This blog is a place for music and letters. The roaring 20's are here - but what if the roaring lion was never asleep? What if the bull never ceased its sacrifice for us, or the eagle never ceased endowing our souls with a grace we've grown to ignore? I am here to revive and make sense of the visions of my early youth, obscured by the vertigo and collective amnesia of the unprecedented, soul-crushing 2010's. My memories have been smeared, but I know there was a time when I knew the true meaning of Christmas to my bones, where I felt only chaste love, where I daydreamed as hard as Apollo did when he was a child, where despite the boyish sins I displayed through the mimesis of my surroundings, I never felt the force of gravity on my soul.
How do we return to this state of being? Through a constant stream of tweets? Through incessant cultural commentary? Through podcasting our way to the truth? It seems like no one thing is sufficient anymore. The idea of a single film or album having an impact on a "generation" is a relic of the 20th century. Culturally, we are living in the age of the small. This is not a bad thing! It doesn't feel wrong to me that teenagers prefer TikToks of a talented, emotive singer recording an intimate performance in their bedroom over an over-produced video by an ambitious band. It is no surprise to me that podcasts recorded over beers and background noise have more success with the populace than the latest NPR endeavor. The Gen-X ideal of “authenticity” came true, albeit heavily fragmented by the digital world.
The return of the small and intimate has many silver linings. We are once again allowed to, as Wendell Berry says, "Think little." We can try out, and enjoy, lots of different things. It doesn't have to be for a "big dream", because the ambitions of such a thing usually lead us away from the greatest ideals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. A "big dream" can't be fully distinguished from a fever dream. The fevers of our culture's past may have led to glorious zeitgeists, but those zeitgeists inevitably decayed from egregoric sin and groupthink. We have left the era-of-eras with clear heads, which is a blessing. But clear heads also struggle with boredom, malaise, even resentment. So, the timeless question returns: How then, shall we live?
The blog will begin as an assorted collection of writings, in addition to related musics I make under my primary name, The Carmelittles. I hope to incorporate video and film into this format someday as well. Regardless of what I do, this endeavor will never include principalities, powers, or forces of darkness in high places.
God-bless and God-speed to you, adorable reader. See you here, there, and everywhere!
