In Defence of Escapism

I'm writing this post in what is an attempt to offer a thoughtful response to the great deal of anti-video game rhetoric that has been floating around evangelicalism, especially neo-reformed circles.

First, I want to establish where they're coming from. The issue that many of these pastors, speakers, authors and bloggers bring up is not that video games contain some intrinsic evil or that they're turning children into mass-murderers - no, those are objections that stem mostly from the fundamentalist camp, and seem to have few champions outside of that. Rather, their criticism is that they have become a time-sink that threatens to paralyse a generation. Which generation is unclear - they seem to believe those primarily being undermined by video games are young men, despite the fact that the average gamer is somewhere in his/her early 30s and nearly half of them are female (http://www.onlineeducation.net/videogame) (as an aside, here's a fun fact for you: there are slightly more gamers above the age of 50 than there are below the age of 18).

But the actual threat of the video-gaming epidemic is not what I'm writing about. I will concede that they are certainly sucking up an excessive amount of many people's time, young men included. I myself am no stranger to this: While I enjoy video games as a way to unwind, relax, and de-stress, I confess that I can take that too far. Heck, I remember when I was in my second year of college, studying for an exam one night, and my roommate handed me a copy of Rollercoaster Tycoon. All of a sudden it was three in the morning and I still hadn't done any studying - though I had built some pretty awesome theme parks, if I do say so myself. One even had an underground train people could take to avoid crowded areas. But I digress - the point of this is that I, too, have plunged hours into video games that I won't get back, hours that could have been spent on more productive things.

But like I said, this isn't what I'm talking about. Obviously with these criticisms came counter-arguments, people saying "Well, sure, we waste time on video games. How is that any worse than people from your generation (because it's always a generational criticism) who waste time doing other things? Our fathers who spend afternoons watching football or our mothers who spend hours a week curled up in bed with romance novels?" And of course, the answer was, "Well, uh, it's not." So now there's a bit of a crusade not only against video games, but against escapism in general - against doing things that take away time from your role as a man of God (because it is always men who bear the brunt of these attacks).

The truth is, though, is that this isn't anything new. It's been kicking around for a while. We've seen it in music, too. There are very few people today who would consider rock and roll to be the "Devil's Music" -:and even those who do usually do so rather quietly and aren't taken all that seriously - but this has been replaced with an entire new approach that argues much the same thing, but in a subtler way: "I don't think there's anything wrong with rock/[insert genre here] music, I just don't see why I'd listen to it when I could be listening to music that praises Jesus and builds up my relationship with Him" - as though music is only worship if its accompanied by some doggerel about how Jesus is your boyfriend! But that, too, is a topic for a different time.

What I'm getting at is this: There is a growing trend within evangelicalism (and again, perhaps within neo-reformed circles in particular) to dismiss anything that does not, as they put it, contribute directly to the Kingdom's cause. There's a couple of flaws in that line of thinking, which I'll explore in a bit, but first, let's look at the results. I realize this conclusion might offend some of you and anger others, but I think it is an observation that is accurate, and that observation is this: The evangelical church is a cultural wasteland. Perhaps this is a recent development, perhaps it has always been such - I would not venture to comment on that at this point in time. It's also a little unfair, since America itself has become a bit of a cultural wasteland in recent years, and its possible that the church's shortcomings in this area are simply reflective of the surrounding society. I don't think so, though - or at least, I don't think that's the whole story.

This is not, it is important to point out, an observation limited to those outside or on the fringe of evangelicalism, either. This is an issue that seems to me to be in constant discussion within the church. "We need to bring excellence to the arts!" is a common rallying cry in music and art ministries across the continent. There seems to be this understanding that we as Christians need to be producing higher quality art. Here's a question: What comes to mind when you think of Christian art? We're not exactly known for our creative output; our music is often derided as being generic and simplistic, our attempts at film are generally discarded as being cheesy and having low production values, and our recent literature is criticized for lacking substance or subtlety (I'm not even going to mention Christian video games). These criticisms do not apply across the board, and there are certainly plenty of exceptions in all three categories. Moreover, many of those criticisms can also be applied to their secular counterparts (anyone who's listened to the Top 40 or flipped through the New York Times bestselling list recently will know that humans don't need the church's help to create bad art). But the point is that even by the people creating Christian art, there's a sense that things could be better. "After all," they say, "We've got the greatest inspiration, don't we? Our art is fueled by the love and grace of an omnipotent God, who created the very concept of beauty. Why, then, aren't we creating the best art?" Why indeed.

