The Value Proposition of Identity.

Yesterday, I got as close as I've ever gotten to delivering an authentic elevator speech. It was my first opportunity to pitch what I'm both good at and what I'm passionate about.

I wasn't prepared, really, to crawl out of the hole of what is and reach for what could be. I like to do my research. I like to know my playbook. I like to run through the different possible outcomes. Because Myers-Briggs tells me I'm 50% introvert. But then, I heard the voice of a good and talented and shy friend in my head, giving a speech to 50 college musicians on retreat and telling them, "Do something that scares you every day. That's why I'm here."

And the 50% extrovert kicked in. The only thing worse than no plan is half a plan. For me, I either run through every permutation, or I don't think at all. Just jump.

So I jumped.

And here's what I realized: I know what I want to do, I'm just not sure how to get there. 

I want to help churches identify and communicate their rich value proposition. I think many of them (particularly here in the Northeast) are in a terrified scatter pattern right now. They're finally beginning to re-learn how to communicate, they're finally getting around to trying to reach out instead of stand and "Let the children come to me." But they're also very much focused on delivering what "people" want (which is a good thing, but) and sometimes forget to focus on delivering what they actually have. Too many parishes are a Facebook page of feel-good without explaining the crucial next step: THIS KIND OF FEEL-GOOD CANNOT BE OBTAINED ANYWHERE ELSE. IT IS TIED TO GENERATIONS OF TRUTH, AND IT IS TIED TO YOU. AND THIS IS THE KIND OF FEEL-GOOD THAT CHANGES LIFE, THAT IS LIFE.

This kind of feel-good cannot be obtained anywhere else. It is tied to generations of truth, and it is tied to you. And it is the kind of feel-good that changes life. That IS life.

But what really get's me fired up is the artistry and history that surrounds the faithful every time they walk into one of these buildings – whether the church is 300 years old, or was built in the (what I consider to be slightly tragic) post-Vatican II style. (editorial side note: a lot of amazing philosophy-in-practice came out of Vatican II; carpeted churches with a 270-degree circular floor plan and no center aisle were not among them.) For generations, the Catholic Church funded and supported and very best fine artistry there was. It still does, most apparently in the music tradition.

Almost a year ago, I gave a reflection at Villanova, in celebration of a Music Director that was moving on. It was on Veritas, and how music and art helps us access the Veritas of faith. That's a blog for another day, but presenting that reflection to a church packed with 500 people was undoubtedly the most excited I've ever been about anything in my life.

My mother just read me a Fr. Richard Rohr quote over the phone. The gist was: God gave us what we are and what we have. Stop pretending you can change what he wants you to do with it.

Then she really drove the point home by referencing a West Wing episode, which is, as sources of basic truth and inspiration go, only a few steps down from the Holy Bible and Gardner's Art through the Ages in our house.

And my Saturday AM revelation is simply this: I'm currently facing a hurdle that is not entirely different than what the Church is facing. Because there's inherent value and passion and fire that has been there from the very beginning, and I've just been trying to do the wrong things with it.

So stand by. Whether someone helps me figure out my path forward, or I have to find a pith helmet and a machete, something's going to happen soon.

Wait for It...

Things are pretty much just this right now:

...wait for it...

Don't hold your breath. But maybe continue to hibernate. Slow breathing. Low heart rate. No sudden movements.

Truth, Obscured and Interpretable

The current political climate has me feeling nauseous.

I'm not asking to not hear about it - indeed, I read as much as I can handle. I'm not asking to hide from it - I think the calamitous clash is a symptom of a privileged society that has tried to hide too long. #colormeliberal

But I will say this: the blatant misrepresentation and mishandling of the truth is terrifying to me. I'm not talking about government transparency. I'm not talking about interpretation of facts or political philosophy. I'm talking about compromised truth.

I'll admit, I'm naive. I believe there is a truth in all things - a bottom line - which many people do not. But I also believe that, insofar as we can understand that truth, it's more of a whispered breeze than a mathematical treatise inked in black and white.

I studied art history in college, and that colors my perception of what truth is. Because art history isn't about solving problems. It's about discovering them. There are a million truths associated with any given painting - its meaning, its purpose, its effect. Context is always king, but context doesn't inspire creation; the search for truth does.

