Inspired by a line from my friend

When your brain is crackling
with flames from the latest outrage

go feed your rage
to the creek

which will carry it away
to the bottomless ocean,

go scream your sorrows
to the stars

and they will dissipate
in the dark
of those endless expanses,

go rest yourself
in the fields

and they will sing you to sleep
with wind in the grass.

For awhile now I’ve been pondering a change to the name of this publication. I couldn’t quite pin it down, but I wanted something that better captured me in all my disparate musings.

I’ve been thinking about walking a lot the past few years, and particularly the past month, mainly because I am contemplating a book project on walking as a spiritual practice. This endeavor has grown out of the fact that walking has been such a key spiritual practice in my life for years now.

My first major poetry collection, A Year in Weetamoo Woods, was written during hours and hours of walks from Fall 2011 to Summer 2012.

I tend to be a person who lives in my head and can get stuck there, so moving my legs often helps me get back down into my body and can help disperse my sometimes anxious thoughts.

What I’ve come to realize as well is that walking has a deeply spiritual component for me. Try as I might, I deeply struggle with sitting still on a meditation cushion and praying and being still. When I’m out in the woods, prayer and contemplation come easier as I hear the birdsong, the babbling stream, the wind in the trees. Here poems, which are often my best form of prayer, come to my mind.

I’ve also come to realize that “walking” is maybe not the best term for this practice. It’s such a generic phrase that could encompass both the activity of the middle-aged mom powering through the neighborhood with Air Pods in, and my own leisurely, meditative strolls through the woods. This is where Henry David Thoreau’s musings on “sauntering” (see above) came into save and illuminate me.

The word has such a beautiful relaxedness about it, an unhurriedness, a sense of curiosity. To me it is an antidote to our frenetic culture. To leave my phone in the car and wander the woods, or to explore the quiet side streets of a favorite city, is a healing balm.

In this quest I’ve also found another companion in the poet Mary Oliver, whose work has become more and more meaningful to me as the years have gone by. To read her work is to notice someone quietly dedicated to paying holy attention to the world. Her poem above, “When I Am Among The Trees”, has become a touchstone for my soul. I now consider it part of my life’s calling to “walk slowly, and bow often”.

Sauntering for me isn’t just about the act of slowly putting one physical foot in front of the other though. I think it’s becoming a larger metaphor for my life. Sauntering can be a physical, and emotional, and psychological, and spiritual, and intellectual practice. I’ve spent the past twenty-five odd years rambling through philosophy, spirituality, pop culture, and literature. I’ve lost my faith and found it again. I’m curious about religious and spiritual traditions other than the one I was brought up in. I feel politically homeless these days. Life feels like a pilgrimage right now toward some unseen Holy Land, and I’m interested in the journey itself.

So, The Holy Saunter is here. If you’ve followed me for awhile, the writing you’ve come to expect here is not going to change. Sometimes there will be original poems. Sometimes there will be more personal reflections. Sometimes there will be musings on films or books I’m engaging with. The goal with all of it will be to move meditatively, and to notice. If that sounds good, I’m grateful for you staying. And if you’re new here, welcome to the wandering journey.

Once,
a long time ago
the Shadows
broke into my home.

They spread
through the kitchen
and the living room
into the bedrooms
and under the sheets,
into the photo albums
tainting every good memory.
They even took over
every channel
on the television,
and I hid in the basement
scared and alone
hoping someone
would come and save me;

and eventually a hand
reached into the darkness
and took mine,
and together
we walked
a step at a time
up those stairs
and the Shadows moved back
and out the door
and across the grass
and into the forest again.

The hand then led me
around my house
and showed me
that many things had changed.

Some of the Shadows
had eaten through the walls and floor
and I saw some beams
were rotten there
and would have to go,
a strange revelation
I would not have known otherwise.

Some rooms looked different
in a way I could not explain
but I saw their beauty
in a new light.

