there has been much talk of spiritual maturity in my community as of recent; of the need to press forward in the way we live our lives to enter into a place where God can begin to use us as we were designed.  since the challenge was first put before us as a church by our pastoral leadership, i have been contemplating a lot what exactly it is that prevents us from growing spiritually.  He began to reveal to me a lot during the Anchor’s month-long monastery time, and it has made me reevaluate many of my own attitudes to my own life and the situation we all find ourselves in: how to live out the Great Commission.

it has become more and more apparent to me that there is a concrete difference between our salvation and the christian life, a separation we too often fail to realize.  when we cannot see these two central concepts of faith for what they really are, we find ourselves in a dangerous cycle of spiritual immaturity.  much of this hinges on the attitudes of our society that tell us we are the most important thing in our lives, that we have to do what we can to elevate ourselves to where we (they?) want us to be.  and so we allow this mentality to permeate our relationship with God, presenting him with a long list of requests and questions that we expect to be answered in the exact way we deem appropriate.  how much do we limit God in this!  while this is indeed part and parcel of what our relationship to God entails, we stop there.  our prayers usually boil down to “what can i get from God?”, rather than “what can i do for God?”  yes, it is true we need the Lord to reveal our weakness and brokenness, but there is so much more to experience beyond the (albeit painful) deconstruction of our selfish egos.  it was pointed out to me at our men’s retreat a few months ago that we generally stop at confession (recognition of sin) and never partake in penance (movement away from sin).

when we only press for the need to be broken before God time and time again, we breed self-pity, not self-denial.  And so we come to a place of addiction to the “experience” of salvation, an experiential faith that is removed from the necessity of pursuing a WAY of living that is pleasing before the Lord.  we think coming before God to be broken down and healed of our hurt is a relationship.  But it’s not!  how much can we know about the character of God if we only seek healing (and by extension, self-preservation) in our lives?  Where is our acknowledgment of God the Spirit in this?  where is our growth?

growth comes through sacrifice.

the Lord has been revealing to me the lifestyle we are called to is in and of itself a sacrifice.  oftentimes when we think of “sacrifice”, we see it as a way for us to prove ourselves to God, to validate our intentions.  As if He cannot already read our hearts!  We agree to be “transparent” before Him, as if He doesn’t already know our thoughts and see our actions.  we must move away from this train of thought.  we have to allow God His omniscience again, and rethink what a relationship looks like with Him considering the entirety of His being.

the sacrifices we make (i.e. our very lives) are not to prove to God that we’re dedicated.  they aren’t the thing that proves some other aspect of our relationship, the sacrifice in and of itself IS the intention: to have an ACTIONARY response to God’s love.  we become transparent before Him for own own benefit, that we might see OURSELVES as naked before Him, and see ourselves through His eyes (see Kierkegaard, first chapter of The Sickness Unto Death).  Once we grasp the unending love He has for us, we begin to live in a way that honours that love.  We seek to please Him in our thoughts and deeds, and we seek to find Him in every waking moment.  life stops being about us and what we can get out of it, life becomes about what we can give to God.

i’m in the process of reading chuck klosterman’s new book eating the dinosaur, and there are two separate essays included that made me think about this idea of complete moral conviction and how it can very easily translate to insanity in contemporary american society. The first essay looks at the standpoint of ralph nader (in comparison to that of werner herzog and, um, rivers cuomo), and the second talks about ted kazynski (the unabomber). it just struck me how the unifying element of these two (almost typed whackjobs) is they’re undying singular dedication to their convictions. Nader has been so focused on his message for the past forty or fifty years that he is completely unironic in his worldview, and has never run contrary to any of his personal beliefs. this eplains why the man has NEVER been in a relationship. similarly, ted kazynski believed so wholeheartedly in his manifesto about the poisoning of our species by technology that he was willing to kill people in order to perpetuate his ideas.