I have narrowed down the possible explanations to one culprit, and that is this: In the church, art is seen as a tool. This is where things get tied back together with the whole "Everything must advance the Gospel!" attitude that I mentioned up above somewhere. See, the issue is that because the Gospel (the Gospel being understood here to be the message that Jesus died on the cross for your sins - I am familiar with the arguments of N.T. Wright and others that this is a very incomplete understanding, and what's more I rather agree with him, but this is the definition, I think, that would be most prominent in evangelicalism) is the centre of Christianity, there is therefore seen to be a need for all Christian art to point to the Gospel. If there isn't some sort of prominent indication of salvation through Christ in the art (or of God's glory, if you're a new Calvinist), then it is a waste of time and is not worthy of support. In other words, many Christians refuse to accept art unless it preaches at them. After all, we are here to share the Good News, are we not? And isn't anything that doesn't do that mere distraction, not worthy of our time?

I'm not so sure. First, this image of life paints a picture of the Kingdom of God being little more than a dull, dreary sweat-shop, where men and women with neither names nor faces toil endlessly to make certain  that enough Gospel messages are rolling off the assembly line to be delivered to everyone. It's a bleak portrait that prizes utilitarianism and functionalism ahead of everything else. Don't get me wrong, there's a place for that mentality. There is a need to share the Gospel, don't get me wrong. But I think this negates an important part of who we are as human beings: We are tainted, even corrupted by sin, yes. This is evidenced every day in a million different evils we commit. But, underneath it all, we bear God's likeness. Even in the midst of the darkness that writhes inside us, we carry the spark of the divine. We are, at our core, in His image - and, like Him, we are creators.

Of course, humans can't truly create. As I said in my last blog post about jazz, our creation is more synthesis - we take ideas that we have already encountered, and fuse them together into something new. But the point is that this act is not merely distraction, but that there is within the work of art a celebration of who we are - an affirmation of our status as the creation of God. Surely not all of art is a positive creation, and there is some of it that is detestable by the standards of anyone and more that is so to the average believer. Yet it remains that much of it is not. In other words, what I am arguing is that art is either creation itself or the enjoyment of another's creation, and as a result it is the revelling in this divine spark within us. Art for art's sake is not an empty proposition, but is actually an expression of our status as children of God.

"This is all well and good," some of you might be saying, "but even if it were true, how useful is any of this if the Gospel isn't a part of it?" I might reverse the question and ask: How powerful is the Gospel if this divine spark is never witnessed? Of the many songs being mass-produced to share the Gospel, of the cookie-cutter paintings of Jesus (with long hair, white skin, and a gentle expression, of course) being handed out at conferences like mints, how many of them instil within the partaker a sense of the divine, of transcendence, of there being in creation something more than mere man?

Let me put it all in a nutshell: The fundamental flaw of Christian art isn't that the artists themselves are unskilled, because while many of them certainly are, there are also a number who are quite capable. The problem is that it's seen primarily as a marketing tool, Advertisement for Jesus, and therefore seems cheap and superficial. I would instead suggest that artists ought to create whatever they feel compelled to create, to fashion whatever their muses dictate. After all, if Christianity is true, then all beauty ultimately points to God, and if it is not, then creating art that promotes the Gospel is a waste of time anyway. This, however, is not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that we, as a church, must seek to encourage art, even if it doesn't have obvious allusions to the Gospel, even if it doesn't preach what we want it to preach - even if, heaven forbid, it's made by non-believers.

So let's tie this all back up to the opening paragraphs. What we as a church need to begin doing, I think, is accepting and appreciating beauty that doesn't immediately denote the Gospel. I know there was some criticism when the game Skyrim came out: "They're spending time in awe of a virtual world" people complained, "instead of being outside in awe of God's creation!" But is not this imaginary world every bit as miraculous as the natural one? Not as beautiful, certainly, nor as large or deep or full or fulfilling. But it is a celebration of the divine spark and a testimony to our role, however much some of us may have forgotten it, as the bearers of God's image.