Some corners
sent a chill through my bones
and I generally avoided them
as much as possible.

One day
after time had passed
I opened the door
and crossed the yard,
and stood at the forest edge
where the Shadows still were.

I thanked them for
their strange gifts
though I said I would prefer
they not come uninvited again.

Some days I look up
and see a Shadow
just standing in the yard
and staring.

Some dark nights,
I hear the Shadows
scratching gently against the door,
and every once in awhile
they rattle the knob
and make my heart race.

Sometimes,
I imagine
what it would be like,
to unlock the door
and invite the Shadows in,
not as invaders,
but for a cup of neighborly tea,
and we’d sit across the table
and talk
or even just,
sit in silence,
companionably.

I carry
my nation’s sins
like a millstone
about my neck

A litany echoes round my head:

We confess
that we have sinned against You
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved You
with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbor
as ourselves.

I walk about each day
in sackcloth and ashes
to see Your peaceful name
painted in blood
like a banner of war.

Why do wicked men
keep getting away with murder?

And why
do we let them?

I feel like I should
be shouting in the streets every day
like some wild prophet.
Instead I’m standing
in the grocery line
looking at the latest horror
on my phone.

Who will save us
from this body politic of death?

Quietly slipping
through the stone
into morning air
and birdsong,
he stoops
to retuck
the slipped cloak
of a sleeping guard
before
moving on.

Perhaps you remember the scene from 2017’s Lady Bird. Our eponymous character is in the office of her Catholic school principal and teacher, Sister Joan, talking about her writing:

Sister Joan: “You clearly love Sacramento.”

Lady Bird: “I do?”

Sister Joan: “You write about Sacramento so affectionately and with such care.”

Lady Bird: “Well, I was just describing it.”

Sister Joan: “Well, it comes across as love.”

Lady Bird: “Sure, I guess I pay attention.”

Sister Joan: “Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”

Love and attention.

For my day job I’m an English professor at a community college, and about once every year I get the opportunity to teach a Poetry Writing Seminar. As part of our journey into the nuts and bolts of writing verse, we read and discuss Mary Oliver’s classic text A Poetry Handbook.

These are freshmen community college students, so I’m not really expecting deeply skilled mature writing or profound insights. I’m just trying to help them lay a foundation. But every once in awhile a student drops a thought that stops me in my tracks.

Last week we were discussing imagery in poetry and a student noted Mary Oliver’s emphasis on attention. The student wrote, “[Oliver] treats paying close, careful attention to the natural world as almost a moral act, not just noticing things but being fully present with them.”

These are the kind of moments as a teacher that make my soul sing, when a student “gets it”, but they also offer a perspective that teaches you something.

“Attention is the beginning of devotion” - "Upstream”, Mary Oliver

I know I’ve been circling around attention for many years. I’ve got a bit of a contemplative streak. I love the writing of Mary Oliver, from which this student drew inspiration. I myself have been a poet going on twenty years, developing my own practices of attention. One of my most meaningful habits is taking walks in nature, where I try to notice the small stories and details happening around me. So, yes, I know the value of attention. But somehow the idea of attention being a moral act had never struck me in quite that way. Until now.

Not coincidentally, for the past month or so I’ve taken social media off my phone for Lent, because, you know, Lent is when you give up stuff. But more than that, I have been struggling for years, as I’m guessing many of us have, with my relationship to social media. I’ve at least whittled down my social media presence to Instagram and here on Substack. I’ve set focus times and app limits on my phone that have helped me somewhat curtail the time I spend on these apps. But it still hasn’t felt like enough. I’ve still found myself wasting time on my Explore page feeding on whatever diet the algorithm has cooked up for me.

We all know the data and evidence on social media consumption at this point. We’ve watched The Social Dilemma. We’ve read Jonathan Haidt’s work. We know that social media algorithms are the bait and we are the fish, and that our attention is being bought and sold by big tech companies, companies that are well aware of all the ways that social media is negatively impacting society and don’t care because they are raking in billions.

