Art and Explanation (1998)

I love talking to people about the songs and giving them a tour through the meaning of the song. However, one thing I've resisted is ever printing "song explanations" either in a book or on the website where folks could find the meanings of all our songs. I don't resist in order to keep the meaning secret, but because of my understanding of the function and significance of art and music.

What seperates art from other forms of expression is that art shrouds meaning through symbolism, analogy and other means of storytelling. Non-artistic forms of expression, like preaching, simpley state "the way it is" in the clearest way possible. Although an artistic expression and a non-artistic expression may be making the same point, they do it in different ways.

The non-artistic, preaching, style is simply "in your face." While this has the advantage of being clear, it also gets annoyingly too-obvious, too-clear, too-up front.

That is why we enjoy the artistic approach so much. It is not obvious, but instead the meaning slowly sneaks up on you, and leaps upon you. That's the moment we've all experienced where we say, "all of the sudden I GOT it!" That sensation is the feeling of being attacked by meaning.

When someone simply preaches up-front and clear, you can easily turn a deaf ear to it and ignore it. The reason you can do that is because you can easily see it. But when meaning attacks you from behind, you are forced to wrestle with it. You think it over, you question it, you take it in. In the end, you must decide what to do with it. And what you do with the meaning you've encountered is a deeper and more willful understanding than you get from simply hearing preaching.

That's why artistic expression hits you deeper and has a deeper affect on you.

Now, just because words are set to music does not mean they are "art," or that they are written in this sort of artistic expression. In fact, much Christian music is simply preaching set to music. It is clear, obvious and "in your face." It doesn't force you to think, because it doesn't attack you.

That's why I don't want to publish "explanations" of my songs. I intentionally wrote my songs with a bit of mystery, in order to force the listener to think. If someone spends time thinking about what in the world a song means, that is wonderful. Because, after all, so few forms of media do cause you to think.

If instead of thinking about it, someone could just click a few buttons and get the clear, "in your face", obvious explanation of a song, then the artistic expression of the song will serve no purpose. Any song explanation will just be preaching. And the song will be reduced to preaching. And if the song is simply non-artistic preaching, then Caedmon's Call doesn't serve any purpose. After all, there are plenty of good Christian preachers out there--we don't need more. What we need are Christian artists. People who can create art which will sneak up and attack those people who no longer listen to preaching.

I love to talk to people or email them about what songs mean. But what I want to avoid is people never having to think for themselves about what the songs might mean. Once someone gets an explanation, they've been robbed of the joy of being attacked by meaning, and of having that moment where they say, "Aha! I finally GOT it!"

It does, I suppose, reflect my view of life. As they say, "Art imitates life," and so you can tell one's view of life by his or her art.

You hear a lot of folks ridicule modern art; I must admit, I do it too. We look at it and exclaim, "That's art?" or "That doesn't make any sense!" We assume that because it doesn't make any sense or is bizarre, confused, or meaningless that it isn't art. But art imitates life, remember? And if you think that life is essentially without meaning, then your art will reflect it. A blank canvas may be a brilliant and clever summation of life for an artist who believes that life is essentially defined by nothingness.

There is a chapel near my home that is locally famous for its art and achitecture. I toured it one day. It is a single, octagonal room with cement floors covered only by a few wooden picnic benches; each of the eight cement walls is adorned with a huge black painting. At first glance, these canvases appear solid black, and only when you scrutinize them closely can you see that there are some different shades of black present. Now, I'm not an art critic, and so I won't critique this art, but what a statement about life, religion and faith: it's all blackness, but if you stare real hard, you might find a few different shades of this blackness.

It is certainly no coincidence that this is an inter-faith chapel, open to celebrations by Buddists, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Zorastrians, and basicly anyone else who needs an octagonal building to meet in. So, the blackness is to be expected. When you try to mix all colors and images into one, you do not get a beautiful rainbow or portrait (both of which depend on their clarity and seperation of colors for their beauty), but you get black. In trying to preserve all, you lose all. As my wife said a few weeks ago, "You know the problem with pluralism? It robs you of passion. It makes you unable to be passionate for just one thing."

