Some Holy Ghost
“Holy Ghost,” from Low’s 2013 album The Invisible Way, is lyrically the most straight-forward LDS song in their extensive catalogue.
Excerpt for Easter: “A Terrible Beauty Is [Re]Born”–William Butler Yeats, Julia de Burgos, and Romantic Resurrection
Meditating on the impossibility of both the Resurrection and the 1916 Easter Rising during this Easter season.
On Indefinite Articles and Ukraine
The fates of entire nations can pivot on the indefinite article, for “by small and simple things are great things brought to pass.”
The Complete Music for a Sunday Morning
For your playlist construction pleasure. Part 1: The Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning” and Jimmy Eat World’s “A Sunday” Part 2: Ben Folds’ “Jesusland” and America’s “Sister Golden Hair” Part 3: Johnny Cash’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and U2 & Johnny Cash’s “The Wanderer” Part 4: Blondie’s “Sunday Girl” and No Doubt’s “Sunday Morning” Part 5: […]
Music for a Sunday Morning, Part 21: A Finale–The Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” and Spacemen 3’s “Lord Can You Hear Me”
When you get into those Sunday Morning moods, how do you snap out of it? Or at a bare minimum, how do you wrap up the playlist about it?
Music for a Sunday Morning, Part 20: Nearing the end–New Order’s “Ceremony” and David Bowie’s “Blackstar”
This is why events unnerve me.
Music for a Sunday Morning, Part 19: The Velvet Underground’s “Jesus” and The Replacement’s “Can’t Hardly Wait”
You can tell we’re getting near the end of this playlist since we’re looping all the way back around to the Velvet Underground, who’s “Sunday Morning” helped kick it off in the first place. I do have to make a confession though: as undeniably influential as their legendary debut The Velvet Underground and Nico has […]
Music for a Sunday Morning, Part 18: Ben Harper’s “Amen Omen” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”
My mission president was one of those rare ones who refused to straight up ban genres of music, trusting us to use our own judgment to determine whether a song was “conducive to the spirit” or not. This actually worked out better than one might expect, and there were a surprisingly high number of missionaries […]
Tale of a T-Shirt
In which Darwinistic Randomization is at once refuted and reaffirmed. Once, when I was an inexperienced young first-year MA student at the U who did not yet realize that graduate academic conferences accept pretty much everyone with a pulse, I submitted abstracts to a couple of local ones and to my surprise was accepted at […]
Music for a Sunday Morning, Part 17: Leonard Cohen’s, John Cale’s, and Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” for Your Valentines Day
I’d been avoiding doing the single most overplayed, over-covered, over-exposed Sunday song of the past 30-odd years, simply because it is so obvious.