But more than that, I think I have truly begun to understand and grapple with the reality that social media and the general media consumption ecosystem is malforming us and has malformed me. I think again of the hours I have spent consuming the algorithm stream. I think of the money I’ve spent on products that were fed to me via advertisements. And beyond that, I think of every time I pick up my phone when I’m bored in a work meeting, or at church, or at home, or at a party or God forbid in a conversation with my wife or a friend. That action devalues the real human experience I’m having in that moment.

The tricky thing is, there are people in my life I wouldn’t know and be in relationship with if not for social media (my wife for one). I’ve gained some wonderful friendships and connections through social media that I wouldn’t trade for the world. Without social media I wouldn’t really have a place to share my own work and writing. So it seems possible that social media is not entirely malforming or negative.

So I guess I’m trying to figure out how and in what ways social media can be life giving and promote flourishing in my relationships, and in what ways I can try to resist its malformative tendencies. Perhaps that’s a losing battle, and thirty years from now we’ll look back and be like what the hell were we thinking. I admire Wendell Berry and his commitment to not even own a computer, but I’m not ready to give up mine or my smartphone, and maybe that makes me a weaker person. So be it, Wendell Berry can be better than me.

For now at least, I’m grateful for the perspective this last month has been providing me, and for this insight from my student on the moral value of attention. If I could bring it back to Sister Joan for a second, if my attention is love, I want to love humans above all, and not streams of mindless code whiling away my hours.

“The gate of heaven is everywhere” - Thomas Merton

The gate of heaven
is everywhere
if you have eyes
to see it,
if you are blessed
with a moment
of lightning.

For Merton,
it was the corner
of Walnut and Fifth
in the shopping district
of Louisville, Kentucky,
where he saw everyone
shining like the sun.

I recently beheld
the chariot of God
gliding over Target
on a dreary late
February afternoon.

The kingdom of heaven
is breaking through,
and the humble,
the weary,
the teary-eyed,
and bent low,
stumble in
and are dazzled.

February blues,
always something
in the news, snow
has overstayed its welcome
like a guest who leaves
piles of their stuff
all over your house,
like this stubborn head congestion-
a parting gift from a nasty cold.

Yet I look up,
trudging through
the slushy Target parking lot
to see a fresco
of rosy-gold etched clouds
processing behind
the rusty power lines,
and something inside
comes alive again.

after

Holding the screaming baby
for the tired mom at her wit’s end:
this too is protest.

Calling your congressperson yet again
while on your lunch break:
this too is protest.

Dreaming of the spring flowers you’re going to plant
while it’s still the heart of winter:
this too is protest.

Helping shovel out your elderly neighbor:
this too is protest.

Welcoming the refugee,
taking care of the orphan,
befriending your neighbor,
petting a dog,
picking up trash on your street:
these too are protest
against the dirty rotten system,
against the fat cats and the billionaires,
against the power hungry politicians,
against that tug in your own heart
to shrink inward,
to avert your eyes,
until you are only eye to eye
with your own shriveled self.

There’s a scene from The Two Towers film that I’ve thought about a lot this past year. It’s the Battle of Helm’s Deep, and things are not going well. Our heroes are preparing one final stand in the keep as the Uruk-Hai attempt to batter down the doors of the Hornburg. Aragorn is attempting to rally the survivors while King Théoden contemplates the end:

“So much death,” he says. “What can men do against such reckless hate?”

“Ride out with me,” Aragorn responds. “Ride out and meet them.”

“For death and glory,” Théoden replies.

“For Rohan,” Aragorn says. “For your people.”

“Yes…yes,” Théoden replies. “The horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the Deep one last time. Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn! Forth Eorlingas!”

You probably know the rest. They charge, slaying the Uruk-Hai as they ride, then Gandalf shows up with the dawn, riding down the hill with a wave of Rohirrim warriors. It still gives me chills every time I watch it.

