199. Le Pape

It’s worth mentioning again in going through this Tarot series that I do not approach the cards from the standpoint of divination (i.e., fortune telling). As an atheist, I do not believe in divine or supernatural forces, especially those that may guide our fates. That some force or thing created the universe with us in mind, and that arbitrary positions of cards, stars or planets can somehow foretell a future or course of action to take is silly, at best—narcissism, at worst.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about life goals and directions, as what I’ve been doing job and living-wise has not been bringing me joy or satisfaction. Quite the opposite. This summer, during a moment of particular distress and depression, a friend of mine offered to do a Tarot reading for me. He is also an atheist, and approaches Tarot from a similar analytical perspective. It was he who first suggested that Tarot was really collaborative storytelling; that the cards themselves describe general but universal aspects of the human experience around which a codified “school” of reading and interpretation was defined.

I’ve always been deeply fascinated by Jungian psychology, and in particular the archetypal. As a storyteller, I find myself drawing on these images myself—the wise old man or woman, the cunning trickster, the child, the hero, the dark shadow lurking just out of sight.

The thoughts and questions that I’ve been contemplating lately are on the epic (albeit personal, so not huge in the grand scheme) scale. I’m in the process of doing in a couple of years what most people do over the course of their lifetime—or at least in the process of growing up. A few years ago, I realized that the foundations of my life were fictions. Though there are some mythic truths to be found, the stories my parents and teachers told about a holy and supreme god who made me and the entire universe; who has a divine purpose and plan for my life; who is keeping notes on every thought, word, and deed to determine which afterlife I’ll enjoy or suffer for all eternity—none of it’s true. And now I’m faced with probably the most important question asked by any human being: Who am I?

It’s an insignificant question compared to most of the problems we face. And most people never really give it a second thought. But when you realize that every premise you’ve based your life on (and experience you’ve denied yourself) isn’t true, you start to wonder: What do I believe?

All that to say, Tarot has been helpful the past couple of weeks in bringing up and beginning to confront some of these issues and questions of purpose. What do I care about? What do I want to do? The cards can’t tell me the answers, but they introduce a certain level of randomness to get me mentally unstuck.

One of the big questions right now is that of career. Because I don’t really have one. I’ve been doing office admin work since college, but that’s a job. I don’t care about data entry, filing, document formatting, or any of the pointless shit I’ve done for other people over the years.

What I care about is storytelling. And art—specifically, music and writing.

Late this past summer, I decided to finally explore pursuing a master’s degree in one of those areas: music composition. I somewhat hurriedly (and haphazardly) put together three applications and submitted them this past fall. And they were rejected. These rejections made me question whether this was even the right path I should be taking.

The cards told me what I’ve always known at the core of my being, but have been afraid to acknowledge. Follow your passion.

The Hierophant is an interesting card. It’s also referred to as The Pope. It typically represents tradition, conservatism, discipline, heeding the status quo or social convention, and education. Wikipedia suggests that “it is a warning to the Querant to reexamine his or her understanding of the meaning of things; of the structure of the world; of the powers that be.”

Another interpretation of the reversed card (which is how I laid it out):

The Hierophant reversed is about breaking the rules and challenging the status quo. You no longer accept the rigid structures, tradition and dogma surrounding you, and now seek out opportunities to rebel and retaliate. You want to challenge ideas and concepts that you once thought of as written in stone. (BiddyTarot)

A friend of mine posted a comment yesterday on my previous entry: You didn’t get into grad school because that’s not really your best choice; you’re comfortable in music, and so you pursue it. You have great eloquence as a writer, but you didn’t pursue a master’s degree in writing. Why?

Frankly, I still wonder if I did the right thing in doing my undergrad in composition. Deciding on it was almost a last-minute decision. My original plan was majoring in creative writing, but my father suggested that I had real talent in music. But was that reason enough? Music was always easy for me; and while one’s natural talents should be considered, no field will successfully hold one’s interest without passion.