How does where you stand affect your perspective?

That's why artists have a love/hate relationship with critics. The critic, one can argue, doesn't initiate creation. He comments on how he sees what is before him. 

Art critics are like opinion editorialists. (I'm an opinion editorialist.) The lion's share of their argument is based in a reality created by someone or something else. They are creative, yes. But they are not originators.

Modern media (and I mean BOTH sides) has learned in the last decade that to survive, they must earn clicks. And hyperbole and click-bait and cat-videos get clicks. Because the average Joe doesn't want to be challenged, or to learn, or to hear something that might make him uncomfortable. And so the Modern Media transformed into critics who spin and fluff the truth in order to make it clickable.

The 4th Estate needs to forsake the attention-seeking behavior and get back to what they were intended to do. Report what happens. Try really really really hard not to weight reporting with opinion. Publish the spin and the interpretation under op. eds.

Why? Well, just because. It's not going to earn money, but it earn respect.

Because most people can't identify an author's sly insertion of spin.

---

In High School AP English and AP History, we filled blue books with permutations and rabbit-hole-runs of ideas, dug right into the foundation-soil of truth, created by it, and yet empty of it, feverishly excavating without realizing the futility. When we wrote ourselves into circles, we got As. When we wrote in absolutes, we missed the point.

That's why the Interdisc Honors program at Villanova was joy and a terror. I wanted so much to put my finger on what was true. To say, "THIS IS," with certainty. Instead, I waltzed with Kant and Kierkegaard and Heidegger, and at the end of it the only thing I could declare with no qualms was, "I am not a Cartesian."

And to compound all this, I've been completely educated in Catholic Schools, from kindergarten through the mortarboard-tassel-switch. Catholicism, a rich and tumultuous religion bedecked with some of the finest artistry ever created, surviving - sometimes seemingly solely - on paradoxes and belief in the unbelievable.

Amadeo Modigliani - Red Headed Girl in Evening Dress (1918)

So the truth? In my humble and indoctrinate-able opinion, it's a holy and enduring and purpose-giving thing, unable to be defiled except in its representation.

Because the truth is indicated by its representation, but its not defined by its representation.

That's why the Cy Twombly room at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of my favorite places to sit. Why Modigliani's red-headed woman - What is she thinking? - holds such an allure. It's why I studied humanities, and art history in particular. Because the truth was what everyone was struggling to identify, but there were no absolutes, only guidelines that could be gutted depending on who you studied, how you grew up, where you stood in the gallery.

I'm terrified of what people are doing to the truth, how they presume to own it, how they abuse it.

Because I'm afraid we'll lose it.

Christian Dior and the Re-Terrestrialization of the Assumption

Some would say that fashion is a religious experience. Some would say the fashion elite bow before the cult of commodity with the fervor of the reborn.

I don't disagree.

Trolling through Pinterest yesterday, I stumbled across a shot of the Christian Dior show at Fashion Week. A bustled, graceful, elegant model struts down the runway with the conviction of someone who knows where she's going, swathed in yards and yards of lush fabric, which somehow doesn't hinder her progress through a bright white landscape.

And all I could think of was Nicholas Poussin's The Assumption of the Virgin, in which Mary, similarly garbed in folds of fabric, ascends into the heavens. She's surrounded by white clouds and columns, and a plethora of little putti who, it could be argued, sport just a little bit less in the way of clothing than the average runway model does.

The coloring of both images is so strangely similar. Mary in her signature red (the color of blood that symbolized humanity) and blue (the color of heaven), the red washed out in the light of heaven, and the blue rich and bold. I've analyzed that painting in my Hail, Mary lecture, so when I stumbled across this bold modernization, echoing its coloring so clearly, but with such a different purpose, I couldn't wait to put them side-by-side.

The question of secular religiosity is one to be tackled another day. But for now, it's hard to deny that a woman wrapped in scads of fabric is imbued with a sense of purpose.

Christian Dior Haute Couture SS 2005 from Sis Maxina on Tumblr

The Assumption of the Virgin by Nicholas Poussin

Back to Reality.

Red eyes are a special kind of limbo, charging you across the transcontinental skies in partial reality. You only really come to as the roar of the wind breaks over the wing flaps on landing.

