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.

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.

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?

I think the reason it’s hard to write good worship music is because it takes a lot of effort for me to bring the vastness of my emotional and thought world into some sort of artistic convergence.  It usually takes a measure of holistic engagement with the Bible that usually results in a little more introspection than I asked for.  Simply put, when I write, God is faithful to let me know that I’m a sinner, and that he loves me eternally and abundantly.

The Psalms are full of soul-exposing poetry and lyrics, much of which can go undiscovered or unnoticed if something like that holistic engagement is set aside for superficial knowledge or half-hearted reflection.  Take Psalm 99, for instance.  When you read it on its face, it’s pretty straightforward.  Nothing really to see.  But let’s take verse 1.  I know that most of us are already fixed inside our Western cosmologies, so if you were to read this carefully:

The Lord reigns; let the peoples tremble!
He sits enthrones upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!

it should make no sense to you.  You see, for us over here in Western Industrial Enlightenment-land, it makes absolutely no sense that there would be a close connection between our spiritual and physical existence.  However, it was very different for the Jews (especially the ones who followed Jesus around, but even the ones that came before them).  They were quite aware of the fact that God’s presence in the world (signified here by his reign as king) meant something real and tangible for all creation.  When I read this, it makes me think about whether or not I know Jesus as this kind of King.  Sometimes, I fall into thinking that the Jesus I gave my life to is a figment of my imagination, a guy who was real to people 2000 years ago.  I forget to pray and to hope and to live as though he is the risen, reigning King of this world, now and forever.  The question is not whether or not he is the same yesterday, today, and forever; rather, the question is whether or not I’m letting all of Jesus’ character shape my expectations of him.

I think this psalm gives us a great praise imperative (it has two variations):

Exalt the Lord our God;
worship at his footstool!
Holy is he! (verse 5)

Exalt the Lord our God,
and worship at his holy mountain;
for the Lord our God is holy! (verse 9)

I’ll end on this.  People talk about God being holy, and usually have no idea what that means for their life.  These verses are pretty clear: one indication of the value of God’s holiness in your life is how much you give him credit and honor for his character and his work.  Think of it this way: you’ll talk someone’s ear off about the people you think are memorable or one-of-a-kind.

NOTE: you can find recordings of all of my discussed music by clicking on the My Music link at the right.