Imaginary Pirate Radio Broadcast from KDFS (Jesus Music)

In several of these recent days, I have taken to amusing (or annoying) some of my friends on the intenets by pretending to be the DJ of an imaginary pirate radio station.  As host of this make believe broadcast I play obscure and terrible music.  Why?  Because I love it. Like this gem from Mrs. Miller.  I know that it’s dreadful in just about every way (I can’t tell if its bettered or worsened by the fact that she seems to forget the lyrics part way through) – but she seems so joyful about it that I can’t help but love it.  

I thought I might share today’s broadcast with a wider audience.  You’re welcome (or, I’m sorry – whichever is more applicable).

Whether you intended it or not, you’re listening to KDFS (and that’s Okay, Doofus).  My name’s thatjeffcarter, and I’ll be your server today, serving up great big heapings of the weird, and terrible, and the disfigured beauty.

Kicking things off today is Negativland and “Christianity is Stupid.” Here in the studios of KDFS we like the heavily ironic.  We also like that we know what movie is being sampled for most of the soundbites in this song. 

And maybe we should be more modest about it, but we’re going to follow that with this oddity: “John Hagee Describes the Naked, Merciless Power of the Illuminati”

Hungry?  How about a servin’ of Methodist pie?

I wanted to play Skeeter Davis’ rendition of this next song, but I couldn’t find it on-line, so you’re stuck with the Cowboy Copas singing, "We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus and a Lot Less Rock-and-Roll."

Now before I sign off I want to play something that never fails to affect me.  It is still the odd and the strange, but it is also wonderful and beautiful.

In 1971 English composer Gavin Bryars was working with a friend on a film about people living in one of the rougher areas of London. In the course of the filming some of the people broke out into drunken songs, little bits of opera and sentimental ballads. But one singer wasn’t drunk. He sang a simple religious tune. His voice was ragged and frail and you could almost hear the freezing cold of the street. But, ultimately, it wasn’t used in the film.

Later, Bryars realized that the recorded snipped of this man singing could be looped and played in an endlessly repeating loop and that his singing was in tune with the piano. Bryars composed a simple accompaniment for the voice.

“I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.

“I was puzzled until I realized that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man's singing.”

A further recording of the piece was made in 1993 with Tom Waits singing along with the unnamed tramp. And, I can’t think of anyone better suited to join this unidentified homeless man in his song. Tom’s connection to the poorest and surliest, the straggliest, and sweatiest of humanity brings an earthy dignity to this man’s song, and a quiet trust and security. In spite of everything, in spite of trouble and calamity, in spite of death and loss, in spite of hurt and pain and ruin and loneliness, there is trust and there is hope. There is hope because “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.”

A Counting Song

Remember, remember,
let’s count and remember.

We’ve ONE sun in the sky

although there are more;
ONE moon is night’s eye
as we sleep on the floor.

TWO is the strangest prime
the rest are just odd;

and THREE is sublime-
it’s the fav’rite of God.

Remember, remember, 

let’s count and remember.

FIVE books, pillars, and wounds

in three religions;

to EIGHT we’re attuned
for breath, our oxygen.

THIRTEEN is unlucky,

though we don’t know why;
TWENTY-ONE can be

written as X X I.

Remember, remember, 

let’s count and remember.

We don’t like THIRTY-FOUR-

there’s nothing to say;
Ole FIFTY-FIVE’s score
was composed by Tom Waits.

EIGHTY-NINE comes before
ninety, but so what?
Now ONE-FORTY-FOUR
has made the final cut.

Remember, remember,
let’s count and remember.

The Scripture in Song

Torah

 

 and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. - Genesis 1: 2

 

Adam made love to his wife, Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. - Genesis 4:1

  

Caught up in the fable I watched the tower grow …
 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens – Genesis 11: 4

 The Prophets 



Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes and took him down to Gaza. - Judges 16: 21

  

Uriah hit the crapper, the crapper, dead… 
Moreover, your servant Uriah the Hittite is dead. -2 Samuel 11: 24


 

Go, post a lookout and have him report what he sees. -Isaiah 21: 6

 

My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge… -Hosea 4: 6

 Writings 



 I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. -Psalm 40: 1




 A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba. -Psalm 51:1



 
…and the Ancient of Days took his seat. His clothing was as white as snow – Daniel 7: 9