this reminded me of a conversation we had about a year ago after watching no country for old men, specifically about the character of anton chigurh. at first, the general sentiment was that chigurh was a sociopath, and clinically insane. but, perhaps from having read the book and gaining a little extra insight into the three main characters, it slowly dawned on me that perhaps chigurh is actually the only sane person in the story. this, of course, was met with guffaws. but here’s how i see it: the three central men in this book/film exist on some sort of moral spectrum: anton a “the bad guy”, the sheriff portrays “the good guy”, and josh brolin is caught somewhere in the middle. i mean, he’s not an evil man, but he DOES steal $2 million and place his wife in jeopardy for it. but one thing the book further expounds on is the moral fiber of the sheriff, how he battles with a specific scenario from his youth in the war where he denied his convictions for his own self preservation, and was consequently rewarded for it. sheriff bell lives with the weight of this irony for the rest of his life, never being able to reconcile what he had done, and in way, it dictates the path he takes in his adult life as a reaction to this guilt. anton chigurh lives with ZERO ambiguity in his life. this is perfectly illustrated in his final scene with llewelyn’s widow, as he dialogues with her about why he HAS to kill her; for no other reason than he said he would. this is a man who has CLEARLY defined his moral stance, and will not err from it, because he KNOWS that to deviate even slightly, as the sheriff had done, is to fail. it makes him a hypocrite.

similarly, the antihero rorschach in the graphic novel watchmen almost perfectly typifies this single-minded allegiance to his convictions. of all the people in that novel, he is the ONLY one who does not quaver from what he believes, and is seen as an almost one-dimensional character because of it. it’s amusing that we see static personalities as “less” than ones who exist on some perennial rollercoaster of identity, well illustrated by the other protagonists in watchmen, especially nite owl and dr.manhattan, upon both of whom the entire plot revolves on their change in perspective. rorschach is the all-encompassing personification of his own belief structure, to the point where he would rather become a martyr for the truth than allow a lie to keep the peace. this seems insane.

so, in our conversation post no country, i made the parallel comparison between these two characters. when my friend reiterated that chigurh was indeed insane,possibly because he went around shooting people in the head with a cattle punch, i asked him to define the term. we came to the conclusion that insanity is measured by a person’s deviation from what society deems as “normal”. but this precludes the idea that SOCIETY IS NORMAL. which, of course, is the message we are barraged with from day one. this is why we go to school, o to college, get a job, listen to certain types of music, eat at certain restaurants, blog on the internet, whatever. we seek out what the rest of the world tells us is NORMAL. but what if maybe that isn’t true? what if society is an insane institution? what if what we are REALLY asked to do from the moment we are born is to compromise our very essence, because mankind has sought to claim and establish our OWN standards of morality?

now, please don’t misread me. i am NOT advocating shooting people with cowpunches or wearing masks and destroying german shepherds. i’m not saying it’s alright to mail bombs to people or run for president at the expense of really allowing progress to take place. what i’m attempting to discuss here is not the belief structure itself, but the WAY in which we go about upholding that structure in every aspect of our lives. i’m talking about the poison of compromise. when we ascribe to a specific set of ideals, we are taking on those parameters as a way in which we intend to live our lives. and unfortunately, far too often we allow ourselves to be swayed by something that deviates from those ideals. it’s a our search for value that leads to a misappropriation of the desire for normalcy. to put it another way, we’d rather be “cool” than “right”. perhaps this is a massive oversimplification, but i think it still rings true. and, personally, it stings a little to type it.

paul spoke his friends in rome about this very same thing: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. to accept the message of christ is to reject the standards the world has set before us, and in essence embrace our “insanity”. jesus himself told his disciples (and by extension, us) that, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.the world should hate us for our dementia! so why are we so desperate to impress her?

this is all i can write for now. i might expand it more later, but i hope you find this intriguing. and i apologize of any of these references are alien to you. go watch no country for old men and watchmen, as they’re great films. G-D bless, and safe travels.

whew. okay. let’s do this.
this was a GREAT year for music, and i STILL insist that now is the best time in music’s long lifespan. perhaps 2009 was the year i began to embrace “pop” music while still retaining a love for challenging sounds. there were wonderful offerings from across the spectrum, from metal to dance to introspective folk to noise. i’ve also been looking back at the past decade through my own musical lens, and it’s been really fun to track the process of my personal tastes. i might post that later on. so here goes:

1. SUNN O)))-monoliths and dimensions.
duh. it’s getting somewhat ridiculous that these guys have topped my year-end lists for the past four years or so. but this album is most likely their best to date. 2005’s black one was a meditation on the essence of black metal, and sonically SUNN O))) matched the cold introspective tones that genre is notorious for. monoliths and dimensions, however feels so OPEN, right from the very first note of “aghartha”, my personal favorite track. it’s a warm, extroverted record, with each song pulling some other influence atop the waves and waves of guitar, thicker than a rhinoceros hide. maximum volume yields maximum results.
LISTEN:
SUNN O)))-Aghartha

