Welcome! You have accidentally reached the blog of a heteroclite follower of Jesus: dave wainscott. I'm
"pushing toward the unobvious" as I post thinkings/linkings
re: Scripture, church and culture. Hot topics include: temple tantrums, time travel, sexuality/spirituality, U2kklesia, role of the pastor, God-haunted music/art..and subversive videos like these.
Henri Nouwen had an unfinished manuscript at the time of his death in 1996 about what he had learned (the intimacy and spirituality of interconnected teamwork etc) through watching and befriending a traveling trapeze troupe . The book just came out this year with the help of a friend . The book is very different than his 40 books on the spiritual life .
Here is the section I had in mind. Prepare yourself!
And it is absolutely nowhere online .. until now 😎
I’ll post it without comment .. and duck ! I’ll chime in after some of you do .
“As Henri became more at home in his body , he raised with several editors the possibility of writing a book that would directly explore the questions of sexuality . By the next summer, he mused to a journalist , ‘Every human lives a sexual life , whether you’re celibate [as Nouwen was as a priest/pastor] or whatever . Sexual life is life . That sexual life has to be lived as a life that deepens the communion with God and with our fellow human beings . And if it doesn’t , it can become very harmful . I haven’t found the language for It yet and hope I will someday .’
Gradually , Henri began to feel a little more free, even playful. Early in 1996, he amused some of his New York editors over an elegant lunch at the Barbetta restaurant by blurting out happily , ‘Don’t think that I don’t want to have sex with everyone in this restaurant! I have fantasies just like everyone else !’ His editors stared in astonishment, looked speculatively around the restaurant, and then they all burst out laughing together with Henri.”
-p.203,”Flying, Falling, Catching: an unlikely story of finding freedom “ by Henri Nouwen and Carolyn Whitney-Brown .
"Children were sometimes burned alive at Auschwitz ..After describing this scene, Rabbi Greenburg put forward the following proposition: 'No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.". -Gushee. p. 70, After Evangelicalism
Highly recommended: read page 76 (and ideally the whole section of pp. 74-81) of Gushee's After Evangelicalism (readhere) ,where he covers Greenburg's suggestion that post-Holocaust, for the Jews, the covenant is no longer in a "commanded stage," but is now voluntary.
"Israel's relation with God has been severely wounded. Wiesel: ' Only a wounded faith can exist after these events. Only a wounded faith is worthy of a silent God.'...God no longer has the right to demand covenant loyalty from his people." -Gushee. p. 76, After Evangelicalism
But the canopy is there...even if appearing bruised.
I challenged Stacy to post a few reasons...any reason ..why she likes this song.
I can't wait to hear. She many even know things about the song I don't..and I have been tracking it for 45 years or so, I bet she even knows about the often-unnoticed (and much-debated ) throat-clearing cough towards the beginning that I always hears as a guy waking up and turning on the radio to hear this song, and eventually play along to it.
And that man has been me ever since.
To cough is to pray.
My reasons for liking the song are many.
And some were formed before Stacy was born.
But I don't even know if I can use the word "like."
Or love.
Or "hate"
Or "love."
Or love/hate.
Though they all work.
Maybe the word I need is "need."
I mean, we all need help putting words to our prayers at times.
Even, especially when the prayer ...as written...doesn't seem to be getting through..
And this song was an integral part of the prevenient-grace mixtape that led me to Jesus (tied with this 24-minute hymn from the Book Of Genesis--I mean, Band of Genesis ), and part of the strange and heteroclite canon/cannon of laments and imprecations that keep me tethered to this Jesus.
Stacy, I might not know you..or Jesus..without this song!
(Do I love or know Jesus?)
And this blog post is also serving a public challenge to Stacy to write more; even blog. Her social media posts can be stunningly moving. My post today may only be so to me, but I dedicate it to her.
This song.
Where to start?
If by some tragic circumstance you have never encountered this song, may I counterintuitively (Why not go the unobvious route?) suggest you sample this version filmed in my favorite city, as the song is sensitively interpreted performed by two Jewish men. If I had been there, and stumbled upon this scene, I would've probably been so transfixed that I'd be transfigured..or still there. To me, another Jewish Man is always active in the music of streets of That City.
See you after the break.
Original version.
When this song came out, and my friends and I first heard it cranked loud on Dan's huge JBL speakers:
As most Floydfans know, the album this is found on, and this song, is partly/largely about/addressed to former band member Syd Barrett,
As is much (all?) of their material.
Barrett had left the band/been forced out due to his drug-induced mental ilness, The band tells this chilling story
Syd Barrett's tortured spirit was already hovering over Pink Floyd's ninth studio album, even before he unexpectedly crashed the sessions for Wish You Were Here on June 5, 1975.
Both the emotive title track and shimmering, psychedelic epic "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" were inspired by Barrett, the band's former frontman, with chief writer Roger Waters meditating on themes of isolation and inward escape. So, when the long-absent musician – portly, with distant gaze, shaved head and eyebrows – randomly arrived during a mixing session for "Diamond," the coincidence reduced the band to a mixture of shock and depression.
