We stayed the night with Travis and Christina Miller in Linn, Missouri
We rode scooters around Oklahoma City
Oklahoma City’s botanical gardens were lovely!
We went from Oklahoma City all the way to Phoenix, cutting our trip from 4 days down to 3 days.
Around 1 a.m. on Saturday night, we arrived at our house in Phoenix, Arizona.
This is where we’ll be for the next two or three months working with Aim-Right Ministries and Unite Phoenix. Come see us or send us a letter or something at:
Every time a murder happens which is touted as racially motivated, many of us re-enter the conversation about racial relations in America. Maybe it’s a conversation we should have more often – hopefully it doesn’t take killings to get us to the table.
History.com says slaves were brought from Africa to America for use around 1619. And then the enslavement, buying, and selling of black people was abolished by a law set forth around 1865. White people stole Africans from their homeland and bought and sold them as property back in America. Effectively, they took a people with dignity and brought them into a new society where they were made non-human. White America removed the humanness from African people openly for about 200 years.
It’s been about another 200 years since black people have been reclassified as people, not property. Abstractly, you might say we’ve now spent more time classifying African-Americans as people than we have as property used to make money. White Americans have played God – taken life and tried to give it back, stripped dignity and tried to restore it, trampled a people and tried to raise them up. But dignity is not mankind’s to give and take away. And if you spend 5 minutes insulting someone, removing their dignity, turning them into an object to be used for your gain, it’s going to take more than 5 minutes to make peace with what you did go, to make the consequences go away. For 200 years whites classified blacks as inhuman property. And then another 200 years having decided they’re actually human after all.
The reconciliation, rebuilding, the restoring of personhood does not happen fast. And probably it’s not white people’s to give back anyway. But how long will it take?No one knows. But we must acknowledge these kinds of things are not flipped on and off like light switches, or by strokes of pens on bills of Congress. And pleas to get over it or stop pretending like racism still exists after all this time are not a good way forward. What is a good way forward? Perhaps not assuming our opinions are obvious conclusions – stopping to listen, to read other perspectives, and to look at our own actions. How have I acted a reconciler? What am I doing to reverse the curses of my fathers?
This sort of process has been my experience over and over again. I see someone make something – the coolest thing ever. And it’s like they must have been blessed by the gods to be able to create like that. But then you look into it, and while it still seems magical and impressive, it probably isn’t impossible. Eventually, you do some research, buy some stuff, and realize hey, maybe I could do this too.
I think I first experienced this with songwriting. I marveled at how anyone could go into a room with a guitar and some paper, then come back out with an anthem. I started copying down the lyrics to my favorite songs, line by line – pages and pages of mimicking the process. Eventually, I did it again but didn’t copy anything. When I walked out of the room, I wasn’t holding anything spectacular, but it was mine.
It was pretty much the same with surfing. When Switchfoot released a film (Fading West) documenting surfing off the coast of South Africa, I watched in amazement at how anyone other than Jesus could stand on water, or even better, ride with it. A few years later, Luke and I dropped $20 on a used, yellow surfboard which we became really good at falling off of. We talked a group of friends (who also had no idea how to surf) into taking a surf trip, and by the end of three days, we had all felt the rush of riding (briefly) with water. We even made a video. (from which this rather discolored image was taken)
This semester I found myself in MCM-213, a media production course required for my degree program. The course requires each student to write, film, and produce their own short film. I was first hesitant and had no idea what I was getting into. Then I was excited – I had a cobbled together vision for my project. And that gave way to despair; my ideas were not working – my script was not working – things were not aligning. Eventually, the first day of shooting came, and I found myself sitting on the floor surrounded by a skeletal screenplay two hours before my main actor would want to know what to…act. I made some new stuff up, borrowed from my earlier ideas, and hoped for the best.
Filming turned out to be a blast! We filmed three separate days for about two hours each session. Brandon willingly did whatever I asked of him – Aleisha took notes of which takes were good and bad – Luke had the idea to shoot the last scene in one continuous take. And we found props and set pieces lying around our shooting locations.
Editing also turned out to be really fun. I purchased a student subscription to the Adobe Suite and watched a lot of how to use Adobe Premiere YouTube videos. I really enjoyed getting to make the mechanical choices (soundtrack inserts and video cuts…) which pushed the narrative forward. All the video was shot on my Nikon D3300, which is a very entry-level DSLR, and (almost) all the music was from the YouTube Audio Library.
