Episode 7 // Language

A theological movement that I've found very useful in my own self-study of Christianity is that of 'postliberal theology'. A great deal of its framework is based on the thinking of the great analytic philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein -- and his ideas of 'language-games'. It perceives Christianity as some 'overarching narrative', and within it, its own embedded grammar and logic, culture and practices. The movement in some sense rejects an epistemology founded on the Cartesian cogito, but instead reclaims one based on the language and culture of the particular community and its particular tradition. Paradoxically, it is rather unconcerned with an exegesis founded on historicism, and is more so taken with interpretation as an 'act of imagination' with the needs of the community at the forefront. It is similarly unconcerned with the 'objective' meanings and truths of text as well as the scholarly adventure of retrieving 'original meaning' of texts (as if such a thing exists, in light of Gadamer's hermeneutics), and is more so inclined to the non-foundationalist task of interpreting what the text means for a particular community, now. This emphasis on the particular, and the eschewing of the universal, intends to empower normative interpretations of texts that incite action; this in some sense arising as a response to the frustrating liberal inaction of the Christian church under the Nazi regime and other similar shortcomings of theological liberalism.

This is the sort of context that non-explicitly serves as a backdrop for this week's episode themed on 'language'. I find a great deal of significance in 'language' and firmly believe it to be foundational for not only spirituality, but consciousness and human existence itself. I attempted to explore the far-reaching theme of 'language' in this week's playlist with references from Saussure's pioneering work on structuralism, to the semiotics of the 'I am' statements Jesus uttered in Johannine literature, to Berio's exploration of the text's relationship to vocalization and meaning, and to the theological relationship between Pentecost and the tower of Babel. Hopefully it was relevant to your relaxing 'reading week' wherever you happened to be.

The image below is from a 12th century illuminated manuscript known as 'St. Albans Psalter' or the 'Albani Psalter'. It illustrates, in characteristically English Romanesque style, the biblical story of Pentecost and the related imagery of glossolalia (speaking in tongues).

[download forthcoming]


0:00:53 - station id: Holy Fuck
0:00:59 - promo: cfrc twitter
0:01:10 - promo: black history month, prisons, racism
0:02:19 - The Magnetic Fields - 'The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure'
0:05:28 - talking: on Saussure's signified/signifier theory, lectio divina, Johannine 'I am' statements, [1]
0:10:15 - Boredoms - 'Super You'
0:17:51 - Toro y Moi - 'Divina'
0:20:07 - Pelt - 'True Vine'
0:36:38 - promo: brother brian's bluegrass (radio show)
0:37:25 - The Golden Gate Quartet - 'He Never Said a Mumblin' Word'
0:40:42 - Luciano Berio - 'A-Ronne'
0:47:52 - talking: on Luciano Berio and nuances of meaning, text and vocalization, Resurrection Williamsburg, glossolalia, theology of Babel and Pentecost (via William Cavanaugh), [2], [3]
0:55:29 - Greg Scheer - 'Glossolalia'
0:58:27 - station id: Shad
0:58:31 - promo: below the decks (radio show)
0:59:02 - psa: Anishinabe and Haudenosaunee territory
0:59:12 - Spacetime Continuum & Terrence McKenna - 'Speaking in Tongues'
1:09:40 - Fiona Soe Paing - 'Tower of Babel'
1:12:54 - Anthony Braxton - 'Language Improvisations' (Excerpt)
1:20:11 - Matmos - 'Roses & Teeth for Ludwig Wittgenstein'
1:23:32 - talking: on Wittgenstein, [4]
1:28:49 - Jani Christou - 'Tongues of Fire: A Pentecost Oratoiro' (Excerpt)


"[A] religion can be viewed as a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought. It functions somewhat like a Kantian a priori, although in this case the a priori is a set of acquired skills that could be different. It is not primarily an array of beliefs about the true and the good (though it may involve these) or a symbolism expressive of basic attitudes, feelings, or sentiments (those these will be generated). Rather it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulations of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments. Like a culture or language, it is a communal phenomenon that shapes the subjectivities of individuals rather than being primarily a manifestation of those subjectivities. It comprises a vocabulary of discursive and nondiscursive symbols together with a distinctive logic of grammar in terms of which this vocabularly can be meaningfully deployed. Lastly, just as a language (or “language game,” to use Wittgenstein’s phrase) is correlated with a form of life, and just as a culture has both cognitive and behavioral dimensions, so it is also in the case of a religious tradition. Its doctrines, cosmic stories or myths, and ethical directives are integrally related to the rituals it practices, the sentiments or experiences it evokes, the actions it recommends, and the institutional forms it develops. All this is involved in comparing a religion to a cultural-linguistic system.