2. memory tapes-seek magic
this was the record i felt i needed to show to EVERYONE. so i’m sorry if i beat you over the head with this. but there is something in the way this record is written and how the sounds sound that just KILLS me. this fella dayve hawk was in a band called hail social a few years back, and now he makes bedroom dance pop that has kind of a hazy sheen over the synths and guitars. and his rhythms are genius. he samples sneakers on a basketball court right in the first song. there are so many moments of pure ecstasy on this record that it’s hard to pick a favorite, but i find myself continually coming back to “bicycle” and “graphics”. mr. hawk also regularly hands out songs he’s been working on/remixing on his website.
LISTEN:
memory tapes-graphics

3. mount eerie-wind’s poem and dawn
phil elverum is a machine. a machine that churns out endless swaths of gorgeous, introspective avant folk. this year alone he added three more albums to his already impressive discography, first as the microphones, and then his moniker transition to mount eerie. wind’s poem is a maturation of elverum’s current obsession with black metal, but it’s the way that he owns the sounds that make this album so solid. it wanders between white washes of stinging guitars to rivers of slow organ meandering through a forest, to gently plucked acoustic notes strung together on blades of grass. dawn is a collection of stripped down songs, some of which surfaced on other records, that were recorded in a cabin in the middle of nowhere norway. the CD comes embedded in a beautiful book containing photographs, drawings, and a journal that documents his months of solitude that spawned these songs. what i love so much about elerum is how his voice carries an incredible amount of honestly, that each word is imbued with the heaviness of a dylan thomas poem.
LISTEN:
mount eerie-wind’s dark poem (acoustic)

4. volcano choir-unmap
let me go ahead and admit that i only own four bon iver songs, and i didn’t even like it that much at first. but over the past year those four songs have really grown on me, so when i read over the summer that justin vernon was collaborating with collection of colonies of bees (a band i had stumbled across five years ago, and quite liked), my interest was piqued. then i heard “island, IS”. whew. in the first three seconds i knew this was something to really pay attention to. the album sounds exactly as you would anticipate the meeting of a woodsy girly voiced folkster and a minimalist-worshipping electroacoustic post-rock outfit. vernon’s voice becomes an instrument among instruments on this record in a more fully realized fashion than he has been capable of in his solo work, and the COCOB gentlemen show tremendous maturity in their restraint and appropriateness of sound. but it is in the choppy grooves of “island, IS” that their collaboration works best. this record really exemplifies how “weird” and “accessible” are slowly eeking towards each other as comfortable bedfellows in the coming decade.
LISTEN:
volcano choir-island,IS

5. fuck buttons-tarot sport
speaking of the weird/accessible dynamic… well, there isn’t too much to say here except this record is great. it was funny reading reviews of tarot sport arguing that it’s either more accessible or farther out than their previous album street horrrsing. i don’t know about that too much, but everything about this record is HUGE. they are epic in the way that i loved so many post-rock bands in the beginning of the decade: the constant build, the layer-upon-layer approach that reaches a climactic wall of beautiful noise. the only [potential] downside is the absence of vocals, which i thought were such an interesting element to the first record. but a minor aside to an otherwise fantastic chunk of blissed-out dancy cacophany.
LISTEN:
fuck buttons-surf solar

6. kylesa-static tensions and baroness-the blue record
okay, i kind of cheated here, but i JUST got the baroness album, and i’m still processing it all. these two records go hand-in-hand in my heart for their impressions of where heavy metal (of the southern-fried variety in particular) are heading. what i love about but these albums is the sense of power, and in that, it feels victorious in some way. like how the old D&D metal bands of yore made you feel like a warrior, kylesa and baroness make me feel like some sort of modern day viking, if norway was a county in rural georgia, and everyone had sweet facial hair. long live the almighty riff.
LISTEN:
kylesa-said and done
baroness-jake leg

7. animal collective-merriweather post pavillion and fall be kind
do i even need to write anything here? as soon as we heard it, we all knew it would be on our year-end lists. i guess the only thing i can say is that MPP hits me like a sigur ros album now, in that i feel like i’ve exhausted it and i don’t want to listen to it anymore, but as soon as i hear it, AC start feeding me juicy sonic morsels i didn’t notice the previous 654,000 times i listened to this album. and fall be kind is some sort of humble victory lap wrapped in gleeful strangeness.
LISTEN:
animal collective-what would i want? sky

