Lauren Wilford
oh, look. meaning.
Interjection!: The real soul-mate
No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up ‘in the Church’. Those outside seem seldom to have…
"What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."
Bleakness and Richness: Christopher Nolan on Human Nature
Editor’s Note: This essay contains discussion of plot details, including potential spoilers, from several Christopher Nolan films.
I remember the frenetic buzzing in my head on the way out of the midnight showing of The Dark Knight. I remember the way the theater seemed to heave after the final frame, all at once ringing with cheers, expletives, arguments, and the laughter of release. We went home and made all our friends see it. We watched the box office numbers climb like we had money on them.
As part of the millennial generation, I’ve seen my fair share of franchise mania—people always want to talk about the latest Spider-Man or Harry Potter—but people wanted to talk about The Dark Knight at a level I had never seen before. By the time the film opened, Christopher Nolan had already released five films as a director and cowriter—three noir-influenced crime dramas, his first Batman film, and a period thriller—to increasing acclaim and financial success. All were dark and philosophically bent. But none of those films had generated its own cultural moment.
Part of this fervor was related to the well-deserved hype concerning Heath Ledger’s final performance. Remember how gleeful we felt to meet Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow? Watching Ledger’s Joker took that feeling to dizzy, depraved heights. From the second he walked into the frame with his deadpan laugh and matted hair, we were rapt. By three lines in (“I’m gonna make this pencil … disappear”), the audience had lost it. It was the most literally I have ever sat on the edge of my seat—it was the first time I had laughed and gasped in the same breath. Ledger’s Joker made the film a ride.
Mere rides don’t linger, though, and The Dark Knight lingered….
Continue reading at The Other Journal!
This is my first officially published piece, and I’m so grateful to TOJ for running it.
Look, I know this tumblr has a theme of feely songs about existential anxiety. If I’m the market for that, then so be it. But this song… “The Sickness Unto Death.” I read the lyrics along with it and began crying within the first stanza. In the words of the friend who recommended it to me, “It’s like a Psalm.”
"Our anxiety is less the mind shielding itself from death than the spirit’s need to be. It is as if each of us were always hearing some strange, complicated music in the background of our lives, music which, so long as it remains in the background, is not simply distracting but manifestly unpleasant, because it demands the attention we are giving to other things. It is not hard to hear this music, but it is very difficult indeed to learn to hear it as music. […]
Anxiety comes from the self as ultimate concern, from the fact that the self cannot bear this ultimate concern: it buckles and wavers under the strain, and eventually, inevitably, it breaks.
"
~ Christian Wiman, “Hive of Nerves,” The American Scholar I’m so excited to pick up this man from the airport.
Wintersleep, “Dead Letter and the Infinite Yes”
I found a letter it read
“Our existence has serious side effects”
Turned on, turned on the television
It’s telling me the world is collapsing
I think it’s coming and it comes so fast
I’m hearing whispers of an infinite yes
And I don’t know why it is
Our bodies are dead, why you look so sad?
And my therapist said
“We’ve evolved through a series of accidents”
There’s been talk of chemical imbalances
Restless sense of detachment, nausea and or violence
I think it’s coming and it comes so fast
I’m hearing whispers of an infinite yes
And I don’t know why it is
I feel it coming, I think it’s real and significant
I think I think I think a little too often
That’s what my therapist said
We’re alone in this wilderness
Left to choke on the pills and to feed on the viruses
I think it’s coming and it comes so fast
I think it’s coming and it comes so fast
I’m hearing whispers of an infinite yes
Our bodies are dead, why you look so sad
Our bodies are dead, why you look so sad
"Because of piety’s penchant for taking itself too seriously, theology does well to nurture a modest, unguarded sense of comedy. Some droll sensibility is required to keep in due proportion the pompous pretensions of the study of divinity. I invite the kind of laughter that wells up not from cynicism about reflection on God but from the ironic contradictions accompanying such reflection. Theology is intrinsically funny. This comes from glimpsing the incongruity of humans thinking about God. I have often laughed at myself as these sentences went through their tortuous stages of formation. I invite you to look for the comic dimension of divinity that stalks every page. It is not blasphemy to grasp the human contradiction for what it is. The most enjoyable of all subjects has to be God, because God is the source of all joy."
~ Tom Oden (via Philip Tallon on Twitter)
(Source: wesleyhill, via ayjay)
Purpose— Cloud Cult
There must be purpose here cause most of us keep waking up
(Don’t you think it’s pretty here?)
It’s so unexpectedly predictable
So sloppily intentional
Does anyone know the punchline yet?
There must be rhythm here cause all of us have a heartbeat
(Don’t you see the music here)
Inside our ribs we tick an average of 60 beats a minute
A-rum-pum-pum-pum
A-rum-pum-pum-pum-pum
There must be forgiveness here cause most of us have our weaknesses
(Tell me, what are your weaknesses?)
I don’t know myself and I’m afraid of you
I’m happiest on chemicals
The goings come and the comings go
Forgive me I’m just an animal
There must be healing here cause everybody here has been damaged
And we’ll wear it like a tattoo
Every scar is a smile
To hell with the going down
There must be afterlife here cause we all pray for resurrection
You see the end comes quick as a bullet
about
arts/faith/culture blogger. web intern for IMAGE journal. come fall 2012, editor-in-chief of Lingua journal.
on twitter
at Filmwell
there are some more things I have written here. (Full links coming soon.)
I study aesthetics and narrative at seattle pacific university.
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