curse your branches

first up, music.

David Bazan has truly been dominating my music listening time lately. This video specifically begins by showing Bazan playing a house show at what (I perceived anyway) as being quite a middle class christian hipster home. We see David Bazan at the end of his faith still joking away and being received positively, kind of breaking the enchantment that follows him in his music of him perhaps not baring a grudge but having lost a part of himself. Again, this might be how I perceived him, not how he actually is. While he's playing images of a tired looking crowd who seem focussed on the words he's singing. Words that they really can relate to, they can relate to them because they've had these questions and not had answers.



(This was originally posted as a response to a friends' facebook call for opinions on the video. I admit now, twenty minutes after posting it, that I may be harsh in the statement. I will say though that the distinction on the definition is irrelevant, as they both lead to a very similar conclusion, bad art. Admittedly though, i have read several responses from agnostic friends describing it as being 'refreshing' and 'spot on'. It upsets me that they saw this and not other videos that captured it better. An interesting article, if not completely agreeable, may be found patrol mag here)

‎"The word itself [religion] has been dreived from two similaar Latin words 'religere', to execute painstakingly by means of repeated effort, and 'religare', to bind together, as a bond of 'piety'' - Herbert Aptheker

Bethke is obviously speaking about the hypocrisy of religious christians against those who 'have a relationship with jesus' (a term commonly adopted by non-denominational evangelicals). It's still theologically incorrect on many levels though.

If we adopt the above then regardless of which model we take be, the institutionalised christian or the non-denominational evangelical, the notion of religion as being a struggle and a unity still applies. What can be taken from the poem is this: it's bad. If a poem needs such extreme language such as 'hate' towards something that has been speculated over so extremely (how much exegesis has gone into Bethke's notion of religion on facebook in the past week?) it's evidently poorly written. I'll meet people half way, the artist doesn't have an absolute duty to be completely theologically correct in their language, but in a mode such as poetry, which only relies on language you'd hope to be at least 60% right.

Oh and it's a really poor version of I'm sorry I'm a Christian.

xox