8. the mountain goats-the life of the world to come
john darnielle means a lot to me. or rather, his music does. from the handful of times that i’ve seen him perform, to the musings on his blog, i am enraptured by him as a person, or at the least a very clever product of an amplified personality. i consider him one of the best lyricists alive, and it often comes not just from what he sings, but how he sings it. there is such a directness and urgency in his voice, and, like the aforementioned phil elverum, an honesty. on the life of the world to come, darnielle uses 12 lessons he has learned from the bible as a jumping point for stories of crystal healers and vandalists on pilgimages. it’s always interesting to me to delve into the impressions of christianity from someone who is not a professed believer, and this has been something that has always fascinated me about the mountain goats. his characters are often endowed with a sense of their own salvation through action, or the acknowledgement of their own resultant condemnation. this album, as with others, contains many references to driving or traveling, creating an overarching theme in his work; that life is one grand journey that requires our participation.
LISTEN:
the mountain goats-ezekial 7 and the permanent efficacy of grace

8. white rainbow-new clouds
richard, matt, kim, and i drove up to cincinnati to see the no age/deerhunter/dan deacon (all good albums this year) show a few months ago, and we walked into the venue immediately enveloped in a glorious drone from white rainbows. i finally found a copy of this new record a month ago, and it has been such a blessing to me. white rainbows is one dude who has worked in/with many other underground bands prior to his current moniker. the sound is a thick wall of guitars, drums, synths, and vocals, all set on repeat for four slabs of beautiful psychedelica. i once had a friend tell me i was the stoniest non-stoner he knew, and this album does nothing to refute that statement. gorgeous drone, like the best bits of a song when it’s on the edge of collapse.
LISTEN:
white rainbow-tuesday rollers and strollers

9. OM-god is good
you cannot fuck with the rhythm section from the almighty SLEEP. you just can’t. but lo and behold chris hakius left the band after a partnership with bassist al cisneros than spans two solid decades. thankfully, the addition of emil amos on the skins is a smooth one, and this album is probably the best realization of OM’s meditative bass-and-drums mantra.
LISTEN:
OM-meditation is the practice of death

HONORABLE MENTION:
tortoise-beacons of ancestorship
eagle twin-the unkindness of crows
anaal nathrakh-in the constellation of the black widow
daroc-super8 EP
passion pit-manners
no age-losing feeling EP
atlas sound-logos
pelican-ephemeral EP

i have been a little concerned recently with this realization, that there is something about our generation that deems it necessary to “reinvent the wheel” when it comes to mankind’s relationship to/with G-D.  often i hear language that verges on relativistic and universalist coming from the mouths/blogs/whatever of my friends, seeking an alternative to the stale history of our faith.  i almost don’t blame them.  the past 150 years of christianity have been plagued by legalism and an abject loss of true RELATIONSHIP with the Father.  i have heard it said that we are in a time of “the church of laodaecia”; neither hot nor cold.

yet i think in our search for truth and meaning in a sea of corruption, we have so far flung ourselves to the other side that we cease to acknowledge our spiritual ancestry, and from it, glean the reality of G-D.  i think this is found in no better place than our varied definitions of the word “love”, and all it encompasses.  it also permeates our understanding of faith/heart vs. law/works, and we begin to embrace the concept of grace so readily as to neglect our responsibility to live lives that please the Lord.

we cannot neglect those saints that have come before us.  despite all the [many] dark moments in christian history, we strive to maintain our covenant with G-D, and we must look to those who have come before for their guidance.  faith matters, when coupled with the things that we do.  ”love” is a concrete term.  let’s begin to rework this search to be a search for TRUTH, devoid of reactionary spirit.  amen.

three men come to a ravine. they need to cross to the other side. let’s say that two of the men decide to try to jump across. the first man jumps and misses it by three feet. the second man tries to jump, and misses the other side by three inches.

question one: who is the better man?

the third man looks around, and glimpses a small rope bridge a few hundred feet from where they were standing. he walks over to the bridge, crosses it, and comes to the other side of the ravine. he lives happily ever after.

question two: who is the better man of the three?

this man did not build the bridge. it has always been there, he just happened to be the one to see it. now, let’s consider that the third man is a serial killer.

question three: who is the better man now?

question four: can the third man consider himself a better person than the other two because he found the bridge?

please consider.

long time since i wrote anything in this space, so there is much to update in the way of music.