Sometimes I wish life was that easy.

We live in times where darkness is spreading across the land. Our country is being led by an unprincipled demagogue who has apparently taken up the casual sport of invading or contemplating the takeover of other countries, and who thinks the only limit on his power is his own “morality”. Meanwhile, masked government thugs terrorize the streets. A U.S. citizen was just m*rdered last week in broad daylight by an ICE agent.

Racism and xenophobia are just everyday parlance from the highest halls of power in our nation.

What can men do against such reckless hate?

The irony of where I’m going with this whole thing, is that the Republicans and tech-bros currently ruling our society would claim that they are inspired by The Lord of the Rings as well. Our Vice President J.D. Vance has proclaimed himself a huge Lord of the Rings fan, and has said that the mythology has influenced both his conservatism and his conversion to Catholicism. He even named his venture capitalist firm Narya, after one of the elven rings of power. I guess it’s no surprise, since Vance’s mentor, tech-bro Peter Thiel is also a self-proclaimed Tolkien nerd who has named numerous companies with Tolkien references: Anduril (AI powered warfare technology), Palantir (AI powered government surveillance), Mithril Capital, Rivendell One LLC, and Valar Ventures (all venture capital investment companies)1

But more seriously, many of these men currently wielding power envision themselves as Tolkien’s human heroes, the “Men of the West”2 standing against the forces of evil, in their case the forces of “evil” being liberalism, immigrants, Islam, etc.3

Many have pointed out how bad of a misunderstanding of Tolkien’s mythology this is. As someone who has loved and studied Tolkien’s world for decades, let me throw my own opinion into the scrap by arguing that the heart of The Lord of the Rings isn’t about what the “great men” of the story do at all. Among themes like the corrupting influence of power, and the value of community and friendship, the heart of The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien’s small folk—the hobbits. And I believe they are who we should be taking cues from in these dark times.

The hobbits are an apt example for many of us in so many ways. They’re normies. They like their food and drink, their cozy homes. They want to live lives of simplicity and peace. They can also be (like us) petty, insular, and gossipy. They’re apt to bury their heads in the sand about the doings of the wider world. But, when push comes to shove, they can be surprisingly resilient and brave (even if they complain while doing it). And the courage they show, when brought to it, is not the sword-wielding, “ride out and meet them” type. It is small and steady and often accompanied by a lot of fear and trepidation. It is one step in front of the other.

Take, for example, Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, reluctant “burglar” and adventurer. When at last the moment comes for him to face Smaug, Tolkien writes:

“It was at this point that Bilbo stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterwards were nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait.”

At this point in the story, Bilbo has escaped goblins, fought giant spiders, riddled with Gollum, and rescued his friends from elvish prison. The Battle of the Five Armies awaits. But that moment to keep going down the tunnel to face Smaug is apparently bravest thing he did in the whole story.

Or let’s go back to The Two Towers. While characters like Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Théoden are off doing the sexy stuff like slaying orcs, Frodo and Sam are just…plodding. Wandering the misty crags of Emyn Muil. Trudging through the Dead Marshes. Climbing the endless stairs to Cirith Ungol. It’s not very exciting compared to the other storyline. Frodo and Sam even have a conversation about this:

“Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on - and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same - like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we’ve fallen into?”

“I wonder,” said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to.”

Like Frodo and Sam, we don’t really know exactly what kind of story we’ve been thrust into. We don’t know what the ending of this chapter will look like. We know that the skies look dark, and that forces of hate, racism, and xenophobia are trying to prevail. Most of us are just hobbits, caught out here in our everyday lives, wondering what the hell is going on and what the hell can we do?

In response I’m reminded of a scene from the first Hobbit film:

To me, this captures the heart of Tolkien’s story. It’s not ultimately about wizards and heroes and Dark Lords. It’s about the small acts. It’s the No Kings standout I see driving by a random corner in a little town. It’s the story I heard of an unnamed woman handing out tea to people mourning Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. It’s looking out for your neighbors, loving your family, donating to the local food bank, calling your representatives.

