EASTERN SYNDICATE

we all share in the success, shortcomings, and failures of culture. this is common grace: the human experience is communal. we may disagree, but we are in the thick of it together.

[easternsyndicate]

Black Sky Thinking | Why The Music Business Shouldn't Turn Into The Art Business

As Wu-Tang Clan unveil their one copy luxury new LP, Robert Barry argues that even in these straitened times, the last thing we need is for the music industry to start resembling the shady, exploitative art world

Really enjoyed this article.

The idea that music has been undervalued and in some cases devalued has a lot of merit and that is a problem that the music industry should work to solve. The starving artist ought to be fed. I want my favorite singers and my favorite rappers to live and live well. 

To take that idea to the logical extreme as the Wu-Tang Clan have with Once Upon A Time in Shaolin is comical and misguided, in my opinion. While the monetary value of this album may be high, music tends to only be beyond value, priceless, when it can be shared. Accessibility affords communal love for music and that is a beautiful thing. 

Being able to join in with a crowd shouting out the lyrics to "Sweet Caroline" and rapping "Gimme the Loot" with my closest friends in Joey's Toyota is what makes the art of music so much more communal, instant, and wonderful than the other art forms.

Hater alert: I kinda hope it leaks.

[easternsyndicate]

On being a critic

I saw another Wes Anderson movie with my two best friends the other day which brings out the worst in me.

Considering the title of this tumblr post, I think it is only just to limit the reasons why to two sentences, and here they are, unoriginal and unpopular. I believe Wes Anderson’s live action movies, aside from Bottle Rocket, Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom, to be almost entirely unrelatable, unlike life in most ways, and often twee to the point that it can’t be tolerated. I also think that my main reason for feeling this way is that Wes Anderson’s style is so fussed over for perfection that it squeezes the lifelike almost entirely out of his work. 

Style over substances enrages the writer in me, but more importantly, it enrages the critic in me.

And if there is one thing I hate, it is a critic.

A pastor I hardly care for once tweeted this when he was under scrutiny and criticism, and while I think it was a pithy, indirect response to reality, I have to say that the thought has always stayed with me.

No one ever made a monument to a critic.

— Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark)

January 31, 2012

To be honest, I think art needs criticism. Not only does a good critic develop passion in music-listener or a moviegoer, his words can give direction and clarity and a shape to our thoughts on particular artists or their works. This is a valuable and worthwhile work. 

People, however, do not need criticism. 

Criticism is hitting someone over the head that is already reeling from being hit over the head. 

You are not the only one that feels a pressure to perform.

You are not the only one that feels a need to defend every thing you do.

You are not the only one that gets into arguments with others inside of your head. (http://www.theonion.com/articles/fantasized-argument-getting-pretty-intense,33990/)

The reason we feel this way is because we are always under the law. We always are trying to live up to, or down to, some standard. We have this vague sense that we will never be good enough, we will never be who we are supposed to be. 

And in being a critic to someone, you are only reminding someone that they will never be who they ought to be. They, like you, don’t have a shot at outperforming that vague sense of underperforming. 

I hate critics and so naturally I am one. 

I am constantly criticizing myself and others, but there is a longing in me to just be and let others be, as well. I long to live like someone who has accepted Jesus’ invitation for rest and let all the other wearied and heavy-laden do the same. Just be and rest a while.

This is the most comforting invitation of the bible, in my opinion. This is where I am most apt to take Jesus at his word. I may doubt the gospel at every step, but this is the Jesus I know I need - the one who takes the weight off me and puts it on himself.

When I was seeing a counselor a few years back, he introduced me to the Gestalt prayer after seeing the myriad ways that I felt judged and judged others. Here is the text, created by Fritz Perls.

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful. If not, it can’t be helped.

Why don’t we just give each other a break? I do my thing, you do yours.

Now, back to movies.

For a long time now, I’ve felt burdened by certain rules. I should only like certain types of movies, certain actors, certain directors, certain styles. And it’s so easy for me to just dismiss a movie because it doesn’t meet an entire world of criteria that I’d like to think a movie I made might meet. And recently, I have have been practicing the art of suspending my disbelief. When taking part in culture, wether it is art, music, movies, TV, what have you, I really try to enter in and take part. Though something may not be entirely relatable or believable (the films of Wes Anderson), that does not discount it. There is a part of me that thinks, or at least hopes, that nothing, no matter how stylized (the films of Wes Anderson, the masks I wear, my projected identity), there is substance that does not deserve to be dismissed.

That’s why I respect the rapper Aesop Rock so much. Since following him on Twitter (@AesopRockWins), I’ve noticed a trend.

I like all movies

— Aesop Rock (@AesopRockWins)

August 27, 2013

@BabiesWithGuns no favorite I like all movies equally. But some are better.

— Aesop Rock (@AesopRockWins)

March 11, 2013

i saw hunger games. it was good. disclaimer: i like every movie i’ve ever seen.

— Aesop Rock (@AesopRockWins)

April 20, 2012

This is who Aesop Rock has been for years and I love him for it. There has been a steady influx of tweets appreciating each and every movie since I’ve followed him. He just loves movies. There is nothing above him. There is nothing below him. He takes art for what it is and appreciates it. 