 

the new album is entitled “sundaland”, and i have the music just about finished.  there is a small tour in the works for mid-march, you can find all the info about that here.  in a nutshell, the album is a story of a robot who [for reasons i don't really care about] is thrust back in time about 13,000 years ago to the tiny island of flores, in the south pacific.  now, at this point in time there apparently existed a tiny race of people scientists are calling homo floresiensis, or “hobbits” for fun.  the story is about the interactions between these two entities, but i’m hoping it will explore a larger concept about what it is that makes us human, as seen through the eyes of two creatures at opposite ends of the argument.  i know i said i’d never do a concept record, but there you go.

i think what interests me about this fictional tale is the juxtaposition of the cold, singular future and the ancient, pre-societal interdependence that we have nearly lost.  even our ancestors and evolutionary cousins understood the necessity of  togetherness better than we do now.  i guess the question is, as we “advance” the race through technology, are we losing that very thing that makes us human?  are we losing the essence of what G-D called us to be?

plus, i really love robots.

anyway, this project has led to many great conversations with friends, a lot of fantastic reading and study [asimov, wikipedia, u.s. robotics, etc], and quite a bit of contemplation.  i believe that musically this is the best thing i have done yet.  i know, everybody says that about each new album, but even removed from the conceptual weight of the story, i think i am becoming a better musician in every aspect.  everything is demoed and set, next will be recording other instruments and people, which i haven’t done since “megafauna”, almost two years ago. there will be drums, guitar, choir, real piano, and whatever else might be lying around.  my friend luke is illustrating the album, which is a big deal considering i’ve done all my design in every band i’ve been in until now.  but he is absolutely incredible.  here’s the poster for the tour:

very excited.  anyway, much more to do.  G-D is good, the only pure goodness we have.  my love to you all.

ryan.

Come, O true light!
Come, O eternal life!
Come, O hidden mystery!
Come, O indescribable treasure!
Come, O ineffable thing!
Come, O inconceivable person!
Come, O endless delight!
Come, O unsetting light!
Come, O true and fervent expectation
of all those who will be saved!
Come, O rising of those who lie down!
Come, O resurrection of the dead!
Come, O powerful one,
who always creates and re-creates and transforms
by your will alone!
Come, O invisible and totally intangible and untouchable!
Come, O you who always remain immobile
and at each moment move all,
and come to us, who lie in hades,
you who are above all heavens.
Come, O desirable and legendary name,
which is completely impossible for us
to express what you are or to know your nature.
Come, O eternal joy!
Come, O unwithering wreath!
Come, O purple of the great king our God!
Come, O crystalline cincture,
studded with precious stones!
Come, O inaccessible sandal!
Come, O royal robe
and truly imperial right hand!
Come, you whom my wretched soul
has desired and does desire!
Come, you who alone go to the lonely
for as you see I am lonely!
Come, you who have separated me from everything
and made me solitary in this world!
Come, you who have become yourself desire in me,
who have made me desire you,
the absolutely inaccessible one!
Come, O my breath and life!
Come, O consolation of my humble soul!
Come, O my joy, my glory, and my endless delight!
I thank you that you have become one spirit with me,
without confusion, without mutation,
without transformation, you the God of all;
and that you have become everything for me,
inexpressible and perfectly gratuitous nourishment,
which ever flows to the lips of my soul
and gushes out into the fountain of my heart,
dazzling garment which burns the demons,
purification which bathes me
with these imperishable and holy tears,
that your presence brings to those whom you visit.
I give you thanks that for me
you have become unsetting light
and non-declining sun;
for you who fill the universe with your glory
have nowhere to hide yourself.
No, you have never hidden yourself from anyone
but we are the ones who always hide from you,
by refusing to go to you;
but then, where would you hide,
you who nowhere find the place of your repose?
Why would you hide,
you who do not turn away from a single creature,
who do not reject a single one?
Today, then, O Master,
come pitch your tent with me;
until the end, make your home
and live continually, inseparably within me,
your slave, O most-kind one,
that I also may find myself again in you,
at my departure from this world
and after my departure may I reign with you,
O God who are above everything.
O Master, stay and do not leave me alone,
so that my enemies,
arriving unexpectedly,
they who are always seeking to devour my soul,
may find you living within me
and that they may take flight,
in defeat, powerless against me,
seeing you, O more powerful than everything,
installed interiorly in the home of my poor soul.
Yea, O Master, just as you remembered me,
when I was in the world
and, in the midst of my ignorance,
you chose me and separated me from this world
and set me before your glorious face,
so now keep me interiorly,
by your dwelling within me,
forever upright, resolute;
that by perpetually seeing you,
I, the corpse, may live;
that by possessing you,
I, the beggar, may always be rich,
richer than kings;
that by eating you and by drinking you,
by putting you on at each moment,
I go from delight to delight
in inexpressible blessings;
for it is You, who are all good and
all glory and all delight
and it is to you,
holy, consubstantial, and life-creating Trinity
that the glory belongs,
you whom all faithful venerate, confess, adore, and serve
in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Saint Symeon The New Theologian  (949- 1022)

