Catapult magazine
James Stewart, a fine gentleman whom I really enjoyed meeting in Grand Rapids, reprises a blog post about my book for Catapult magazine. He quite rightly takes me to task for errors of detail (which I’ve tried to catalog here), but I’m not sure what he means about errors from the Festival of Faith and Music. I stand by my notes on that one, though I’ll happily correct anything I’m wrong about.
About me not understanding the language of David Dark: I’m not an academic, and while I consider it my job to learn to parse things I don’t understand (exhibit a: a book I wrote about Christian rock), I couldn’t make heads nor tails of the man’s speech. I encourage anyone interested, though, to download and listen to one of his talks and let me know if I’m just a dope. (I’m at work and don’t have my notes here, so I don’t know whether this was one of his keynotes or a workshop.) I also highly recommend the Stockman talk.
June 22nd, 2006 at 7:57 am
In the interest of full disclosure, I am friends with James and acquainted with Dave, so take this for what it’s worth.
I do think Dave Dark’s lectures are far more comprehensible once you’ve read his books. They are similar in style to his free-association manner of speaking, but with the added benefit of being able to follow the (very worthwhile) literary rabbit trails back to their source in print.
I adore Dave and he is extremely creative, which is another way of saying that sometimes I have no idea what he’s talking about. (In a formal lecture context, I hasten to add - I follow him just fine in normal conversation.) I get the basic concepts because of our mutual cultural backgrounds and because I’ve read his books, and I agree with the basic premises of Dave’s worldview when it comes to popular culture. (Not so sure about the drinking blood out of skulls hypothesis, however.) But it makes sense to me that if you were not overly familiar with this off-the-beaten-track Christian vision of pop culture when you heard his presentation, then you would have a difficult time understanding his off-the-beaten-track style of speaking.
On the other hand, I have to say that I took almost identical notes during his lecture, and despite coming from the same background, they are as incomprehensible as yours. Others who have deep roots in the “FFM worldview” (for lack of a better term) also struggled mightily with Dark’s lecture - for example, Andy Whitman, a Christian, one of the best writers I know, and a frequent contributor to PASTE, had this to say on his blog:
David Dark, a very bright man, and author of Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons, delivered two keynote lectures that were as dense and convoluted as the title of his book. It may be evidence of my feeble mind, but for someone who purports to find meaning in “lowbrow” entertainment, his lectures struck me as heavily academic, surprisingly meandering, and devoid of a point. Or maybe it’s that there were several dozen points, and I was missing the Big Point that was meant to serve as a unifying factor. In short, he had a lot of interesting and good things to say about many things that vaguely had to do with God and culture. Maybe it was an aural collage or something, and I again missed the avant-garde nature of the presentation. The undergraduate take: he used a lot of big words and rambled.
So although I see what James was saying, I think there’s more than a cultural-language lapse going on. I think it’s a style thing.
I’d also be interested to know about the factual errors James found in more detail. (I think he may have mentioned them but I can’t remember due to my flaky memory.) There were a few quotes that sounded off to me - Ken referring to someone as “this brother” for instance - but I have no way of proving that, nor do I think it’s necessarily important to do so.
Well, now I’m the one rambling!
June 23rd, 2006 at 7:42 am
Hi Andrew — thanks for the kind words, and the link.
I think Kate’s largely right about David’s talks, and I know that my friendship with him and familiarity with his writing is a huge help in following his talks. I showed him my copy of the book, and I believe he and Sarah are planning to buy a copy.
When it comes to the errors I mentioned, I must confess I wrote that blog entry in haste and haven’t had a chance to go back and make more detailed notes. Between time away for Bonnaroo and various other events I’ve a lot to catch up on right now, but I’m hoping to go back through the book and check my comments as soon as I can.
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:37 am
I swear Ken said that! Nice to chat with you all. The Festival of Faith and Music was my favorite event of everything I did for the book.
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:47 am
I’m really glad you liked FFM, Andrew. It’s my favorite event of everything you did from the book, too. (Although I must confess that my favorite chapter was about Brandon Ebel. He’s insane.)
I tried to locate that interaction in the mp3 of Ken’s talk, but it got too tedious, so I’m going to take your word for it
It is a totally insignificant detail and I am just giving you a hard time!
Buuuuut…. now that I’m thinking of it, the main thing that jumped out at me was Ken’s description of Sufjan Stevens’ first performance (as a solo artist) at Calvin. I’m not sure it counts as a “factual error” or a misquote, because I have no idea what Ken said. But here’s MY recollection of that performance:
1. Sufjan was booked in advance to open for Over the Rhine, but he was a late addition to the bill.
2. He showed up late, disheveled, and confused, only a banjo in tow. (He is, in fact, notorious for this, which is why he now has a manager and/or Denison Witmer to make sure he does not leave his glasses at Calvin College.)
3. He was totally unknown at the time. Michigan had just come out and was not yet receiving accolades. Which accounted for:
4. The audience (who were there to see OTR) hated him. People were laughing openly through his most tragic songs. However, while the performance certainly wasn’t the best one I’ve ever heard him give, I would not say it sucked. The audience was just completely ill-suited to his style.
Of course, the irony is that now those same kids probably looooooove Sufjan because he has the mainstream stamp of approval. Instead of saying “He’s weird! I don’t get it!” they say “Ooh, he’s so mysterious and avant-garde yet accessible.”
See, this is why I’m leaving Calvin to become a librarian - I could spend all day nitpicking.
June 23rd, 2006 at 10:48 am
I need to stop leaving novellas for comments. Sorry.