In closing, escapism in general and video games in particular do pose a very real threat - one can become easily addicted to them, and become so deeply embroiled in them that commitments and relationships suffer. But, should these impulses be mastered, escapism also provides the opportunity for enrichment, for development, and for sheer revelling in the incredible breadths of the imagination and this God-given spark - and to provide perspective, thinking how much this pales in comparison to God's own creative ability.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, and remember that beauty is every bit as much a part of the Kingdom of Heaven as truth

Why I Love Jazz: A Musical Journey

So I'm writing this because over the past couple of years I've gotten waaaaay into jazz, and I know there are a lot of people out there who are like "Buh? What? Jazz? Is that still a thing? I thought that died out years ago!" And if you've known me for a while, you'll know that I used to be huge into classic rock and progressive rock, and when I was a freshman I even went through a brief metal phase (and by "metal phase" I mean I listened to Dream Theater and an Iron Maiden album. I also bought a Dragonforce CD, which is a purchase I regret to this day). So people are all like "Man where's this jazz crap coming from?" Let me tell you.

(As an aside, I haven't left that classic rock music behind me. It's all still there, I still listen to it, I still have every Pink Floyd album worth owning, plus The Wall, I still love King Crimson and have a great time with Zeppelin, so all you rockers panicking can cut it out. I did basically stop listening to metal, though. Except for Opeth. Mmmmm, Opeth).

Where It All Began

So I studied jazz guitar on and off for a few years, mostly because it's basically the most advanced and interesting stuff you can play on the instrument. You can only run pentatonic scale patterns over blues riffs for so long, you know? And metal excited me for a bit, because it was more difficult. But then you realized that the only reason it was more difficult was because it was faster. It was still basically the same thing as rock, just sped up a bit. But jazz was entirely different. A "Whole New World," for all you Disney fans out there (man I cannot believe I just made that joke). But more on this later.

Anyway, despite the fact that I'd been messing around with jazz guitar, I still wasn't really into jazz. Like I had a few recordings of jazz guitarists (mostly Wes Montgomery, of course), but I more appreciated them for their impressive guitar work than I actually, you know, enjoyed listening to them.

But then, one day, I heard Charlie Parker's nonet (fun fact: a nonet is a nine-piece band. Like a quintet, but with nine people) playing A Night In Tunisia. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxibMBV3nFo

(And yes, that is a very young Miles Davis on trumpet there)

I don't know what did it, but somehow, when I heard that recording, everything clicked. To me, that music had a spirit to it that was just so vibrant, so alive. It was technically demanding, but at the same time, it was incredibly soulful. They put themselves into their music in a way that I'd never really heard musicians do before, and it spoke to me. It said "Man, forget everything else. You want to be able to create like these guys do." I'd never been so excited about improvising in my life. Suddenly it became less about playing guitar solos and more about creating, on the spot, a statement, an expression of yourself, your soul. Something that only you could say, that no one else could ever express, that even if they played the same notes in the same order as you, they still wouldn't be saying what you said. Man, just about every alto sax player who's ever lived has tried to learn Bird's solo (Bird was Charlie Parker's nickname, for the uninitiated) from that recording, but none of them have ever been able to play it quite like he did.

But that sort of expressiveness doesn't come easy. Miles Davis once famously said "Sometimes you have to play for a long time before you're able to play like yourself." And I soon learned that half of playing - more than half, probably - is listening. You've heard the expression "You are what you eat?" Well, with music, you sound like what you listen to. And the more widely listened you are, the more you kind of pull from to knit together, the wider the range you have to synthesize sounds into your own unique voice. So I started listening like crazy. First thing I did, I went out and bought a bunch of jazz albums - Kind of Blue by Miles Davis was one, Giant Steps by John Coltrane was another. And the more I heard, the more I wanted. I suddenly just couldn't get enough of it.

Here's Coltrane's Giant Steps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30FTr6G53VU

Man, that blew my mind when I first heard it. Still does, every time I listen to it. He's cooking along at around 300 BPM (that's beats per minute), switching keys roughly every two beats, and he somehow manages to have it sound musical. I used to look up to guys like John Petrucci and Steve Vai when I was a teenager but this, this was a whole new level entirely. I couldn't even fathom it.