After many hours of sitting in class, working on a script, filming with friends, and learning new software, I hit the “export” and “upload” buttons and declared this project finished! Now I’m back to getting Aleisha to teach me how to make macrame plant hangers, which is starting to seem less impossible.
“I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids.” (Psalm 132:4)
It is somewhat trivial in relation to worldwide catastrophe, but I sure do miss waking up in the morning to the thought of needing to be somewhere soon. Of speed walking across campus because I took too long in the shower. Or throwing my tea in a to-go mug because we’re about to be late for church. I can’t wait to be late to things again, to have groups of people expecting me to rendezvous with them.
At our house, not having anywhere in particular to be in the morning has led some of us to give up going to bed almost entirely. There have been some strange, unexpected meetings at bizarre times of the night. And usually in the kitchen, the light over the kitchen sink shining out into the backyard like a torch that never burns out. You wander down at heaven-knows-what hour past midnight, and there bump into someone else who also has nowhere else to be and doesn’t feel like sleeping.
The other night around 1:30 I headed down towards the kitchen and found Aleah baking two different kinds of brownies. Just kind of gave her and a few words and a wave and kept walking. Mom heard the dog up on the counter getting into food and jumped out of bed to scold her, but instead saw Luke at the bar eating ice cream. On Saturday night/Sunday morning, Mom came through as I was cleaning some fish I had almost forgotten about. The night before last, from my bed I heard someone trying to get comfortable on the couch – I don’t know they ever made it to bed at all. And just a minute ago, which was two minutes to 1, I ran into Aleah mixing up some cookie dough.
So many nights I’ve wished I could make time stop – I had so much to do: reading, writing, watching, making – and had to give it up and go to bed. Or else I disregarded the numbers on my alarm clock and then stumbled tiredly through the next day, wishing I just had time to work and sleep. Tonight I have both, but not as much motivation, not much to say at all. It feels like I can’t get momentum, like I’m stuck here with everything but inspiration. Maybe it’s the going out, the sense of urgency, the limited time and energy that create a space for making something good. I’d be ready to have that back again.
Until then, I sit at my desk and window overlooking the back yard below. And I imagine whatever might be out there in the woods looking up at the face illuminated by a computer screen, fingers meandering over keys, eyes staring back like a princess waiting to be rescued from her captor’s tower.
I got to watch Jojo Rabbit with a group of friends – and it’s the best film I’ve seen lately. The reactions I’ve heard/seen from some friends have been somewhat mixed – but I certainly loved it. Simply put, Jojo Rabbit a melodrama wrestling with deep, dark questions of nationalism, hate, and compassion through the eyes of a 10 year old boy growing up. As a viewer you laugh, ache, and then dance – what could be better?
This film reminded me of the novel All the Light We Cannot See, which also tells of young boys training to be Nazis. But whereas the novel is gritty and dark even its beautiful prose, Jojo Rabbit is lighthearted and hilarious while delving into many of the same spaces. It kept occurring to me that this movie was so good, so special, because everything was seen through the eyes of a 10 year old boy. The Nazi training scenes are shot in a montage that makes it look like a summer camp, and that’s what it is for Jojo, a boy trying to become a good Nazi like he ought to. In his endeavor to become a boy the fuhrer would be proud of, Jojo is accompanied by his imaginary friend who is none other than Adolf Hitler himself (played by director Taika Waititi). I promise it’s a version of Hitler you’ve never seen.
This film is also about a kid growing up, losing innocence, getting broken. Jojo gets picked on, has a best friend, and falls in love – all in the space of a World War II German city. I’ve always been drawn to stories about boys figuring out how to grow up, trying to understand why life is turning their good world upside down. For me, Jojo Rabbit is reminiscent me of some of my other favorite coming-of-age stories (Bridge to Terabithia, Boyhood, Almost Famous, Holes). And it’s so effective at portraying how the world looks to a young boy, yet as a viewer we’re allowed to see more than Jojo does – we see what’s really at stake – but all through his eyes. The war scenes are confusing, like they would be for a kid: one minute your running for your life, then you bump into an old friend, you can’t tell where the enemy is coming from, the camera’s eyes aren’t “tall enough” to show us what we’d expect to see.
I think the most powerful element is the tangible tensions we have to hold when we see a cute, blonde 10 year old embodying Nazism which we “know” is always evil. When we see a mother loving her son but giving him the freedom and space to work out his nationalism and morality. When we see a German officer giving his life for a traitor. This film is about things not being as obvious as they seem, wrestling through that, and growing up – and it does so through the eyes of a kid with an imaginary friend.
