Up Through the First Joke

Posted on May 4, 2015 by awtraughber

JackdawFrom The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis:

The Lion, whose eyes never blinked, stared at the animals as hard as if he was going to burn them up with his mere stare.  And gradually a change came over them.  The smaller ones– the rabbits, moles, and such-like– grew a good deal larger.  The very big ones– you noticed it most with the elphants– grew a little smaller.  Many animals sat up on their hind legs.  Most put their heads on one side as if they were trying very hard to understand.  The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it; he was breathing out, a long, warm breath; it seemed to sway all the beasts as the wind sways a line of trees.  Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music.  Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying:

“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake.  Love.  Think.  Speak.  Be walking trees.  Be talking beasts.  Be divine waters.”

It was, of course, the Lion’s voice.  The children had long felt sure that he could speak: yet it was a lovely and terrible shock when he did.

Out of the trees wild people stepped forth, gods and goddesses of the wood; with them came Fauns and Satyrs and Dwarfs.  Out of the river rose the river god with his Naiad daughters.  And all these and all the beasts and bords in their different voices, low or high or think or clear, replied:

“Hail, Aslan.  We hear and obey.  We are awake.  We Love.  We think.  We speak.  We know.”

“But please, we don’t know very much yet,” said a nosey and snorty kind of voice.  And that reall did make the children jump, for it was the cab-horse who had spoken . . .

“Creatures, I give you yourselves,” said the strong and happy voice of Aslan.  “I give to you forever this land of Narnia.  I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers.  I give you the stars and I give you myself.  The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also.  Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts.  For out of them you were taken and into them you can return.  Do not so.”

“No, Alsan, we won’t, we won’t,” said everyone.  But one perky jackdaw added in a loud voice, “No fear!” and everyone else had finished just before he said it so that his words came out quite clear in a dead silence . . . The Jackdaw became so embarassed that it hid its head under its wing as if it were going to sleep.  And all the other anumals began making various queer noises which are their ays of laughing and which, no one has ever heard in our world.  They tried at first to repress it, but Aslan said:

“Laugh and fear not, creatures.  Now that you are no longer dumb and witless, you need not always be grave.  For jokes as well as justice come in with speech.”

So they all let themselves go.  And there was such merriment that the Jackdaw himself plucked up courage again and perched on the cab-horse’s head, between its ears, and clapping its wings, and said:

“Aslan! Aslan!  Have I made the first joke?  Will everybody always be told how I made the first joke?”

“No, little friend,” said the Lion.  “You have not made the first joke; you have only been the first joke.”  Then everyone laughed more than ever . . .

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On Goofy, Mountains, and Magic

Posted on April 29, 2015 by awtraughber

One of the most interesting distinctions that Matthew B. Crawford deals with is the ascendancy of the virtual world as the “real” world for so many.  He uses the “Handy Dandy Machine” from Micky Mouse Clubhouse as a modern counterpoint to what feels like the now-ancient misadventures of Goofy. Unlike the cartoon characters of today, Goofy could not simply press a but or summon a computer to solve his problem in the abstract.  He has to deal with things head-on (at least in cartoon terms).  Consider:

 

For all of the fanciful ups and downs of the short clip, Goofy still has to deal with the reality of the mountain.   From Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head:

The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one’s getting too entangled with them.  Treated from arm’s length, the object can issue no challenge to the self.  According to Freud, this is precisely the condition of the narcissist: he treats objects as props for his fragile ego and has an uncertain grasp of them as having a reality of their own.  The clearest contrast to the narcissist is the repairman, who must subordinate himself to the broken washing machine, listen to it with patience, notice its symptoms, and then act accordingly.  He cannot treat it abstractly; the kind of agency he exhibits is not at all magical.

If we are not careful, Crawford seems to be saying, we will fool ourselves into believing that we truly are living in a magical world.  And there are many wizards more powerful than you and me.

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“That Lack of That Next Big Glorious”

Posted on April 28, 2015 by awtraughber

The Space ShuttleThe Telegraph recently posted an article/interview with Dave Eggers, who I write about here as often as I can.  It’s a good article, focusing primarily on Eggers’ last three novels.  The article is mostly couched in Eggers’ take on technology, which is most seen in The Circle.  But the article also makes decent use of the most recent (and under-discussed) book by Eggers, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And Your Prophets, Do They Live Forever?  One image that inspired that book is something potent for many who grew up in the 90s: the NASA shuttle program:

“Fathers was so odd,” he admits. “I wrote it on and off for about a year, but in a fury each time.” Even more than Alan Clay in A Hologram for the King, Thomas is a figure of dispossession adrift on America’s post-industrial landscape. He yearns obsessively for the time when America blazed a trail with the Space Shuttle programme.