here’s an interesting article is came across while reading up on the new david byrne/brian eno collaboration cd (!) that’s due soon.  this guy is doing the designwork for the album, so i googled his name to find out what his aesthetics are like.  i came across this article:

 

In September design felt impotent and frivolous. There is nothing inherent in our profession that forces us to support worthy causes, to promote good things, to avoid visual pollution. There might be such a responsibility in us as people. In August, when thinking about my reasons for being alive, for getting out of bed in the morning, I would have written the following down.

1. Strive for happiness
2. Don’t hurt anybody
3. Help, others achieve the same

Now I would change that priority:

1. Help others
2. Don’t hurt anybody
3. Strive for happiness

My studio was engaged in cool projects, things designers like to do, like designing a cover for David Byrne

We had a good time designing them, and since the products and events these pieces promoted were fine, I don’t think we hurt anybody who bought them.

One of the many things I learned in my year without clients, a year I had put aside for experiments only, was that I’d like a part of my studio to move from creating cool things to significant things.

The 80s in graphic design were dominated by questions about the layout, by life style magazines, with Neville Brody’s Face seen as the big event. The 90s were dominated by questions about typography, readability, layering, with David Carson emerging as the dominant figure.

With prominent figures like Peter Saville recently talking about the crisis of the unnecessary and lamenting about the fact that our contemporary culture is monthly, there might now finally be room for content, for questions about what we do and for whom we are doing it. The incredible impact the First Things First manifesto had on my profession would certainly point in that direction.

The first sentence on page 1 of Victor Papanek’s “Design for the Real World” reads: “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only very few of them. And possibly only one profession is phonier: Advertising design. In persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others that don’t care, it is probably the phoniest field in existence today.”

I do know that bad design can harm our lives. From the problems this little piece of bad typography caused in Florida to unnecessary junk mail and overproduced packaging, bad design makes the world a more difficult place to live in.

 

At the same time, strong design for bad causes or products can hurt us even more.

Good design + bad cause = bad

Just consider this age old and powerful symbol symbol and its transformation into a very successful identity program by the Nazis.

 

Context is all-important: The Christian cross had one meaning in 16th century Europe and another one in 20th century India.

Bad design + good cause = good?

On the other hand, bad design for a good cause can still be a good thing. We designed the logo for The Concert for New York, a huge charity event for the fire and policeman in Madison Square Garden, involving among others Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, The Who.

 

From a design point of view, the statue of liberty playing a guitar is a trite cliché. I am not suggesting that the logo had much to do with the over $ 20 million raised for the Robin Hood Foundation, well, actually, a tiny portion was raised through the logo in the from of merchandize sales.

How to be good?

Well, does help by definition have to be selfless? Am I allowed to get something out of myself? If I do help, am I permitted to have fun while doing so?

I read an interview with an art director in England discussing his award winning campaign ad campaign for an association for the blind, featuring a striking image of a guide dog with human eyes stripped in.
He mentioned that he knew that a picture of a cute puppy would have raised more donations for the association, but was more interested in winning awards. He had no problems with this attitude.

When GE gives 10 million to the WTC victim families, is it ok for them to look good for doing so?

Or, a more extreme case: Is it ok for Philip Morris to go and give 60 million to help out various charities and then spend another 108 million promoting this good deed in magazine ads?