The ideal would be finding a program where I could somehow combine my love for creating music with my love for writing. This is why opera always felt like such a good fit. In addition to providing the music, I also provided the text and the story, although I’ve always felt like more of a musical playwright than a composer when it came to it.

So that’s where things currently stand, stuck between a hard and a rock place and unsure which direction to go. What comes to mind is (yet another) lyric from Sunday in the Park with George:

“I chose and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken. The choosing was not. You have to move on.”

192. solstice

My breakfast this morning was two tumblers of whisky (neat), about three fingers each. This after getting up to feed and water the dogs I’m looking after for the month. No sense in them going hungry. I got an email last night from the University of Michigan at 11:10PM, which seems an odd hour to be sending emails. A bit like waiting until you know someone’s gone to leave a voicemail. The email read:

I regret to inform you that your application for admission to the Music Composition MA program at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance has not been approved. We are therefore unable to offer you the opportunity to audition. This decision is based on a careful review by the faculty committee of your pre-screening recording and your application materials. The staff of the Admissions Office and the Composition faculty are not able to provide individual feedback from student auditions because of the volume of candidates to consider. We ask your understanding and thank you in advance. As you continue your college search, I know that you will find another school at which to pursue your studies. We wish you continued success and every good wish for a career that will fully utilize your interests and abilities.

Basically, a “thanks for trying, now fuck off” email. This might not have been such a blow had my temp job not ended yesterday, a week and a half early than what I was planning on. It also might not be such a disappointment were I not single again for the holidays. Last year was the first time in a while that I’ve been employed during the Yule season, and the first time ever that I’ve been dating someone for a major holiday. Now I’m back to where I was in 2011, when I told my parents that I wanted nothing more to do with them for their bigotry, I was still reeling from heartbreak and my loss of faith, and I’d just been laid off from another temp job right after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. As in, thanks a lot. There are still two applications out there that might yield something, but I’m terrified now that the results will be the same there—that my work just isn’t good enough on its own to merit a place as a cohort in graduate school. A friend of mine tells me that it may have nothing to do with the quality of my application or compositions; that it’s more about finding a group of students that coalesce together. If that’s the case, I may never get into grad school as I’m really an oddball when it comes to music. And everything else. What I’m terrified over is the prospect of yet another year of living in purgatory. I’m tired of working these temp jobs that pay far below the skill level required for the work the client needs performed. I’m sick of being expendable. I’m sick of working with the 9-to-5ers, the workaday folk who go home after a long day at the office of doing something they ultimately don’t care about and aren’t invested in; who are planning to working long enough to cash in on their 401K pension and retire somewhere comfortable. This is not the world I belong in. Remember this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ofKJ6UFv60 Instead of a Shakespearean subtext, my inner voices have quite another Jungian game going on:

• Id: Running back and forth, simultaneously trying to make ends meet and bash my head against a wall to get anything artistic done.
• Ego: Uncertain about whether I’ve made the right career decision or whether my music is even good enough to pursue a career in, even though it’s pretty much the only thing I’m really good at and give a fuck about.
• Superego: Those strident subconscious voices that are difficult to shake, like Christianity:
  • Every single rejection letter or person who has rejected my music, told me that it’s too difficult, or that it’s just not very good.
  • My lack of business sense and self-promotion; of knowing how to strategize, network, who to talk to, how to talk to people, etc.
  • Frustration over my dating life and singleness; over how I haven’t found a guy yet who ultimately doesn’t disappoint me (cf, Fiona Apple); how my current scheme is to find a like-minded guy at grad school; feeling anxiety over nearly being 31 and that I’m at the age where younger guys who are into “older guys” are interested in me but not interested in a relationship.