Although, waiting for the train as the sun comes up did kind of extend the nothingness of the morning.

Here comes the sun... it's alright.

But those long trips are good for one thing at least: listening to your new favorite tunes on repeat. So even though it’s not Friday, here’s a few Happy Friday tunes. (I’m sufficiently jet-lagged and vacation-tired to use the time warp excuse. Go with it.)

1. Good Grief – Lucius

The new album Lucius just dropped: Good Grief with particular amazing fan-girl euphoric stressing on track one: Madness. I’m utterly certain that every track's consistent lyrical resonance with my mental state of being lately has nothing to do with how obsessed I am over this album. It’s more the indie-chick tight vocals layered over electro/synth smorgasbord stolen straight out of the eighties. The bridge of Madness sounds like Questlove’s kiddie instrument treasure chest on The Tonight Show was raided and funneled through vocoders. The chill groove with an errant beat is just too good to pass up, the music matching the message without sounding erratic or lost. But but the best part of the whole song comes at 3:20 because #keychange #strings but with mind-blowing compounded effect because it’s just so unexpected. I mean, I love a good key change anywhere I find one, but when it SNEAKS IN LIKE A RED-HEADED NINJA WITH A PRECARIOUS EMOTIONAL STATE OF BEING, it’s jaw-dropping.

"Maybe I drive myself to madness spinning in circles, don’t have it figured out just yet."

Good Grief is particularly great at optimizing the similarities and then differences of Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig's vocals. Unison splits into multi-layered harmonies that sound something like it looks when you open a mirrored cabinet in a mirrored bathroom and all of a sudden there are a thousand permutations of yourself surrounding you - all the same and all a little different. Check out My Heart Got Caught on Your Sleeve if that description doesn’t make sense yet.

2. Suicide Squad – People I know, and people I have never heard of.

And now, for a change of pace. Suicide Squad is coming out next month. Yes, my name is Chesley and I enjoy subtitled foreign films, art-house cinematographic experiments, watching all the Oscar Noms (especially the ones that score Best Supporting nods, which no one has ever heard of), and also: Marvel manifestations on the big screen. DON’T JUDGE ME. All elitism should be cut with a little nerdy plebeian guilty pleasure. So yes. Suicide Squad. I don’t even care if it’s bad, I’m still going to love it. So I downloaded the music ahead of time. Heathens by twenty one pilots and Sucker for Pain by, like, everyone I never listen to and a couple bands I love: Lil Wayne, Wiz Kalifa, Imagine Dragons, X Ambassadors, Ty Dollar $ign, and Logic – I put these two on repeat while I’m riding the last 1.5 miles into town on 676, cruising at a smooth 5-miles-an-hour, stuck in ridiculous traffic in that crucial commute turning point when you realize you could get out and run home faster than you’ll actually be able to drive there. So listen, look them up. But not around small children. And for god’s sake turn it up loud. Also: do not expect lyrical genius. Just a hook that’ll carry you home and Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds's sexy-ass gravel-voiced refrains that make me melt for some reason.

3. The Waitress - Original Cast Recording

Saw this on Broadway a week ago, and I laughed, and I cried, and I bought the soundtrack. It was easily the most entertaining Broadway show I’ve ever seen in my life. This could also be because I loved the movie and I girl-crush Sara Bareilles so hard it’s almost indecent. But also because the cast had an absolute revelatory performance and were – to a one – amazing.

Disclaimer: the soundtrack isn’t going to resonate as much if you don’t know the storyline. I might even go so far as to say that the soundtrack isn’t going to resonate as much if you haven’t seen the actual stage show. But it’s got all the Sara elements that float in that atmosphere of expression and emotion, translated into the grittier vocals of lead actress Jessie Meuller. Back to the lyrical genius – like many Bareilles songs, you have to listen hard to get the meanings, because she weaves metaphor into reality like nobody’s business and sometimes it’s difficult to discern her message if you’re not a slightly introspective adult female with a healthy balance of skepticism and hope. 

Home Is Where...

Well, hell.

You know, when little girls are growing up, learning to spin dreams like Rumpelstiltskin's gold off the spinning wheel of fairy tales, we imagine True Love. And it's true, as we get older, we have to shed the skin of expectation and hope that comes with all the bite-sized morals of these bygone stories. 