If you are homeless and you just got a hot meal from St. Johns in Brooklyn, one of the organizations the money went to, you don’t really give a shit if the people who gave it to you tout their own horn afterwards.

Even though it really is a ridiculous case, isn’t it still preferable to blowing the entire 168 million on a regular ad budget?

And: Why are so many celebrities involved in charities?
Five years ago, my feeling was they just wanted to promote their careers. Now I am somewhat less cynical. It is conceivable that many simply came to realize the pursuit of money/fame/success does not hold the contentment it promised and are on the lookout for more significance.

 

Poor Sting practically ruined his career with all his do gooding, transforming himself from the cool leader of the Police to just another sappy rain forest bard

 

Where do the critics come in? If I make fun of Sting, do I keep other celebrities from following his lead and therefore somehow contribute to the destruction of the rainforest? If I do criticize Sting, do I have to have a better idea to help the world?

When philosopher Edward DeBono talks about values, he puts them into four equally important sections:

Me-values: ego and pleasure
Mates-values: belonging to a group, not letting it down
Moral-values: religious values, general law, general values of a particular culture
Mankind-values: human rights, ecology

I often make the mistake of concentrating on just a couple of these values in my life. We all have heard of the philanthropist who gave away millions to charity and was a genuine asshole to all his friends. Or the guy who is totally devoted to his family and friends but hates himself, drives a Suburban and works for a Nuclear Missile Plant.
Or Mr. Bin Laden himself: I am sure he is totally devoted to his religious values as well as to the values of his own culture, but does not really care about human rights much.

For a full life I would have to be involved in all four.

I do think there is a role for everyone. It does not really matter if I am the Mayor of New York, or if I design the tourist brochures for New York or if I sweep the streets in New York. There is always room to be nice to a co-worker, to send a sweet letter to Mom, to love Anni.

Of course there are different degrees of separation. The rescue worker down at Ground Zero is directly involved, when I design a pin to raise money to help the rescue worker, I’m a couple of degrees further removed. But I might just function twice as effective as a designer than I would as a rescue worker.

Well, while pondering those questions half a year ago, I got invited to participate in a media design exhibition in Vienna, Austria. One of the perks that came with the exhibit was a free, full-page ad in Austria’s best newspaper, space I was free to fill with whatever I liked.

It’s an idea for a packaging that might be applied in zones of large catastrophes, earthquakes and such. At the time I was naively thinking of far away locations, India or Africa, not for a second conceiving that my hometown New York itself might be turned into the largest catastrophe zone.

It is basically a large, hollow Lego like block containing basic foods like milk powder, water, dried fish, rice. After the food has been consumed, the empty packaging can be filled with sand or dirt and used as an interlocking brick to build a shelter.

In the ad I explained the idea and asked other designers, packaging manufacturers and aid organizations to contribute.

Responses came into my laptop immediately. Many from students who just wanted to help, some from Austrian packaging companies interested in participating and many from designers and architects offering ideas.

Also, it was an opportunity to feel and look good myself: The caring designer.

Among all the positive responses was also a violently negative one;
- the writer stating that this is the absolute worst idea he ever saw in this context, that it’s a case of designing poverty, just plain ignorant and stupid.

I got really nervous. I am just not used to having my work hated that much. Maybe I should have stuck to CD covers.

The e-mail did prompt me to get quickly in contact with aid organizations and I had subsequently a discussion with the Director of Emergency Preparedness at CARE, the largest of them all.

It turns out that in emergency cases, Care tends to buy food whenever possible locally in bulk: That way they don’t have to package, there is less garbage, they avoid shipping problems and the food will be compatible with local tastes.

And similar thinking applies for shelter: It’s to everybody’s advantage to use as much local building material as possible. Care just supplies some additional resource materials like rolls of plastic or corrugated metal sheets and utilizes the ingenuity of the population. This results in sturdier, better-built shelter.

It turns out, my e-mail writer was right:
This is a stupid idea.

SO: I have to be part of an organization, part of a problem to be able to come up with a solution. Do-gooding from afar, as a tourist, won’t do.

In the meantime in New York I was also at the center of a disaster, I was not tourist anymore. One of the tasks at hand was the creation of a symbol that could also work as a fundraiser for various charities hit hard by current events.

