unobtrusive lucidity

Priorities, Remixed

I had planned to go to a movie today, but I didn’t.

Stay with me, I’m going somewhere with this.

The movie was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. While about half of Marvel’s phase 4 has been underwhelming, I’m excited about this film. I was looking forward to seeing it tonight, but I didn’t, for a variety of reasons. I’ve travelled quite a bit in the last week. We had an annual Ikea run on Saturday (what used to be an annual event), and spent the night setting up new furniture. Our 6-year-old randomly decided to set an alarm clock, which went off at 0-dark-thirty after I’d been up really late anyway, and I was just wicked tired. I decided to help with dinner instead. All good reasons to skip a movie that I can easily catch later.

This film has already been in theatres for a week as a I write this. So the fact that a Marvel movie has been playing that long without me in an audience, and then I postponed it likely another week….well, if you know me at all, you’ll appreciate the paradigm shift.

There was a time when Marvel film releases were on my calendar and planned for weeks or months in advance. We were in the theatre on opening weekend. If there was a scheduling conflict, the other thing was shifted. Child care was booked and confirmed. Think of it as the Superbowl, but for geeks, often followed promptly by a review of the movie on this very blog. That really hasn’t been the case lately. It’s part of a post-Covid mental shift for me. As with many, I’ve just re-prioritized things. I still really want to see this movie, but I’m also really happy that I took the afternoon and had a relaxed dinner with my family.

When Black Widow opened in theatres during the pandemic, I was still very uneasy about venturing back into that environment. I waited three weeks to see that film, and only then during a sparsely attended matinee. This for one of my all-time favorite characters. I never saw Spider-Man: No Way Home in the theatre due to the virus…I (im)patiently awaited it’s Blu-Ray release. And now Wakanda Forever. Which, as much as I want to see, I’m honestly just questioning if I want to make it to a theatre, less now because of concerns over the virus, but more because there are just so many other priorities, things that would have been shifted three years ago in favor of the movie, but that are now reasons why the movie hasn’t happened.

I love the experience of going to a movie. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t call myself a movie lover, but the experience feels similar enough to attending live theatre that I’ve always enjoyed it. Now that I’m on the other side of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, however, I find myself thinking, can I just wait until this is streaming somewhere?

I fully intend to see Wakanda forever in the theatre (and wow, is it difficult to avoid spoilers for this long). I’ll probably post a review here when I do. I miss that buzz of seeing some of my favorite characters come to life on the big screen, the excitement of being there as soon as it is available, but other things have taken its place. I guess that, no matter how much I wanted…and I think that many of us did…the end of the pandemic to bring things full circle to exactly the way they were before, it’s simply not the case. Different things have changed for all of us, and won’t be the same. I question how much longer movie theatres will survive, and that is a thing that has shifted for me. My movie-going habits won’t be the same.

Interestingly, life still goes on, and I’m even the better for it.

Travel Log: Portsmouth, NH

Photo of me at the ocean on the NH coast

After more than two years of doing almost no travel, we had a busy summer. Multiple trips through the summer and early fall, both for vacation and family events, were tiring, but also life-giving. I had just started to include travel logs of the places I visit here on the blog when the pandemic shut down our lives. I’m really happy to be able to post one again.

One of our trips this summer was to Portsmouth, NH. I’d been through Portsmouth before on a couple of occasions…a quick visit on earlier vacations, a work excursion taking some students to a repertory theatre production…but I hadn’t really spent time there. We had a great time exploring the city and experiencing what Portsmouth has to offer.

Portsmouth, NH harbor — A view of the harbor in Portsmouth. Many boat tours launch from here, and there are a lot of restaurants just out of view.

