Results of Ruminations

Screen capture from here . This word describes Shakespeare's work, and in no other case is that more apparent than  Hamlet  (and, as is so often the case, Hamlet). Despite my parenthetical aside, I'm again struck by how the meanings and depths that Hamlet  plumbs are...you guessed it, indefatigable. I have read, seen, or taught Hamlet  countless times--not countless because I can't count that high, but because I can't remember how many I've seen or read or taught. The safe guess is that I've gone through that play, in one form or another (not counting The Lion King , my favorite of the Disney Renaissance films of my childhood) at least fifty times. I always get something out of it, I always realize something new, I always feel there's more to explore. Hamlet  is a well from which I can never overdraw, as it is like Juliet's love: Infinite ( Romeo and Juliet 2.2). How did Shakespeare pull this off? Part of it is that he allowed himself to luxuriat...

This is the fourth music video analysis (the others are all found here ). These essays try to use the visual medium to help encode an interpretation that the text both supports and obscures, allowing the director of the music video to provide an additional analytical lens. I'm looking at an artist whose music I stumbled into because of the instrumental work that she's best known for. The album, Shatter Me , features the eponymous track with singer Lzzy Hale, even though most of the tracks on Lindsey Stirling's records don't have a lot of vocals. There's a soft spot in my heart for Stirling's stuff because it is the music that most galvanizes me when I'm trying to write. I'm almost afraid of listening to it for fear that its power will be broken, but whenever a track from Shatter Me comes into my playlist, I find my ability to focus is heightened. (I have a hypothesis for why this happens, but it's immaterial here.) The Set Up This is the musi...

After having finished both But What if We're Wrong ?  and White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America , I've been thinking a lot about stuff I was wrong about. It led to the question of this post--what are you wrong about?--and, because it requires a level of self-awareness as well as a view of history and current events, it's not really something that I can throw at my students and mull it over with them. (Odds are good that I'll toss that at one of my coworkers, however, and we'll see where that gets us.) The thing about this question that makes it hard for me to get a grip on is that I know I'm not asking what I regret. "I was wrong to order from Burger King" is not my goal with this. Additionally, it's too superficial to say, "I was wrong about my assumptions of the book  Freedom by Jonathan Franzen; it was not a very good read at all, and I was miserable the whole time I tried to read it, eventually abandoning the thing...

Note: This is part two in a three part analysis. Part one can be found here .  Second Assumption The pathways to understanding Truth are legion.  This posit would entail epistemological considerations that I'm not interested in following here, but anyone curious could start here for an overview of the philosophy. Rather, I'm interested in pursuing broader swaths of understanding and knowledge, recognizing that a lot of the road has been paved by philosophers and theologians, but focusing more on my own process of thinking. To begin, I think there's something to be said about prima facie  impulses about basic sensory data. The sun is hot, we can feel it and see it, and those physical stimuli come from a cause which we can point to and agree with. Intersubjective agreement may be necessary on one level, but once there, we're discussing common knowledge, verified through the senses. This kind of truth can be considered a rudimentary Truth--human senses are trigge...

A story of the evolution of a thought, in three parts. I Growing up, I didn't know if I knew anyone who was LGBTQ+. Middle school and high school happened throughout the nineties, and though there was still some AIDS conversations in hushed tones in the hallways at school, the judgment of homosexuality particularly (the rest of the gender and orientation spectrum being even more suppressed than it is now) was somehow tied into the disease. I lived a sheltered life, shared with friends who didn't know much about sexuality--or, if they did, they didn't bring it up around me. This meant that most of my understanding of sexuality and human relationships was narrowly confined. I remember the first time my mom explained how gays have sex, and the disgust and disdain in her voice still echoes.* I don't know what inspired it, or if there's another way of reading that conversation. It was long ago, and I daresay that I may have misremembered what was said. Neverthele...

Nestled in the foothills of Provo, beneath the gleaming white Y that's painted on the face of the mountain, a water park gurgles thirstily to itself. This is Seven Peaks Water Park, a place that I have been going to, almost every summer, since I was I don't know how old (the old park, Raging Waters, falling out of favor). Now that I have children of my own, a modest budget, and ample summer time, we decided to visit Seven Peaks and swim around for a few hours this morning. As we pulled in, my boys--who were rather excited about the day's activity--wondered aloud about the parking situation. "Pay When You Leave?" asked my seven year old, reading the sign in the parking lot. "What does that mean?" "Instead of paying right now, we'll pay on our way out," I said. "How much does it cost?" he said (I imagine; this is partially paraphrased). "Seven dollars." "Wow! That's a lot!" "Yup." I gu...

Klosterman's But What if We're Wrong? is bubbling in my brain. I mentioned it before , and I've pushed deeper into it since then. In it, Klosterman tries to imagine where and how the next great piece of literature will come into being. His argument is that it will be someone fringe--someone who is outside of societal mores, someone who is part of a minority so small that no one can really anticipate or think of anything worthwhile coming from that direction. The argument makes a lot of sense, as he explains it (and, though I'm not done with the book, I do recommend picking it up). I'm only sketching here, because his thinking got me thinking about the past, rather than the future. As I drove from a lunch with a former student, I texted my friend, who is our resident Classics expert, and threw down a different idea of how we could define what a classic is (as opposed to the Classics, of course). It's something that has been nebulous if only because we're...