“Half the people I grew up with wanted to go up in the Space Shuttle,” Eggers replies when I ask about this. “It was one of the most central images of our childhood and teenage years. I went to the last Shuttle launch in 2011. It made me feel incredibly patriotic and proud, and really sad. There were so many of these old-timers who have been at NASA from the beginning and they knew it was ending. Astronauts were going to have to ride on Russian rockets to get to the space station.

“It was crushing. Everyone was crying. The Shuttle was such a powerful emblem of a sense of optimism and a can-do spirit. I think this is what Thomas in Fathers is suffering from and Alan too in Hologram. That lack of that big next glorious communal mission, whether it’s the opening of the West or the transcontinental railroad or the Panama canal or Apollo or the Shuttle.”

But it’s talk of the internet and data and privacy that takes up the rest of the article.  Instead of technology that directs us truly beyond ourselves, we have apps where “they’re all more intrusive, they all reach through” into the personal areas of our lives.

You can read the whole article here.  It’s a worthwhile read and a healthy perspective.

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The Professional Necessity of Others

Posted on April 28, 2015 by awtraughber

From Matthew B. Crawford’s The World Beyond Your Head:

For experiences to become part of the secure, sedimented foundation of a skill, they must be criticized.  Otherwise people (and the resources of language) are indispensable.  Without them, your experiences are partial, and may sediment as idiosyncratic bad habits.

The power of these conversations to clarify your experience, rather than introduce fresh confusion, depends in part of the dialectical abilities of your colleagues.  They have to be able to interrogate their own experience into the conversation in such a way that their initial interpretation of it is put at risk.  They have to be capable of offering it up, without undue attachment, to the shared enterprise of trying to understand  structure fires.  In other words, they must have the art of philosophical conversation (which is a kind of moral accomplishment).  I believe the most competent people in any field do have this art to some degree, though they probably wouldn’t name it as such.

Getting things right requires triangulation with other people . . . It typically happens in conversation– not idle chitchat, but the kind that aims to get to the bottom of things.  I call this an “art” because it requires both tact and doggedness.  And I call it a moral accomplishment because to be good at this kind of conversation you have to love the truth more than you love your own current state of understanding.  This is, of course, an unusual priority to have, which may help to account for the rarity of real mastery in any pursuit.

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Having Your Attention (and eating it, too?)

Posted on April 27, 2015 by awtraughber

Yesterday’s classic Calvin and Hobbes also reminded me of something Andy Crouch recently said about technology and the attention our screens demand from us (connected to Calvin and his appliances).  From “Small Screens, Big World”:

Our screens, increasingly, pay a great deal of attention to us. They assure us that someone, or at least something, cares. The mediated world constantly falls over itself to tell us, often in entirely automated ways, that we matter every bit as much as we secretly hope we do. They tell us we are liked, retweeted, favorited—that we are significant, useful, and urgently needed. Every generation of devices gets better at this, becomes less a persnickety, recalcitrant technician (does anyone remember the exacting syntax of command-line interfaces?) and more and more an utterly dedicated, ingratiating concierge for our preferred future.

The unmediated world does not flatter us in this way. Stand on a deserted seashore and the creation pays you no evident attention, except perhaps for a few creatures that alter their paths to keep a safe distance. Even our fellow human beings rarely flatter us with the attention we think we deserve. Walk down a street in Hong Kong or Phnom Penh or London or Rome, and unless you are young and beautiful, or possibly rich, no one will pay you the slightest heed. And youth and beauty, even wealth, are fleeting things. I never was beautiful, but I have had some success, enough to know that even at the heights of attention, when the whole room is looking at you, smiling at you, standing and applauding you, the overwhelming experience of life as a human being is smallness and disregard. There is a hunger for attention that all the selfies in the world will never fill, a hunger that only grows as our mediated world breathlessly offers more and more ways to call attention to ourselves.