The Gospels 



 I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. -Luke 22:14

  

 While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him. – Luke 22:47

The Epistles

 

 Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit – Ephesians 5: 19





For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. - Romans 7: 19

 The Apocalypse

 

 She has become a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit.-Revelation 18:2





Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done. – Revelation 22: 12



Obviously, this list could be greatly expanded.  Do you have any suggestions?
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Rock and Roll Apocalypse (Tom Waits style)

On the radio someone is screamin’

about the imminent falling of the moon,
and outside these paper thin walls

the howlin’ wind is rippin’ trees to timber.
The coffee is hot but the night is dark
and I drink with a certain reluctance
because now I know that the time is short
before I stand condemned.

John Lennon’s ghost is marching

through the rain swept streets tonight
with a golden trumpet in his right hand

and the keys to a Mercedes in his left.
The herald of the new age of love
never quite knew what he believed.
He believed it all and not at all,
and then he was no more.

And as anyone anywhere can tell you,

the Rolling Stones will never die,
they’ve already been taken straight to heaven

along with the Lizard King Morrison.
Kurt Cobain was there to greet them
still holding that goddamned shotgun
“Welcome,” he said, “to eternity,
but I think this might be hell.”

It’s a marvelous night for a moondance
with the stars faillin’ out of the sky,
a fantabulous night for the apocalypse
‘neath the collapse of nations and kings.
The night is magic but when the spell’s been cast
only dreams of death will survive,
and no amount of chanting will repair
a circle that has been broken.
 

The ringing in your ears now
is the sounding of the trumpet of the Lord
and the sky is about to be cracked
like a boiled lobster’s shell.
The show is over, the end has come;
it’s time for our final reward.
The heavenly choir has sung the last encore.
It’s the rock and roll apocalypse.

Hunting in the Burned Out Heart of Modern Society

It's October, time for monster movies.  This is number three for the month.

In arrogance man knows nothing of what exists. There exists on this earth such as we dare not imagine; life as certain as our death, life that will prey on us as surely as we prey on this earth.

A big part of why I picked this movie was because of Tom Waits' role in it.  But, sadly, Tom’s scene was cut from the DVD (and Netflix) version of the film.  Sigh…

There was still plenty in the film to enjoy.  Like Edward James Olmos (recent star of Battlestar Galactica ) – actually too much of Olmos, maybe – Gregory Hines and, hey look, it’s Reginald VelJohnson not playing a cop for once – all  in a movie based on a novel by that UFO freak, Whitley Strieber.

It is, on its surface, a werewolf movie.  But again, it is not a werewolf movie.  There’s much more going on. As police detective Dewey Wilson investigates a set of particularly violent murders, he slowly realizes that the victims were killed by some kind of animal.  He suspects wolves, but his investigation leads him to Native American beliefs in the Wolfen… not wolves. 

The film is located within the decaying heart of New York City.  Urban decay is both the setting and the theme of the story.  The wolfen live in a burned out church – a symbol of the spiritual center of a community that is abandoned and empty, now invaded by dark and threatening forces.  No one cares about the hundreds of people who go missing every year, not when they’re winos and drug addicts living homeless in the city’s shadows. But when the dead are prominent and powerful socialites, that’s when the police are called.

The movie is about power and wealth and poverty and struggle. 

Wolfen is notable for its use of an in-camera effect to suggest the POV of the creatures – similar to that later used in the Predator movies. There are some breathtaking scenes filmed atop the Brooklyn Bridge.  But the scenes filmed in the Brox make the movie. Instead of werewolves on a foggy English moor, the wolfen live amongst the heaps of rubble. They roam the squalid and devastated areas.  They hunt in the burned out heart of modern society.

Tom Waits may have been cut from the movie, but here's the song he would have been singing ...

Beyond the Valley of Dry Bones

Imagine with me, see it in your mind, behind your eyes.

The field is stretched out below us, a wide and open plane between two mountains. We soar over the field in the early morning as the sun is burning orange and red in the east. Swooping low we see, gathered at either side of the valley, two opposing armies gathered for war. They are shouting at each other, screaming their taunts and cursing their foes. They roar like fierce and hungry lions in anticipation of the battle.

Suddenly a trumpet blast echoes across the field and the armies charge like rushing waves toward each other. The sound they make is that of an earthquake or thunder. It’s only seconds, but it feels like years before they collide in the center of the field with the sound of a hundred hammers on a hundred anvils, sword upon shield. The crash is catastrophic. Blood flies and horses shriek in terror.

