The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, the materials
are what does not exist.
Be a spot on the ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
– Rumi

Since my becoming unchurched, I have had some time to think about what speaks to me spiritually. And I’ve come to no conclusions whatsoever. What I have learned, however, is what I don’t like.

One of them is bad sermons.

Sadly, if you’re a Unitarian Universalist, unless you’re attending a church that has hired an amazing minister that always knows just what to say to draw people in, or keep people around, or whatever that congregation wants to do at the time, you’re pretty well guaranteed to get bad sermons at least half the time. And that’s if you’re lucky.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Stephen at 6:53 pm under General, Religion, UU, The Arts, Fightin' Words
9 Comments

Some are beginning to doubt of her existence. Perhaps her clever little page on the right side of this website is but a ruse, a childlike tale to give us all hope, like the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus, or God.

But I’m here tonight to say yes, Virginia, there is a Devon. She exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Devon. She is alive and well and needs your love. And she needs to get her ass back over here and set us all straight again.

Until that happens, I give you the fabled Unabridged Oeuvre of Devo; read at your great pleasure:

Hello World!
Some Self-Involved Rambling from the Makers of Facebook™
Don’t Cry Out Loud. No, Please Don’t.
Hummmm…
Hmmm…
Incredible
Opera Nerdiness
The Manifesto

That is all.

Filed by Trevor at 11:58 pm under General, Shameless Plugs, Fightin' Words, Love
No Comments

So, like Trevor said, Bil will explain Hatemail in greater detail. So here it is.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 1:44 pm under Shameless Plugs, Social Issues, The Arts, Fightin' Words
3 Comments

You are warmly invited to take part in a massive social experiment hosted by all of us here at tip your waiter: Hatemail. As Bil was the originator of this project, I will allow him to explain it more deeply; in the meantime, I will allow the site to speak for itself.

And as for you, send us your hate.

Filed by Trevor at 2:56 am under Shameless Plugs, Social Issues, Fightin' Words
3 Comments

must be revised:
I’ve done to others
for years,
and all I have to show for it
is a broken heart
and a shattered credit rating.

I can’t compete with him,
not his body,
not his money,
only his devotion.

It’s what I’ve got to work with.

Filed by Trevor at 4:17 am under Fightin' Words
No Comments

I am preparing to write my first real high-stakes proposal. By high-stakes I mean there’s a chance of rejection. I wrote grant proposals in college but that was pretty much like asking for pennies that fell through someone’s pants-pocket and into their shoe.

I’m not sure why I made that analogy, because there isn’t any money on the line. What I mean is this: I have a shot at getting an actual theatre space to have a staged reading of a play I wrote. Our bad-ass new theatre company, Per Diem, will be producing it in the spring and I want as much publicity for our ice-breaker show as we can get. And staged readings are key. I want to have several of them, in fact, at various venues around the city. I’m thinking small stages at bars and cafés may be the way to go, but if I can get a space that is known for doing staged readings, that would help take it a lot further. So in that sense, the stakes are rather high. At least, they are in my mind.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 10:57 pm under Shameless Plugs, The Arts, Politics, Fightin' Words
3 Comments

Bil sent me a link to a protest MoveOn Chicago had organized in response to Bush’s recent appalling SCHIP veto, so I headed on down last night to take part. Initially I’d intended to write a little play-by-play in the manner of my Ira Glass post, but frankly at the moment it’s a little hard to take a glass-half-full attitude about the current situation in our country. It brings me no end of misery at the realization that we have just barely under a year-and-a-half remaining with our current president; thus I believe ours is the generation that will see the collapse of this great nation, save the scenario in which we stop treating democracy like a spectator sport.

I will say this, however: I was greatly encouraged by the sheer volume of supportive honking from passing drivers, not to mention the presence of several resident physicians from UIC and Northwestern. Please, please contact your representative and urge them to vote to overturn Bush’s veto in two weeks. Please.