Sure, they taught us to be bold, to be kind, to be hopeful, to be industrious. Unfortunately they also taught us the myth of the One True ______.  The one true love; the one true home; the one true calling, the one true job, the one true meaning of life that was custom crafted just for me and will bring me fulfillment and joy.

I don't doubt that there are some women out there who succeed in finding and attaining a One True or two.

But boy, am I not one of them.

I'll leave a number of the One Trues aside for the time being, because I only have so much battery power. What is particularly afflicting me right now, today, in this very moment, is the question, "Just where do I belong?"

They say Home is Where the Heart Is.  But what if your heart flits about like an adventurous sparrow, swooping and alighting in a million incongruous places? What if, with the intent of finding a One True, you instead begin to rack up multiple True, Toos? 

I don't think I thought a lot about rolling back into Boulder. I mean, I told everyone I was excited about revisiting this place, but mostly because my mind was busy with other things and I hadn't really had an internal pow-wow to determine my thoughts and I had to say something and, "Gee, I'm super excited," sounded adequate and place-holderish enough to persuade inquiring minds to move on.

And now here I am, and 27% of my brain is saying, "Well, you needn't really leave. You could just come back; come home." And that's silly to me, because Atlanta should feel more like home than Boulder does, right? Or maybe no; maybe Atlanta is where I grew my wings but never really used them, and maybe a place cannot be a True, Too until you've struggled and ached and been lonely there, and discovered and dreamed and learned there.

What on earth is it that I want? I mean, the overwhelming irony is, of course, that not having an answer to that question is what brought me here in the first place. And although I didn't find the answer to that inner ringing What while I was here, I did learn to be okay with that unknown state of being. 

And I left this place because it didn't have everything. It didn't have the theatre and music and opera and dance just a few blocks away, and it didn't have grand old buildings, and museums with an un-memorizeable catalogue of works. It didn't have the sheer number of friends that Philly has - my people who know me better than I know myself. It didn't have the music of St. Augustine's, and I never would have sung for the Pope if I lived out here. But what wonders this place holds, including a wondrous part of my soul that melted into the earth here for one very pivotal year.

At the very least, perhaps seeing the mountains, and feeling this high-altitude sunshine, and basking in the happy smiles of the denizens here, and seeing bikes and books everywhere I look, has reminded me of a lesson learned that had begun to fade: that life is what you make it, and while it can be challenging, it isn't meant to be a challenge to truly live.

Home is where the heart is – but maybe some of us have the unhappy pleasure of finding home in too many irreconcilable places.

Stomping Grounds

I fell asleep on the bus ride up, because I was exhausted after more than a week of long days, scheduled down to the minute, packing in the to-do's, and then smiling like a fiend at strangers on a expo floor, flirting and tittering when I'd rather have rolled my eyes and walked away. Exhausted. 

When I opened my eyes, they were there - the foothills of the great Rocky Mountains, nose to nose with the gathering storm, like an old and powerful friend who is gracious, and wise, and welcoming, and doesn't take shit from anybody.

Well, hello there, you handsome stony-faced hunk.

"...like an old and powerful friend who is gracious, and wise, and welcoming, and doesn't take shit from anybody."

After five years away, I'm back in Boulder. For the past waking nine hours, the memories have been floating to the surface, not like Hokusai's crashing wave, roughly represented under the bridge in Boulder Park, ferocious and sudden and all-consuming. Rather, it's like I've waded into Boulder Creek's ostensibly crystal clear water, but then little realizations break, one at a time – the temperature is colder than anticipated, the bubbles and leaves and blossoms flash and flit, a rogue fishlet, and then the crash of an exuberant puppy – surfacing not all at once, but ceaselessly pulling consciousness.

Home is where the hearts of many are.

I walked Pearl Street and then sat, and realized I had unknowingly found my way back to one of my favorite haunts, the Boulder Bookstore. Rooms upon rooms of other worlds and times and people, new books and used books shelved side-by-side in beckoning rows. Starving, I realized my budget is more flexible than it was when I lived here. I went straight to The Kitchen – the place I only ate when some visiting relative was treating - and sat at the bar.

