U2’s Songs of Surrender give us an opportunity to love music without hype, volume, and crowds. Let it do that for you.
Category Archives: Religion
The Shape of Beckett’s Waiting
I recently recovered a first-semester graduate paper of mine about Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot. I believe I wrote it as a final paper for a graduate class on Irish literature taught by Dr. John Warner. He advocated for my admission to the program on the basis of my senior undergraduate honor’s thesis onContinue reading “The Shape of Beckett’s Waiting”
Bob Dylan’s The Philosophy of Modern Song
If Dylan died tomorrow, this book would be a fitting last word.
Pete Townshend and World War II
I have three iTunes playlists dedicated to The Who — 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s to the present — and I can’t listen through them without being impressed, over and over again, by Pete Townshend’s genius. Record sales aside, his creative accomplishments exceed that of the Beatles, Dylan, or the Rolling Stones throughout the 60s andContinue reading “Pete Townshend and World War II”
“There Is No Pure Evil, Nor Pure Good, Only Purity”: William Blake’s and Patti Smith’s Art as Opposition to Societal Boundaries
Patti Smith’s Blakean influence deviates from the infamous excess that has come to define rock; rather, Smith presents the alternative, individualized responses to Romanticism that illuminate the spirituality present in rock singers. . . This chapter investigates the connections between Smith and Blake and thus hopes to remind readers that female artists should be discussedContinue reading ““There Is No Pure Evil, Nor Pure Good, Only Purity”: William Blake’s and Patti Smith’s Art as Opposition to Societal Boundaries”
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 