you're addicted to God? Is it possible to be addicted to God? How do we define addiction? Are all addictions by nature unhealthy?
Those who read this blog know me, so it's redundant for me to point out that I like to think. I have no answers on this one, and quite frankly, it's way out there and not well written (unedited stream of consciousness never is), but I've thought about as much as I can about this idea of God addiction without getting any farther than what you read here. I welcome outside thoughts. Let's converse, dear readers.
I want to be addicted to God. It's an interesting idea, to be sure. Maybe even I am addicted to the idea of being addicted to God. Think about it. What is there was nothing you wouldn't sell to get a more God in your life? What if you had a constant "jonesing" for God? Would it not be awesome if any time you didn't have God, you wished you did?
Of course, I must be sensitive to those who have struggled, or are close to someone who has struggled, with addiction.
There does seem to be something, though, about the human nature, some flaw in us, that allows us to become so radically unbalanced in favor of one thing that it negatively affects all other aspects of our life. Wouldn't it be nice if we could find some way to manipulate our flaw for good?
There are physical, emotional, spiritual, relational consequences to addictive behavior.
I guess I just wish that we could find some way to re/un-twist our ability to become unbalanced in favor of The One good thing that can only affect every aspect our lives positively. That would be nice.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Vintage Music Dos
Your indifference won't stop me from blogging more about this, so don't bother not bothering.
The transformation of music media has trended towards the song being the primary musical unit, over against the album/record. Consider this: you started with the first major music medium for the purpose of sales - the record. From the record, you move on to the 8-track, which is smaller and more portable, but like the record, you don't really have a choice which song you listen to or when. From the 8-track to the cassette tape, you really start to see how the medium influenced the way music was hawked. Not only do you have the choice (albeit now a somewhat ridiculous choice - why fast forward when you can skip... or shuffle?) to skip past songs, you also now have the ability to buy blank music media and record whatever song you want on the cassette. Ah yes, the mix tape. From the cassette tape to the CD, song preference becomes even easier, and the mix tape offers a light to the mix CD. From the CD, the MP3 was a New York subway train.
Concurrent with these developments was a significant change in the landscape of music. If we look specifically at the CD era of music, we can spot the pinnacle of this trend without tracing it through history. By the time the CD-form of music saturates the market, we have a thriving style of music widely embraced by the POPular masses. Pop music is not just a slice, it's the whipped cream on top of every slice. There's a pop form for just about every version and this pop music is driving the financial growth of the music industry, so much so that they start to figure out that if a band can put together two or three radio-worthy singles, then the record companies can sell whole albums based on just a couple of songs. Who cares if the rest of the music is horrible, bad, or passable? People will shell out $20 for the next big thing. Yeah, we used to pay $20 for CDs.
So, there are two movements, one towards pushing albums with only a few good songs and the other towards allowing listeners the freedom to have only the music they actually want to have. I find this fascinating, in an Emmett Brown kind of way. I think it's interesting to see how these two trends are now playing out. On one hand, pop music is going as strong as ever in the way it should - one song at a time. On the other hand, truly great music is carving out a niche of its own in this pop-crazy world - one album at a time.
Great Bands / Great Albums (in no particular order)
The Flaming Lips / Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Fleet Foxes / Fleet Foxes
Bon Iver / For Emma, Forever Ago
Band of Horses / Cease to Begin
Brandi Carlile / The Story
Cloud Cult / The Meaning of 8
Miracle Fortress / Five Roses
Sigur Ros / Takk
Blind Pilot / Three Rounds and a Sound
And for kicks, I really can't get enough of the song "Holes," by Mercury Rev.
The transformation of music media has trended towards the song being the primary musical unit, over against the album/record. Consider this: you started with the first major music medium for the purpose of sales - the record. From the record, you move on to the 8-track, which is smaller and more portable, but like the record, you don't really have a choice which song you listen to or when. From the 8-track to the cassette tape, you really start to see how the medium influenced the way music was hawked. Not only do you have the choice (albeit now a somewhat ridiculous choice - why fast forward when you can skip... or shuffle?) to skip past songs, you also now have the ability to buy blank music media and record whatever song you want on the cassette. Ah yes, the mix tape. From the cassette tape to the CD, song preference becomes even easier, and the mix tape offers a light to the mix CD. From the CD, the MP3 was a New York subway train.
Concurrent with these developments was a significant change in the landscape of music. If we look specifically at the CD era of music, we can spot the pinnacle of this trend without tracing it through history. By the time the CD-form of music saturates the market, we have a thriving style of music widely embraced by the POPular masses. Pop music is not just a slice, it's the whipped cream on top of every slice. There's a pop form for just about every version and this pop music is driving the financial growth of the music industry, so much so that they start to figure out that if a band can put together two or three radio-worthy singles, then the record companies can sell whole albums based on just a couple of songs. Who cares if the rest of the music is horrible, bad, or passable? People will shell out $20 for the next big thing. Yeah, we used to pay $20 for CDs.
