Episode 167: Emotion
It’s a primary theme. ‘Lobo’ talked about it as well as any of our troubadours. So did, and does, Burton Cummings.
Cummings teaches so much, partly because he doesn’t filter his emotions. His songs sometimes have odd emotional interjections within them, words and phrases that sound dis-junctive. A classic example is his 1976 single “Stand Tall”. The song is pure emotion, no editing. You could almost say that “Stand Tall” sounds un-cool. But that’s because the singer/writer is not filtering what he is feeling.
Religion at its best takes the filters off, too; and embodies healing for uncooperative turbulence within. It’s one of the reasons Christians do well to tilt towards the charismatic. But then, once the healing has begun, stipulations start to fly; and we stop up the pump again.
Well now, you just “stand tall, and for God’s sake don’t do something foolish.” Listen to Burton and feel to heal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCc8wyBBsbA&w=600
Episode 168: Generation Zahl
This is about a fabulous new made-for-television movie from Germany, entitled Generation War. Generation War breaks new ground. I’m not talking about its subject matter, which is young German adolescents who fought on the Russian front, and their girlfriends. No.
What I want to talk about is the writer of the show, Stefan Kolditz, and his heuristic breakthrough in understanding. It is what he calls “non-ideological access”. Kolditz is trying to understand his father’s generation, and how they felt about the war, that hell into which they were hurled just out of high school. He is trying not to judge them, from an intrinsically self-righteous position of today; but rather, to understand them. And yet he wants to hold nothing back in terms of that hell’s reality. It is an ambitious (and courageous) project.
It sure got to me! And it got me thinking about a relatively suppressed era in my own life. “I’ll Take You There” (The Staple Singers). Sort of jimmied me open. Maybe it’ll have a parallel effect on you. It’s not remotely baleful.
COMMENTS