...It remains true, therefore, that the most easily pictured of the contrasts between a linguistic-cultural model of religion and an experiential-expressive one is that the former reverses the relation of the inner and the outer. Instead of deriving external features of a religion from inner experience, it is the inner experiences which are viewed as derivative."
- George Lindbeck (The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age)


Further Info:
[1] Yale New Testament Lecture on Johannine Literature (Video Lecture)
[2] Meaning in Relation to Text and Vocalization by Luciano Berio (Short Text)
[3] William Cavanaugh on Babel and Pentecost (Video Lecture)
[4] Wittgenstein His Life and Philosophy (Audio Lecture)

Episode 6 // Sanctums

This week's episode explores the spatial dimensions of spirituality and how we relate to different spiritual conceptualizations of space. I've tried to curate musical expressions that express a spectrum of ideas of what it can mean for a place to be sacred or divine. As a religious individual myself who has personally come to perceive all of planet Earth as a sanctum of sorts, my sense of 'sacred' space is deeply intertwined with notions of ecological justice -- a theme Wade Davis (a Canadian anthropologist I really admire) continually evokes in much of his public work. Davis argues:

"[A] young kid from the Andes who's raised to believe that that mountain is an Apu spirit that will direct his or her destiny will be a profoundly different human being, and have a different relationship to that resource or that place, than a young kid from Montana raised to believe that a mountain is a pile of rock ready to be mined. Whether it's the abode of a spirit or a pile of ore is irrelevant. What's interesting is the metaphor that defines the relationship between the individual and the natural world. I was raised in the forests of British Columbia to believe those forests existed to be cut. That made me a different human being than my friends amongst the Kwagiulth who believe that those forests were the abode of Huxwhukw and the Crooked Beak of Heaven and the cannibal spirits that dwelled at the north end of the world,"

The image below was taken at Temppeliaukio, a rock-hewn Lutheran church in Helsinki, beloved for its idiosyncratic architecture and exceptional acoustics. Often referred to as 'Church of the Rock', it is a monolithic church cut out from a single block of stone -- something it shares in common with 12th century churches in the Ethiopian town of Lalibela.
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[download forthcoming]


0:03:08 - promo: 'aelita: queen of mars' screening with music by Fire Moss
0:03:37 - station id: Jack Layton
0:03:48 - promo: cfrc funding drive prizes
0:04:39 - psa: four directions aboriginal center
0:05:37 - Conjunto of Cusipata (Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Chileno'
0:08:39 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 1)
0:0":""' - talking: on Lord of Quyllur Rit'i Festival in Peru, Eliane Radigue and Buddhism, mountain themes in Canaanite and Hebrew religion, [1], [2]
0:12:19 - The Incredible String Band - 'The Mountain of God'
0:14:12 - Elvis Presley - 'Crying in the Chapel'
0:16:35 - Death Cab for Cutie - 'St. Peter's Cathedral'
0:21:05 - Julia Brown - 'library'
0:23:40 - Hop Along - 'Diamond Mine'
0:29:13 - Jawbreaker - 'Bivouac'
0:39:23 - The Stupid Stupid Henchmen - 'Catacombs Are COOL'
0:40:57 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 2)
0:4":""' - talking: on Tao Lin, various definitions, and Lalibela, Ethiopia, [3]
0:43:42 - Jason Lescalleet - 'Friday Night in a Catholic Home'
0:45:49 - Eschaton - 'Trap Tune (Scrivel, Christ's Church)' (with funding drive plea)
0:51:52 - Sanctums - 'Brass Towers'
0:56:41 - Caribou - 'Lalibela'
0:59:05 - The Welcome Wagon - 'Unless the Lord the House Shall Build'
1:00:54 - Denison Witmer - 'Two and a Glass Rose'
1:04:16 - Eliane Radigue - 'Kailasha' (Excerpt 3)
1:0":""' - talking: on cfrc funding drive, Cibo Matto reunion, 285 Kent
1:07:35 - promo: cfrc funding drive
1:07:54 - promo: cfrc funding drive (3 choices)
1:08:09 - Cibo Matto - 'Lobby'
1:12:08 - Kitty and Pinkiepieswear - '♥♥♥285♥♥♥'
1:16:47 - Active Child - 'I'm in Your Church at Night'
'":20:05 - talking: on cfrc funding drive, Flannery O'Connor
1:21:22 - Wise Blood - 'Penthouse Suites'
1:22:53 - Purity Ring - 'Fineshrine'
1:27:22 - Vessel - 'Temples'
1:29:01 -  psa: SNID (Students in National and International Development) lectures


