2017 - July 21 - The Cross

So I opened the door again a couple of days ago, when I mentioned leaving the Church of Norway on my fourteenth birthday - and I started realizing that I hadn't talked much about my faith - or lack thereof. I thought it could be worth trying to explain where I come from and how I arrived where I am at today - and exactly where that is...

I think it all started when my age still was in the single digits and I realized there was no Santa Claus. In Norway, the tradition is that Santa Claus (julenissen) comes and delivers the presents sometime after the big Christmas dinner on Christmas eve. Thinking back, I should have realized that something was up knowing that either my mom or my dad was always missing when Santa came knocking - there was always an errand that couldn't wait - and the Santa came. This year in question, the problem was that Santa was wearing my mom's shoes. This was a very unique pair of shoes, with gray wool that was felted (tovet in Norwegian), much in the Sami tradition - at least that's how I remember them. Noticing this, I started looking for other similarities, and the voice then gave it away. It's actually interesting to me how you don't notice things like how the voice is similar when you don't expect it to be. But I had it figured out - and all of a sudden, all the years of believing in Santa evaporated and I realized it was all something the adults had done all along.

The connection didn't happen right away, but after a while, I did start thinking about the possibility that if the adults had been lying about Santa, could they be lying about other beings as well, such as God and Jesus. After all, Santa was one of the most important figures in my life, because although he only showed up once a year, it wasn't only like Christmas when he came, it was Christmas, and Christmas was the best thing ever - next to my birthday. That's when I started questioning whether there really was a god. I had grown up with the Bible stories in school - I went to school when Christendom still was a separate subject in Norway that pretty much exclusively taught Bible stories from the earliest grades on - and I suddenly found myself asking to what extent could I believe them.

I think the main issue for me in the beginning was the long discussed subject of suffering given that the Christian God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent - he (because we all know that it is an old white man with a long beard - at least that's who I always envisioned) is all-powerful, all-seeing, and all good. That did not make sense to me - how could someone who could see it all and have the power to do something about it be good when there was suffering in the world? The answer that always came back was, "because he gave mankind free will," often coupled with, "God works on mysterious ways." Both statements are great examples of an application of Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" - but they did not work for me.

Not getting answers that I not only wanted but also needed at that point in my life made me pretty militant - to the point of hunting down obscure Bible verses to try to pin down a local vicar in the Church of Norway that had been invited to our class in 8th grade to help answer questions about Christianity and the Bible. I am not proud to say that I (along with two friends) succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, as we brought the vicar to tears on a couple of occasions. What felt like a victory then certainly feels like an embarrassment now.

As I got older, my views softened quite a bit, but I still don't believe. I simply see no evidence for a god. I don't want this to be a big theological argument whatsoever - because while I don't see any evidence for a god, I know that many do. And I am very ok with that. I am not part of the so-called new atheism, where people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and now deceased Christopher Hitchens (and there are more, I know this) feel like it is their missionary duty to tell everybody else they are wrong. I don't. I am very ok with acknowledging that we all look at the same evidence and reach different conclusion. Of course I think I am right... :-) The only thing I don't like is when people try telling other people how they should live their lives based on their own beliefs, such as deciding who should be allowed to marry and who should not (two words provides a clue to my position: consenting adults). I don't have an issue with churches saying that, "in our church, this is who can get married," but I have an issue with people saying effectively, "I don't like it, so no one can do it."

Now the paradox for me is that I love church buildings. I love visiting them, and I love the peace I feel when I enter them. And I love a lot of religiously themed music. Now, I don't listen much to Christian rock - the bands that make their religion a mission - but there are songs that are very strong in their religious themes that just resonate well with me. One of these songs is by Prince. It was released on the Sign O' The Times album - and this is a live version of it from the film of the same name that was released back in 1987 as well. I remember going to the movie theater to see it - and The Cross was a great way to end the movie!

April 21 - Purple Rain

There really isn't much to say. Some artists are so great that only one name is ever used. Picasso. Hitchcock. Shakespeare. And then there are the ones who only use first name. I can think of three: Miles. Elvis. Prince.

 I will be playing Prince for quite some time now. This song is another album closer of his - Sometimes It Snows in April was also one of his great album closers - but tonight there will be rain, and it will be purple. Prince was a genius. I didn't like everything he did, but I still recognize his undeniable talent in everything he did. Thank you for the music, Prince Rogers Nelson.

April 3 - Sometimes It Snows In April

Prince is a genius. Yup, I really believe that. I don't always like what he does, and I haven't always liked him, but the switch eventually flipped, and I consider his mid-80s output from 1984's Purple Rain through 1987's Sign O' The Times to be one of the best strings of pop records ever recorded. Some will balk at the exclusion of 1999 (from 1982) and Lovesexy (from 1988), but this is still my blog - and my taste. I liked the albums that came after better than the ones that came before, and I like both of the aforementioned albums - just not as well as the 84-87 output.

Like I said, I didn't always like Prince. It is similar to my intense dislike for Michigan State, which started with just a slight preference for University of Michigan that became amplified as a protest to the "way too vocal to be healthy for any team" support I encountered for MSU - so now I obnoxiously support any team that plays MSU - including Middle Tennessee State University. It was a little bit of that with Prince as well. I didn't really have anything against him, I just wasn't sold on him. But I had friends, especially Svein and Are, who really liked him and talked a lot about him, so my inner contrarian eventually kicked in full force.

However, at one point, I think it was not too long after the friendship with Svein started getting closer, Svein actually convinced me to start listening to Prince. We were starting to play together a little, and one of the songs he suggested was The Cross from Sign O' The Times. After hearing it, I was blown away. Although I couldn't identify with the lyrics, I did recognize how good they were - and it rocked harder than a lot of what I was listening to. Discovering his edge made me listen - and then I fully discovered his abilities as a guitar player, which are highly underrated. All of this made me ask Svein to get a stack of his CDs for me when he went to the US to study - and I fully committed to this eccentric Minnesotan.