That bloodcurdling scream the girl playing Ophelia lets out at the end of that scene? That’s the sound in my head almost all the time these days. “Get thee to a nunnery” indeed. I’ve also grown weary of the Midwest and its seemingly provincial attitude toward sophisticated art and music. I once shared the recording of my senior composition recital with a supervisor of mine, and he called it “long-haired music,” a reference (I suppose) to graduate students of the 60s and 70s being somewhat shaggy in appearance. I’ve sent pieces of mine to ensembles all over the Twin Cities, hoping to get performances, or the very least readings. No bites. If I get feedback at all, it’s usually something to the effect of: It’s really not what we’re looking for. … thanks, now go fuck yourself. It’s difficult not to think that I’m the common denominator here. What’s more probable? That hundreds of people have had the same independent reaction to my music, or that my work just… sucks? The latter is what I’m afraid of. We’ll see what happens in the coming weeks as I wait to see what happens with the Eastman School of Music and with the University of Southern California. I have a little hope, but not a lot. In the meantime, Christmas is in four days and I feel like drinking myself silly to forget that I’m single and miserable, and that my entire family is fundamentalist Christians.

97. ambivalence

Only three more blog posts away from #100. It’s hard to believe how long this blog has actually been going, and how long it’s actually taken me to get to a hundred posts. Most of that ground has been covered in the past couple of months as I’ve been using this blog to explore and document my journey from Christianity to apostasy, and the various ways in which my thinking has changed and grown since February.

For my hundredth post, I intend to write out an essay on what exactly I believe now, how I came to atheism (aside from the “born again” moment on my birthday, which I shall try to reference as little as possible), and answer some of the questions that have been posed to me since coming out as an atheist.

Since wrapping up NaNoWriMo on November 28th and feeling utterly drained creatively, I’ve been taking some time off to recharge, feed and nurture my creative self. Most of the time I drive myself like a machine, with the expectation that my mind is this factory of ideas that can churn out and turn over high-quality work in a relatively short span of time. The fact is that this is not the case, and that I’m more like a creative “shoppe” that needs freedom, flexibility and room to work. And I also need to love myself and my muse, and treat it with love and respect instead of with an iron fist.

My brain also undergoes something akin to the reversal of the earth’s magnetic poles every couple of months, switching from musical North to verbal South, or what I call different mental “modes.” Sometimes my brain thinks in words, and I’ll write stories and novels; and sometimes my brain thinks in music, and I’ll do a lot of composing and music. Right now, after a heavy period of verbal writing my brain is switching back over to music; and one project in particular has caught my attention again.

Back in 2007 I started work on a setting of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Aria da Capo, a one-act play which I’m turning into a one-act opera. My friend Larisa directed it in the spring of that year, and I was immediately taken with it. Aside from how well her words translate into music, what attracted me at once was both the beauty of the language and the chilling message that it offers. The difference between what I do as a composer and what most composers do is that for me, music always takes a backseat to story and to text (and/or to action, whichever is driving the piece). When I’m picking a story or a text to set, my first consideration is whether it will be served at all by being paired with music, and how my music can serve the words and the story. (A lot of the time I feel it’s the other way round.)

My composition professor in college gets a lot of credit for this perspective. He would say that “opera is a mind expressing itself at a critical point.” I take that to apply to music in general: That breaking into song or playing an instrument is the only possible choice that a character could take at that moment in time, so I’m very careful about how and where I put music. For me, singing in an opera isn’t an obligation, and I’ll think nothing of cutting music if it makes more sense to have speech. After all, song is just sustained speech.

I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, I’m getting to the headline at the top of the page.

If you haven’t already, go and read Aria da Capo. It’s well worth it, and a short one at that. The title comes from the baroque song form, which is tertiary, meaning that it’s essentially in three parts: A B A, where you have the first part of the song, followed by a contrasting section and then a return to the first part. The play opens with a harlequinade, with a farce featuring the Commedia dell’arte stock characters of Pierrot and Columbine.