"The soul is feminine before God, waiting in a state of surrender for the Beloved to come. The sixteenth-century Indian princess and poet Mirabai knew this mystical truth. Mirabai was devoted to Krishna, her “Dark Lord,” and once, when she was wandering in some woodlands sacred to Krishna, a famous theologian and ascetic named Jiv Gosvami denied her access to one of her Dark Lord’s temples because she was a woman. Mirabai shamed him with the words: “Are not all souls female before God?” Jiv Gosvami bowed his head and led her into the temple.

The lover waits for her Beloved. And when He comes to us, in those moments of meeting and merging that are so intimate that one can hardly speak of them, the lover is feminine, pierced, penetrated by the tremendous bliss of His love."
- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee


"In the monarchical model, God is distant from the world, relates only to the human world, and controls that world through domination and benevolence. On the first point: the relationship of a king to his subjects is necessarily a distant one for royalty is "untouchable." It is the distance, the difference, the otherness of God, that is underscored with this imagery. God as king is in his kingdom -- which is not of this earth -- and we remain in another place, far from his dwelling. In this picture God is worldless and the world is Godless: the world is empty of God’s presence. Whatever one does for the world is not finally important in this model, for its ruler does not inhabit it as his primary residence, and his subjects are well advised not to become too enamored of it either.

...As an alternative model I suggest considering the world as God’s body. In what ways would we think of the relationship between God and the world were we to experiment with the metaphor of the universe as God’s body, God’s palpable presence in all space and time? If the entire universe is expressive of God’s very being -- the incarnation, if you will -- do we not have the beginnings of an imaginative picture of the relationship between God and the world peculiarly appropriate as a context for interpreting the salvific love of God for our time? If what is needed in our ecological, nuclear age is an imaginative vision of the relationship between God and the world that underscores their interdependence and mutuality, empowering a sensibility of care and responsibility toward all life, how would it help to see the world as the body of God? This image, radical as it may seem (in light of the dominant metaphor of a king to his realm) for imagining the relationship between God and the world, is a very old one with roots in Stoicism and elliptically in the Hebrew Scriptures... it surfaced powerfully in Hegel as well as in twentieth-century process theologies. The mystical tradition within Christianity has carried the notion implicitly, even though the metaphor of body may not appear: "The world is charged with the grandeur of God" (Gerard Manley Hopkins). "There is communion with God, and a communion with the earth, and a communion with God through the earth" (Teilhard)."
- Sallie McFague, [4]


Further Info:
[1] Canadian Anthropologist, Wade Davis, on the Star Festival in Peru (Video Lecture Excerpt)
[2] Onomastics and Theophorics in Canaanite and Hebrew Religion (Yale Video Lecture)
[3] Lalibela, Ethiopia (UNESCO profile)
[4] 'Imaging a Theology of Nature: The World as God’s Body' by Sallie McFague (Essay)

Episode 5 // Lunar New Year

This week's episode explores a variety of Lunar New Year festivities, including Tet (in Vietnam), Losar (in Tibet), Spring Festival (in China), Seollal (in Korea), and Tsagaan Sar (in Mongolia) -- featuring Chinese lute music from the acclaimed pipa player Wu Man, a film score by avant-garde/kosmiche German band Popol Vuh, a 5000-year-old circle-dance tradition from Korea, and some Mongolian throat-singing.