We continue circling overhead, watching as the battle is fought below us. The forces ebb and flow like tidal waves, surging first this way and now that, back and forth until, finally, one army presses their advantage and the ranks of their enemies collapse beneath them. They turn and attempt to flee the battlefield but they are cut down as they run. In a few short hours this battle has been fought and thousands lie dead and dying under the sun. Already the stench of death hangs in the air. We are joined in our circling by vultures and ravens and crows, waiting for a feast of carrion.

Imagine it. See it in your mind, behind your eyes.

A few days pass and the corpses remain in the field, swollen and bloated by the expanding gasses trapped within them. Scavengers have been at work, pulling the flesh and muscle from the dead. The crows and ravens and vultures are joined by jackals and wolves, and hyenas. They snap and snarl at each other as they pick at the bones. Here one drags his meal away from others who would take it from him.

Imagine it.

Now weeks have passed, with days of sun and wind and rain. The flesh is gone

Months pass, now years. This field of the dead is silent. Nothing moves. Nothing breathes. All that remains are the scattered bones, desiccated by the sun blasting heat of the sun.

Imagine it. See it in your mind.

This was – and is - the sort of thing celebrated by victorious kings. They laugh when they see the bodies of their enemies scattered across the field of battle, and they celebrate. King Sennacherib of Assyria, for example wrote this after a battle with his enemies:

I cut them down and defeated them. I cut their throats, and I cut off their precious lives like a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made their gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding plunged into the streams of their blood as (into) a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings the wicked and evil low, were spattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors I filled the plane like grass.

-from the Annals of Sennacherib

Victorious kings look out over the field of bones and bodies and they laughed, but the defeated can neither weep nor mourn for they are no more.

What does it matter, a dream of love

Or a dream of lies

we’re all going to be the same place when we die

Your spirit don’t leave knowing

your face or your name

and the wind through your bones

Is all that remains

And we’re all going to be

just dirt in the ground.

-“Dirt in the Ground” -Tom Waits

It doesn’t sound like scripture. But then again, maybe it does. Consider the words of Qoheleth, the Teacher in the book of Ecclesiastes:

So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.

This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all.”

-Ecclesiastes 9: 1 – 2a, 3a

Now imagine again, the prophet Ezekiel is crushed by the heavy hand of God upon him, and then lifted up through the air in a visionary experience and carried out to that battlefield between the mountains – that valley that is more than just the valley of the shadow of death. He’s taken into that valley of death itself.

Now walk with the prophet through this desolate and lonely place. He is pushed and prodded, forced to walk up and down among the bones. He sees how many of them there are. And he sees that they are so very dry. He stumbles now, and looses his footing. He falls forward as the bones underfoot roll and scatter. An empty socketed skull lolls to rest just in front of him. Its eyeless gaze stares at him in silence.

For seven years he’d had only one message – Doom, death and destruction! Doom, death, and destruction! And while he understood that message better than those who heard him (or those who wouldn’t hear him…) I think the reality of that message became clear for him in this experience. He was compelled to walk among the scattered bones of those he said would die. And I don’t want to imagine what that might have felt like for the prophet.

And then a voice from somewhere, nowhere, everywhere speaks to him. “Son of Man, can these dry bones live?”

The prophet searches the field but sees nothing but the scattered dry bones and he answers, “You know, Lord. You know.”

Now this isn’t much of an answer. This is not the confident affirmation of faith that we might have expected. We might have expected the prophet to speak boldly, without pause and without doubt, “Yes, of course, God! With you all things are possible!” Instead, Ezekiel’s diplomatic non-answer betrays something of the prophet’s mind.

He sees the bones. He understands what they mean. This valley of bones is the people of Israel and they are dead. They are cut down and destroyed. They are bereft of life. They breathe no more. There is no hope.

“Son of man, can these dry bones live?”

Along a river of flesh

Can these dry bones live?

Ask king or a beggar

and the answer they’ll give

is we’re all going to be

yea, yeah

we’re all going to be

just dirt in the ground.

“Dirt in the Ground” – Tom Waits

“Son of man, can these dry bones live?”

The prophet sighs “You know, Lord. You know.”