Today's song is inspired by the snow storm I drove through yesterday, even though that's really not what this song is about. It's a hauntingly beautiful jazz-tinged ballad from Parade (1986) called Sometimes It Snows In April. Unfortunately, Prince appears to be patrolling YouTube a little bit too closely, but my fellow countryman Espen Lind has a decent cover version of it - but get the original!

January 28 - Raspberry Beret

In rarities week, I continue with strange groupings. This time we can take a lot of alcohol, one of the biggest American alternative rock bands of the 80s and 90s, one of the most iconoclastic American singer-songwriters, and the music of pop-rock-funk royalty. Put all of that in a blender, and out come Hindu Love Gods.

This is another acquaintance I can thank Sigbjørn Nedland and Pandoras Jukeboks for, as I believe he played this song on the show, and it stuck in the back of my mind for a long, long time. Legend has it (and I am not fact checking this) that members of R.E.M. met up with Warren Zevon for a night or two of drunken musical studio shenanigans - and the result was Hindu Love Gods, a record filled with blues and rock standards - and Prince's song Raspberry Beret. Warren Zevon sings using R.E.M. as his backing band - how cool is that? The answer is that it is as cool as the pairing of Neil Young and Pearl Jam should have been.

Supposedly, both Warren Zevon and R.E.M. disowned this album, yet it is out there, in all its glory - and my personal highlight is Raspberry Beret.

Thank You For Hearing Me (Sinead O'Connor)

I remember watching Sinead O'Connor's video for Nothing Compares 2 U, the Prince-penned love song, in my grandparents' living room. They were the only ones in my family who had cable TV, and it included MTV, which I always found curious, being that the cable deal was negotiated with the association where they lived - and they lived in a retirement community at the time where there was no interest for MTV (I should note that cable TV in Norway was about picking channels you wanted at that time - there was no basic distinction between 'basic' and 'expanded' as main package deals. 

While I did like Nothing Compares 2 U and her entire 'I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got' album, I was not prepared to hear 'The Lion and the Cobra', which was her debut album. My very good friend Nina Skaaden (now Schefte) had the album and taped it for me (along with Let Love Rule by Lenny Kravitz, another stunning album). When I popped it in the tape deck and heard Troy for the first time, I was so completely blown away - in fact, I was so enamored by this cute Irish chick with her shaved head that I kept checking out her music even after releasing 'Am I Not Your Girl', an album of standards that was lackluster, to say the least.

Fast forward a few years to 1994. The Norwegian military is based on conscription, which means that all males must serve their country through military service. However, they do allow for conscientious objectors, and as I was (and still am) a pacifist, I was doing my civil service in place of military service. In order to get this approved, I had to be interviewed by the police (I remember a pretty arrogant police officer who certainly didn't appreciate a giant long-haired peace loving guy's perspectives) - and when it was approved, I had to do 16 months of civil service in place of the by then 9 months of military service that was required. 

I showed up at Hustad Leir, a camp that originally had been used for the internment of traitors after World War II (and that now has been turned back into a prison - it wouldn't be a major adjustment), in the summer of 1994, thinking that I was going to the civil service 'boot camp' that lasted six weeks and then find placement for the rest of the time. When I got there, I was in for a surprise. First it was the geography. When you look through the gates of the camp, you see a vertical mountainside. No vegetation, just rock. On the other side was the ocean. There was maybe a mile or so between the camp and the coastline, but you could still almost smell the saltyness of the water. And, to make things even worse, the mist often came rolling in from the sea - or the clouds were trapped by the mountain side and pressed downward, creating an eerie light reflected by the vegetation around the camp (I seem to remember mossy rock, but that may not be true) and sucked up by the dark mountain side. The other part of the surprise was that I was there to be part of their staff. That's right, sixteen months at this desolate place instead of the six weeks. 

My initial assignment was working in the kitchen. While I liked it, I did have another job in mind, and I soon got the opportunity to work in the library there. It was the perfect job for me, surrounded by books and music, with a snooker table and cable tv at my fingertips. The snooker table was heavily used, and it was while playing snooker late at night that Sinead O'Connor's next album was played over and over again. It was called 'Universal Mother', and it is a fairly unknown masterpiece. It spans spoken word set to music (Famine), an excellent cover version of All Apologies (although not as sore as Nirvana's Unplugged version, which was released around the same time), political lyrics (they are all over), and the closing track is this excellent little song called Thank You For Hearing Me. It is built around a programmed drum loop, then instruments are added (mainly programmed on a synthesizer), and the lyrics are sung like a chant with each of the following lines repeated four times:

Thank you for hearing me

Thank you for loving me

Thank you for seeing me

And not for leaving me

Thank you for staying with me

Thanks for not hurting me

You are gentle with me

Thanks for silence with me

The next verse has four different lines

Thank you for holding me

And saying "I could be"

Thank you for saying "baby"

Thank you for holding me

Then she sings the next line four times before finishing a verse that turns the meaning of the song upside down:

Thank you for helping me

Thank you for breaking my heart

Thank you for tearing me apart

Now I've a strong, strong heart

Thank you for breaking my heart

While it can be argued whether this song truly captures the spirit of Thanksgiving, it is nonetheless a spectacular song. She plays around with dynamics and instrumentation, but it is the same melody that is repeated over and over again. So simple, yet so complex - and it adds emphasis to the lyrics. Enjoy this live version of the song. Sinead actually has hair in this one - and she is almost cuter than she was without hair (for my infatuation with bald women, it is safe to assume that Gail Ann Dorsey will be discussed in a later posting - but that will have to wait).