analysis

David Van Biema 2-22-2018

Image via Adelle M. Banks / RNS

In October, Shaaban Abdel-Gawad, the head of the Reparations Department, confirmed that the case was under investigation. Representatives for both the Museum of the Bible and the Green Collection say they have no knowledge of Egypt’s initiative. But if it proceeds, a second international scandal could rock their world. (Asked how many Egyptian objects are in the Green Collection, a Hobby Lobby representative emailed: “I’m sorry. That’s not information that I’m able to provide.”)

Christian Piatt 12-04-2013
Courtesy of Burnside Books

'Cinematic States' explores fifty films that help define something about each state. Courtesy of Burnside Books

Lots of people like movies; Gareth Higgins loves movies. But the founding director of the Wild Goose Festival and long-time peace activist engages popular culture with a different eye than most of us. And he’s used that keen eye for deeper meaning to create his latest book.

I asked Gareth about his new book on American film, his peace work, and what it’s like considering American culture both as an insider and as a non-native. Here’s what he had to say.

Tripp Hudgins 10-30-2012
Abstract rendering of bright sound waves.

Abstract rendering of bright sound waves.

What is it that music actually does? What is that thing? I'm not entirely sure.

That music has physical qualities is unquestionable. A certain pitch can shatter glass. Low notes can cause the trunk of the car stopped next to you in traffic to shimmy and shake. Volume hurts our ears. Music, temporally bound, is material.

It affects the world around us. It engages the world around us. Sound waves travel through various substances...with greater or lesser ease depending on the substance, but it does travel. It moves. 

But does it live, move, and have being?

Cosmic Christ – depth of reality. The resurrection of Christ is also of the body…exit wounds and all. So can the music that changes the shape of the world we live in not help us access the God who inhabits the world and heaven at the same time?

So often I read passages like the one above from Rock and Theology (an amazing blog, by the way) and I wonder what the hell we're all going on about. Music does not have agency in any conscious sense. It is substantive, of course, and could be analysed liturgically like any other liturgical object.