after the bright lights…

It’s truly been a long time.  Audience, I am truly sorry for the absence.  A lot has happened.

A lot has happened since my last post.  To be honest, my life and my soul has become sincerely complicated.  Before my last post, I was enjoying some of the simplest and joyful days of my life.  The things I wanted to do came easy, and I held fast to a strong sense of purpose, clarity, and resolve.

Now, I am re-searching for purpose, clarity is a commodity seemingly as precious as gold, and joy is just as hard to come by, if not more.  I have to work so much harder to remember why I exist and what I’m doing in the world.  Elements of my life that sparked complex and interesting thoughts and self-conversations now illicit a simple reply from my soul: why?

It was in the thick of this storm cloud that I was invited to join a team of artists that would perform at Urbana09, InterVarsity’s 22nd missions conference.  At first, I looked at my fractured state and I wondered if any artistic beauty could come from a soul retroactively and violently mourning the loss of a father who was more of a father to strangers than to his own son.  But I live my life based on my reaction to “gut feelings,” and the invitation left me with one I needed to examine.  After consulting friends, supervisors, and the Jesus I didn’t really understand and didn’t really like but knew would still speak to me, I reluctantly said yes.

The next 8 months were insane…

goofy acting exercises…3-a-day starbucks runs…spontaneously writing music that would be danced to by professionals…playing and breaking a cajon in front of 16000 people…First Presbyterian Church of Covina…ten days in a small room studying John’s story of Jesus…pictures of pooping snow in Madison…black men declaring the good news of Jesus: from power to powerlessness…Glendale Presbyterian Church…bringing life to the intensely mysterious…driving all over LA to take camera footage that no more than 5 people would ever see…learning how to read a script and act alongside veterans…seeing, up close, the best tap-dancing I might ever see in my life…finding out that tap-dancer goes to UCLA…realizing that God put him on our team to give him a sense of dignity he’s never had in his life…

One big thing I experienced was the generosity of God.  I’m still a little confused as to how God aligned Urbana with some other events happening concurrently; I had almost come to the conclusion that I was unable to create and that God had cursed me with a broken body and a broken family.  And in the thick of thinking about and being sad about those things, God gave me songs.  He gave me songs that I could use to let God’s truth rise up in me.  He gave me songs that would speak to me in moments when I wanted to give up.  He gave me songs that reminded me of his hugeness and authority in heaven, on earth, and below the earth.  He let beauty come from the very broken; that’s a transaction that only a crucified and risen Savior can pull off.

Urbana came, and Urbana went.

The week itself was kinda interesting.  Before I had arrived in St. Louis, I told people that I felt like my experience of the Theatre Team was pretty complete.  I had been able to create with and learn from some of the best artists I had ever been around, and that was a big enough gift for me…I was pretty tempted to ask our director to find another actor who could deliver the lines with more authenticity and skill than myself.

But God had me there to teach me some things.  One big lesson: TRUST.  Performing at Urbana was relatively easy for me, despite the intimidating force of the crowd and its opinionated nature.  However, this was only possible because I had a profoundly deep trust in my team.  I trusted that they would know their lines, have everything prepared, and come into that week ready to work and ready to put something really good on that stage.  I trusted that, in the midst of us accomplishing different things in each piece, we were all thinking about the overall vision and what we knew God could do through each piece.  And that trust was built over 8 months of rehearsal, relationship-building, creating together, and experiencing God together.  It was a serious investment of artistic, emotional, physical, and spiritual energy that resulted in the kind of trust necessary to perform art in front of such an imposing crowd without feeling the enormous weights of success and self-promotion.

And now I’m back.  I’m still adjusting to life without my team and life off the incredible stage.  And I’m carrying with me lessons and thoughts and dreams and hopes for myself as an artist and as a campus pastor.  I’m still sufficiently broken, but I know that beauty can come from my crap, and I expect it to.  And I know that I’m still trying hard to trust God, but I know that I can still respond to his character in faith and that he’ll respond to me.  The faithfulness of the God of history will be my badge, and I will wear it as proudly as possible.

to God be the glory.
to the artists be courage.
to the students be strength.
amen.

Premiere Afterglow

A few weeks ago, Hiatus officially played its first gig.  I was a little nervous the week before.  I thought about it every day with jitters stemming from lots of different sources, most notably two recurring thoughts:

1. It’s been three years; we need to perform.
2. Will people even like our music?

The day before our premiere was actually pretty hectic and crazy, including a three-hour drive up and down 101 going to and coming from San Louis Obispo to lead worship for an event co-sponsored by InterVarsity’s Black and Latino small group and the university’s Multicultural Center.  (Note to self: Don’t ever drive back from SLO to LA at 10pm in pouring rain.)

Happy to be alive, I woke up Saturday morning ready to take on this strange beast called an audience.  Before a few weeks ago, I hadn’t performed in a really long time, so I spent moments out of the day being reminded that I needed to remember how to make the audience mine.  I pictured myself in front of a crowd of between 50-200 people, smiling at them, relating to them, making them feel comfortable, and guiding them through thoughts and emotions and worlds through which they may or may not have been expecting to travel.  It was helpful preparation.  When the evening came, I was ready.