Anyway, I was talking earlier about listening. This also mean that I had to do a bit of a cull of my music. "But I thought you wanted to diversify your listening as much as possible!" you ask, confused. I did. And I do. But here's the thing: Not all music is helpful. Just as how a balanced diet doesn't include McDonald's, balanced listening doesn't really include three chord music. The whole point of broader listening is trying to push your ears outside of the box, and it's hard to do that when some music keeps pulling you back in. I know to some of you I probably sound like an elitist jerk, but there doesn't really seem to be any other way of putting it. Some music is meant to be listened to, and some music is meant to be consumed, and I try to avoid the latter.

Why Jazz?

There are a few things about jazz that really attract me to it.

The first is, like I said before, its challenge for the instrumentalist. If you want to push yourself on your instrument, go for jazz. I can't think of a single other genre that will work you more. Maybe classical, for piano, but even there, just about everything you're playing has been written out beforehand. Here's the deal: Jazz pushes you in all three major ways: Technically, because you've got to be a master of your instrument to be able to play effectively. You've got to be able to shred at lightning speeds, to be intimately acquainted with the different positions, and be acutely aware of the unique sounds, abilities, and opportunities your instrument brings to the table. It's not enough to just memorize scale patterns, because it pushes you outside of boxes. And that segues into the second way, mentally. A comprehensive knowledge of music theory is key if you want to be able to create in a jazz setting. There are always these myths about how the greatest musicians never knew a lick of theory - there's not a shred of truth to that. These guys studied a ton of theory, formally or informally, but they did it. You're bouncing between different keys, you're improvising solos over +5b9 and min/maj13#11 chords, you've got to be able to understand how things work together, and why. Most importantly, this helps to push the boundaries - if you don't know that you're "supposed" to play an E natural in a certain spot, how are you going to know that you can get out of the box by playing an Eb instead? The third way is emotionally. With jazz, it's not enough to just be able to play a chart. You've got to put yourself into it, you've got to be able to play stuff that's musical, that's compelling, that can push the audience to feel what you're feeling. It's not just enough to have game, you've gotta have soul, too. This made me realize: All that talk about being a technically gifted musician vs being an expressive musician is a false dichotomy. If you see that as being either/or, as being you can either play fast or play soulfully, you will never be anything more than a mediocre musician.

One of my favourite examples of all these things coming together is right here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_PmQrXv4O0

Technically, it's pretty impressive. It's not a fast standard, but Jim Hall still manages to throw in some blazing lines - which are, most incredibly, very tastefully understated. The speed is not a "Look at how fast I can play! moment, but rather an expression of what he felt was most fitting at that point. It's also mentally impressive too - he's stretching the harmony of the song, going outside the box while still keeping it palatable to the average listener. His chord solo is also pretty amazing on those lines - the ability to, on the fly, come up with a series of chords that both work together to form a musical statement as well as sound good over the underlying harmony is not easy at all. Finally, emotionally it reaches a level that I couldn't even imagine when I first heard it. It was a hugely influential song on me for that reason, because it's what taught me that by being conscious of your dynamics, your picking technique, your tone, etc, a guitar can be very nearly as expressive as a horn (note: "horn" is jazz slang for any wind instrument, not a French Horn).

Another big thing for me is the subtlety of the music. It doesn't smack you over the head with emotion, but instead slowly lures you in. That was something I'd become a bit burnt out on in rock music. When it's angry, it's ANGRY! When it's happy, it's HAPPY! When it's sad, it is DEPRESSED! It beats you over the head a bit with what its saying. Not that there's anything wrong with that; sometimes you're upset about something and what you really need is something that just screams ANGER! But more and more, I began wanting something with a bit more emotional depth to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEC8nqT6Rrk

Listen to that song. It's off one of the first jazz albums I ever heard, and is one of the most well-known recordings of all time. It's very expressive, very emotional, but what emotion is it conveying? It doesn't instantly assault you with being happy or sad or angry or fearful. Instead, to me, anyway, it's got a thousand different emotions to it, many of which don't have names. It reaches inside and pushes parts of your brain that you didn't know where there, making you have feelings you didn't know existed. To me, it allows for a greater level of communication between the musician and the audience - the musician puts his heart and soul into what he's playing, and the audience takes away from that, well, whatever they take away from it. Like a good book, the listener can take what's being said and be impacted by it in a different way (yeah, yeah, call me a filthy post-modernist. Go on, I dare you), and jazz has more room to do that than any other style of music I've heard.