Portsmouth isn’t a large metro area, but it’s close to a lot and has a lot going on in it’s own right. Just an hour north of Boston, and less than 20 minutes to one of the best beaches in Maine (I’ll get to that in a bit), you’re close to a lot, but there’s so much going on in Portsmouth that you may be too busy. This is the centerpiece of New Hampshire’s coastline. There are several tech companies with offices here, a great arts scene with theatres and galleries, and the seafood is fantastic. A lot of these I had experienced before when dropping by, but when spending time here, what surprised me the most was it’s history.

Portsmouth holds a lot of history from the country’s founding, as well as a lot of Naval history and history in the ship-building trade. We love seeing historical attractions on family vacations, so this trip wouldn’t have been complete without seeing Strawberry Banke, a working reproduction of an original settlement in the area, complete with authentic period homes and reenactments. You can easily spend a day there, especially with kids, and the gardens are a stunning on a summer day. I was lost in conversation with some of the staff about the history of Portsmouth a couple of times. It’s well worth the visit.

Ticket sign at Strawberry Banke museum in Portsmouth, NH

An outdoor garden at Strawberry Banke museum in Portsmouth, NH

Dining is a great experience, as well. There are multiple gluten-free restaurants in the city, and we had no issues getting seated on the water even without a reservation to enjoy some of the best seafood I’ve had in some time.

I also recommend just taking a day to walk around downtown. There are some quirky little art installations that seem to pop up where you least expect them, very interesting architecture in places, and some great cafes. There are also a lot of good local shops to patronize. As you would expect in New England, Portsmouth is a very pedestrian-friendly city.

A fun street sign outside of a restaurant in downtown Portsmouth

We also found ourselves only a quick 20-minute drive away from one of our favorite summer haunts, York Beach, Maine. If you’ve never been to York, that would be a post of it’s own, but it’s very much worth the drive if you’re in Portsmouth, as I’ve found York to be some of the best beach in New England, as well as being home to the Goldenrod candy shoppe. Spend the day at the beach, then leave the hustle and bustle and be back to Portsmouth in time for dinner with no problems.

We very much enjoyed Portsmouth. Even though it’s a small city, we still didn’t manage to see everything that there is to see there, and I’m sure we’ll be back. If you’re looking for a place to visit in New England, I recommend you visit, as well.

A Review of “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art”

Cover of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Fair use for review purposes.

My very first comic book was an issue of X-Men. I grew up in a town with no comic shop, but one of the larger grocery stores had a healthy magazine rack and included a weekly stock of comics. I was hooked in a way that is difficult to describe. Much to my parents financial chagrin, I accompanied my mom on the weekend grocery shopping excursions faithfully, and I couldn’t wait to get to that store and to the comics. There was always something that I wanted to read.

Now, I think that comics is like any other artistic medium: whether or not you are drawn to it is a matter of taste. In a similar way that film, sculpture, or poetry may or may not be something that particularly engages you, comics sort of is or isn’t. And that’s fine. Inherent in that idea, though, is the supposition that comics is an art form in its own right, a medium deserving of the same respect as any other form of art or literature. And, as with other mediums, even if it isn’t to your taste, learning an appreciation for the art form is culturally important.

I, like many readers at their first exposure, just naturally grasped the way in which the stories and artwork flowed. I was far too young to articulate any sort of theory about usage of line, color, or pacing, but it worked. The stories captivated me, enchanting my imagination with a concept of good vs. evil that would later inform not only my entertainment choices, but my theology and worldview at a very practical level. Comics, especially superheroes, are something about which I’ve been passionate ever since.

That’s why I’m sort of surprised that I didn’t know that this book existed until recently. Understanding Comics was written as I graduated high school. Certainly, there are parts of the book that feel dated now. However, this is an absolutely essential read for putting into serious language why this art form works so well for so many of us. Central to this is that McCloud insists from page 1 that comics is to be taken seriously as an artistic medium. There is no room to conclude otherwise in his thesis, which is as it should be. He argues strongly for comics’ recognition as art, not just as pulp or “the funnies” as some see it, and does a great job of backing his assertions.