So, there are two movements, one towards pushing albums with only a few good songs and the other towards allowing listeners the freedom to have only the music they actually want to have. I find this fascinating, in an Emmett Brown kind of way. I think it's interesting to see how these two trends are now playing out. On one hand, pop music is going as strong as ever in the way it should - one song at a time. On the other hand, truly great music is carving out a niche of its own in this pop-crazy world - one album at a time.
Great Bands / Great Albums (in no particular order)
The Flaming Lips / Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Fleet Foxes / Fleet Foxes
Bon Iver / For Emma, Forever Ago
Band of Horses / Cease to Begin
Brandi Carlile / The Story
Cloud Cult / The Meaning of 8
Miracle Fortress / Five Roses
Sigur Ros / Takk
Blind Pilot / Three Rounds and a Sound
And for kicks, I really can't get enough of the song "Holes," by Mercury Rev.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Vintage Music
In an iTunes world, it's no longer an accomplishment to create one good song. "That's right," said Fred and Tommy Tutone agrees. For better or worse, there is now little significance in producing a song that forces someone to stop and listen for 3 minutes and 23 seconds. So what if you get to work and haven't finished a song? Just press pause on the bottom of the click wheel and catch it on the drive home.
Is this not the death of music? What ever happened to the good old days, right? I'm old enough to joke about 8-track but young enough to have no idea what an 8-track looks like. I can remember cassette tapes, though, and I grew up during the boom for CDs. Napster, Song Spy, and later Kazaa, transformed personal computers into personal schooners for techno-pirates riding open-sail over a sea of unmonitored bandwidth. Each successive development rendered the former obsolete and making music, and more specifically songs, incredibly accessible. The pirates have mostly all gone the way of their seafaring predecessors and we're left with a whole new enemy to music: the teenager.
This week, two of the top five songs on iTunes are songs by Miley Cyrus. The number one album on iTunes currently is an album by Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana. I rest my case.
Yes, there will always be mainstream pop music, built upon the carcasses of yesterday's one hit wonders - a collection of increasingly made-up men and barely-clothed women. who knew Twisted Sister was the pinnacle of pop?
On the other hand, this is still a time of unprecedented (until it becomes a precedent) musical diversity. Much to John Mayer's Twitter chagrin, the old tunes aren't going away, and still the number of artists proliferates. Thus it is that true music snobbery remains alive and well. So it is with nose-upturned, that I salute the unique musicians. There are those who are balanced somewhere along the middle who attempt to create a unique sound, but at this point, few sounds are literally unique. Very few bands sound only like themselves. So then, what makes an artist unique, in my humble opinion, is the ability to create a unique sound consistently. This is judged not by the quality of a song but by the quality of the album. Ironically, then, in an iTunes world, the same as it was in the world of every other music medium, accomplishments are measured by the album.
Is this not the death of music? What ever happened to the good old days, right? I'm old enough to joke about 8-track but young enough to have no idea what an 8-track looks like. I can remember cassette tapes, though, and I grew up during the boom for CDs. Napster, Song Spy, and later Kazaa, transformed personal computers into personal schooners for techno-pirates riding open-sail over a sea of unmonitored bandwidth. Each successive development rendered the former obsolete and making music, and more specifically songs, incredibly accessible. The pirates have mostly all gone the way of their seafaring predecessors and we're left with a whole new enemy to music: the teenager.
This week, two of the top five songs on iTunes are songs by Miley Cyrus. The number one album on iTunes currently is an album by Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana. I rest my case.
Yes, there will always be mainstream pop music, built upon the carcasses of yesterday's one hit wonders - a collection of increasingly made-up men and barely-clothed women. who knew Twisted Sister was the pinnacle of pop?
On the other hand, this is still a time of unprecedented (until it becomes a precedent) musical diversity. Much to John Mayer's Twitter chagrin, the old tunes aren't going away, and still the number of artists proliferates. Thus it is that true music snobbery remains alive and well. So it is with nose-upturned, that I salute the unique musicians. There are those who are balanced somewhere along the middle who attempt to create a unique sound, but at this point, few sounds are literally unique. Very few bands sound only like themselves. So then, what makes an artist unique, in my humble opinion, is the ability to create a unique sound consistently. This is judged not by the quality of a song but by the quality of the album. Ironically, then, in an iTunes world, the same as it was in the world of every other music medium, accomplishments are measured by the album.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Foodie Booty
If it is in fact true that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, then I am hopelessly in love with Memphis. My belly will vouch for that statement.
Last summer, there was a large gathering of Faris people (I'm not a fan of the plural form, NT Christians start thinking they are more funny than they are) in Colorado for a reunion of sorts. The first thing my grandfather said when he saw me was, "You've gotten fatter."
Thanks, man. My brain almost exploded thinking of the possible responses I could give - covering the spectrum from petulant crying fit to over-the-top crass - but perhaps I would have done well just to say, "I live in Memphis, what do you expect?"
In pirate terms, Memphis is teeming with culinary booty. Jokes about Memphis topping the "America's Fattest City" list aside, I am going to get a lot of miles out of this pun, don't worry. In fact, Memphis has so much booty (see?), I'm inclined to keep a record of it.
