Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Augustine and the prophetic nature of "producing stinkless musical sounds from your behind"

From "Jesus and the Grotesque," an excellent chapter in Tortured Wonder: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels (click that title for a review in the MB journal, Direction), here's Rodney Clapp:

St. Augustine  observes... there are those who “produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region" ...there are recurrent rumors of jazz trumpeter Bix Beiderbecke's ability to pass gas in tune, or the historically documented showmanship of the “fartiste” Le Petomane a nineteenth-century cabaret performer who "could blow out candles with a well-aimed blast and break wind in tenor, baritone, and bass registers" ... (Who knew comedian Jim Carrey and his ventriloquized butt had such a venerable pedigree?)  -link, p. 186, most of the chapter readable between the pages here  and here

If you don't get the profound connections to a deep theology yet...(:
     ...read the chapter.

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