Most of us are very small creatures in the wide, wide, world. We’re not warriors or wizards or world leaders. But that doesn’t mean who we are or the simple things we do don’t matter.

Without much fanfare, my favorite books, music, and film/TV of 2025:

Books

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman: Arthurian retellings have been done ad nauseum, but I like Grossman’s take of starting after Arthur’s death.

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson: I found the ending of the trilogy somewhat unsatisfying, but the magic system + heisty combo of this first book was great.

Zero Stars Do Not Recommend by MJ Wassmer: A darkly comedic sort of modern Lord of the Flies.

Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin: An engaging read about the creation process of Springsteen’s classic record.

The Will of the Many by James Islington: I love the world and political intrigue of this story.

Katabasis by R.F. Kuang: PhD students journey to hell, but academia is also kinda hell?

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow: Wrote about it here.

Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao: Reminds me of Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea in the best way.

Music

Rushmere by Mumford & Sons: Mumford is back and it’s pretty good

The Profound Foolishness of by AMXN Radio: Really enjoyed this new ambient project from Hillsong United’s Joel Houston.

The Richest Man in the World by Ben Rector: I’m always here for a new Ben Rector album.

Sable, fable by Bon Iver: I like the contrasting sides of this work: sad boi Justin meets happy groovy Justin.

Cosmic Supreme by John Mark McMillan: A great sendoff(?) to John Mark McMillan’s songwriting career.

Wild and Clear and Blue by I’m With Her: Been waiting for their sophomore album and it did not disappoint.

Miracle Service by Andy Squyres: Andy is writing the best Christian/spiritual music out there right now hands down.

The Crux by Djo: Steve from Stranger Things is a great babysitter and a great musician.

People Watching by Sam Fender: Accidentally discovered it this year and loved it.

Modern Worries by Tyson Motsenbocker: Really liked Tyson’s previous album, and this one is great continuation.

Fielder by Skye Peterson and Addison Agen: Just some great singer-songwriter folk.

The Light for Days by Jacob Collier: I love the simplicity of this album.

Film/TV

The Chosen: Season 5: I’m here for The Chosen until the end.

Sinners: Ryan Coogler takes vampire horror and gives it a genius historical twist.

Andor: Season 2: Maybe the best Star Wars thing ever. What a show for our times.

Thunderbolts*: Felt like something actually fresh and enjoyable from Marvel.

Superman: Wrote about my love for post-cynical Superman here.

Silo: Season 2: A compelling dystopian show with a lot of mystery.

Shrinking: Seasons 1 and 2: Heard good things about it, finally watched it. So funny and so good. Harrison Ford is incredible.

Frankenstein: The best film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel yet.

Wicked: For Good: I have been changed for good.

Hamnet: A beautiful, heartwrenching film on the alchemy of art and grief.

Wake Up, Dead Man: The best Knives Out yet. Intelligent, funny, but also surprisingly nuanced and spiritual.

Stranger Things: Season 5: Perfect ending. No notes.

This is the season
of listening
into the silence,
of staring up at a sea
of winter stars
or sitting in a dark room
by candlelight.

Maybe the silence
will speak to you,
but maybe,
it will not.

Quiet can be
companionable,
if you welcome it
as a friend.

Maybe silence,
is the gift itself,
to hear your own heartbeat
in your chest,
to watch the dust motes
float in the light,
to be still,
and to know,
might be all you need.

I started working on a series of Advent poems last year. I’ve picked up the project again this year and have been quietly working away. Here’s one that feels particularly relevant:

This is the season of longing
as we sit amidst the wreckage
and rubble of the ages,
dreaming of the
shining towers and turrets
of an everlasting city
whose ruler is good.

Little men speak loud,
boastful words
and smash the world
like toys in their tantrums,
and we are left reeling
in the wake of their passage.