The voice tells him to prophecy over the bones, to speak the word of the Lord. And Ezekiel follows these instructions. He speaks the word of Yahweh over the bones and then he hears a noise – a rattling noise as the bones begin to move. They shake and stir and then begin flying together, reconnecting each one to the proper body, bone upon bone and joint upon socket.

Then the muscles and sinews begin to form, knitting themselves over the bones. And finally flesh appears and covers the bodies. The decomposition of these corpses is reversing itself. But as astounding and amazing as this is, they are still lifeless bodies. They are still corpses. Can these dry bones live?

The voice speaks to the prophet again, instructing him now to prophecy to the wind – to the breath –interchangeable words in the Hebrew language. And again, Ezekiel does as he is instructed. He speaks to the four winds, the north and south and east and west wind which act as God’s messengers, and the wind begin to blow across the plane. The breath of God begins to blow across the plane.

Remembering that story of creation from the book of Genesis, the Man was formed in a dry and desolate place, sculpted from the dry red clay of the ground. But there was no life in the Man until God breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.

Those dead and desiccated bones now stood as the living, breathing army of God – an army of life. “This is what I’m going to do,” the Lord tells Ezekiel. “I’m going to bring you up out of your graves.” He promises the restoration of his people. But in giving this vivid visionary experience to the prophet, the Lord is showing something of his greater, larger plan.

It is, as he told the prophet, the promise of restoration. Like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ezekiel described the return of the people of Israel from their captivity in Babylon. But this valley of dry bones resurrection is the beginning of new idea.

In the Old Testament world, dead was dead. There wasn’t much of a concept of an afterlife, as we know it. There wasn’t a concept of a reward in heaven or punishment in hell. A good life was its own reward and dead was dead. But Ezekiel is given a small glimpse of something more.

It’s curious that this vivid picture of a resurrection isn’t quoted in the New Testament where resurrection becomes a central idea, but there is a slight echo of Ezekiel’s experience in the valley of dry bones. Matthew’s gospel tells us that at the moment Jesus died on that cross outside the city of Jerusalem, there was a shaking and a rattling and the graves of many righteous men were opened, and that these dead men were seen walking through the city. They were resurrected in Jesus’ death.

We are currently in the season of Lent, a time when Christians the world over prepare themselves for the coming events of Holy Week and for Resurrection Sunday. As we move with Jesus towards the city of Jerusalem and towards the crucifixion and the resurrection, I suggest that we carry this question with us.

“Son of man, can these dry bones live?”

Surpised by the presence of God - More Theology with Tom Waits

A couple of weeks ago I spoke at the Truth Voice 2010 conference in Ohio at the invitation of my good friend Virgil V.  The title of my presentation was Tom Waits: Singing for the Least of These.  I thought it went over fairly well - no one threw anything at me, no one got up from their seats and ran for the door even though I subjected them to my own singing of a couple of Tom's songs. 

Later Virgil told me that one attendee had complained to him about my talk on the ground that he he didn't believe Waits to be a Christian, so what relevance did all of that have to us anyway?  Either he missed the point or I wasn't as clear as I though I had been - or both.  Oh well.

In recent years I have begun to be surprised by the presence of God in unlikely places.  (Hence the title on my blog: Looking for God Everywhere...)  And I have been enjoying the surprise.  He's there, all around, waving at us, grinning and smirking at his own cleverness.  "Ha!" he laughs. "You found me." 

And despite my complainer's complaints (who, by the way, never complained to me directly....) I'm not the only one who has been amused by the surprising presence of God in the music and lyrics of Tom Waits.   Benjamin Myers - an Australian scholar teaching systematic theology - wrote a blog not quite 3 years ago on the same theme:  Tom Waits: theologian of the dysangelion .

I hadn't read his blog before putting my presentation together - but it is interesting to see where we overlapped.  I am encouraged.  At least I know that I'm not out in left field by myself.

Tom Waits: Singing for the Least of These - My TruthVoice Presentation

The music of Tom Waits is definitely an acquired taste. He won’t be appreciated by everyone. He is eccentric. His music is hard to define, difficult to pigeon hole. It’s not quite rock, not folk, not country. It’s jazz, or maybe it isn’t. It’s almost a burlesque when it’s not a waltz or a tango. It’s a “Cemetery Polka” . It’s a gypsy song with a gospel choir at the state fair or a field holler sung by a prison gang along a Texas highway. Alongside traditional instruments like the guitar, piano, and drums you’re likely to hear accordions, horns, clanking chains, wheezing calliopes, and hurdy-gurdies. Tom Waits doesn’t easily fit into any one category.

