I’ve had the same wish for the past five years. My wish is that I’ll live forever. A lot of people don’t understand that… It’s a wish! Go big! I don’t wanna fucking die! How simple is that? I have no interest in dying… Out there? I don’t know what’s out there. It’s unknown. This is known. That’s unknown . I’m sticking with the known. “But Lewis, if you had faith,” my Christian friends say, “the angels will come and they will take you to heaven…” “Well,” I tell them, “until there are photographs, the legal system would say that’s hearsay.”

paraphrase of Lewis Black on his new album

A few weeks back, I had the distinct pleasure of getting to see David Bazan live at a house show here in Nashville. As many are well aware by this point, Bazan has made a major transformation from “leader of a Christian band” (Pedro the Lion) to “openly agnostic solo artist.” It would be easy to assume that someone who was that entrenched in the culture of western Christianity would be having quite an awkward adjustment — especially after “coming out” to the world via one of the best albums released in a long time. It was, essentially, his “breakup album with God,” for lack of a better description.

I was expecting to sit in a living room with a guy who was full of “umms” and “ahhs” that played his songs and mentally prepared himself for a barrage of questions about his departure from faith. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did my fellow listeners treat him with the utmost respect, he was confident, bold, outspoken and, dare I say it, happier and more comfortable than I’ve ever heard of him being. It was as though he had finally settled into his right place.

Especially in North America, evangelical culture persists a lot of black-and-white mentality about what is truth and what is lie, what is to be believed and what is to be rejected. In the past few years, I’ve seen a growing population of Christians who debate and argue and divide themselves over nitpicky theology, which I find more than a little bit disconcerting. Over time, I realized that this mentality is rooted in a desire to prove their beliefs in a concrete fashion which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous.

An idea that’s been rolling around in my head for my long absence from blogging here — originally seeded in a growing and poorly-worded curiosity about the validity of the other major religions — boils down to this: faith is just that.

Faith, in the religious sense, means believing in something that cannot be proven. If, as Lewis Black wishes, we can prove that God and heaven and angels and an afterlife exist without a shadow of doubt, it wouldn’t be faith. It would be fact. In the same way, we can’t disprove the beliefs of others, especially when they are in agreement with millions of others.

Western Christianity has made a lot of effort in the past 50 years to prove why Christianity is “it” and everything else is not. It shows a supreme lack of confidence in the unknown and in being wrong. To truly have great faith, one must submit to the fact that, at some point, he has to stop proving, accept what he believes and live accordingly. Or stop believing it.

Certainly we need people who can read and interpret the Bible and the Koran and the holy scriptures of Hinduism in order to form a foundation of beliefs, but interpretation is not something for everyone. In fact, the more that get involved in interpretation, the less unity there seems to be, which completely throw the idea of a body of believers out the window. Our culture’s Jeffersonian push on education has somehow caused us to forget that faith and education are near-polar opposites. Christian culture’s desire to have concrete answers to the eternally unanswerable and ridiculously inane questions of life is causing it to crumble in on itself.

Perhaps if most of us dropped the habit of (mis)interpreting, debating and arguing ideas, submit to the philosophy that it’s not only okay but recommended to not know everything, then focused on practicing the undeniable core of our beliefs — to love and respect and ask everything in humility — we’d all be better off.

Perhaps Bazan’s confidence is seeded in knowing that he doesn’t need to know all the answers or ask all the question to live an inspired and beautiful life.

Required reading/listening:

• The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, by David Dark
• The Religion Episode, by the Grapes of Rad
• Curse Your Branches, by David Bazan

Given its “by the people, for the people” punk roots, indie’s most relevant definition would seem to come from its fans, its most fervent believers. But take to the Internet — the homeless home of this decade’s most important scene — and you’ll find that any definition set forth has been swiftly and furiously countered.

Paste Magazine posed the question: is indie dead?. A good article that addresses an issue that needed to be explored at length. Rachael Maddux treats the subject well, addressing it from several perspectives.

Her final conclusion (not to spoil it for you; you should read the article to see a fine journalistic specimen regardless) is that yes, indie is dead.

She makes her point in a roundabout way, but abuses the term “dead” in my opinion. Indie is not dead, it’s just become a singularity. Much like the Nietzsche-posed question “is God dead?,” which she addresses, which more states that “God” means too many things to mean anything. Which is exactly what “indie” is: too much to be something any more.

I have friends who say “indie” when they mean independent. They’re usually the ones with a grasp on the recent history of pop culture. But to the rest — generally the less history-aware — it means “quirky” or “authentic” or a hundred other things.

Or they don’t know what indie means at all, so wrapped up in a world of the mainstream that they’re entirely unaware something else exists outside a world of corporate-sponsored entertainment based on market research. They probably don’t even know that market research exists.

