - and if you're tone deaf you can skip this part - but working within the confines of the rules of music should automatically give the writer rhythm - something that is vital to writing in any structure.

Am I boring you? I'm sure I'll bring this up again, so we can call this Part I or something. In the meantime, I will leave you with a dialogue between a writer and a neurosurgeon.

Surgeon: What do you do for a living?

Writer: I'm a writer.

Surgeon: What do you write?

Writer: Novels.

Surgeon: Oh! I've been thinking about writing a novel when I get some spare time!

Writer: That's so funny! I've been thinking about doing a little brain surgery in my spare time!

Obviously exaggerated. But I gotta give it to real writers. They work hard.