Tablets of Rock
Tag: Music
The Best Listeners Are the Best
Jeff Tweedy, in How to Write One Song, writes, “In my opinion, it’s more important to be a good listener than to be a good musician. In fact, I wouldn’t separate the two. I think the best musicians are the best listeners.”
This is also true of spiritual directors, pastors, preachers, parents, plumbers, principals, psychologists, poets, presidents, programmers, police officers, pharmacists, physicians–anyone, really.
If you want to be great at something, start by opening your ears, softening your heart, and paying attention.
A Monday Morning Shot in the Arm
You’ll have to head over to Reddit to receive it. This lifted my spirits.
I Don’t Know What It Sounds Like…
My son wrote a song, which I love, and asked me to help him title it. I felt like that was his to do.
I asked tonight, “Have you named your song?”
His reply: “No, I don’t know what it sounds like.”
The Restorative Power of Art
I’m reading Jeff Tweedy’s memoir Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back Again) because of my decade long listenership to Wilco. The book was a Christmas gift. My fascination with the band began with a friend named Clint Newlan, who was a shift manager and fellow barista with me at Starbucks in 2005-2006. I saw a Wilco show with Clint at the Uptown Theater in Kansas City on March 21, 2006, saw them again at Crossroads KC with my friend Mike Hibit on October 6, 2009, and then went to see them with Molly at Bass Concert Hall in Austin on October 1, 2017. I’m a fan.
In the book Tweedy comments on the purpose of art, and expands his thought by reflecting on art’s restorative power. He writes:
I think that may be the highest purpose of any work of art, to inspire someone else to save themselves through art. Creating creates creators. When I was in the hospital going through treatment for addiction and depression, they would have everyone in my group do art therapy. One of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen was watching a catatonic sixty-three-year-old woman who had been hooked on heroin for close to thirty years become human again by holding a pencil and being asked to draw. I’m an agnostic by nature, but seeing that made me believe in staying close to the notion of a creator. The one we identify with most easily by finding it in ourselves.
I think that is about right. Art puts us back together; creating heals, connecting us with something that is elemental to being human. Art is not a self-salvation project, as Tweedy suggests, but it does have restorative potential.
There is a theological dimension to Tweedy’s observation as well, one Christian theology affirms. The Apostle’s Creed begins with the words, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and when God gets around to creating humankind in Genesis 1:27, we read, “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
While Tweedy is an agnostic, his impressions point him toward a truth that Christians agree with: “Creating creates creators.” Human beings, created in the image of their Maker, make.
The creative impulse is stamped upon us, and creativity takes many forms. When it finds outward expression it is not only revelatory of something within, but also something without–the existence of a Creator who first created, making creatures who then, in turn, create.
The Chiming of the Hour
When my family lived on Wabash Avenue in Fort Worth, right across the street from University Baptist Church, the hours were sounded by the nearby carillones of Carr Chapel and University Christian Church. When walking to and fro across the TCU campus or while jogging in the surrounding neighborhood the bells made me cognizant of the time. All I had to do was listen.
I was also occasionally made aware of death. When the UCC congregation gathered to mourn together, declare their hope, and to offer words of comfort, the bells informed the neighborhood. Funerals began with a slow, clear, and steady bell, tolling for us all.
There was one particular afternoon when I was home alone, standing in my small, cold bedroom, being warmed mostly by sunshine passing through the window panes, when the carillon of UCC rang out a series of hymns, songs I recalled having sung in my younger years. Words flooded my mind, songs of praise, some long forgotten and now freshly remembered, and my heart was warmed. I was glad. Some may have considered the bells an intrusion, an unwelcome clamor. But I found them to be a comfort, a welcome call to prayer, a moment of joy and celebration.
I no longer remember which hymns were sounded. But I remember the moment. And I think of it often, anytime I hear the sound of bells.