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This is the most complete collection of my songs ever collected! Most of them have been posted before (not all), but never all in one place. What follows are all my EPs with all their songs (click the links to listen) and a short synopsis for each album.
“Fourth Time’s the Charm” (July 2024)
The major themes I think about in these songs are realization and acceptance, loss and confusion, and faith. My favorite song is track 3, “Where Are We” which I wrote while in college around 2020. This is, by far, the most produced work I’ve ever released. Still, it contains the rawness and intimacy of the previous three projects.
These songs are about trying to find perspective and looking towards the future, which at the time looked like a wide open room. A couple friends helped me with some of the recordings and Aleisha helped with the cover photo. My favorite song is track 3, “In Your Arms.”
This second collection of songs was written out of a pretty hard time – but with the hope of new life and resurrection in mind (springtime). The vibe of this collection is pretty mellow and raw, and I think that fits. I really like a lot of these tunes, “April” “Numb” and “Springtime” are my favorites.
*This is the first collection of songs I ever recorded. They are dear to me, and as I listen to them I think of Oregon and what it felt like to be eighteen and nineteen years old. They were (almost) all recorded with a borrowed mic and my Taylor guitar in an upstairs room. My favorite is track 4, “What Love Is” and track 2, “For Your Morning.”
In An Introduction to Film Genres, Friedman defines the genre of melodrama as, “Films centering on personal relationships…that seek to elicit spectator sympathy for the film’s protagonists and tell their story in a lighthearted style that may include spectacular effects, implausible coincidences, plot twists, and a clear dichotomy between good and evil” (Friedman, 85). Marriage Story certainly has some of these characteristics but shies away from anything unrealistic or implausible and also doesn’t draw neat distinctions between protagonist and antagonist. The two main characters antagonize each other, yet the story is told in a way that makes us root for both of them. Ultimately, the couple (together) is the hero. And in their separation, neither seems complete as the protagonist.
I watched this film one and a half times, and I’m sure I would pick up on new elements with subsequent viewings. The first time through, I walked away mostly thinking about the failed marriage, the relationship which was not able to hold. I loved the scene where Johansson and Driver have a prolonged screaming argument in the apartment – they insult and degrade each other full force, the raw pain and baggage finally being aired. Each compares the other to their parents, which is taken as a below-the-belt insult. It’s clear both characters have a lot of emotional baggage from their past. As I watched I thought, “If they could have had this conversation in act 1, they would’ve made it.” And at the end they end up in each other’s arms apologizing. Director Noah Baumbach says of the scene, “It’s a cruel, relentless duet of a scene — but ultimately offers relief” (Sollosi).
The second time through I noticed how much Johansson’s character (Nicole) was taken with Charlie, even though broke away from him. In the first meeting with her lawyer, she’s awkward and weak in her conversation (the high angles and long shots make her look really small). But once she starts talking about Charlie, her demeanor changes completely. She walks around and speaks comfortably, confidently. In another scene Charlie gives Nicole a “note,” a comment about her performance that night, and tells her she was too dramatic in her delivery. Later on, Nicole prefaces a remark to Charlie with, “I promise to say this as un-dramatically as possible.” It’s clear she still values his opinion and even wants his approval.
In the beginning of the film, this couple agrees they want to cut the cord, get the divorce and make a clean break. Ultimately, they are not able – the ties are to strong and too deep to sever with signatures on paper. I really liked how Marriage Story depicted the awkwardness of the characters figuring out how to live out a sudden, life altering decision. They think they can just break it off, but Nicole keeps calling Charlie “honey,” Charlie is the one she calls to come fix her entrance gate, Nicole has to order Charlie’s lunch at a settlement meeting because no one else (Charlie included) knows what he wants to eat, and in the final scene he stands there while she ties his shoe for him. It’s awkward to watch, and there are no clear winners.
Marriage Story depicts the tension between the legal and the emotional, bureaucracy and humanity. Both spouses drop thousands of dollars on lawyer fees and in a desperate attempt to get themselves clear of each other, but the past proves much too dense and meaning filled to easily get free from. It is painful to watch, but very powerful in a melodramatic way, how Charlie and Nicole must lay down their humanity as they fight each other in a legal battle. I thought the film did a great job of framing this as a key tension throughout the narrative. Winning in court against a spouse and retaining the humanity that bound you together seem almost mutually exclusive. Marriage Story is a beautiful film about breaking apart.
References
Sollosi, Mary, and Mary Sollosi. “Noah Baumbach Breaks down the Devastating ‘Marriage Story’ Fight Scene .” EW.com, 7 Dec. 2019, ew.com/movies/2019/12/07/marriage-story-noah-baumbach-fight-scene/.