COLUMBINE: Pierrot, a macaroon! I cannot live without a macaroon!
PIERROT: My only love, you are so intense! . . . Is it Tuesday, Columbine?— I’ll kiss you if it’s Tuesday.
COLUMBINE: It is Wednesday, if you must know . . . Is this my artichoke, or yours?

This goes on until Cothurnus, the Greek muse of tragedy, enters and kicks them off. He then brings on two shepherds, Thyrsis and Corydon, who insist that they thought they had more time before they had to go on.

CORYDON: Sir, we are counting on this little hour. We said, “Here is an hour,—in which to think a mighty thought, and sing a trifling song, and look at nothing.”—And, behold! the hour, Even as we spoke, was over, and the act begun, under our feet!

They also complain that the setting is all wrong (“We cannot act a tragedy with comic properties!”), but Cothurnus urges them on:

COTHURNUS: Try it and see. I think you’ll find you can. One wall is like another. And regarding the matter of your insufficient mood, the important thing is that you speak the lines, and make the gestures. 

The shepherds begin their own play, with Cothurnus standing by as prompter, a tragedy about two friends who decided to play a game that goes horribly wrong:

THYRSIS: Let’s gather rocks, and build a wall between us; and say that over there belongs to me, and over here to you!
CORYDON: Why,—very well. And say you may not come upon my side unless I say you may!
THYRSIS: Nor you on mine! And if you should, ‘twould be the worse for you!

Over the course of this play, this game becomes more real as Corydon realizes that Thyrsis has all the water on his side of the wall, and then he discovers jewels on his side. In the end,  the shepherds kill each other, with Corydon strangling Thyrsis with a necklace of jewels and Thyrsis poisoning Corydon with a bowl of water. Pierrot and Columbine return and discover the bodies. Pierrot complains to Cothurnus:

PIERROT: Cothurnus! Come drag these bodies out of here! We can’t sit down and eat with two dead bodies lying under the table! . . . The audience wouldn’t stand for it!
COTHURNUS: (Off stage.) What makes you think so? — Pull down the tablecloth on the other side, and hide them from the house, and play the farce. The audience will forget.

They then start the first play over again, with the first couple of lines (“Pierrot, a macaroon,—I cannot live without a macaroon!”). For almost a year I was working on bits and pieces of music for this, struggling with the meaning of the text, and it wasn’t until I saw the documentary The Devil Came on Horseback, that I finally understood. It’s a film about former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle’s experiences in the Darfur, documenting incidents of cease fire violations, and his eventual uncovering and exposing of the genocide taking place there. The last scene from Aria da Capo instantly came to mind as the story broke in U.S. papers but then quickly faded as a news item.

That film, along with the shockwave of 9/11 still relatively fresh in my mind, as well as the genocides in Bosnia and the myriad of other horrific events — murders, suicides, tsunamis, earthquakes — began to shake my faith in God and his supposed goodness.

So today I open my Google homepage, with a newsfeed from CNN, and there’s the headline from the story I posted at the top of the page (which you can read here). A 7-year-old girl was beaten about the head, stabbed to death, and thrown in the trash. Is that part of God’s ineffable master plan somehow? That somehow this all fits into his grand design?

Or perhaps that, as some of my Christian friends assert, he’s constantly working to restore the creation? In that case, God is looking more and more like a harried, overworked social worker, with an ever-growing stack of files on his desk, and more cases falling through the cracks than he’s able to keep track of, no matter how hard he tries to stay on top. That God deserves our pity and maybe even our assistance, not our worship or undying devotion.

However… this is the all-powerful God who created the universe and all life therein? The God who forgives sins, ushers the faithful into a blessed afterlife, and punishes the wicked with an eternity in hell? This is the deity Christians entrust their security to?

The more I look at that headline, the less plausible God (at least the Christian God) seems, even less plausible than he already seems to me. Again, I will cover more of this in post #100; and I certainly don’t believe in God anymore; but it is an interesting thought.