The Hold Steady – Heaven is Whenever

Need any more proof that Craig Finn is a genius? Aside from writing a song essentially about the Catholic concept of heaven coming to earth every time we perform Mass (though his communion is over vinyl rather than bread and wine; no complaints here), check out the research done by some Hold Steady fans to uncover ten or fifteen references in four and a half minutes.

The way Finn weaves countless cultural, religious and personal reflections into a single song that means the world to a lot of people (well, at least two that I know of) is endlessly comforting.

I’m reminded of Scott Adams’s theory of God’s debris: that, as time moves forward, the world at large slowly converges back into a single consciousness that is the consciousness of God himself. Finn might be the patron saint of this idea, if for no other reason than to prove we’re getting better at massive consciousness in compact form. It’s a beautiful thing.

Let’s get this out of the way from the get-go: I have never seen the movie version based on About a Boy by Nick Hornby. And now, having read the book, I feel a minor tinge of disgust at the idea of Hugh Grant playing Will’s character.

It’s not so much that I have anything against Hugh Grant; he has a typecasted character and he plays it well. It’s just that I got an image of someone else in my head for this role. Someone manlier. Maybe Jason Statham with a little more slob and a little less “I’m going to shoot you in the face.”

Anyway. This was a pretty standard Nick Hornby book. That means it was full of well-written, self-loathing, quirky characters who all learned something from each other. And it means it was good.

I love Nick Hornby, precisely because it’s always a complex story, with no obvious endings, but no real twists either, and yet somehow it’s the easiest book in the world to fly through in a weekend. Case in point: I’d made it almost halfway through the book between getting to my gate at the airport and arriving at my destination a few hours later.

About a Boy is about a very boyish man becoming less boyish, with the help of a very mature twelve-year-old named Marcus. Marcus’s mom has some major issues, Will stumbles into it with all the irresponsibility of a trust fund kid and Marcus latches on. Hilarity, epiphany and growing up ensue (for both parties, of course).

It’s not a particularly deep book, nor is it one trying to make any particular point, but it feels realistic, and somewhere within it lessons are learned. Like I said, the beauty of Nick Hornby’s work is that it effortlessly slides life lessons at you. And I get the feeling even he doesn’t mean for them to happen.

I’ve heard that many authors end up discovering that the characters, plot lines and ideas write themselves, whether or not the author himself meant for things to go the direction they did. It’s an odd form of chaos that ends with everyone involved learning something from it, the author included — rather unlike some pithy morality tale where the theme is decided ahead of time.

It is sometimes said that a PhD (short for “doctor of philosophy”) is a sign that one has learned to relate his or her subject of study to the world at large on a philosophical level, hence the name. The more of David Dark’s writing I read, the more I realize that he, perhaps more than most, understands the potential impact of his level of education in English and literature. Rather than devoting himself to insular research, he’s focused his energy on addressing a questioning subculture of the American religious and political tradition through thoughtful analysis of that culture, reflected back by its own literature, music, film, television and political icons.

In The Gospel According to America, Dark’s analyzes the intricacies of America’s politics and its “Christ-haunted idea” through the eyes of George Washington, Herman Melville, Bob Dylan, Flannery O’Connor, Elvis, Thomas Pynchon and others who have found inspiration in the freedom, culture, history and possibility of the American Way.

Unsurprisingly, Dark digs even further than just America’s past, by challenging its widely-held theories and practices concerning faith, salvation and the person of Jesus. He puts forward ideas of faith that both emphasize and support the underlying goals of America’s founders and challenge us to question the way those goals are put into practice. He warns us of the dangers of media pundits and believing we are administers of Truth:

When the church is the blind, uncritical endorser or “spiritual” chaplain of whatever the nation decides to do, it has largely renounced its vocation as the body of Christ.

But he also praises the art of being weird, exploring uncharted ideas and the practice of digging deeper than the sound bite culture to which most of us unknowingly subscribe to:

When we’re no longer willing (or able) to exercise the attention span required to hear, read, or listen to any version of history that can’t be contained in a sound bite or a put-down, our capacity for worship and for contribution to a stable democracy is compromised.