Maybe indie is no more dead than any other thing that was never alive in the first place; I suppose the real issue here is deciding what “dead” and “alive” mean.

It takes a hell of a lot of energy, courage, thought and faith to take your foundation, drop it off a cliff and start over. It’s the biggest undertaking any of us will ever attempt. And, for some reason, I’ve discovered that continually doing so is what keeps me motivated to keep going. I’ve never felt so satisfied realizing that I know so little.

It’s not so much that I enjoy freeing myself of my beliefs, philosophies and values. It’s more that, when I look at those who don’t go about this process, the cancer of complacency is written all over their graying faces. Challenging my own ideas is what I do best, it seems, and the one habit I can’t seem to free myself of when shedding my ball and chain is judging those who, knowingly or not, do not deny themselves — mind, soul and spirit included — for the sake of their own personal development and enlightenment.

Today, the concept of Universal Truth is on the table.

To those who deny it, it sounds like the product of fundamentalist rubes. Only one Truth is possible. One timeline; one explanation for life, the universe and everything; one way we’ll experience the afterlife, if an afterlife exists at all. It’s impossible that you and I could experience two very different things in the very same circumstance, and even less possible that two contradicting beliefs can both be right. It just makes sense.

But relative truth certainly has its appeal. A world where we can justify our actions by claiming relative truths sounds much fancier and full of options, but it’s hard not to wonder if the motivations still boil down to one enveloping universal truth: we don’t want anyone to challenge what we believe. In other words, selfish individualism (which potentially leads to the death of community and tradition).

On the other hand, universal truth denies the gray area of differing cognitive realities. Part philosophy, part neurology, we can’t prove that what I see is what you see. Somehow (if I’m not just imagining you all exist in my own self-created universe) we all manage to get on the same relational wavelength about whether or not that blue rubber ball just rolled off the table and bounced into a corner. But hallucinations, misinterpretations and crossed wires in the brain can’t be overlooked either, therefore invalidating the mind from being an entirely trustworthy vessel of Truth.

What it comes down to is the fact that it’s hard for me to shed the weight of 25 years of dogma — which I find increasingly full of cracks — when I’m trying to pragmatically explain why I know that, despite the billions of people that disagree, my truth is the Truth.

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism. If there is one Universal Truth, why are we all so split on what we believe? Why is there no clear front-runner with the vast majority of the votes? What gives me, a WASP if there ever was one, the right to think that what I believe is right? If I were born and raised by Iranians in Iran, I’d be a Muslim. No doubt about it. My core foundation, that I continually push off a cliff — and eventually dive after to retrieve every damn time — seems more a product of my environment than some spark of inspired awareness imbued in me by a greater power.

Maybe I lack faith. Maybe I just got lucky. Or maybe the only Universal Truth is that every venue of faith is true and, despite the overwhelming list of contradictions, they all converge into one path in ways that are beyond our ability to understand. (It should be just as easy to use what faith we have to accept plurality as it is to faithfully believe in only one way; the attempted use of empirical evidence to pick one over the other will continually fail.)

But I don’t know. I really don’t. I’m somehow satisfied with not knowing. It’s surprisingly easy to relate to people when willing to admit to knowing nothing. And I like it that way.

What if we could pedigree our food? We do it for our pets and our own family trees, and that has almost no usable value other than investing in human pride. But having a pedigree on our food, that has some potential health benefits.

There’s been a lot of talk that we Americans (and all consumers of mass-produced food) are basically corn chips with souls thanks to corn subsidies in the American midwest. So what if we knew that our vegetables were grown, not only organically, but with fertilizer from well-pedigreed cow manure with three “generations” of distance from mass-produced feed?

Okay, maybe vegetables are an overwhelmingly large food to start with, but we could at least do it with meat, right? I’d much rather eat beef that I knew had five generations of grass-fed, free-range behind it.

There are other things we could rate too: how humane the slaughter house is; the quality of the land the cows were pastured on; the number of cows shared the square acre it lived on.

Yeah yeah, most people don’t care about these things. But that’s half the point: creating a system where people can see how well, or how terribly, our food is managed, maybe it’d be easier for them to care, and easier for them to make wise decisions, and easier for food-makers to feel bad when they serve us crap.

It’s just an idea. And before you proclaim that it’s “too much work” (though in reality it probably is) let’s have a look at how often we add personal content to the internet cloud that, collectively, creates enough material to create 3D models of certain parts of the world. What if we cared enough about our food to spend a little time caring about where it came from.