The beauty of this book is that it is written in the medium upon which it seeks to expound. That is, it’s essentially a nonfiction graphic novel, which I find to be ingenious for a couple of reasons. First, it immerses the reader into the art form. I don’t know of another art criticism text that does that (perhaps because other mediums can’t do it…?). Secondly, it uses the medium to illustrate the points. The beauty of comics, after all, is that literature and art intertwine, and the author’s choice here is a very practical application of that flexibility.

McCloud begins by defining a vocabulary for comics, and moves into discussions about the use of line, color, and how the artwork interacts with the language. This is a deceptively academic treatment of the subject, as he spends a significant amount of time working through a language development theory, with the written word as an ultimate abstraction of iconography. This works by example to prove the author’s point on legitimacy of the art form, as well: the very language used is painting the picture…quite literally…for us, drawing the reader in to inhabit the points being presented. That’s what makes comics such a powerful medium, in my opinion…and in the author’s…the direct interaction with the reader on so many different levels, an interaction that I would consider unparalleled in any medium other than theatre.

McCloud spends a chapter discussing how line enhances the mood of the story, replete with examples of lines illustrating anger, peace, anxiety. He walks through a fascinating history of how line work has developed through the history of art in general, and specifically in comics from artists in different geographical areas and cultures.

My favorite chapter, I think, is devoted to the gutter. The gutter is unique to comics: the space between panels in the layout of the page. Things happen in the gutter that require the reader to fill in with their imagination. Time passes in the gutter. McCloud argues that the physical space of the gutter is used in the same way as time is used in film. Examples of how panel layouts further stories are presented in fascinating detail.

I think that my one criticism of the book is that McCloud’s definition of art is far too expansive for my taste. He spends time unpacking a theory of what makes art, but backs himself into a trap composed of overly broad brush-strokes. Essentially, anyone doing anything for a purpose of understanding something is doing art. He also defines a process through which art is made that succumbs to the fault of many academic texts on the arts: a rigid definition of process for a creative instinct that defies process almost by definition.

Nobody is perfect.

Recent film successes and a pandemic have drawn new fans to comics. People are discovering the medium in earnest who have never been interested before. Those who are engaging comics for the first time will be curious, and will benefit a great deal from McCloud’s work. Those of who have loved comics for most of our lives will also…I have already found myself drawing greater understanding and appreciation from my weekly pulls having finished his work, and am re-reading some classics through a new lens.

In short, if comics interests you at all, I strongly recommend Understanding Comics as a read that will be well worth your time.

Success in Education

The first time that someone asked me if I wanted to go to college, I was in middle school. That someone was a teacher. I thought for a moment and answered “yes,” then went home that afternoon and told my parents. I remember them taking a bit of a deep breath, and then encouraging me. No one that I knew in my family at the time had graduated from college.

I went to bed that night and thought nothing else of it until somewhere around my sophomore year in high school, when things like advanced placement and honors classes began. Then the adventure was underway.

As I said in a recent podcast episode, I’m a case study in not knowing what you want to be when you grow up. My freshman year in college I was a music major. Then I dropped out altogether for a semester and went back to a different school as a communications major, eventually declaring theatre as a second major, and graduating with a psychology minor. Then I went to grad school for religious studies, and ended up working as a programmer, and eventually a manager of programmers. So, my higher education was a circuitous route through the humanities that eventually ended up with the acquisition of some hard technical skills much later (and which, incidentally, I acquired at an arts school). The thing is, though, that I could never have gotten where I’ve been professionally without that humanities education. The things that I learned in communication studies (being required, for example, to take two courses in listening), the things that I learned in theatre as a director, the leadership theory that I learned in grad school….have all served as a foundation beneath the technical skills that I’ve acquired later. Without them, I couldn’t have made sense of where in the world those technical skills fit in, to say nothing of being able to relate and communicate with the people (much smarter than I) that I lead every day.

Which sort of brings me to my point.