The performance was fun.  I remember feeling nothing particularly profound or remarkable about how we played; we didn’t make any big mistakes, and all the songs were relatively fun to play and to engage with.  I remember being eternally grateful for all the friends and family that came out to see us and that I got to have beer with after the show.  I loved that people that have been significant to the development of my musical philosophy were there to see and hear that I actually do intend to apply all the yapping that I have done for the past 8 years.  I hated the venue; there wasn’t enough energy.  And I hated that some very important people weren’t there (L and E and E, to be perfectly cryptic, yet grateful for their contributions to our success).

And now that it’s over, the real work begins.  We’ve received a ton of input from a lot of people about the direction of our sound and image, and, for some reason, it hasn’t felt good or satisfying.  Nobody has said anything derisive or insulting, and plenty of people have said complimentary things.  But as we have considered the input and dialogued about it over and over again, I have felt less and less like I am an artist, and more and more like…something else.  New and frightening thoughts have surfaced:

Is this what I signed up for?
Am I selling out?
Why am I not having fun anymore?

And so even though I am assured by plenty that our music is good, my soul is still in wont.  And when our band gathers to talk about our music and sound, I can’t help but feel like I was too idealistic to have thought that I could be a part of something new.  For what an honor it would be, to host rock’s fanciful homecoming to its rhythm and blues roots; to be the usher that leads friends and strangers into the delicate dance of two worlds that have been unnaturally separated for far too long by culture, subculture, ethnicity, and the music industry.

Don’t get me wrong; I have not given up on my dream, on our band or our imagination.  But I am reminded that new infrastructure is never built quickly or without a sometimes obscene amount of “red tape” and “budget revisions,” not to mention sweat and strength and overtime.  And I am reminded that the plans only multiply in complication when that road turns out to be a bridge.

why do i sing?

Actually, this is actually an extension of a much bigger question that I am asking myself and God: Why am I ‘here’?  I have been looking at my life right now from a lot of angles, examining why things are the way that they are; why I am a campus pastor, why I am a black man on the UCLA campus, why I am a fundraiser.

One evening I was on the phone with Erina, and we were talking about why I am a black man on the UCLA campus.  As we talked, I began to see images in my mind of myself leading worship in BCF.  I could see myself singing wholeheartedly, and then I could see everyone else in our community.  And I knew that the only thought in my head at that moment was, “I wish everyone out there knew why I sing.”

I would like to return us to “The Beauty of God,” a collection of essays about art and theology which finds their origins at the 2006 Wheaton Theology Conference at Wheaton College in Illinois.  This time, I want to show you the essay “Call Forwarding,” a piece by Bruce Ellis Benson talking about the cyclical nature of our art.  He makes the claim that all of our art is both a call and response; a call to those who will experience the beauty of God in what we create and a response to the voices and images and colors and beauty that has shaped and influenced us every day before this one.  He makes three statements about the call and response of our art:

1. The call always precedes us
2. In responding, I respond on the behalf of myself and others
3. The improvised response is a repetition and an improvisation

It is from the second point that I give you this excerpt:

“…my response is never mine alone.  To be sure, I speak for myself, yet also for others and in their name.  To improvise is always to speak to others, with others (even when one improvises alone) and in the name of others.  Given that the call precedes me, I do not begin the discourse, nor to i bring it to a conclusion.  For instance, if I’m playing one of the perennial standards of jazz, I do so along with so many others – whether those playing alongside me or those playing the tune in some other corner of the world, or all of those who have played it before.  Jazz musicians typically have a sense of what the author of Hebrews calls a “great…cloud of witnesses” (Heb 12.1).  Moreover, when I play a tune, I am never simply improvising on that tune alone.  I am improvising on the tradition formed by the improvisations on that tune…” [page 78]

On a technical level, this is very accurate.  When I sing any song, I am doing so with an eye to simultaneously honor the original singer and to sing a new song entirely.  I am adding my voice to the voice of so many others who have sung the same song, thus adding to the landscape that the song has already painted in the minds and hearts of listeners.

But Benson is actually referring to so much more.  Let me give you the big picture.  In the days of slavery, my people sung songs as they worked in the field.  Some of those songs were actually codes that would go from field to field, telling people that the Underground Railroad was someplace in town, ready to whisk them away to freedom (e.g. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot).  Some of those songs served as encouragement, to remind them that God was among them in the midst of their bondage and pain.

The story of Black people in America can’t be told without the songs that have been our rally cries and inspiration, from slavery to Jim Crow to the Movement to today.  I am in the midst of that story; I am a beneficiary of the inheritance of freedom left to me by slaves and civil rights activists who gave their bodies and souls (many in the name of Jesus) so that God would be glorified and I would be free; in this way, I am responding to a very significant call.

On the other hand, I am making a call, a call to people who are Black and people that aren’t.  As a part of the story of my people, I can see where we have come from and where we are, which allows me to see where we might be going, and I’m not too pleased with where the road leads.  As an American, I can say exactly the same thing.  I can assure young Americans, Black or otherwise, that the foundation we are setting for our children and their children is very questionable and in need of great repairs.