Will some righteous one
take the scepter and the crown?

My dad found
a maple seedling
sprouting in
our flower bed
and put a cage around it
in hopes
that it will grow.

Somehow, new things
are still springing up
in the treacherous soil
of these times.

When did we succumb
to the delusion of
separateness?

That I
am better,
and you,
are lesser?

That I
am deserving,
and you,
are not?

We are fellow beings
in the household
of creation1
our lives and stories
woven together,
back into the past
and on into the future.

Our destinies depend
entirely on each other
our flourishing founded
in the good of all.
Children of the Creator
each an image.

Can one arm
chop off the other
and be well?

Can one clump of cells
say to one another
you are not welcome here?

Who will save us
from this autoimmune
dysfunction?

“You know that history is mostly happenstance. Accidents piled on top of mistakes, a series of dice rolled in dim rooms by careless hands. It is not a lesson, until we learn it. It is not a story, until we tell it. And every story serves someone.”

-The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow

When you read a lot, there are moments when a sort of synchronicity happens. An idea being explored in one book gets taken up from a different angle in another. Usually my reading habits consist of one fiction book that I read at night before bed, and one non-fiction book that I read from in the morning. Last week, I was finishing up Alix E. Harrow’s latest novel The Everlasting just as I was starting theologian Kat Armas’ new book Liturgies For Resisting Empire.

I quickly realized that a theme of both books is about how empires tell stories to perpetuate themselves, and, most often, the people in power at the head of them.

In Harrow’s novel, Owen Mallory is a citizen of Dominion, a war veteran, and a scholar obsessed with Dominion’s founding myth—the quests, battles, and victories of Una Everlasting, a female knight whose prowess helped establish the foundations of Dominion before she was tragically betrayed and killed.

Dominion’s Minister of War, Vivian Rolfe, summons Mallory for an important task of “service” to his country. She laments to Mallory that the peace they’ve won in the recent war (which he fought in) is “a fleeting, fragile thing. It must be protected, fought for, defended against all threats, native and foreign alike—and I fear we have grown weak….We’ve forgotten—as a nation, as a people—who we are….a nation is not a boundary on a map or a flag on a pole, but only a story we tell ourselves….And yet, it fades. The people forget. It’s time we remind them.”

And then she sends Mallory back in time1 because, it turns out, he’s the one who’s written the story, and he needs to ensure that Una plays her role.

What unfolds is a tale in which Mallory returns again and again to the past in order to get things right, because as it turns out, Una is not a saintly figure on a page, but a real flesh and blood woman with her own desire and struggles, and Vivian is not some selfless patriot, but is using Mallory to craft the nation’s mythology in such a way as to consolidate and perpetuate her own power. Through his time-traveling adventures, Mallory also grapples with the ways in which he’s been complicit in propping up Dominion’s empire-narrative, both as a scholar and a soldier.

Colonizing our Stories

As I was pondering the lessons of Harrow’s story, I had picked up and begun to read Kat Armas’ book. Armas is a Cuban-American writer and theologian who is interested in exploring Christianity from a postcolonial perspective. Toward the beginning of her book she writes:

“Empires have always created their own ideologies in order to justify domination and control. These beliefs become systems of oppression over people and land alike. And in their wake we are left with existential questions about identity and belonging that pierce the deepest parts of our being….The answers to these questions are flesh and blood. They not only shape who we are, rippling through our lives, but also steer the course of history, which unfolds through the telling of stories. Stories are never innocent, never impartial. They carry the weight of perspective, ideology, and cultural values.”

Armas echoes Harrow’s story here. Empires craft stories that give people a sense of identity and belonging, but only to reinforce their hegemony, and they impose that story on the conquered. Thus the most rooted form of resistance becomes another type of storytelling. Armas says:

“To interpret our own stories is to reclaim something sacred, to perform an act of resistance. The interpreter becomes the storyteller, the one who shapes their own history. But to be colonized is to be stripped of that power; it is to be erased from one’s own story. This is part of the empire’s violence: seizing control of interpretation, rewriting the past to impose its own narrative on people’s lives, land, and ancestors.”