So the real gift of my absence from screens was that nothing was paying attention to me. Of course my wife and children and friends did, graciously, continue to attend to me (along with gracious hosts in the countries I visited over the past few weeks). But not in the relentless, addictive way that devices do. And in the absence of that constant digital flattery, feeling much smaller and less significant, I was more free to pay attention to the world I am called to love.

The whole essay, which talks about Crouch’s digital sabbatical over Lent, is a great read.  You can read all of it here.

There really is so much great thinking going on these days, especially by thoughtful Christians trying to make sense of the world around them as it changes at such a great pace.  This is just one quality example of that.

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Has It Always Been A Trap, Barry Allen?

Posted on April 24, 2015 by awtraughber

It’s interesting to me how quickly The Flash has become my go-to for a standard concerning super-hero shows.  I don’t understand the appeal of Arrow at all.  And as much I enjoy SHIELD, it is so far removed from anything iconic that it almost feels like a genre unto itself.  This may be the most I’ve enjoyed a super-hero show since the second season of Smallville, really.

Here’s the extended trailer for this Tuesday’s new episode.  Hard to believe there are four episodes left in the season . . . and still so little Grodd.  They’ve played the mystery of Harrison Wells almost perfectly.  Let’s hope they stick the landing (to mix athletic metaphors).

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What Tames You

Posted on April 22, 2015 by awtraughber

A few years ago when I had the chance to visit France, I took two books along with me.  I think I got through two chapters of A Tale of Two Cities before I set it aside.  Then there was The Little Prince: much shorter and probably a good deal stranger (that ending- what?!).  Now there’s a movie being made of it . . . and it’s beautiful.

 

This is one of those occasions where I think the framing sequence (mother and child) is a wise move.  I am a but surprised, though, that they include one of the book’s best moments in the trailer.  It still got me, though.

I’m still trying to figure out, though, what actually makes a wonderful grown-up.

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Nearing the First Season Finish Line

Posted on April 21, 2015 by awtraughber

Tonight brings another episode of The Flash on the CW.   I was recently talking TV with a student who, like me, is pleasantly surprised by how quickly the “Reverse Flash” storyline has been moving.  We are both wondering, though, what could happen once the story is over, as it’s the kind of thing some series would tease forever.

Here’s the trailer for tonight’s episode:

 

I must admit to being pretty impressed with how well the writers have integrated the casts of The Flash and Arrow.  I tried Arrow for The Flash‘s sake, and I just couldn’t do it.  This kind of bleed-over coupled with the promise of a thirteen episode ensemble-cast spin-off next season makes me think that something really big could be in the works.

And all this time, for so much of this season, Grodd has just been creeping in the background . . .

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The Moment That Gets You

Posted on April 16, 2015 by awtraughber

I imagine that most Star Wars fans are especially pleased with the latest trailer for this winter’s new installment in the series.  I much preferred Skywalker’s voice-over to the closing shot of Han Solo and Chewbacca’s “we’re home” moment (especially when the screen goes dark and the voice-over continues).  But it’s the first scene that ignites my imagination.

 

The slow pan of the landscape with the Imperial Destroyer is a great reminder of context, something that reminds you of the high stakes of The Return of the Jedi.  And even though it’s a wide shot, it’s the kind of subtle moment that the prequels never seemed to master.  It often felt like the prequels were all about something I can only call a “flash-forward callback.”  There were a number of scenes, shots, and lines of dialogue that were meant to be obvious nods to the original trilogy (like the last shot in Attack of the Clones).  Those things never manifested into cool moments for me because they never really worked my imagination.  In fact, they almost dulled the significance of the moments they were simultaneously looking forward to and calling back.  But some kind of speeder coasting in front of a downed Imperial Destroyer?  That’s brilliant.

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Bitterness and Blessing

Posted on April 16, 2015 by awtraughber

Last night’s reading from the book of Exodus (ESV):

Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water.  When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah.  And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”  And he cried to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a log,  and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

There the Lord made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them,  saying, “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer.”

Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they encamped there by the water.

They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.  And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness,  and the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”  So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt,  and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we, that you grumble against us?”  And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against him—what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”  And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.  And the Lord said to Moses,  “I have heard the grumbling of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”

Turns out that opportunities for bitterness are everywhere, even on the road to God and His blessed best.  And while I don’t want to oversimplify the passage, you definitely identify with the Israelites even as you are frustrated by them.  Thanks be to God for daily provisions, “give us this day our daily bread” and for the reminder that “man cannot live on bread alone by by every word which comes from the mouth of God.”

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