The other day my friend Brett wrote in defense of using violence in a last-resort situation to solve problem. He addressed it in a mature way that I completely understand and, while I am writing to support pure pacifism instead, it’s not meant to be in opposition to him directly (and not the least bit personal), but more of a devil’s advocate response. Well, sort of. I currently haven’t decided exactly where I stand when it comes to violent measures “when necessary.” So I’m partially writing to get an idea out that’s been bouncing around my head, too.

First off, this argument is founded on general Christian ideology, so if that’s not how you swing, read on only for your own entertainment.

In America, Christians glorify the martyrs of the faith in other parts of the world. We stand in awe of those willing to stand up for their faith and die for it, then sit comfortably and question why it is that American Christians rarely die for theirs. It’s because it isn’t threatened here, in the land of free worship. But I argue that it is still threatened, albeit indirectly.

There is a fair amount to support the idea that Jesus taught pure pacifism. Not an idea closed to reasonable debate, but it’s a substantial point made in the New Testament. If that side is taken, then we should, ideally, not cause harm others when our safety and the safety of those around us is threatened. Instead, we should take the “third way” (as Shane Claiborne calls it in Jesus for President [see my review]) and respond unexpectedly, however that may be.

When we talk about peacemaking and the “third way of Jesus,” people inevitably ask bizarre situational questions like, “If someone broke into your house and was raping your grandmother, what would you do?” We can’t exhaustively troubleshoot every situation with nonviolent “strategy,” but what we can do is internalize the character and spirit of Jesus. We can meditate daily on the fruit of the Spirit and pray that they take root in us. Then we can trust that when we encounter a bad situation, we will act like Jesus.

At one festival, I was asked after a talk, “What would you do if you lived in Darfur and had a gang of young men running at you with machetes?” I though such a strange question deserved an equally far-out answer, so I said, “I’d take off my clothes and run around like a chicken, squawking wildly and pecking at the ground with my mouth.” I figure the chicken response is about as likely to disarm a mob of young hooligans as my trying to fight them. Either response would be ugly, but I’d opt for the former. I’ve already decided that the next time I get jumped, I’m going to turn some backflips and act like a ninja. Or I might just get on my knees and start speaking in tongues. Either seems as likely to hold promising results. At any rate, these aren’t solutions for the tragic situations of brothers and sisters in areas like the Sudan. Without a doubt, protecting the innocent is one of the strongest arguments for redemptive violence. A bunch of folks running around like naked chickens is not a solution to the crisis there. But the story of my friend Celestin [who continued to teach forgiveness and reconciliation, to eye-opening results, after militant Rwandans killed many in his church family] is. After all, Jesus didn’t say, “Greater love has no one than this, to kill to protect the innocent.”

The end idea is this: if we truly believe Christ’s teachings, and it is true that he asked for our peace and pacifism, we are martyrs if we stand up for that belief in any situation where our physical safety is threatened by another person.

Is this easy to do? No, not at all. But I’d wager that, if a nonviolent movement of Christians were to rise in this country, someone would take notice and perhaps see something in our faith that hasn’t been seen in quite some time through the inevitably martyrdom that would occur, even if not in great numbers. Something that goes beyond lots of words and cheesy attempts at evangelism and actually gets at the core of our faith and our humanity.

Defensive violence makes sense in a logical world where our own survival is of the highest value. But if our faith is what defines us, then it is for it that we should be willing to die, even when given the opportunity to fight back.

I wonder the same thing about folks who check for new email every 5 minutes, follow 5,000 people on Twitter, or try to do anything sane with 500 RSS feeds.

Some graze unlimited bowls of information by choice. Others claim it’s a necessity of remaining employed, landing sales, or “staying in the loop.” Could be. What about you?

How do you know when you’ve had “enough?”

Not everything, all the time, completely, forever. Just enough. Enough to start, finish, or simply maintain.

(via Enough by Merlin Mann on 43 Folders)

After I read this short essay by Merlin Mann, I got rid of a good handful of the news feeds I was reading in Google Reader. My life already feels better, and has continued to for the week or so since I did it. Turns out I didn’t need up-to-the-minute headlines on Tiger Woods’s love life and fifty funny headlines a day from Fark and The Onion. If I’m aching for a funny headline, I can always peek at the site sometime. But I don’t need it every day. I certainly don’t miss it yet.

I also did a big cleanup on Twitter recently that has made it a simple joy again. Something to fill in gaps for a quick bit of communication or an enjoyable tidbit of a friend’s day. It’s not something I feel like I have to check every five minutes any more just to keep up. Turns out I don’t need to keep up with every move every band and person I know at every moment.

Suggested goal: Sometime before the new year, go through the websites, email newsletters, Twitter accounts, news feeds, newspapers, magazines and social networks that take your attention and ask yourself whether or not each of them is essential to your daily survival. Try to get rid of a third or even just a quarter of it. Then open your eyes to all the things you have time for with those extra moments.