American Myths

I find all this fascinating to think about because are in a particular moment in our own country where competing stories are battling it out. MAGA is a mythology—Make America Great Again. It tells a whole story: our nation used to be great, now it no longer is, but it’s time to restore it. It fosters a sense of identity: if you’re a real American, don’t you want America to be great? Who is bringing America down? People who hate it and don’t want it to be great. They’re not real Americans. If you want to save America, come don a red hat and join the movement. It’s all very seductive and appealing to the right audience.

Of course, if you begin to interrogate the mythology, you start to wonder: when was America great? What made it great? Who was it great for?

This power of mythology is also why efforts like The 1619 Project have been so feather-ruffling for many people. It’s America’s story written by those it oppressed and enslaved, and it purports to turn the whole dominant narrative on its head. This has driven some people into a rage, because as Harrow wrote “every story serves somebody” and the dominant one usually serves those in power.

Storytelling As Resistance

While there is much to be despairing about in these days of creeping authoritarianism, the perspective that Harrow and Armas offer gives me hope, because it reminds me that storytelling is a form of resistance that we can all practice. Most of us do not have our hands on the levers of power to stop injustice or cruelty or corruption. We can all reclaim stories that may have been taken from us by empire, or we can begin to tell new ones about the kind of communities and nations that we want to be. And with each telling or retelling, we, as Armas says “reclaim something sacred” and we begin to bend history in a different direction.

These days
my tongue
feels like a silent stone
in my mouth,
not because I
don’t care,
but because I do not know
where to begin
responding to the onslaught;

so I take to the woods
where the trees are surrendering
yet again,
but oh,
how they protest their demise
with such beauty!

Perhaps this is how
we defy
the tyranny of small men,
by flying our full colors
in the face of death.

Hesychia (hay-soo-KHEE-ah): a state of inner tranquility and concentration for prayer, a stillness of mind, heart, and body.

I seek a stillness
that is full.
An absence
that is presence.

There are infernal noises
in this world—
the grinding roar
of men’s machines
upon the land,
the cacophonous wail
of our churning cities,
the endless
talktalktalktalktalk
from all devices.

So I sit in my room
and listen to the flicker
of the candle,
or take to the woods,
and the birdsong,
and the wind through the trees.

I am trying to carry
stillness in myself
like a flame,
shielded against the wind
by a trembling hand.

The bright October moon
rides
prow forward
into the clouds.

I stare
and feel something wild
stirring within,

let me grab my cloak
oh captain of the night
and join you
on this autumn evening sail
into a sea of stars.

Several days ago, August 25, was the 50th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run, one of the greatest albums in history. Today Springsteen is a music legend, and songs like “Born To Run”, “Thunder Road”, and “Jungleland” are classics. But none of these things were true half a century ago when Springsteen set out to create his third record. At the time, he had released Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle in 1973 to critical acclaim but commercial failure. Bruce and the E Street band were touring relentlessly around the country just to survive, and his label Columbia Records was souring on him due to the financial loss from his records. Springsteen was staring down the prospect of his artistic career dying before it had barely begun.

Even in that dark moment, he had the glimmers of something new. In late 1973, watching muscle cars drive up and down Ocean Avenue in Asbury Park, he saw scrawled across one of the cars a phrase that he wrote down in his notebook: Born to run.1 What’s wild is how much effort it took for him to get from that moment to the iconic song that we know today.

I recently finished reading Tonight in Jungleland: The Making of Born to Run by Peter Ames Carlin, where he documents the torturous process of making the album. He uses Bruce’s work on the title track as an avatar for the struggle of whole experience. Of the earliest version of the song from early 1974 Carlin writes:

One early draft of the lyrics was called “Wild Angels.” Scrawled on a sheet of lined notebook paper, the verses describe a litany of modern urban catastrophes. Murderous junkies turn shotguns on soldiers on leave from Fort Dix. Them wild boys did it just for the noise / Not even for the kicks. Roads crumble, drivers are crushed beneath their own cars. The game is so rigged, it’s murderous. This town’ll rip the bones from your back / It’s a death trap / You’re dead unless you get out while you’re young.