I read this column a few days ago about the most regretted and lowest paying degrees. As you might guess, the data that this report cites indicates that most people surveyed regret degrees in the humanities, because, as a rule, they pay less. I think the data is likely skewed, as the purpose of the column is clearly to focus on “return on investment,” approaching higher education as a business proposition. I’m not without sympathy to that, given the cost of a university degree. I believe, though, that we’re doing ourselves a dis-service to let the conversation end there.

If you read to the end of the column, you’ll see two words that really summarize the issue for me: “critical thinking.” The author reports, to his credit, opinions from “humanities specialists” that degrees in the humanities foster the critical thinking skills necessary to adapt to a wide variety of vocations, instead of being narrowly focused on a single field.

I can say without hesitation that the critical thinking skills that I learned in my humanities education, both undergrad and graduate, have been more important in my life than the technical skills that comprised a small sliver of my education. I can also say without hesitation that I would not grasp the technical skills at as meaningful a level without those critical thinking skills.

I also think that it only takes a casual look around our everyday lives, even a cursory glance at the headlines or a social media feed, to see a void of critical thinking skills. I would argue that the rampant conspiracy theories and hatred we feel toward each other as our nation collapses in on itself is the direct result of a lack of critical thinking skills. This deficiency, in turn, is the result of education being treated as a business model, in which the prioritized outcome of a degree is the income that it will allow you to earn. Higher education, however, is so much more than that. The academy is where people learn who they are, what their views on art, on religion, on politics, on relationships, on…everything…are. Without those fundamental belief structures in place, we’re just doing things. Rushing but getting nowhere. We’re just busy. We’re just making stuff up as we go.

Make stuff, earn money, repeat.

The end result is using those technical skills to make things without stopping to consider whether or not we should. Not all progress is progress. If we use income as our only barometer for success, and if that continues to lead to a decline in studying the humanities, our collective humanity may well be a casualty.

Toward Not Raging Against the Machine

I was introduced to the band Rage Against the Machine by a co-worker with whom I shared an office many, many years ago. They weren’t my kind of music, but I recognized why she would be into them. She was angry, and had reason to be. I remember thinking that there was much against which she felt rage.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about culture wars, although that’s become a bit of a cliche term. I imagine that you have, as well, because it’s sort of difficult not to. The one constant that I seem to find around me, from extended family conversations to (anti)-social media, to interactions with colleagues, is that everyone is angry. And, like my co-worker from so many years ago, they have reason to be. A lot of people have died over the last two years. A virus revealed just how much we all seem to only care about ourselves. Politics have thrown any sort of economic stability into question. An autocrat has launched a war of attrition.

Perhaps I’m guilty of rose-colored glasses, but when I was in seminary I spent a lot of time thinking that these are the sorts of events…and confluences of events…into the occasions of which the Church should rise. Regardless of denomination or disagreement in minutiae, we are presented with an opportunity to care for the sick, the bereaved, the wounded. Instead, we seem to be doing what everyone else is doing: screaming louder than the next person in order to be heard, defining ourselves by what we stand against instead of what we stand for, trying to force others into our mindset, and refusing to interact with them if they do not comply.

The Church is currently just as, and likely more, guilty than anyone else of not exercising basic common sense, not taking time to analyze statements to determine if they are truth or lies. Many in the Church have chosen allegiance to leaders over allegiance to God, channeling rage instead of attempting to walk in the light.

Instead of choosing to be confrontational, instead of fighting culture wars, the Church needs to choose a much more basic, yet profound, way of existing. A Biblical way of existing that’s explicitly laid out for us:

“He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?”
Micah 6:8, NKJV

I’m thinking through this because I’m just as guilty as anyone else of anger. I too find myself raging: against the loss of what could have been, against a broken system, against all of things at which one can be angry. I’m just as guilty of letting that rage drive my decisions, and poison my interactions.

If I were to spend more time acting justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, how would that impact those around me?

What if all of the Church were to do this?

Imagine how much better this could be.