And that voice… He will never be described as a “good” singer. He would never have made it as an “American Idol” contestant. No. He sounds as if his voice has been pickled in brine for six month, then taken out and beaten with a meat tenderizer before being run over by the car. I’d like to be able to sing like him, but I don’t want to gargle with razor blades, and whisky and shards of broken glass.

But it’s amazing what he can do with that voice. I am continually surprised by the range of emotions that he can conjure through those vocal cords. He can growl and he can croon. He can in one track shout and scream and howl like the dogs of war and in the very next deliver such a tender and affectionate ballad as to make heaven weep - and both with that same gravel throated voice.

“Half of me” he says of himself, “I feel like a jackhammer. I love to holler and stomp my feet and throw rocks. But there’s another side of me that’s like an old man in the corner that’s had too much wine. I’m probably too sentimental for my own good sometimes.”

Though he has never developed a huge following, you are probably more aware of him than you realize.  In addition to his career as a musician, Tom Waits has also appeared in a number of movies, including a couple of my favorites: Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Francis Ford Coppola , (he played the lunatic, Renfield) and Mystery Men alongside Ben Stiller and William H. Macy (He played Dr. Heller – an inventor specializing in non-lethal weapons like the “Blame Thrower” and “the Canned Tornado.” He has a role in the recent film, The Book of Eli. You probably know the Rod Stewart song Downtown Train – Tom Waits wrote that, not Stewart.

And here is the portion of my talk where I would introduce the biographical information of my subject. I would tell you that Tom Waits was born on such and such a date in this or that city in that state. But those kind of details seem – at the least – irrelevant to the person, or rather, the persona under discussion . Instead I’ll relate a few of the things he’s shared about his life, and I’ll let you determine how factual, or true (and the two are not always the same) they might be.

“My father was an exhaust manifold and my mother was a tree.”
“I was born in the backseat of a Yellow Cab in a hospital loading zone and with the meter still running. I emerged needing a shave and shouted, ‘Times Square and step on it!’”
“I live at Bedlam and Squalor. It’s that way.” (point both directions)
“I didn’t just marry a beautiful woman. I married a record collection.”

“Let me fall out the window
with confetti in my hair,
deal out jacks or better
on a blanket by the stairs,
I’ll tell you all my secrets
but I lie about my past.
So send me off to bed forever more."
(Tango 'til They're Sore)

Tom Waits’ music is populated by all manner of unsavory characters: Tramps, vagabonds, hookers, criminals, strippers, arsonists, sewer-dwelling drunks, dwarves, and circus freaks. He sings of sailors on shore leave, and farmers staring out over their fields. His songs are about mechanics, run-down middle aged business men, and lonely housewives with ugly dogs. He sings of soldiers, home from the war and widowed soldier’s brides. While the rest of the entertainment industry may be celebrating the famous, the rich and the well dressed parading down the red-carpet, Tom Waits is singing of the poor and humble and the unknown. Tom Waits sings for the very least of these… and in doing so, I believe, he sings for God.

“…I tell you the truth, whatever you have done for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25: 40

These then – the mentally ill, the tired, and the broken-down, the many varied and strange characters who inhabit his songs – these are the least of these, my brothers, the ones Jesus spoke about, and the ones Jesus came to serve. Jesus came, not for the healthy and wealthy, but for the sick and the poor. He left the ninety and nine who were safe and secure and went searching for that one that had wandered away and was lost.

He came for the woman in Tom Waits’ song: A Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis .

She’s the reason for the season, she and others like her who need the love and comfort that the savior of men offers. He came for broken, hopeless people on the precipice of despair. He came for those who look around at the world and who are afraid that maybe this is all there is.

DIRT IN THE GROUND

What does it matter, a dream of love
Or a dream of lies
we’re all going to be the same place when we die
Your spirit don’t leave knowing
your face or your name
and the wind through your bones
Is all that remains
And we’re all going to be
just dirt in the ground.

It doesn’t sound like scripture. But then again, maybe it does.  The last verse of that song says:

Now Cain slew Abel
He killed him with a stone
the sky cracked open
and the thunder groaned
along a river of flesh
can these dry bones live?
Ask a king or a beggar
and the answer they’ll give
is we’re all going to be
yea, yea
we’re all going to be just
dirt in the ground.

