A View from Just West of Hollywood

The 61st Grammy nominations were released today, and while the list of popular artists whom I cannot recognize continues to expand, I am reminded of the events of the 43rd Grammy Awards.

That was the year in which Steely Dan's brilliant comeback album Two Against Nature upset Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP in the lofty category "Album of the Year".  Complaints were registered, the Grammys were again pronounced dead, and a young man in Virginia couldn't believe his eyes and ears.

One of the top three albums I own, Two Against Nature is a tour de force of jazz/blues/rock that improved on Steely Dan's already impeccable career. Relying on even more obscure reference material than their 1970s fare, the duo of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker crafted oblique story-telling around metaphors as varied as New Orleans voodoo (title track) and 1940s cinema ("Gaslighting Abbie"). Commenting on the musicality of the album, Fagen admitted that Two Against Nature dove more into the jazz side of their musical swimming pool, and tracks like "Almost Gothic" and "Negative Girl", whose charts are about as complex as Charlie Parker tunes, confirm this.

But it is the denouement of the album which I find instructive even today, and hence prescient in its own time. "West of Hollywood" is an upbeat cut of some 4 minutes with a surprisingly apropos coda of an additional 3 minutes during which Chris Potter discovers and reinterprets John Coltrane inside of a pop tune (albeit one with a far more interesting rhythm section).

The lyrics of "West of Hollywood" tell a story the listener can reliably follow, though the vocabulary and phrasing still retain Steely Dan's patented cryptic tone. The protagonist reminisces about a fling he started on holiday. The new couple loses themselves in thoughtless indulgence, first metaphorically, but then later in reality:

Just a thrill away from punching through to the cosmic wow 
It started out good 
Then it got lots better 
Makin' up the rules as we went along 

And there's the rub. "Makin' up the rules" can often be a recipe for disaster. Thinking not about right and wrong, but only about what churns out dopamine can blind us to what is truly good for us and bind us to what is ultimately bad for us. And so as the story continues, just when the couple has found a kind of superficial perfection, they receive some grave news. As a result of their fling, they have both been afflicted by some seedy side effect. It isn't apparent whether the culprit is drugs, disease, or something else, but it's implied that the fling itself, i.e. the source of their euphoria, was in the end the very cause of their downfall. And so the protagonist must come to terms with their new reality,

Look in my eyes 
Can't you see the core is frozen? 
You can't ask me to access the dreams I don't have now 
Sadly for us 
Our little talk is over 
So together we'll endure the tyranny of the disallowed

In the end, the protagonist is left with a three minute sax solo under which to contemplate why he finds himself, "way deep into nothing special, riding the crest of a wave breaking just west of Hollywood".

Thankfully for us, the story doesn't end with our mistakes or past failings. We are promised remission from even our most egregious faults. With Christmas approaching, we have a wonderful opportunity to consider how to become better people. We can ask ourselves:

What have we indulged in which later became an object of regret? (Hershey's Kisses is a valid answer). Do we learn from our mistakes? Do we treat ourselves with the same dignity and love with which we treat others? Do we forgive ourselves?

As Catholics, we know that Christ's coming has ended the tyranny of the disallowed. That's the Great News!

Celebrating in an "In-Between" World

Though often overlooked by Catholics, the first Sunday of Advent marks the start of a new liturgical year. At Mass last Sunday, i.e. the final Sunday of the previous liturgical year, Catholics celebrated the Feast of Christ the King with readings focusing appropriately on apocalyptic themes. This Sunday began the season of Advent, whose Latin root means "coming". Interestingly, the readings of the first Sunday of the new year are also apocalyptic. While perhaps strange on the surface, these selections are intentional and fitting, for Advent serves not only as a memorial of the historical coming of Jesus as man into human history 2000 years ago, but it also celebrates the current Advent in which we find ourselves today.

This present Advent is our preparation for a different "coming" of Christ; not his Incarnation but his Second Coming, the Parousia (from ancient Greek meaning "coming"). These two terms, Advent and Parousia, precede different historical events; one which occurred 2000 years ago and one which will occur at the end of this age. Catholics can readily identify with the Jewish people of the Hebrew Scriptures who anticipated the "coming" of the promised Messiah. We can also find solidarity with Jewish people of today who, like us, await Christ's coming.

To paraphrase Carl Sagan, we find ourselves in an "in-between" world. While Sagan's context referred only to the constant changes of the physical world, the Catholic sense of our present "in-between" world adds to that our own persistent development into holy people. Our aim is to prepare for the Parousia with hope. What a momentous opportunity this Advent season could provide us.

(As an aside, "liturgical year" makes far more sense than, say, "school year". We celebrate the liturgy every week of the actual year. Those pupils referring to nine-month-long school terms as "years" had better be attending one of those gilded ivies on Earth's nearest neighbor.)

H/T to Fr. Rolyn at Christ the King in Mesa, AZ whose homily today informed much of this post's content.