May you and I be the same. May we not be harsh critics of art and may we especially not be critics of people.

[theoxfordamerican]

Eyes on the South this week takes us to Orlando, Dylan DeRose’s exploration of the Central Florida landscape and the pervasive iconography of the Walt Disney Company.

Disney ultimately accumulated an amount of property twice the size of Manhattan. As fate would have it, Walt Disney died before he could actually start developing this land. However, you can see the residual effects of this vision through the Walt Disney Company’s formation of a municipal government, and the utilities they now control within Central Florida. 

[easternsyndicate]

The City Beautiful in all its beauty, ugliness, gaudiness. My lovely hometown.

[fast-machine]

i can be just as cynical as anyone. ‘everyone is fake.’ ‘there are no sincere moments anymore.’ ‘life is humiliating.’ blah blah blah but every once in a while something reminds me of this video and i sit and watch it and you can believe in things like ‘beauty’ and ‘honesty’ and ‘connectedness’ again. for five minutes. or whatever. stevie nicks is a witch or an angel or someone whose feet you want to lie down beside. saying everyone/everything is fake is about as fake as you can get, jack. writing a novel is fake. not committing suicide is fake. it’s all fucking fake so how bout having a real fucking moment in which yr vulnerable to the ppl around you and open yrself up to the possibility that it - life - is not all fake or it’s as fake as you yourself are. i just really like this video. 

[easternsyndicate]

Recently, it's been all Water Liars for me.

Trouble will always be at your heels, near as your shadow, hot like the breath of the devil. May you and I never bother with being cowards.

[easternsyndicate]

Embracing reality

One of the benefits of growing up and going my own way in this world is that I am forced to experience life as it really is. No matter how much I try, reality cannot be escaped. It can be evaded momentarily, but not escaped. Often this feels like repeated, heavy blows. Often, it hurts. I think especially so considering my extended childhood where reality was at arms lengths until I was deep into my twenties.

For twentysomething years I could disappear. I could pull back from life as it really was and go somewhere else. I could remove myself from all of my relationships, all of my friendships, and just be inside myself for a while. Though it was often dangerous and provided a kind of incubator for private emotions and ideas, I could always disappear and imagine a different way, a different me, a different life. 

Or I could push myself into something new. I am a man of intensity in phases. It seems like every two months I develop a new passion that consumes my mind and my soul and I dedicate as much time as I possibly can into some pursuit. 2013 went like this: Searching for God in the Bible, Reading Fiction, Paleo Diet, Playing Basketball, Working Out, Writing Fiction. My Google search history in each of these phases was almost completely devoted to the matter at hand. These things were my private passions. My means to escaping my truth.

In 2013, my wife and I, newly married, were in a new city, in a new state, with new neighbors that we didn't know that broke into our rented house and stole a computer, stole a car, and left us, unsettled as we were, truly and deeply unsettled. 

My wife wanted to move back home. Immediately.

Part of me did, too, but part of me wanted to be bigger than reality. I wanted to carry all that on my shoulders and say, "Is that all you've got?" I had been so small and so helpless and so childish in my life for so long. And I wanted to be a man for once. I wanted to look the troubles of this world in the eye and say, "You can kiss my ass." 

That sounds BAMF but the problem was I was too overcome by fear to truly engage in reality.

The problem was it was all pretend. Like my wife tried to evade our reality by watching TV and dreaming of moving back home, I tried to read it, write it, hoop it, and bulgarian split-squat it away. 

To that extent we were successful. We evaded some difficulties. I tried to be too busy to hurt, she tried to numb away the pain. And I would say that is my only regret about our stint in North Carolina, that we did not continue to engage the reality of our situation. In the beginning we did, but with time we disengaged and plugged into other things. 

By a small miracle, we are back home in Florida.

And, as a matter of fact, reality followed us here. 

Struggle. 

Trouble.

Effort.

There are many obstacles to grace. Grace and joy and peace and love all seem so distant and so unnatural. And yet, in moments, they are as present as your next breath. And often they aren't. 

But that's reality.

That's life as it truly is.

Embracing that is engaging in what is real rather than what is imagined.

That is my wife and I enjoying ourselves as we struggle through living with my parents, figuring out what it means to love each other, wondering how are we ever going to get settled again. 

Here is the way to tell circumstances to kiss your ass: acknowledge them and still strive for goodness, deny your right to do what seems natural and instead live with grace.

[joseromussi]

hand embroidery on photo

[easternsyndicate]

Jose Romussi has engaged in mixed-media for some time, making old pictures come alive again especially in his series on dancers. Most of the images are simply beautiful if nothing else. To me, this specific image speaks to the messy nature of human relationships, so full of effort and performance that we can leave even those closest to us tangled, weighed down, hurting for the sake of our own glory.

[easternsyndicate]

I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped.

Fritz Perls, the gestalt prayer

[easternsyndicate]

Official Statement

We all share in the success, shortcomings, and failures of culture. This is common grace: the human experience is communal. We may disagree, but we are in the thick of it together.