Potential readers of any of Dark’s work only need be warned that his explorations are not a quick read. While his ideas are clearly put forth, he doesn’t waste words for the sake of easy skimming. (Perhaps this is his own way of combating sound bite culture.) It’s more of a “take your time and take notes” kind of book than the more commonly enjoyed pop philosophy/sociology examinations that make it into the New York Times bestsellers list.

UPDATE: If this Yahoo! Pipes version is acting buggy for you and you have some web space, try using the PHP version I recently wrote instead. It works way better!

If you’re a geek like me, you try to get all your internet content from as few places as possible. Right now, to keep up with all the blogs, communities and people I love, I go to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Stack Overflow (and a few of its spin-off sites), a message board or two and, last but not least, Google Reader. Not to mention my own calendar, to-do list and a few other randoms.

The general goal is to get as much of my life into Google Reader as possible. But not everything in my life is an RSS feed, so I have to make do. That is, until I have a couple hours to nerd out and figure out a way to turn one of those sites into an RSS feed.

Today’s target: Tumblr. I love the Tumblr dashboard, but it’s basically its own social RSS feed of everyone you follow, but without its own RSS feed.

So, I created a Tumblr dashboard RSS feed using the power of Yahoo Pipes. All you have to do is enter your Tumblr username and password (don’t worry, nobody will ever see it) and you get an RSS feed that you can throw into your favorite RSS aggregator.

It’s still got a few bugs, but I did as best I could to make it presentable. Of course, it being a Yahoo Pipe, you can always clone it and fix bugs yourself. Or, if you find an issue and you’d rather have me fix it, you can do that too. Just send me an email or leave a comment here.

Known Issues

• Videos don’t show up. You have to click through to see them on the blog site. Still trying to figure this one out.
• Audio won’t play. You have to click through for these too.
• You don’t get feed items when someone likes a post or starts following you. Think of it as an opportunity to reduce your own vanity.

Some credit is due to Satoru Tamura’s original pipe that I cloned this from, which gave me a basic structure to expand.

I guess you could say July was a busy month. I had ear surgery at the end of the month, so I think my brains were trying to get in as much music before I’d be down for the count for a few weeks while my hearing comes back. Sucks to be me.

The beginning of the month brought a re-run epiphany that Pavement succeeded at what Nirvana was trying to do. Long story for another post. And then I found the This Is Dubstep comps and got hopelessly lost in electronic music for the rest of the month. I only took breaks for some new releases, like the new New Pornographers, the new M.I.A., Admiral Radley, Acacia Strain, Best Coast and Max Richter. And in the middle there somewhere was a phenomenal Hold Steady/Whigs show in Memphis. Needless to say, I’m a bit music saturated in my current environment and I am not going to complain about it.

1. Pavement – “Here” (Slanted and Enchanted)
2. Chasing Shadows – “Ill” (GetDarker Presents: This Is Dubstep 2)
3. Tes La Rok – “Darkness Falls Upon Us” (GetDarker Presents: This Is Dubstep)
4. Drumsound & Bassline Smith – “R U Ready (Dubstep Mix)” (GetDarker Presents: This Is Dubstep 2)
5. Fused Forces – “Chemical Reaction” (GetDarker Presents: This Is Dubstep 2)
6. Lung – “Afterlife” (GetDarker Presents: This Is Dubstep 2)
7. The New Pornographers – “Crash Years” (Together)
8. The New Pornographers – “Valkyrie In the Roller Disco” (Together)
9. The Hold Steady – “Positive Jam” (Almost Killed Me)
10. The Whigs – “Right Hand On My Heart” (Mission Control)
11. M.I.A. – “Teqkilla” (MAYA)
12. M.I.A. – “Meds and Feds” (MAYA)
13. Admiral Radley – “I Heart California” (I Heart California)
14. The Hold Steady – “Soft In the Center” (Heaven Is Whenever)
15. Beach House – “Walk in the Park” (Teen Dream)
16. The Acacia Strain – “Btm Fdr” (Wormwood)
17. Max Richter – “Infra 5″ (Infra)
18. Best Coast – “Summer Mood” (Crazy For You)

And here is your playlist, as usual.