Joss Whedon and Trusting the Story

Posted on August 26, 2013 by awtraughber

JossEWThe joy of this past Saturday was sitting down with my coffee and breakfast and reading Entertainment Weekly‘s Joss Whedon issue.  And it was great.  I think I’ve seen about 85% of Whedon’s work (I still haven’t finished the last season-and-a-half of Angel), and I’m always amazed at how he creates new things that reflect significant truth.

Some highlights:

  • While working on Roseanne, Whedon learned that “every time somebody opens their mouth they have an opportunity to do one of two things– connect or divide.”  I wish I could always keep that in mind.
  • The story of the Toad/Storm dialogue from X-Men epitomizes the importance of not just what is said but who says it and how.
  • It’s always interesting to hear people’s opinions on The Avengers movie.  Maybe the movie’s writer and director said it best: The Avengers may not be a great film, but it is a “great time.”

and

  • “Somebody once asked me if I have anything like faith, and I said I have faith in the narrative.  I have a belief in a narrative that is bigger than me, that is alive and I trust will work itself out. [Buffy star] Sarah Michelle Gellar once said, ‘I’m not sure where we’re going with this [story line],’ and I said, ‘You don’t have to trust me, trust the narrative, we’ll find our way back.”

Brilliant words from one of our culture’s best story-tellers. There are some more goodies from the interview, but I’ll hold off on them for a day or two.  I encourage you to go find the latest issue at your area Barnes & Noble or grocery store.  It’s brilliant thinking.

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Thinking Through The World’s End (or The Apocalypse of Gary King)

Posted on August 25, 2013 by awtraughber

Cornetto TrilogyThis past Thursday evening I had the opportunity to watch the “Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy,” the three movies made by Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Nick Frost.  I’ve been a fan of their work for years (including two great seasons of Spaced) and was excited to see two classics and the latest work back-to-back-to-back.  The short of it: Shaun of the Dead really is simply amazing.  Hot Fuzz is wonderfully polished and well-played.  And The World’s End?  Well, it’s definitely the more sober of the lot, which is interesting when you realize that it centers on a pub crawl.

The movie follows four childhood friends as they are brought together by their long-dismissed leader, Gary King, to finish a 12-stop pub crawl that didn’t go to well the last time they tried it, twenty years earlier.  It’s a movie tinged with a manic sadness.  It’s not about the loss of society to plague or the loss of real community for twisted civic pride like its predecessors.  This one is about remembering and forgetting and stumbling upon the problem at the heart of the world today.  That, of course, is where the sci-fi twist comes in.  Which is funny, because so much of the normal lives of the characters (cell phones, blue tooth devices, sleek cars, glass offices without posts and lintels) often look like the stuff of early sci-fi movies and shows.  The World’s End is well-done, kinetic and thoughtful and brutally honest.

Any critique of the movie will probably settle on the big technology-centered reveal near the movie’s end.  It’s a popular trope these days, what technology is doing to us.  But I like the spin the movie puts on it, the seemingly benign and innocuous way things have changed over the last two decades.  It’s the perfect contrast to Gary King’s final cry for help, his own personal apocalypse, when his jacket comes off and he reveals the genuine deficiency in humans and their systems, too.  It’s a quick moment, two sentences maybe, that are bulldozed over by the next fight scene.  But the moment is true.

“To err is human; to forgive is divine” is a saying plastered in the background of one scene near the movie’s end.  It’s a good visual and a brilliant reminder.  And while most of the movie epitomizes the first part of the saying, it’s the promise of the second line that should give us all, Gary King included, hope.

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Seth Godin Turns a Phrase (into something great)

Posted on August 23, 2013 by awtraughber

The first time I read Seth Godin’s thinking on emotional labor, I knew I had found a writer I wanted to learn from.  I had never really had a good term for what I knew was a vital part of community and co-working.  Now, as far as I can tell, Godin has done it again.

In his post from this past Monday, Godin spoke of mental bandwidth, the limited amount of quality attention you’ve got to do the thing you most want or need to do but that you so often use up doing (hiding in, really) everything else that fear uses as distraction.

The challenge, then, is a matter of finding ways to minimize “the leakage of mental bandwidth.”  How do you find space enough and time to do the work that is most important to you when so many other things are calling for your attention?  Godin remembers:

Before internet connectivity poured from the sky, I was able to get on a train, plug in my Mac and have nothing to do for four hours but write. And so I wrote. I once bought a round trip ticket to nowhere just to eliminate every possible alternative… pure, unadulterated mental bandwidth.