Tom could just as well be singing the words of Qoheleth, the Teacher:
“So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God’s hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. All share a common destiny – the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not.


This is the evil in everything that happens under the sun: The same destiny overtakes all.” Ecclesiastes 9: 1 – 2a, 3a

This is the evil in everything under the sun: the same destiny overtakes us all. Yeah, yeah. We’re all going to be just dirt in the ground. Can these dry bones live? Only you know, God, but God, I hope so. It seems that even though Tom sings a hopeless Ecclesiastes kind of song, even he believes that there is a glimmer of hope. Though often gloomy and on the verge of despair, his songs retain a hope, a light, a premonition that the future won’t be as bleak as the present may be.

A LITTLE RAIN

The Ice Man’s mule is parked outside the bar
where a man with missing fingers plays a strange guitar
and the German dwarf dances with the butcher’s son.
And a little rain never hurt no one.
And a little rain never hurt no one.

They’re dancing on the roof and the ceiling’s coming down
I sleep with my shovel and my leather gloves
A little trouble makes it worth the going
and a little rain never hurt no one.


The world is round and I’ll go around
you must risk something that matters
my hands are strong, I’ll take any man here
If it’s worth the going it’s worth the ride

She was fifteen years old
and she’d never seen the ocean.
She climbed into a van with a vagabond
and the last thing she said
was, “I love you ma.”
And a little rain never hurt on one.
And a little rain never hurt no one.

This is not the bright and sunshiny Joel Osteen –Your-Best-Life-Now-smile-all-the-way-to-the-bank kind of religion. It’s hard and it’s cold. It’s dirty from soot and it’s rough around the edges. It has calloused hands and dirt under its nails. But it is not loveless and it is not hopeless.

The first several times I listened to this song, I thought that the girl had been abducted or murdered by the vagabond. But I realized later that this isn’t a song of despair. This loss, her leaving her family was a “little rain” but not a hurt. She was leaving to find her dream. The family left behind is dancing and enjoying life – even with the sadness of her going away. There is love and there is hope. There are dreams worth chasing, and you must risk something that matters.

HOLD ON

Hold On is a love song, but not a warm fuzzy, romantic comedy kind of love. It’s not a pop song kind of love. It’s an irascible love. It’s a love that holds on through tough times, a love that perseveres, a love that won’t let go of the beloved - won’t let go of us – even when we’ve run away and we’ve cursed the lover. It’s a love for all the prodigal sons and daughters sleeping in the gutters and alleyways.

This is the kind of love found in the music of Tom Waits and in the gospels. And let’s face it; this is an unnatural kind of love. It’s natural to give up on love. It’s natural to let go. We strive to protect ourselves from hurt and pain. And humans, by nature, push away those who hurt and disappoint them.

But God’s love isn’t a natural love , and God does not give up or push away those who hurt and disappoint him. Instead, he continues to call us home.

COME ON UP TO THE HOUSE

Come on up to the house. Come back home all you runaway sons and daughters, the father still loves you. Come back home harlot brides, the husband still welcomes you. In my Father’s house there are many rooms. There’s one for each of us.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house there are many places to live in… " John 14: 1 – 2

And this isn’t just a pie in the sky some day in the great by and by eternal hope. The song calls us to “come on up to the house.” It’s a song and it’s an invitation for the right here and the right now. Come on up to the house, come into the kingdom. Yes, you’ve got trouble. And yes, I know you’ve got worries. But come on up to the house and we’ll get through them together. We’ll fellowship with each other. We’ll share our troubles and we’ll pool our resources – you and me and all the broken people of the world. This is a song of the Church – or the church as it should be.

The Church should be a haven (and a heaven) for the broken. The Church should be a refuge for the refugee and a place of comfort for the depressed and the grieving. Come on up to the house.

But (and there always seems to be a “butt” getting in the way…) sometimes it seems that the church has become more of a museum for the saints than a hospital for the sick. And the Jesus described in the Church seems to be a CHOCOLATE JESUS. 