In addition to (modest, but adequate) liquidity, the past five years have brought me a confidence I didn't realize I had until I stood in this place and somehow felt different than I had years ago. It's hard to put my finger on it. But this city, which was my escape hatch when I didn't know where or when or how or why I was headed, was the free-spirit nest I needed it to be. Living here didn't exactly show me (in one fell swoop) what I was destined for, but it did show me how to be okay with the not-knowing, how to embrace the non-direction, how to make every path, no matter how long traveled, into one of worth and insight and learning.

And once you can be okay with not knowing who you are or what you're meant to do, well, you can be okay with anything. The possibilities re-open, not in a flighty and wishful sense, but rather in the sense that self-validation isn't reserved for the newspaper heroes and philanthropists and billionaires, but belongs to anyone who can see the world with open eyes.

"Sweet Vermouth on the rocks, with a twist," always gets their attention.

Anyway, I rolled in town much like I did all those years ago – with a half-baked arrival plan, and not much else. So I bellied up to the bar and smiled at the bartender (which I never would have done 5 years ago) and ordered a glass of wine and opened the Times which sat on the counter. I got an appetizer AND a main dish (also something I never would have done 5 years ago) and forwent dessert for a sweet vermouth on the rocks (with a twist) (yet another thing I never would have done 5 years ago). He gave me the vermouth for free, after explaining it's a limited-edition run of Del Professore, and that it has too much coriander and cocoa taste in it to work in cocktails so it kind of sits there, unused and unloved and laughing at his inability to mix it adequately with anything else. I winked at him. (Yes. You guessed it. Something else I never would have done 5 years ago.)

This place hasn't changed much that I can see, and this morning in deference to that, I found myself a bike to rent and came into town to find a coffee shop (alas, Saxy's is closed) to sit with my computer open and type with the Apple-set that lurks in EVERY coffee shop here, while drinking a caffeine-charged mocha, without a single plan for what's coming later today.

It's good to be "home" where home once was.

To Do: Te Deum

T-minus three months until my next scheduled lecture at Christ the King Cathedral in Atlanta.

It's been a couple years since I last delved into the play-by-play (or lead-frame-by-lead-frame) of the Jewels of the Cathedral. And while I'm certain I'll find my rhythm once I jump in, I'm feeling a bit hesitant.

LBH. Isaiah doesn't look like he's going to take anything less than transcendental writing.

(If anyone has any magical fairy dust that bestows inspiration and elevates insight, I could use some.)

Because I don't want to just list the illustrated themes, providing a bored docent's checklist tour from top to bottom of each sparkling lancet. I want to bring them to life.

Stained glass windows are an enigma. They sit high above the viewer, fashioned with the intention of illuminating their story, and yet too far away to really see. (Confession: I just got my first pair of eyeglasses a few months ago. I'm feeling self-conscious about my somewhat compromised long-distance vision.) 

Over decades, for the average viewer, they sadly deteriorate from wondrous feats of artisanship and theology to...wallpaper. And Sunday after Sunday, even as the stories they tell are recited from the pulpit, nobody looks up to see the custom-made illustrations that paint the air around them.

As evidenced here: Angels always memorize their music before performances. #professionals

So I'm excited to pull up the images on my laptop, a few of which are really (really) high res, and can be seen up close in perfect detail. I'm excited to see what Henry Willet and Monsignor Cassidy finally (and after much deliberation) struck upon as the right themes for depiction. I'm excited to play hide-and-seek with the hidden themes and ideas of these magnificent windows.

I'll get to focus in on just the four sets of windows in the Sanctuary. Eight lancets and four roses crafted in a style different than the nave windows, with fewer lead tracings and larger figures. And I'll get to touch on the striking humanity that dictated what ended up in our magnificent windows.

There seems to be a little fan-boying among the younger angels, when in the presence of Archangels.

The thing is, I'm a little intimidated by all this. How to write a lecture that provides the historical back-story, the human context, the theological framework, the artistic interpretation, and all in a way that makes people want to listen? And more than that - to look up?

Perhaps I need to find out if the Patron Saint of Liturgical Art Lecturers is depicted somewhere in the windows? 

Wish me luck....

The Happy Dilemma

I woke up this morning to the less-than-gentle overtures of Snowstorm Jonas, as he battered about the house. 