Our idea was a pin, made of the rubble of the World trade Center, a piece of metal that refused to be destroyed.
After the WTC disaster over 1 000 000 tons of rubble was removed from the site and brought by truck and barge to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island.

The plan here is to make this into a large-scale project. We can raise $ 1.5 million per 100 000 pins sold.

Good Design + Good Cause = Good

Most of current graphic design done by professional design companies is used to promote or sell, which is fine, but design can also do so much more.

Design can unify

Francis Hopkinson, a writer, artist and a signatory of the declaration of independence designed the American Flag (never got paid for it though).

Design can help us remember

The towers of light by Julian Laverdiere and Paul Myoda, at this moment proposed as a temporary memorial down at Ground Zero, are a beautiful emotional response. They are ghost limbs; we can feel them even though they are not there anymore.

Design can simplify our lives

Everybody who had to buy tokens in the New York subway system would agree that the Metro card eased the way we go around the city.

Design can make someone feel better

After we designed the CD cover for the Rolling Stones there was quite some press interest in Europe and a number of Austrian and German TV stations came to New York for an interview.
This was just around the time my Mom was celebrating her 70 Birthday. I made a T-shirt saying “Dear Mom! Have a great Birthday” and wore it during the interview. The Austrian station agreed to air the interviews exactly on her Birthday.
Mom felt better.

Design can make the world a safer place

Cipro comes with a complicated, difficult to understand information pamphlet. It could also inform quickly and efficiently about when and how to take it as well as side effects.

Design can help people rally behind a cause

Robbie Canals poster series wheat pasted all over New York in the 80-ies probably spoke to the already converted, but showed me there are other people out there who are not happy with the administration. I guess I picked these posters over the hundreds or thousands of posters designers created that would qualify as an example because I saw those actually pasted on the street.
There is this entire subsection in design, the peace or environmental poster, where only hundreds are actually printed, only dozens go up in the street and the rest is distributed to design competitions.
This of course does NOT help people rally behind a cause, it only helps the ego of the designer.

Design can inform and teach

From the abstract geometric signs and animals of the cave paintings to the graphs in the New York Times, designers give us a better understanding of the issues.

Design can raise money

As a stand in for all the promotions and ads that raised money for Non-Profit organizations I am showing here the Breast Cancer symbol which made a an impressive amount of money for cancer research.

Design can make us more tolerant

Russian designer Andrey Logvin simple poster called Troika speaks for itself.

Winter Sorbeck, design teacher and fictional main character in Chip Kidd’s new novel The Cheese Monkeys, says at one point: Uncle Sam is Commercial Art, the American Flag is graphic design. Commercial Art makes you BUY things, graphic Design GIVES you ideas.

If I’m able to do that, to give ideas, that WOULD be a good reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Presented at the AIGA National Conference in Washington on March 23, 2002, reprinted in I.D. Magazine April/May 2002

hmmmm.  my goodness, how things slip from one’s mind.  i haven’t written a word in here in some time.

 

much has been happening, and continues to happen.  i shall remain committed, for the most part, to not just using this as an update on my own pathetic life, and i hold to that.

G-D is good.  HE shall increase, and i will decrease.  HE is showing me a lot, more and more all the time, which is what i came to nashville for, i suppose.  some things:

 

-i am broken in ways i thought i had fixed.  not so.  but i’ve been learning about healing.  and going through the process.  justice.  reclaiming parts of me that i had given away.

-G-D is real, regardless of whether i believe it or not.  HE is not a conditional god.

-friends at this point are not merely convenience.  they are a necessity.

-beehives.  root systems. community.

-Hebrews 3:13-14 ”But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”

-if someone could just tell me what being a man is, i would appreciate it.  twelve steps?  no?  okay.

-grace.

-faith.

 

i’m floored by these past several months.  sometimes i feel like the boy in the violent bear it away, and any moment now the heavens are going to open up and a pillar of fire is going to descend and burn my soul clean.  yet i feel the old ways creeping up my spine constantly.  lethargy.  complacency.  lust.  jealousy.  i’m hoping this isn’t a situation where the pendulum is just swinging farther out each time.

 

 

father G-D, protect me and keep me.  show yourself to me.  let me here your voice, and KNOW that it’s you speaking.  amen.

 

oh, and this is done:

here’s a song that didn’t make it onto the record [right click to download]:

doxology