Critic Cal

One of the many nice things about working in a place full of intelligent and interesting people [1] is that they tend to know about such intelligent and interesting things. A slightly unfortunate consequence of this is that I can't seem to have a conversation with any one of them without adding to my already infeasibly long list of things I'd like to read/watch/listen to/learn about. Gone, for instance, are the days when I could dismiss the entirety of contemporary fiction as unworthy of my attention; enough of it has found favour enough with my respected companions that I must resign myself to the likelihood that some of it may have some merit to it after all. Thus did I deign to read ' The Shadow of the Wind ', a novel 18 years my junior. And -- *sigh* -- it quickly won my begrudging affection with its warmth, compassion and convicting insight; even, in places (briefly, mind, and inferiorly) prompting comparison with ' The Brother...

Wimbledon is here. Wait, now... didn't Beckett's Lucky have something to say about tennis? Ordered to 'think', and supplied with his requisite hat, he spouts... “Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged in torment plunged in fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast heaven to hell so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labours left unfinished crowned by the Acacacacademy of Anthropopopometry […] waste and ...

Here's a poem I love, by Ted Hughes: Hawk Roosting   I sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed. Inaction, no falsifying dream Between my hooked head and hooked feet: Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat. The convenience of the high trees! The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray Are of advantage to me; And the earth's face upward for my inspection. My feet are locked upon the rough bark. It took the whole of Creation To produce my foot, my each feather: Now I hold Creation in my foot Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly - I kill where I please because it is all mine. There is no sophistry in my body: My manners are tearing off heads - The allotment of death. For the one path of my flight is direct Through the bones of the living. No arguments assert my right: The sun is behind me. Nothing has changed since I began. My eye has permitted no change. I am going to keep things like this. There are days -- or perhaps, moments every day -...

"Truly, you are a God who hides himself." said Isaiah (45:15) Why?! If there is a God, why does He not make Himself more obvious? Think how much simpler it would all be if there was a yes/no answer that was universally evident. Dallas Willard posits that the hiddenness of God allows people to define themselves: And why would God hide himself? Because God loves us, he wants to be known to us. That is the way of love. But because we, in our rebellion against him, are hardened in our insistence on having our own "kingdom," he must hide from us to allow us to hide from him and to pretend we, individually and corporately, are in charge of our life. He is such a great and magnificent being that, if he did not hide from us, we could not hide from him. He allows us the pretense of being our own god because that is what we want, what we choose. Pushed to the limit, this choice results in the terrible evils of which we have proven capable. (From ' The Craftine...

Mr. W had ' No Surprises ' on at full volume in the car when he came to pick me up from work the other day. So we didn't talk to each other for a full 3 and a half minutes…letting the song have its moment, waiting in shared appreciation until it felt ok to speak… Course, I'd forgotten what came next, and ' Lucky ' is hardly background music for chit-chat either. All in all Radiohead pretty much stymied any chance of conversation till we got home. In a previous post I confessed to having actively destroyed a few particularly 'dangerous' CDs in a moment of ascetic fervour.* Indeed, my cherished Radiohead collection was first in line for the cull. I tease myself, but it was a smart move, at the time. Music is powerful: the better the music, the more dangerous. And Radiohead are pretty epic. All that raw, bleak, despair - unchecked by any rational basis for hope - Thom Yorke's fragile wail over layers of tense, resounding instrumentals...and the gui...