He’s sweet and delicious. We receive him as a gift in an Easter basket full of fake plastic grass and plastic eggs. This chocolate Jesus is full of empty calories and gives us a sugar rush of frenzied energy – but he’s nothing more than a hollow shell of savior. This Jesus doesn’t do anything for us. He can’t do anything except make us fat. The Jesus of the gospels is not this sort of Jesus. And the Jesus we find in the music of Tom Waits is not this kind of Jesus. It’s a Jesus that many churches wouldn’t even recognize.

The Jesus of the gospels and of Tom Wait’s music wouldn’t be recognized in many of our churches today. He came without a name, without an entourage, without flash, and without pomp or circumstances.

“He had no form or charm to attract us, no beauty to win our hearts; he was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom, as it were, we averted our eyes.” Isaiah 53: 2- 3

He came to us without anything. He came naked into the world like us. He lived in poor and humble circumstances. He held no position, and owned no property. "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Luke 9:58

Sometimes I think we miss the vagabond Jesus, the son of man who didn’t even have a place to lay his head. Our churches miss the Jesus who was run out of town the time before, this Jesus who was arrested and executed as a criminal. This Jesus who, though he was fully and truly God, put aside his divinity to be one of us. He came to be one who needed a cup of cold water.

He came to bring comfort to those who were afraid. And there is plenty to fear in the world. Reports of natural disasters as well as human designed catastrophes assault us in the news. We cannot predict the future. And we fear the uncertainty. Waits sings of these eschatological and apocalyptic style fears.

Well, maybe “sings” is the wrong word. That voice – choked and strangled and mangled almost beyond recognition – tears a hole in the speakers and rips through the air riding on a percussive locomotive, not a steam engine, but an engine from hell powered by the screams and shrieks of the damned.

EARTH DIED SCREAMING

There was thunder, there was lightning
then the stars went out
and the moon fell from the sky
It rained mackerel, it rained trout
and the great day of wrath has come
and here’s mud in your big red eye
the poker’s in the fire
and the locusts take to the sky
and the earth died screaming
while I lay dreaming, dreaming of you.

It’s an ecological nightmare. It’s death, and ruin, and the collapse of human civilization.

It’s all the things we cannot control, cannot explain, and cannot contain. It’s forest fires and oil spills. It’s bomb threats at the high school and handguns on the playground. It’s missing children and it’s a lonely cancer ward. War in Iraq, War in Afghanistan, wars and rumors of wars, AIDs, Swine Flu, Floods and Earthquakes. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse have traded in their horses for Ford Mustangs and their engines are roaring at full throttle across hot desert highways.

There are “wars and rumors of wars” and people are afraid. The violence in “those countries over there” spills out and engulfs the world a seemingly endless conflagration. Our leaders appear unable to stop it. Instead, they often seem to be instigating and welcoming these conflicts. It’s not often that Tom sings politics – but the song OUT ON THE ROAD TO PEACE he wrestles with the complexities of the strife in the Middle East only to conclude that “maybe God himself is lost and needs help, out on the road to peace.”

This is, of course, a suggestion that will raise the hackles of many Christians. God does not need our help. And God, most assuredly, is not lost. This idea that God is lost and that God needs help is similar to another of Waits’ songs: GOD’S AWAY ON BUSINESS .

As a result of his concentration on the dark and bleak and all things “sinful”, many have accused Waits music of being godless. The Irish magazine Hot Press described his 2002 album, Blood Money, as a “Jesusless” album. In fact an interviewer once asked Tom about the “godlessness” of his songs.

Waits: “Godless? Really? Oh!”
Interviewer: “Wouldn’t you say?”
Waits: “I don’t know about that.”
Interviewer: “The absence of God.”
Waits: “I don’t know about that. Do you think so?”
Interviewer: “Well some of the songs. Well one explicitly “God’s Away On Business.”
Waits: “Oh, okay. Well he’s away. He’s not gone. He’s just away. You have to understand He was on business. A guy like Him has got to be busy, looking after a lot of things.”

Where was God? Why didn’t God…? These theodicean questions are often found in Tom’s music. It’s a question as old as humans themselves, asked in every age in every language everywhere. Why do we suffer? Why do we hurt? If God is good and if God is kind then why did my child die? Why did the tornado strike? Why?