[EDIT: This clip of the fantastic Rachel Maddow going up against Pat Buchanan must be seen. Excellent!]

(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 8:32 am under GOP, Politics, Fightin' Words, Activism
2 Comments

I love this woman and I hate what is happening to her. This is not the fake Promises attention-whoring that is happening; this is behavior that will end in death. Addiction has absolutely torn my family apart — domestic violence nearly claimed my mother’s life and mine — and the thought of it claiming someone so precious to today’s music world tears my heart out. This cannot stand.

Filed by Trevor at 10:12 pm under Pop Culture, The Arts, Fightin' Words
1 Comment

Days with you
and the footage to prove it,
tapes that stretch for over eighty years.
Six of them
(a windy old gal, you said)
that seemed so many at the time
but now
is a pitiful pile.
Grant that I should go bankrupt
buying enough to fill them all –
rooms of them –
and what should ever have prevented you from doing so?

I hope you’ll forgive me.
Oh God
Please.

I’m pulling anchor.
Please.
Forgive me.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen,
for those who have gained everything
stand to lose everything.
And those that have lost everything already
have lives that are abandoned galleries of regret.

Bother her, I say –
anyone should be so lucky to have such a nuisance.

You have ceased to be permanent –
lance the statue in the arm
and warm blood pours out.

It’s only a matter of time.
Brace yourself.

She’s been there all the time.
Oh God, help me.
Waiting.
Waiting for you.

She’s pulling anchor (don’t you see?)
And she’s throwing things ashore –
are you ready?

It’s begun.
Brace yourself.
Oh, God.

Please.

Don’t wait to put flowers on her grave.
Put them on her table
and do it now.

Filed by Trevor at 11:16 pm under Fightin' Words
1 Comment

I’m gonna lay it out there: I’m a little bit tired of all this talk about truth. Truth with a capital T. “Truth” in quotes. Truth with a cherry on top. I’m up to my neck in truth.

I will avoid naming them because of the nature of this entry, but lately I have been reading some blogs by some very sharp minds. Without commenting my fair share, I have been privy to some very interesting blogalogues, rife with wit and insight. It feels a little bit like stealing. Like pirating intelligence.

But goddammit already. The more they write about it, the more impassioned they become, and the more impassioned they become, the sloppier they get. On some blogs it’s like everybody is shoving their version of truth down each other’s throats.

To what end, I ask?

Don’t get me wrong. Discussion is good, respectful disagreement is even better. People should have these kinds of discussions. But for as much as I hate to be a hater, I’m starting to hate when people talk about truth in art. It feels like lies.

Or maybe it’s just that I don’t believe it. I can suspend my disbelief for the most absurd of absurd, but when you start telling me things like “art is useless without truth,” the first word in my head is bullshit. Why is it useless? For that matter, why is truth useful?

I think what gets me is the fact that there is this overbearing pretension in that mindset. What a lot of these bloggers are doing is separating their artistic working life from their real life, putting it on a pedestal, and saying, “look how much truth this contains!” I can almost guarantee that when you inject truth into your work, that truth is fake truth. Which is both amusingly ironic and maddeningly comforting. To me, at least.

But that’s what it’s all about. Truth is subjective. Truth is everywhere and in everything, very much in the same sense that art is everywhere and in everything. And aside from blunt scientific fact (as it is, not necessarily as we know it), there is no such thing as universal truth. Because truth is what you believe to be true. You can take that as deep or as shallow as you like, but that’s the bottom line. There are certainly things that certain amounts of people happen to agree upon, and artists like to tap into these things in order to reach out and communicate to people. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s part of the fun of creating a piece of art. But there is no be-all/end-all truth with a capital T, and there is certainly no more truth in any work of art than there is in the dried-up leaf still attached to the plant in the corner of my apartment that I haven’t watered since April. So — bloggers — artists — let’s take that pressure off each other, huh?

Filed by Bil at 8:42 pm under The Arts, Fightin' Words
1 Comment