Friedman, Lester et al. An Introduction to Film Genres. W. W. Norton & Company, 2014.
I used to think of really smart people as walking encyclopedias. But I’ve come to believe that’s entirely wrong. Really brilliant people are more like very powerful calculators. They have the capacity to consider a question and produce a good answer. Instead of a huge collection of facts stored and waiting to be regurgitated, these people have minds which have been trained how to think, how to reckon with conundrums, how to articulate insightful conclusions to difficult matters. And this is a much nicer way of framing the situation; after all, who likes to memorize stuff?
It raises the question, what of those like me who don’t know very much about how to think. What of us who’s calculating ability is still rather small? If wisdom was rote memory, we’d just have to set out memorizing. Wisdom isn’t that easy. It stands to reason that, on the whole, the answers put froth by those who haven’t developed their ability to think will be mostly useless to anyone else.
And this is why we ought to be grateful for the impeachment, for new movies, for controversy, for the events transpiring daily. They provide us with new things to think about, new problems to be reckoned with, new space to articulate answers. The point of our answering is not that we’ll get it right – let’s be honest, who among us really knows anything about the impeachment? Have any of us formally studied constitutional law, been privy to the crucial conversations, read the academic literature? Almost certainly not. The point is that we enter in the conversational space and become something more for having been there. And if that’s the goal, to become more through communication, then I’d wager it’s not a waste of time (entirely) to be in the comment threads.
If the goal is to persuade the other to see the truth you are adamant you’ve attained, it’s probably a waste of time. When you come to the table looking to educate the other and “win him over,” treating him as an “it” instead of a “thou,” it’s doubtful you’ve become anything more for having been there.
Personally, the end of the impeachment hearings begs a reflection. What was gained or lost over the course of the hearings? And forget what it means for the country, forget what I think actually happened on a national scale. I can pretend to know, but I don’t. But I can observe what happened up close. My friends view me differently now than they did two weeks ago, what’s changed? Was I graceful? Winsome? Arrogant? Helpful? Honest? Humble? Have I become more through my interaction with current events? How have I treated the other? How did I react in victory? Defeat? Perhaps these sorts of questions are more worthwhile than some others I tend to dwell on.
Did I make the most of the impeachment hearings? Did my presence in the conversation glorify God? Was I neighborly across the channels? The proceedings are over, but the words I’ve written and spoken have shaped a new reality, for me and for others. Am I proud of my contributions to this newly constructed place, albeit a strange place: where presidents stand trial, it’s seventy degrees in February, where I’ve spoken more to that raging idiot on Facebook than some of my own family, where people like you read stuff like this, and where the young can speak freely. What a wonderful world.
“Since the will extends further than the intellect, I do not contain the will within the same boundaries; rather, I extend it to things I do not understand. Because the will is indifferent in regards to such matters, it easily turns away from the true and the good; and in this way I am deceived and I sin.”
– Rene Descartes (Meditations of First Philosophy, 58)
A few nights ago we were at Aleisha’s place for board games and food that never got taken to a cancelled Christmas party. The ten of us sharing in the warm company of friends and the cold cheer of hot chocolate poured seven or eight favorite songs ago.
We were scheming about Christmas, that good time when far-off friends come back home from far-off places, if only for a few days. And Colson brought to my attention that with Mike coming home, three of our group of four would be around, and that we should play Madden like we used to, or almost like we used to. Always the four of us – the “armchair ballers.”
All ten of us were around a rickety table playing a word game, and John Mayer had taken his position in the queue. He was singing Free Fallin’while the hot chocolate got even colder. We talked and laughed at the memories – always the Kansas City Chiefs and blasted Tyreek Hill, that lighting bolt of a man I could never defend. Someone threw out a name, a possible replacement to pick up the controller and remake the foursome.
At the suggestion we kind of shrugged. Someone else said, “He’s alright, but he’s no Gabe.” And at that moment, I heard John Mayer in the last verse, clear as Christmas lights, cut through all the chatter, singing out,
I’m gonna leave this,
World for a while,
Almost as if the first sentence was answered by a second. And from thinking about what was, my mind turned to what will be again. For it is written,
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and first earth were passed away; . . . ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them’ . . . And he that sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
and elsewhere,
“This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, write: ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. ‘Yes’ says the Spirit, ‘they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.’” (Revelation 21 and 14)
And I refused to think for one minute that I will not sit again in great armchairs alongside my three brothers.
javen.bear. 