A quick note: My little apartment is in a 100-year-old-building, and my room is up under the eaves. This means I benefit from a lovely little window nook, but also have to deal with the fact that I live in what was once the less-than-adequately-insulated attic.

When I woke up, the first thing I noticed was that PATCO wasn't running, rumbling beneath 8th and Locust and shaking our entire building with the "...get-up-get-up-Get-UP-GET-UP-GET-UP-Get-up-get-up-get-up..." cadence that it usually (graciously) shares every single morning.

The second thing I noticed was a collection of sinister creaking noises. Now, Logic told me that these were just the sounds of contracting 100-year-old beams and snow drifts being bandied about on the roof. But Logic was only taking up about 7.5% of my conscious brain. The other 92.5% was occupied by (much louder and more assertive) Crazy, which insisted: THERE IS AN INTRUDER IN YOUR HOME, THEY MADE IT THROUGH TWO GIANT LOCKED DOORS WITHOUT MAKING NOISE, THEY HAVE BRUTALLY MURDERED YOUR ROOMMATE IN SILENCE, AND NOW THEY ARE LURKING AT THE TOP OF THE STEPS OUTSIDE YOUR DOOR.

“THERE IS AN INTRUDER IN YOUR HOME.”

— Crazy, speaking considerably louder than Logic

So I did what any woman would do. I compared the options to remedy my unhappy dilemma. I balanced a) being murdered in my bed, against b) stealthily getting out of bed, arming myself, and confronting him.

Important Note: There was also option c) call your roommate next door so that her cell phone rings and he goes after her, first. (backstory: about 9 years ago, living in Manayunk, that's what I decided to do. With never ending apologies to my former roommate, Kinah, who picked up the phone, very confused, before I explained I was actively sacrificing her life for mine. ...Sorry Kinah.) Unfortunately, Britt is in Florida this weekend, so I couldn't call her to divert any murderous intruders. Option c was off the table.

Die like a coward, or die in brave, pro-active glory.

Left with only option a) die like a coward, and option b) die in brave, pro-active glory, I chose (shockingly) option b.

Now, TO ARMS!

Unfortunately, I don't really have much in the way of weaponry lying about my bedroom. In retrospect, I should have perhaps grabbed the red keychain thing that makes a piercingly loud noise. But instead, I opted for the marble head statuette that my mother gave me for my birthday last year. (Clearly, because she wanted my room to look nice AND wanted to provide me with a Classically-inspired hefty instrument of self-defense in case of an emergency. Mom really takes care of me.)

Defense Mechanism, in repose.

What ensued was a (probably not comic, probably brilliantly ninja-like combination of quick and stealthy) surveying of the rooms on the top floor of my apartment, marble Restoration Hardware Classical Roman statuette raised over my head, ready to inflict terrifying (if lovely) bashing injuries upon any unwelcome guest.

With only the very slightest bit of disappointment, I can assure you there was no intruder. The marble head statuette looked quite dejected when I replaced her on the dresser. 

(Which leaves me with only one conclusion, really: We have ghosts.)

Being up, I put on my snow boots and gathered my things to venture into the drifty, windy storm and trek to my very favorite coffeeshop in the city, Menagerie Coffee (or "Menager-RAY, according to my friend, Jane). I was determined to break out the cans my brothers gave me for Christmas and finally write a blog about my favorite songs of 2015.

But as I sat down to begin dissecting the lyrical and melodic intrigues of last year's artists, Fleetwood Mac came on in the coffee shop. (It's the Best of Fleetwood Mac album, which is my 2nd favorite Fleetwood Mac album, behind the unparalleled perfection of the Rumours track lineup.) And one simply cannot put on headphones when Stevie and Christine and Lindsey are singing. And Mick is rocking. And John is playing. And Lindsey's guitar is serenading. It's impossible.

What a happy dilemma.

Do you always trust your first initial feeling? Maybe you shouldn't, because there probably aren't intruders in your apartment...

I want...

Just finished the Ted Talk Radio Hour on Hacking; the one with the segment on bringing extinct creatures back from the dead.

(Not dinosaurs. They've been dead too long and have no surviving DNA strands. Duh.)

They said I could probably see a baby wooly mammoth in my lifetime.

I really, really want a baby wooly mammoth now.

That is all.