(Guest Post by Erik Raymond)
Earlier this week I listened to an interview conducted by NPR with Vernon. They touched on an interesting subject. The words. Perhaps, more specifically, what do the words mean?
Vernon didn't flinch. He basically said that he picked words that sound good. He wasn't so much concerned with their meanings. He is more concerned with the sound and the feelings it produces.
Now on one hand, I don't like this. After all, I am a pastor. I spend days on end with words. It is my life to wring out words and fill buckets with meaning in light of context. This goes against the grain of everything I do.
On the other hand, I like this. I like it because I don't have to work to figure out what in the world he is talking about. This is always a challenge for me. I assume that he has a meaning to be caught. Now I know he does not. At least not overtly. OK...I'm liberated.
One note that I think is helpfully provided by Bon Iver is the search for meaning through personal subjective lenses. This is prevalent in our culture. We discover and define meaning based upon our lives, experiences, and feelings. We are at the center.
I am not going to impute Vernon with all of the warts of post-modernism (I happen to enjoy this aspect of it, musically). However, I will say that he is holding up a mirror for us to see and better understand how people in our communities think, discover and feel. And this is vitally important when we think missiologically.
As far as the album goes, you can still listen to it free (as of right now) on NPR.
4 comments:
I appreciate an artist who will admit the words just sound good.
I feel like Andrew Bird does this, too. There's no way those lyrics are supposed to be coherent, but they sure have a nice ring to them.
I think I understand the impetus behind trying to get at what post-moderns are thinking and motivated by; however, I find that despite their adversion to metatext, metanarrative, and universal meaning, the thing that most of the young ppl in our college groups are attracted to is when we are able to take all the fragmented pieces of their truths and help them see how they tie together with something bigger than themselves.
Post-modernists suffer from hyper-deconstructionism. They see their truths as a set swirling ideas floating about in culture waiting to be experientially verified, having the appearance of randomness and lacking in coherence. Their perception of randomness and incoherence defines existence and trumps any metanarrative that would explain such things as suffering, pain, beauty or pleasure. Rather the only thing that is true is each fragmented sensory experience (sound, touch, taste, smell) unto itself.
Yet, the majority of post-modernists I've met are open to, if not hungry and thirsty for, that 'thing' that ties their experiences together and explains why things are as they are. Even though they won't come out and admit it because they think they've already rejected all of their options, the image Deo part of them can't deny it. They may have suppressed the Truth (metanarrative of God) just as Romans 1 says, but our real trouble as the Church is that the majority of post-moderns haven't really heard the Gospel. They've heard therapeutic moralistic deism and a hundred other post-enlightenment incarnations.
But there is nothing new under the sun, truly.
Give 'em Truth. Give 'em the Gospel. That's what We have and what We've been entrusted with. (not this BonIver stuff.)
David, Andrew Bird is a great example of a guy who goes both ways. There is a lot of substance and then on occasion, a lot of, well, not substance.
anonymous,
to be clear I am not advocating a method for evangelism but rather observing a lesson to help believers to better understand the culture around (and in some cases among) us. There is no power in these observations but only in the gospel.
Erik
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