Last week, I was with about 200 other Black students and campus pastors at a conference in Atlanta, and we spent the whole week talking about all the ways that God is calling us out.  We examined the realities that have destroyed our communities for generations; not the drugs, alcohol, and sexual sin that exist on the outside, but the entitlement, efficacy and desires for comfort and celebrity that lie deep within our souls.  We sat in the fact that those things have affected us indivudually, and we sought God’s mercy and freedom on us, that we would be people who follow hard after and receive his love, and are led straight to the places where we can freely give that love away.

My song is all of that.
My song is a collection of the voices that sung in the fields and in secret.
My song is in memory and honor of those who gave their bodies and souls for me.
My song is a cry for freedom and repentance, for myself and my people.
My song is a confession of my sin and rebellion.
My song is a revelation of my desperation and neediness.
My song is a celebration of my hope in Jesus.
My song is an exposition of those things which lift us up and tear us down.
My song is an invitation for God to meet me, lead me, love me, and use me.
My song is an invitation for you to join me…

I don’t just sing because I can, but because I must.  For the sake of telling the story of the past, present, and future redemption of my people, I must sing.  And for the sake of exposing the lies that keep God’s image-bearers captive and the release that has been offered to us in full, I must sing.  I sing for those who have come before me, for you, for me, and for those who have yet to be.

the fine line between art and technology

My latest reading is “Culture Making,” an insightful look into scripture from a cultural point of view.  And by culture, I mean the most general sense of the word, or as the author (Andy Crouch) would put it, “what human beings make of the world.”  Crouch suggests that you and I were made to be culture-makers.  He suggests that the two key ingredients of good culture-making are creativity (bringing things into existence that did not exist before) and cultivation (knowing and caring for the space from which your materials for creating come).  And he suggests that you and I were made to be culture-makers as a function of our intrinsic relationship to God as his image-bearing representation on the earth that he created.

One thing he talks about is the nature of cultural change.  We know that culture changes; there are a ton of examples around us.  Let’s take movies, for example.  In the past 100 years, we’ve gone from black and white, silent, and projected on a big screen with average picture quality to millions of colors and sounds playing from your HD TV at home with sparkling, crystal-clear picture.  And that’s just scratching the surface.  We could talk about the advent of special effects, stunt doubles, animation, and the artistic elements of comedy, drama, and everything in between.

In the midst of our comtemporary culture possessing a myriad of problems, the church’s response has been a strong desire for revival and revolution.  We want to see Jesus enter the “dirty temples” in our culture, kick some ass, and take some names.  This seems to be the only solution we can see to the seemingly insurmountable social constructions that oppress and abuse the weak and needy among us, and perpatuate a tolerance and fancy for immorality.

And how does this translate for art and artists?  Let’s let Crouch answer…

“Culture watchers sometimes talk about the ’silver bullet’ theory of Christian influence – the dream that someday, someone will write ‘the perfect song’ that will, in four minutes of pure inspiration, bring about a wave of repentance and  conversion in our land.  This is treating a song like a device.  It is turning music into technology.  Christians are not the only ones who cherish this fantasy – advertisers of all sorts have mastered the art of transmuting music and art into the technology of persuasion.  In fact, it might not be too much to say that the four-minute pop song is itself a device, a technologically massaged tool for the delivery of pleasing or cathartic emotions” (59-60).

As a writer of songs about Jesus, I can see what the current landscape of my craft is, and I’m not too pleased.  To be honest, the word technology can, in my opinion, describe a good chunk of the songs out there.  It’s like we’ve reached the level of the generic 21st century hip-hop song: music stolen from another song which was stolen from another song, with lyrics and themes too repetitive and sterile to provide any new insight into the world.

For a long time, I’ve wondered why this is the case, and I think the quote above helps me to understand.  There must be a ridiculous amount of pressure on Christian musicians and writers to create something pleasing enough to its constituency to be bought and enjoyed.  Christians, as the consumers of Contemporary Christian Music (or CCM, for short) need their fair share of “pleasing and cathartic emotions,” and the artists must feel obligated to deliver, lest they run the risk of losing their livelihood and relevance among the only people who take them seriously as artists.

But I conclude by suggesting to you that I see three fundamental problems:

1. My generation has successfully turned music into a tool for addictive emotional manipulation, and artists into their drug dealers; there seems to be no difference among followers of Jesus.
2. As soon as an artist feels the pressure of having to make art that says a certain thing or evokes certain feelings, their vocation changes, from artists to scientists.  Their products are no longer art, but experiments, carefully controlled devices meant to elicit a certain response and deemed a failure if that desired response is not achieved.
3. Nobody in the CCM subculture (or the American church, for that matter) seems to think there’s a problem.  In fact, I would say that few even care.

At this point, I’m sad, confused, and intimidated.
My Question for God: How do you plan to wean a generation off its addiction to technology?  Who will you raise up to provide a reasonable alternative?