He wrote more drafts, filling notebook pages in hotel rooms in the wee hours after shows, or while lounging on the musty sofa in the little bungalow he’d recently rented in a working-class section of Long Branch, north of Asbury Park on the Jersey Shore. The lyrics evolved, but the darkness persisted. Baby, tonight I saw a fast rebel / Crushed beneath the wheels of his own hemi began one verse. By the end we see the rebel breathing his last, clutched in the arms of his “beautiful surfer girl.” In another version the narrator witnesses the death of all his heroes, crushed beneath the weight of / Their own Chevy Six. And what of the beautiful surfer girl?… Dead on a beach in an / Everlasting fix.2

Over the spring and early summer of 1974, Bruce kept working on the song: “I remember it coming slowly. And it took me a lot of pages to write.”3

When it came to recording the music, things weren’t much smoother. Carlin writes:

Ensconsed in 914 [recording studio in Blauvelt, NY] in the wee hours, [Mike] Appell and Bruce seemed to try every idea that occurred to them. A string section. An ascending guitar riff repeating through the verse. A chorus of women chiming in on the chorus. An even bigger chorus of women ooh-ing behind the third verse. Still more strings on the bridge and on the last verse, doing those disco-style swoops, like sciroccos whipping up from the dance floor. They’d work out a part, hire whatever musicians or singers were needed to get it on tape, then mix it all together to see what they had. Sometimes it would stick, sometimes they’d just laugh, shake their heads, and slice it out….Work on the instrumental track went on and on, but it still didn’t rival Bruce’s laboring over the lyrics. He had always put energy into his narratives but the pressure he felt to get “Born to Run” just exactly right pushed him to a whole other level of perfectionism, determined to get every word, every nuance, every syllable, something like flawless. No, exactly flawless. Sometimes he’d be in the midst of a take, sing a few lines of a verse, shake it off, then take his notebook to a folding chair. He’d find a pen, open the book, look at the page, and just…think. He’s be there for a while. An hour, two hours, maybe more.4

Now, you might read that and think, “That’s not genius, that’s just neurotic” and you’re probably partly right. But also, who am I to question the methods of one of the greatest artists of all time creating one of the greatest records of all time?

This is the big impression I came away with after reading Carlin’s book: how much literal blood, sweat, and tears went into creating this singular album.

It also made me wonder: is struggle a necessary ingredient in the making of great art? A quick perusal of history would suggest that it needs to be in there somewhere.

Bruce GPT?

I read Carlin’s book during a summer where I as an English professor am still trying to figure out what the hell do I do in the age of generative AI? Now, I should state up front that I am not anti-AI in principle. In fact I use it at times to help me brainstorm and research, and I am trying to teach students how to use it in ethical and limited ways. But I have decades of training in reading and writing and critical thinking. My students do not, and yet they are being ushered into a world where tech bros are falling over themselves to talk about how AI can do ALL THE THINGS for you and make you so much more EFFICIENT and PRODUCTIVE. They seem fixated by the prospect of a frictionless utopia. How am I supposed to teach my students the value of struggle and effort in a such a world where every tech tool wants to shove AI in their faces and ChatGPT can write them an essay in 30 seconds?

Now, I’m not suggesting that a college freshman essay is comparable to a musical masterpiece, nor am I suggesting every creative effort requires the agony that Springsteen went through in creating his masterpiece. But I am worried that we, and particularly the young people around us, are being thrust into a world that will be smoother but also duller, more bland, less colorful, and more robotic. A world in which the only Born to Runs being made are from third rate Bruce GPTs.