Compare this with traditional Christian art and architecture, exemplified by the stained glass window. It is a fine statement of Christian art, as it is created by a skillful combination of different color fragments. When brought together, they tell a story or show an image of the creation and the faith. At the National Cathedral in Washington D. C., there is a stained glass window portraying the moon, and in that window is a piece of moon rock brought back by one of the Appollo astronauts. When you stand in that great cathedral, you are surrounded by God's revelation to its fullest extent. It is not just the Bible stories that testify to God, but all of creation--and even the celestial bodies--come and surround the altar of God.

Stained glass windows represent eternal images, and yet they are neither lifeless nor static. When you are inside the church, the windows hold back the clutter of the world without blocking it out entirely. Stained glass windows always feel the mood of the outside world; if it is grey outside, the stained glass images are downcast as well, as if mourning the darkness of the world. When a morning is bright, the images shout from the wall to the maker of the morning. And these images are not lit by art-gallery spotlights, turned off or on by some human whenever its appropriate. Instead, they are utterly dependent on the sun for their brilliance; they only appear and come to life when the sun wills to penetrate them with all its fullness.

What a statement about life: the fragments of life come together into an image of faith which is utterly dependent on the light of creation to invigorate it. Christian images of life are only black when they lack light's blessing.

So self-conciousness takes me--or I take it--and I ask myself, "What does my writing say about my view of life?" And, of course, I know the answer, for it is one I've given myself a thousand times. Most Christian songs are written in simple, easy-to-understand ways, so that the listener will immediately understand it fully. I disagree with this approach, because I don't think that's the way the life of faith is. It goes against what we experience in real life. The answers (at least to the hard questions), are rarely simple, and this life is not easy to understand (why else would we pray to God for understanding?) And we will never, in this skin, understand it fully. Art should imitate life, but this too-easy Christian music imitates some idealized version of life that doesn't really exist.

On the other hand, some lesser-known Christian bands sings songs that have absolutely no meaning at all--they are just a random collection of sounds, communicating nothing, signifying nothing. Although these sort of songs are easy to write, and fun to sing, they hang like black canvasses on cement walls. They imply that there is nothing worth saying. This is a problem for the Christian, because nihilism is antithetical to theism. Life as nothingness is neither an option for the Christian, nor the testimony of creation. Rather, life is bursting forth with meaning. Everything from waterbugs to volcanoes to birth pains to computers creates the fertile ground of meaning. God said even the rocks cry out, and I think he meant that in both the spiritual and geological sense.

Still, the meaning is not self-evident (or there wouldn't be so many people looking for it), and it is hard to ascertain the truth in this world. Why? Certainly it has to do with our sinfullness and God's complexity, but even these true answers cannot soothe the frustration of it all. These mysteries can drive us mad. I once knew a dog who would chase the circle of light shone on the floor by a flashlight. She would lunge at the image, but never seize it; she only got a pawful of floor. Yet, something in her dog brain kept her from turning her head to see teh source of the light. So we grasp at the truths God has given us, but there is something in our little dog brains that prevents us from looking full into the one who shines the light. Certainly it is God, who knows how it hurts our eyes to stare full into the flashlight. Our human eyes, so used to looking at darkness, cannot handle that--our pupils cannot get small enough--it is too much light for us to take in and make sense of. We feel only pain. We see only spots.

"Now we see through a glass darkly," says Paul, "But then we will see face to face." For now, we stare through this glass darkly, working to form the fragments of life into an image of faith. We do this until the day when we will see it all, turn our heads, and stare into the flashlight without being blinded to see what is behind light itself. Like an engaged bridegroom, God saves the full knowledge of himself for the day when his beloved enters his arms.

My songs, like life, can seem at first like a random collection of images, but they are neither meaningless nor random. They are fragments with which I am trying to build a stained glass cathedral. Each word, each peice, has a purpose, and it falls into place in time. Some songs, some lines, are clear and make sense the first time around, while the meaning of other lines may never be completely clear. That's how God gives us truth. Some things, like the fact that he's creator, are fairly simple and easily understood by the majority of people. Other things, like what exactly Christ meant by "Drink of this all of you, for this is my blood...", will never be completely clear in this life.

God's truth "is a stream of running water, where alike the elephant may swim, and the lamb may walk without losing its feet." That is the life that I seek to imitate in my art.

For all our bodies are temples unto God, and with our words, writing, and living, we create the art which will adorn the walls.

This essay originally appeared in Thirsty Plants,
a webzine for the Caedmon's Call Guild.