Another thing I love about jazz is the way that it's not afraid of dissonance. Rock always made itself out to be about rebellion and bucking standards, but compositionally it was pretty tame. Even black metal and death metal that I've heard will usually mess around with tritones and maybe the occasional minor second and call it a day. In jazz, harmony goes outside the box all the time, and it's all about taking sounds that clash and making them sound musical anyway. To me, that seems almost more honest. It's very true to life. Our world is full of dissonance, and if you just avoid things that aren't pleasant, you'll never live at all. But if you find a way to take that dissonance and make it musical, poetic even, then you've transformed your setting. Okay, enough pseudo-philosophy, here's some Monk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vofbnkQcW_Q

So What?

I wanted to call this section "So What's Next?" but I couldn't resist making that awful pun. It's tough to be an amateur jazz musician because there isn't much of a scene for beginners. Most of the jazz clubs out there are dominated by guys who have been playing their instrument for decades, so for someone like me, who's young, inexperienced, and pretty mediocre, to find a gig is not easy.

But I've got a bigger concern than that, though it encompasses that. My concern is this: I am worried that jazz is taking the same path as classical music to becoming "museum music" - in other words, music that music students get together and listen to and write papers on, and that's respected for its achievements, but that has absolutely no impact on the culture around it. It's not there yet, because jazz still has some importance in more urban areas, but it's not too far off. And I don't really want to see that happen. Jazz is vital music, and if it's not communicating anything, where's its vitality?

Miles Davis responded to this by merging with all sorts of different styles. After Woodstock, he invented jazz/rock fusion. Later, he did a collaboration with Prince. When he died, he was partway through recording an album that mixed jazz with hip-hop. And I don't know, maybe that's the answer. Fusion, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnR39KzcKUk

Or even like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Siq2qkINyPY (minus the dated synth sounds, of course)

That might be more palatable to a modern audience than straight jazz. And I love fusion just as much as I love jazz, so it's no concern of mine if it does.

But my concern isn't losing "saxophone music," or whatever. I mean the sax is a great instrument, but the issue to me is the aesthete behind jazz, the idea of music being the opportunity to create on the spot, to inspire, for the musician to communicate to the audience exactly where he is and what he's feeling at that precise point in time. Its vital creativity is, to me, a celebration of life, and is something that should not die. I've become almost incapable of playing other people's songs note for note now, and I get frustrated when people say "Okay play this riff exactly as written" or "Oh man, can you do the entire Stairway to Heaven solo?" because to me, you're not making music, you're just taking what someone else said and parroting it. It's glorified Guitar Hero. And I just don't see the point. Why should a band go up there and play Comfortably Numb the way Floyd played it? Why not instead just put on the album? It's the same thing, only it sounds better. And when bands play original material, why play the same song the same way every night? If I wanted to hear that, I'd put it on my ipod and listen to it there. Sure, when I improvise my own solo over a song, it's not going to be as good as the original solo, but that's the whole point. You're not up there to make yourself look good. If you're playing music for your ego, you're going to fail.

In other words, this jazz mentality is something that I think is applicable everywhere, and something that ought to be a part of just about all music. Why parrot when you can create?

To close, here's one of my all-time favourite jazz performances by a man who is possibly the greatest guitarist to have ever lived: Wes Montgomery. Listen to this if you want to hear the raw levels that the guitar can get to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZsdGVYqGco

PS: One closing note. There's a lot of dismissal amongst jazz guys of "smooth jazz" - guys like Michael Buble, Kenny G, that sort of thing. There's a reason for that. These guys take the aesthete of jazz that I was just talking about and urinate all over it for the sake of money. It sounds like just your typical snobbery, but it's not. Not only is their music bad, but they've publicly defaced the image of jazz. If you've ever heard someone describe jazz as sounding like "elevator music" or something along those lines, its because of guys like this. I'm only saying this because novice jazzers tend to describe anything that sounds smooth or cool as "smooth jazz." Never, EVER go up to a professional working jazz musician at a gig and say "Great playing, man! I love smooth jazz like that!" He's not going to take it the same way you mean it.

Let me put it this way: Kenny G is to jazz what Avril Lavigne is to punk rock.

Just a caveat.