Time: 11:04am. Timer: 25 minutes. Go. Case #1 Here's a thing I've been thinking about: Fame. Part of it comes from the book I started listening to this morning, But What if We're Wrong? . I'm still early in the book (about an hour and a half so far), but there are ideas that are challenging and interesting. It's part futurism, part history, part critical analysis--definitely up my alley, even if it does make me uncomfortable with some of the implications of the cheerily described tendencies of humanity. Klosterman begins by talking about Moby-Dick , one of my favorite novels. I've read it once in college (where it ought to be read, if only so that the worthwhile conversations that the book inspires can have regular space; in lieu of college, a good, dedicated book club could tackle the Whale over the course of, say, three or four meetings), then half again whilst playing a Batman video game. It's not easy to read by any stretch, and its purpose is far...

A friend sent me a copy of this essay by C.S. Lewis, in which the world-renowned novelist and essayist opines about the power of Story and puts his significantly-smarter-than-mine brain to the task of analyzing story qua Story. It's left me a little underwhelmed. I know that part of it is that I don't understand what he's getting at. Not being familiar with Lewis' work (I've read Screwtape Letters  and a Narnia book or two, but that's about as far as I got), I'm also not familiar with his allusive tendency or repetitious manner. I found his particular style somewhat disdainful of that which he didn't like, and some of his conclusions were, at best, underdeveloped.* That being said, he brings up a couple of really good points that reminded me to be a little less judgmental of people's tastes. For example, he mentions the tendency to underestimate another's intellectual ability because of what one chooses to read about. But if I am right i...

While talking with a friend on the way home from writers' group, I had a bit of an epiphany. It may be a thought that has been expressed by other, more intelligent and better read thinkers out there, but it was something that struck a nerve in me. It's pretty simple: High- and epic fantasy in the traditional vein is often propaganda for aristocratic suppression of the lower classes. Papa Tolkien  It's not unusual to give the title of "Father of modern fantasy" to J.R.R. Tolkien. Like other giants in their fields (Shakespeare, Freud, Marx, and many more), anyone attempting to work in the same genre or discipline has two options: Confront, or go around. There is no ignoring Tolkien if you're writing fantasy. Part of what makes him so fundamental is his tapping into mythic motifs, re-conceptualizing them and modernizing them in such a way that the topography of fantasy has been permanently shifted because of it. Probably laughing at all the imitators th...

A couple of years ago, Salt Lake City developed a hankering for some Comic Con (or ComiCon), ushering in a new wave of geek ephemera and focus on fandom. While my wife and I missed the first one or two, we decided to attend one of the cons when some of the Lord of the Rings  actors (particularly Sean Astin) showed up for the experience. Gayle put together a dress that looked like Arwyn from The Return of the King  and I wore some Hogwarts robes. We got a picture with Sean and generally had a good time. Since then, we've attended each convention, always going in costume. We've worn steampunk, Hogwarts, Cinderella and Fairy Godmother, and Queen Elizabeth with her Shakespeare. The boys sometimes come, wearing superhero costumes, dressing as Leonardo da Vinci, and even dressing up as dinosaurs. In short, we go and we participate and we enjoy the experience. Now feeling fairly familiar with how a convention works--how much there is to see and enjoy, how much time one is standin...

Many years ago, I wrote a video game essay " On Violence ". Looking over it, I think there's some interesting stuff in there. While I no longer put a lot of thought into a video game theory--in part because what seems pertinent and permanent is quickly outmoded and outdated as the industry grinds along--it was fun to see some of my older thoughts on how violence and video games works on a theoretical level. I can say that I'm older now, but though the wisdom is lacking, I see there are other areas about violence that need discussing. This, of course, pertains to the annual trudging through the trenches that I do with my sophomores, looking at how the World Wars came to pass. We've only started this unit, but there's already a bit of...dread, if not in them, then in me. So the so-called "necessity of the wars" comes into my mind. When my middle child was born, I used to read to him for a few minutes as he fell asleep. I picked Violence  by Slavoj ...

The third of my music video essays, I'm going after a band that I don't know at all, Highly Suspect. In fact, I only had their new music video, "My Name is Human", pop up in my YouTube recommendations list because a student had recommended the song to me. This one is '90s grunge released in 2016, so it's a genre that I'm familiar with and listened to a lot as a kid. Nevertheless, I'm tackling a band that I've never listened to, am not familiar with their discography, and, at the time of writing, have only seen the music video a couple of times (because it is so new). Additionally, this one has some swears in it, which I'm not usually down with. There's something in this song and music video, though, and so I'm going to break from my typical MO and let the f-bombs drop. As always, I do recommend watching the video whilst reading the lyrics.  The Set Up Here's the video: And here are the lyrics : Okay I'm feeling the...