It's not as if Barrett, Floyd's co-founder and the driving creative force behind their debut LP, 1967's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, left the band on good terms. His mental instability, erratic stage behavior and addiction to LSD made him a liability, and guitarist-singer David Gilmour was brought in as a replacement.
....Pink Floyd were confused by his presence, assuming he had to be a crew member. But when Gilmour eventually identified their former bandmate, Waters broke down in tears. That June day also happened to be Gilmour's wedding day, so Barrett wandered into the guitarist's wedding reception at EMI. He left without telling anyone, disappearing as strangely as he'd arrived. The experience had a profound impact on the band, particularly Waters, who even incorporated a lyrical reference to the early Barrett-penned single "See Emily Play" on Wish You Were Here.
"I'm very sad about Syd, [though] I wasn't for years," Waters said in 1975. "For years, I suppose he was a threat because of all that bollocks written about him and us. Of course, he was very important and the band would never have f_____ started without him, because he was writing all the material. It couldn't have happened without him, but on the other hand, it couldn't have gone on with him. He may or may not be important in rock 'n' roll anthology terms, but he's certainly not nearly as important as people say in terms of Pink Floyd. So, I think I was threatened by him."
Gilmour, who co-wrote the music to both the title track and "Shine On," has trouble separating these classic songs from his memories of the former Floyd icon. "Although 'Shine On You Crazy Diamond' is specifically about Syd and 'Wish You Were Here' has a broader remit," Gilmour said in the 2012 documentary Pink Floyd: The Story of Wish You Were Here, "I can't sing it without thinking about Syd."
Finally, now you are primed to read the lyrics, and weigh who they addressed/redressed to? Who is your Syd?
You can "never again sing it without thinking about" your "randomly arrived" Syd.
Lyrics:
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from hell Blue skies from pain Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade Your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange A walk on part in the war For a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here....
From Song Facts:
This song is about the detached feeling most people go through life with. It is a commentary on how people cope with the world by withdrawing physically, mentally, or emotionally. In the commentary of The Wall, Roger Waters states that the inspiration was Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett and his ordeal with schizophrenia.
Roger Waters has said this song was based on a poem he wrote about Syd Barrett's fall from reality. It was said that Syd's friends would lace his coffee with LSD, which eventually lead to his mental breakdown. >>
This was a rare case of the Pink Floyd primary songwriters Roger Waters and David Gilmour mutually collaborating on a song - they rarely wrote together. Gilmour had the opening riff written and was playing it in the studio at a fast pace when Roger Waters heard it and asked him to play it slower. The song built from there, with the pair writing the music for the chorus and verses together, and Waters adding the lyrics.
The song reflected the feeling of the band while they were recording the album. Waters felt they were not putting a full effort into the recording sessions.
When this song starts, it sounds like it is coming from an AM radio somewhere in the distance. It represents the distance between the listener and the music.
"There is no dark side of the moon really. As a matter of fact it's all dark,"
"Is there anybody out there?" they once prayed.
The expected answer is no.
Same with the chilling first set of questions in "Wish".
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from hell? Blue skies from pain? Can you tell a green field From a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?
They are not essay answers.
One senses they are multiple choice
A"Yes"
or
B"Hell, no."
It's often more classically encouraging to hear U2's Bono (Who gives us permission and a decoder to "Turn each song into a prayer") ask the biblical question "How long?'' since we know the question has a deadline, and is not a dead end.
Maybe Pink Floyd is asking the same question, but from the dark side of the faith.
(And bigger than the Boogie Man and the devil, for that matter.)
Waters also may well have meant this as not just about TO or ABOUT Syd, but
FROM Syd, how HE felt towards
the band (or himself..or God)
I was not yet a committed Christian when I first heard this song; I don't know what you would have called me when the pictured guys (I'm the one in the T shirt, And obviously, there is one non-guy with us, but she wasn't part of our gang) in this Upstate New York circle of friends first experienced it.
I felt it/heard it as my lonely being awakened,
It was addressed to myself
to my friends
to Syd
to a partner I hadn't met yet
and to an unknown God that I somehow knew.
I am intrigued that Waters tended to picture the "two lost souls in a fishbowl" as
two fish, but each in a separate bowl (this is perhaps authenticated by cover art on a later single version).
I hadn't felt it that way.
Being two lost souls in the same bowl was lonely enough.
But at least the two were in it together.
Terrifying to be trapped in a bowl alone, able to see your soulmate in an adjacent bowl.
Year after year.
Covid quarantine, indeed
But until we admit we often live this hellonearth in our "there" ("Can you tell heaven from hell?."...
We may never experience God as here.
Wish you were here,
Syd
friends
enemies
Dave
God
It's all in how you read it,
PS Maybe just watch this guy in video. He's crazy, but he may weel say most of what I just tried to sat better than I just did!:
--
It has been hugely productive, revelatory, and (even) fun to, as part of a class that several others and I teach, have students plot out (on the whiteboard) their timeline.