GEORGIA LEE

Where was God on 9-11? Where was God during hurricane Katrina? Where was God during her miscarriage? Where was God during his parents divorce? Why do terrible things happen? Why do terrible things happen, even to people who love and fear and worship God? I don’t know. I don’t have any answer other than silence. Job asked these questions and he didn’t really get an answer. Jeremiah asked these questions and he didn’t get an answer. Tom Waits asks them too. I don’t think he expects to be the one to get an answer but it’s good to ask the question – it’s important to ask the questions anyway even if it seems that there is only silence as a response.

And in that silence I hear one last voice from one of the least of these… That last voice is the voice of an unidentified homeless man.

In 1971 English composer Gavin Bryars was working with a friend on a film about people living in one of the rougher areas of London. In the course of the filming some of the people broke out into drunken songs, little bits of opera and sentimental ballads. But one singer wasn’t drunk. He sang a simple religious tune. His voice was ragged and frail and you could almost hear the freezing cold of the street. But, ultimately, it wasn’t used in the film.

Later, Bryars realized that the recorded snipped of this man singing could be looped and played in an endlessly repeating loop and that his singing was in tune with the piano. Bryars composed a simple accompaniment for the voice.

I took the tape loop to Leicester, where I was working in the Fine Art Department, and copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping.

I was puzzled until I realized that the tape was still playing and that they had been overcome by the old man's singing

A further recording of the piece was made in 1993 with Tom Waits singing along with the unnamed tramp. And, I can’t think of anyone better suited to join this unidentified homeless man in his song. Tom’s connection to the poorest and surliest, the straggliest, and sweatiest of humanity brings an earthy dignity to this mans song, and a quiet trust and security. In spite of everything, in spite of trouble and calamity, in spite of death and loss, in spite of hurt and pain and ruin and loneliness, there is trust and there is hope. There is hope because “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet.”

Tom might not be a great singer but I believe he’s singing for the least of these and that he is singing the song of the church, and whether he knows it or not, he’s singing for God.

Frank's Wild Years

This painting of mine - painted earlier this year - makes me think of Frank.  Frank first showed up in the song Franks's Wild Years on the Tom Waits album Swordfishtrombones (Island Records, 1983).  He appeared again later in more of Waits' work. 

Frank's Wild Years isn't one of the songs that I'll be talking about this weekend when I give my presentation - Tom Waits: Singing for the Least of These... but it's a song that I really like.  It's a dark song.  It's sad and cruel.  But it's funny too. 

Well Frank settled down in the Valley
and he hung his wild years
on a nail that he drove through
his wife's forehead.
He sold used office furniture
out there on San Fernando Road
and assumed a $30,000 loan
at 15 _ % and put a down payment
on a little two bedroom place.
His wife was a spent piece of used jet trash,
made good bloody marys,
kept her mouth shut most of the time,
had a little Chihuahua named Carlos
that had some kind of skin disease
and was totally blind. They had a thoroughly modern kitchen
self-cleaning oven (the whole bit).
Frank drove a little sedan.
They were so happy.

One night Frank was on his way home
from work, stopped at the liquor store,
picked up a couple Mickey's Big Mouths,
drank 'em in the car on his way
to the Shell station, he got a gallon of
gas in a can, drove home, doused
everything in the house, torched it,
parked across the street, laughing
watching it burn, all Halloween
orange and chimney red then
Frank put on a top forty station
got on the Hollywood Freeway
headed North.

Never could stand that dog.

(as always, click the picture to see it full sized. that is all.)

Tom Waits: Singing for the Least of These - a teaser

As I have mentioned, I am preparing a presentation for next weekend. I'll be one of the speakers at Truth Voice 2010 - a theology conference in Dayton, Ohio.  I was invited to speak last year, and now again this year, and I really am quite pleased to have been invited. I still stand in awe of the other presenters.  I've learned quite a bit from their writings and essays and books and what not.  I'm not always convinced that I should be standing with them.


I've nearly finished writing out my presentation.  There are a few places that need some elaboration, and I need to finish up the slide show that will accompany my speech. And I need to practice some of the songs.  Yep. I'm going to bring my guitar and play a few songs as part of my presentation.

Tom Waits: Singing for the Least of These...

I'm exploring some of the spiritual and theological issues in the music and lyrics of Tom Waits - that incorrigible dreamer and inveterate realist.  I'm going to talk about how his music reflects a very human reality and a deep abiding hope for the presence of God. And I'm going to sing.
You can't "talk" about music.  You gotta' sing it.



This isn't one of the songs that I'll be discussing, but it's one of my favorite.  Enjoy.