This week's episode also makes nods to the Shēngxiào's Year of the Horse. It's been difficult to trace the origins of the Shēngxiào (translated literally as 'birth likeness', sometimes known in English as the Chinese Zodiac), but groups of twelve animals began appearing in the Zhan Guo Period (Warring States Period), and a fixed list of twelve animals emerged by the Han Dynasty. Traditions related to associating birth years with the twelve zodiac signs were popularized during the North Zhou Dynasty (557-581 C.E.). Below is an image of Ai Wei Wei's 'Circle of Animals / Zodiac Heads' exhibit -- based on traditional zodiac sculptures from the fountain clock of Yuan Ming Yuan (Old Summer Palace), before they were looted by the French and British in 1860 during the Second Opium War. (Image Source: Ding Musa at LACMA)




0:00:51 - psa: Noam Chomsky on community radio
0:01:37 - station id: Amy Goodman
0:01:52 - promo: Brother Brian's Bluegrass (radio show)
0:02:40 - Beach Fossils - 'The Horse'
0:05:26 - Yao Min & Yao Li - 'Gong Xi, Gong Xi (Congratulations)'
0:08:21 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:0":""' - talking: on Losar (Tibetan Lunar New Year), pilgrimage to Mount Kailash, [1], [2]
0:12:57 - Traditional (Smithsonian Folkways) - 'Dropa (Two Shepherd Songs)'
0:15:01 - Techung - 'Losar'
0:20:03 - promo: CFRC Funding Drive Poetry Event
0:20:34 - promo: CFRC Funding Drive Teaser
0:21:08 - Doan Ca Hue - 'Long Ngam (Dragon Recitation)'
0:23:04 - Dinh Dung, Thu Hang, Doan Ca Kich Hue - 'Ho Gia Gao (Chant of Pounding Rice)'
0:27:54 - Doan Ca Kich Hue, Hien Luong - 'Doan Xuan (Spring Unity)'
0:29:00 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:"":""' - talking: on Tet (Vietnamnese Lunar New Year), pipa player Wu Man
0:31:49 - Wu Man - 'White Snow in a Sunny Spring'
0:35:08 - The Shins - 'Mine's Not a High Horse'
0:38:28 - The Heliocentrics & Mulatu Astatke - 'Chinese New Year'
0:42:15 - St. Vincent - 'Year of the Tiger'
0:45:43 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
0:"":""' - talking: on Chinese zodiac, Jim Jarmusch's documentary on Neil Young, tweets by @horse_ebooks, [3], [4]
0:48:36 - Sufjan Stevens - 'Year of the Horse'
1:01:50 - ad: reelout queer film festival
1:02:50 - station id: Yo La Tengo
1:03:00 - psa: media co-op
1:03:30 - Okkyung Lee - 'One Hundred Years Old Rain (The Same River Twice)'
1:09:40 - Kuktan Arirang - 'Kang-Kang-Soo-Wol-Nae'
1:12:51 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
1:"":"" - talking: on Seollal (Korean Lunar New Year), tteokguk tradition, [5]
1:14:59 - MeryMos - '까치까치설날은 (Korean New Year's Day Song)'
1:16:01 - Baterdene & Khongorzul - 'The River Herlen' (Mongolian long song)
1:20:01 - Popol Vuh - 'Kailash' (film score)
1:"":""' - talking: on Tsagaan Sar (Mongolian Lunar New Year), Mongolian long song and throat singing (overtone singing), [6], [7]
1:21:59 - White Moon - 'Altain Magtaal' (Mongolian throat singing)
1:26:05 - Timbre Timbre - 'Beat the Dead Horse'
1:30:58 - Bishop Allen - 'Dimmer'

"We are born at a given moment, in a given place and, like vintage years of wine, we have the qualities of the year and of the season of which we are born. Astrology does not lay claim to anything more." - Carl Jung

Further Info:
[1] 'Wheel of Time' by Werner Herzog (documentary film)
[2] 'Kailash: Pilgrimage to the Throne of Gods' by Florian Fricke (film art)
[3] Jim Jarmusch talking to Neil Young about the Bible (video clip)
[4] The Now Defunct @horse_ebooks (twitter page)
[5] Vegan Tteokguk Recipe (recipe)
[6] Mongolian Long Song (wikipedia article)
[7] Mongolian Throat Singing (Overtone Singing) (wikipedia article)