The other day I was reading about absurdism. Actually, I take that back: I was reading a comic about absurdism. Close enough, right? Right.

Completely coincidentally, it’s apparently an idea that none other than Søren Kierkegaard is partially responsible for.

The fundamental idea behind absurdism is this: finding the meaning of the universe is impossible because no meaning exists (as in, the universe is cold, dark and unforgiving). Therefore, to attempt to find meaning is absurd, and the only ways to “win” (if you want to call it that) are:

• Commit suicide
• Adopt a set of religious beliefs (aka “philosophical suicide,” since religion requires faith, which is the opposite of pure logic, which is the foundation of philosophy)
• Accept the absurd

In other words, you can either give up or learn how to fake it.

Granted, this is all founded on the idea that the universe is meaningless, which is the point to argue here, and I would in some sense argue against it. But maybe that’s because I don’t want to wear a tutu and hand out hot dogs at a water polo game.

And so ends yet another pointless exploration into the world of philosophy by yours truly. I hope it has been sufficiently educational. And perhaps this will help make more sense of Albert Camus’s The Stranger, should you pick it up again (or for the first time) in the near future.

Definitely stole this from Caleb, who is spending the next few months getting rid of almost all his stuff. I have a huge amount of respect for him for doing this.

I am a firm believer that we need a lot less stuff. It’s why I like what Caleb is doing a whole lot. I feel like I am on a constant quest to have less stuff. It’s not easy to do. Every time I move, I try to throw away even more stuff. Every time I get tired of my cluttered room, things I didn’t need in the first place inevitably go in the trash or to Goodwill.

If I had it my way, I’d have one shelf for my books and music, a clear desk with my stereo and computer and nothing else. My general rule when buying physical stuff now is that, unless it’s something I’m going to use all the time, it’s not worth owning.

I’m kind of glad my family isn’t doing much for Christmas gifts this year. I already have plenty of stuff. If you haven’t started buying Christmas gifts yet (doubtless, unless you’re a dude like me), maybe you should consider buying non-physical goods, like iTunes gift certificates or a donation to charity.

Waiting in the wings like stage moms, breakup songs are ready to hold and lightly stab you, marking the transition from one type of membership to another — albeit with kazoos instead of trumpets.

We are grateful for these mood crashers for the same reason we might question their perversion: They keep us rooted in the heartache. These songs allow for introspection and the full acknowledgment that something very important has ended.

(via Break Me Off a Piece of that Breakup Song at Bitch Magazine)

Nice to see a feminist publication valuing the importance of relationships for once. Hahaaaa just kidding. I’m no bigot.

I love breakup songs. And sad songs in general. Sue me. They are some of the best songs by some of my favorite artists. They console us when we’re not in a good mood. They’re indulgent, guilty pleasures but sometimes they hit the spot like nothing else.

Here are a few favorite sad songs that just crossed my mind:

• Ryan Adams – “Come Pick Me Up” (Heartbreaker)
• Joshua James – “Dangerous” (The Sun is Always Brighter)
• The Avett Brothers – “Tear Down the House” (The Gleam II)
• mewithoutYou – “Son of a Widow” (Catch for Us the Foxes)
• Ryan Adams – “The Shadowlands” (Love is Hell)
• Glasvegas – “It’s My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry” (Glasvegas)

Just now I was listening to Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi) on the Sound of Young America podcast. He said something which, in retrospect, was obvious. I’d just never quite put it so succinctly:

[I have a friend from high school who] has a 13 year old son. And his 13 year old son is a massive Minor Threat fan. In 2009! And I think that’s just incredible! The idea that music, if it’s created in a way that is honest, can still resonate. Kids can still be like, “Yeah, that means something to me.”

It’s interesting how transcendent honesty can be. How the teenybopper pop from the 70s and 80s (Leif Garrett anyone?) has almost zero relevance now while punk rock still inspires and expands, and is well on its way to powering through three generations.

What else are people doing now with music that will still resonate and inspire in 30 years? It’s certainly not “Party in the USA” or that damn Justin Bieber song. It’s what the teenagers do who aren’t listening to top 40 radio or the top-purchased pop songs on iTunes.

I don’t know what that is because I’m an old fogey already at the ripe age of 25. (Seriously, I felt like a grandpa when I saw Vampire Weekend last month.) Maybe it’s a kid writing the next Heartbreaker or some high-schooler learning how to use Ableton Live and a synthesizer, or Talbot Tagora, who are sneaking into their 20s and already touring the US as a noise rock trio (music I’m just now learning to appreciate and understand). Those damn kids and their music.