Perhaps the thought is nothing new: people have been writing about the science of attention for years.  But the image is potent, timely for our age of networks and connectivity and the overlap of so many of our resources.  From beginning to end, the post is a good one.  Take a moment and check it out here.

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A New Steven Curtis Chapman Song? Always a Good Thing

Posted on August 22, 2013 by awtraughber

A few weeks ago I was bemoaning the absence of good new music.  And then a river of solid music started flowing.  Derek Webb.  Andy Gullahorn.  Jars of Clay.  And now it’s Steven Curtis Chapman’s turn.  His new album, The Glorious Unfolding, drops at the end of September.  The first single? An upbeat tune called “Love Take Me Over.”  Here’s SCC performing the song for the folks at K-LOVE.

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Simple Psalm

Posted on August 21, 2013 by awtraughber

I’ve had the opportunity to learn some good things this week at work, from my students and from my co-workers.  In a recent meeting, one of my co-workers shared Psalm 131.  A great example of right psalm at right time, the English Standard Version goes like this:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.

Tradition has it that this is a psalm of ascent, one sung by pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem.  The first verse finds the singer in the right disposition, a place of humility and not pride.  Instead of focusing on things beyond his control, he calms the one thing that he can: himself.  All things in place, then, and that means hope in the right thing: the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

A simple psalm worth singing.

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Jars of Clay Leads You Inland

Posted on August 20, 2013 by awtraughber

Jars of Clay’s newest album drops next week.  Two tracks have been released digitally over the last couple of months.  Both hint at Jars being in a great place both lyrically and musically.  It’s also, I believe, the first album from their own label, so I get the feeling that there will be a bit more free rein with the finished product.  They recently performed the title track, “Inland,” at a concert in Franklin, NC.  I think you might like it.

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Who is the Doctor Puppet

Posted on August 19, 2013 by awtraughber

I was looking around Funny or Die a few nights ago looking for the horror version of The Giving Tree (so bloody!) and then a look at Disney’s vehicle movies (so many obvious puns) when I came across something I might have vaguely known existed but had never watched: The Doctor Puppet.

Now I’m not one for obviously cute things, especially puppets, but the creator behind this series (Alisa Stern) has done some brilliant work.  Lots of nods to the Doctor’s 50 years embedded in an ongoing mystery.  Plus there’s little-to-no dialogue (mostly narration, sonic screwdrivers, and psychic paper).  Check out the first “epidose” below.

You can see the second episode here, the third here, and the fourth here.  There’s even a Christmas episode that you can see here.

Something to tide us all over until Thanksgiving, I suppose.

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Sunday Song with Sara Groves

Posted on August 18, 2013 by awtraughber

Every fall semester I play Sara Groves’s “Maybe There’s a Loving God” for my students.  I’m not sure if it’s a meaningful moment for them, but it is for me.  Something about Groves’s music hits a certain spot of the heart in a certain way for me, and I’m glad for the reminders her music brings.

One of my favorites is the song “Why It Matters.”  I love her insistence on telling the story, having the story told, knowing that anyone who speaks of Jesus and the Bible is more than a storyteller, is a narrator.  And while the distinction may be a fine one, it is also an important one.  I pray we’ll all tell the story well today.

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Ashton Kutcher Speaks Some Truth

Posted on August 15, 2013 by awtraughber

Somewhere between home and work yesterday morning, Relevant Magazine posted a video of a speech given by Ashton Kutcher at the Teen Choice Awards.  I was so impressed with what he said (all the while receiving screams from his female teenage fans), that I showed two of my classes.  I had them write down the one thing he said that they thought was the most important.  It was an interesting conversation.  So check your fears and apprehensions and watch the video below.  He speaks some truth.

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Another Trip to Penumbra’s Bookstore

Posted on August 14, 2013 by awtraughber

Litro LogoThe folks over at Litro Magazine in England have posted a couple of interesting pieces on Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.  Penumbra, the magazine’s current “book club book,”  was one of my favorite books in 2012, a great example of the balance between technologies old and new.

The first article posted to the magazine’s site is an interview with Sloan about his background and writing experience.  From the beginning of the interview you get a sense of Sloan’s optimism, which is nice (and I’m not always the most optimistic about technology).  He also mentions Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain, which is a series I read and loved during my time in Texas.  When asked about technology and how it changes the way we read:

I think it’s giving us new ways to read. . .  “Reading” is not just one thing, and right now we’re seeing a sort of Cambrian explosion of different kinds and contexts. That’s nothing but exciting.

Best unexpected interview prompt: Tell us about the first time you realised that the world may not be as it seems.

The second article posted to the site is a review/opening discussion about the book from Thomas Chadwick that’s worth the read if you’re already acquainted with the novel.

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