My most recent inspiration for blogging about food comes from a few sources. The first is cable TV. Or, more specifically, two shows: Iron Chef America and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. If you've watched either, then I need not type anything else. If you haven't seen those shows, then I need not talk to you anymore.
The second source was a recent meal I shared with my wife of three years on our anniversary. We had several requirements for our special meal. We wanted to have some money after it was over (but not too much). So CiCi's was out, as was Pasta Italia (those are the outliers). We want a unique experience in a romantic setting - down goes Applebee's! That pretty much left Paulette's.
Now, I've never met Paulette. If I did, I think I'd shake her hand and say, "Thanks for the good food," but, we probably wouldn't be best friends. Paulette probably lives in Germantown, drives 35 on Poplar, and has three grandkids with multiple 3-syllable names each. On the other hand, she could invite me over for dinner anytime. Paulette's has the setting down pretty nice. Overton Square is the place, after all, for good food with a dash of local charm. Being Memphis, sometimes that charm has a little less... sophisticated luxury than other more established joints in cities that have older money than Memphis (I'm looking at you Nashville). In other words, if you're wearing black pants, they'll give you a black napkin at Paulette's, but it won't be silk, which is great by me. Like Memphis, this place might be somehwat pretentious, but in the end, it's not going to try that hard.
In fact, I'd say it's just pretentious enough to offer really good food without having to pronounce words you've never seen before. The Faris rule of thumb these days is "always split," which can put more pressure on the meal. Let's just say Paulette handled the pressure to the tune of a medium-cooked filet mignon topped with a gorgonzola cheese and red wine demi-glace. That meal sings. Add to that the roasted garlic whipped potatoes (because the French aren't the mashing type) and the popovers with strawberry butter that came before the meal, and you have yourself a symphony of flavors that does not dissappoint.
In short, a meal that good gives Paulette's a place in the discussion of local Memphis culinary treasure. For me, it's not where everyone knows your name and it probably shouldn't be, but for the occassional special event, Paulette's will not disappoint. In short, it's foodie booty.
So from now on, you can look forward to the occasional post about foodie booty. Also, I'm neither fat nor fatTER. But you, Gramps, look great.
Last summer, there was a large gathering of Faris people (I'm not a fan of the plural form, NT Christians start thinking they are more funny than they are) in Colorado for a reunion of sorts. The first thing my grandfather said when he saw me was, "You've gotten fatter."
Thanks, man. My brain almost exploded thinking of the possible responses I could give - covering the spectrum from petulant crying fit to over-the-top crass - but perhaps I would have done well just to say, "I live in Memphis, what do you expect?"
In pirate terms, Memphis is teeming with culinary booty. Jokes about Memphis topping the "America's Fattest City" list aside, I am going to get a lot of miles out of this pun, don't worry. In fact, Memphis has so much booty (see?), I'm inclined to keep a record of it.
My most recent inspiration for blogging about food comes from a few sources. The first is cable TV. Or, more specifically, two shows: Iron Chef America and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations. If you've watched either, then I need not type anything else. If you haven't seen those shows, then I need not talk to you anymore.
The second source was a recent meal I shared with my wife of three years on our anniversary. We had several requirements for our special meal. We wanted to have some money after it was over (but not too much). So CiCi's was out, as was Pasta Italia (those are the outliers). We want a unique experience in a romantic setting - down goes Applebee's! That pretty much left Paulette's.
Now, I've never met Paulette. If I did, I think I'd shake her hand and say, "Thanks for the good food," but, we probably wouldn't be best friends. Paulette probably lives in Germantown, drives 35 on Poplar, and has three grandkids with multiple 3-syllable names each. On the other hand, she could invite me over for dinner anytime. Paulette's has the setting down pretty nice. Overton Square is the place, after all, for good food with a dash of local charm. Being Memphis, sometimes that charm has a little less... sophisticated luxury than other more established joints in cities that have older money than Memphis (I'm looking at you Nashville). In other words, if you're wearing black pants, they'll give you a black napkin at Paulette's, but it won't be silk, which is great by me. Like Memphis, this place might be somehwat pretentious, but in the end, it's not going to try that hard.
In fact, I'd say it's just pretentious enough to offer really good food without having to pronounce words you've never seen before. The Faris rule of thumb these days is "always split," which can put more pressure on the meal. Let's just say Paulette handled the pressure to the tune of a medium-cooked filet mignon topped with a gorgonzola cheese and red wine demi-glace. That meal sings. Add to that the roasted garlic whipped potatoes (because the French aren't the mashing type) and the popovers with strawberry butter that came before the meal, and you have yourself a symphony of flavors that does not dissappoint.
In short, a meal that good gives Paulette's a place in the discussion of local Memphis culinary treasure. For me, it's not where everyone knows your name and it probably shouldn't be, but for the occassional special event, Paulette's will not disappoint. In short, it's foodie booty.
So from now on, you can look forward to the occasional post about foodie booty. Also, I'm neither fat nor fatTER. But you, Gramps, look great.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)