The Search

Every Fourth of July I get a little nostalgic. I also get patriotic, but mostly it’s just nostalgic. Can you relate? I think most of us can. This grand holiday is at once a momentous celebration of American independence, a celebration of American history and culture, but also a day of memories. In fact I’d say that more than 50% of my day this Fourth of July will be spent thinking fondly back to the various Independence Days of my youth, and this is not in the least a sad or pathetic thing.

I’ll be thinking back to the summers in Oklahoma when the neighborhood kids would get together and set off fireworks on someone’s driveway, when we’d prance around under the humid summer moon, sparkler in one hand and melting popsicle in the other.

Or I might recall the various summers I spent at Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Colorado, when the whole family was there, eating homemade vanilla ice cream and apple pie, waiting for me and my cousins to perform Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to Be An American” (complete with hand motions!).

Then there was the Fourth of July my family and I spent in San Francisco, watching fireworks explode over the Golden Gate bridge, or the year I was in Boston, watching fireworks on the banks of the Charles River, Boston Pops playing in the background. Or the insanely hot Fourth of July my family and I spent in New York City, watching an afternoon ballgame at Yankees Stadium, baking in the upper deck as peanuts and hot dogs and beer sizzled in the July heat.

And I remember one time, the summer after the Persian Gulf War (I think it was 1991), we neighborhood kids in Broken Arrow (Oklahoma) marveled as a local war veteran shot off some special “scud missile” firework. That was such a quick, clean, wonderful war. It was one we could name fireworks for.

I’m not sure Fourth of Julys are ever really about patriotism, at least not as much as they are about family, and the glory of summer, and the making of memories. And perhaps above all it is a holiday about time… It’s a day that celebrates America’s past, which is a rarity for a country that so thrills in the future. But it’s also a day that lets us stop what we’re doing and sink into the present, losing ourselves in the mesmerizing flashes in the sky, the Sousa marches, the barbecues.

It’s a day that captures what is ineffably American, and it has nothing to do with trite slogans (“United We Stand!”) or Gap flag shirts. It has much more to do with the sorts of complexities pointed out by people like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who described in The Great Gatsby how the “fresh, green breast of the new world … pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the first time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

It has to do with Melville’s whale, or Hawthorne’s letter “A,” or Bob Dylan’s harmonica. It is crystallized in Citizen Kane’s Rosebud sled, or the moment in Badlands when Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen dance in the cold prairie darkness to Nat King Cole’s “A Blossom Fell.”

It has to do with loss, and grace, and all that is good and bad about man’s ambition in the world. And perhaps Jack Kerouac captures it most clearly in his drug-addled prose in On the Road:

“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old…”

I’m not really sure what any of this means, just like I’m not really sure what America means—especially these days. But I do know that things don’t have to be crystal clear or black and white (or red, white and blue) in order to be beautiful. We can and should be thankful for this country, for our place in it, even if we don’t always understand it.

It seems that everyday there is a new story in the news about how evangelical Christians are “up for grabs” in this year’s election. On Sunday there was this article on CNN.com about Shane Claiborne’s “Jesus For President” tour, in which the dreadlocked neo-monk said, “With the respectability and the power of the church comes the temptation to prostitute our identity for every political agenda.” Well said.

Then on Tuesday there was a story about Obama “reaching out” to evangelicals–a story that featured quotes from who else but Emergent guru Brian McLaren, who claimed that “there’s a very, very sizable percentage — I think between a third and half — of evangelicals, especially younger [evangelicals], who are very open to somebody with a new vision.” I wonder who he means?

Meanwhile McCain continues to all but ignore evangelicals, adding fuel to the “up for grabs” fire that is so eagerly announced by the mainstream press. He did muster a meeting with Billy Graham last weekend, which seemed more symbolic than anything. I love Billy Graham very much, but is the 89-year-old really the best person McCain should tap to get some evangelical momentum on his side? While McCain continues to cater to the over-80 set, Obama is busy inspiring the formation of young Christian political action committees, like the Matthew 25 Network.

But is anyone else a little weary of all this “seeking the evangelical vote” spiritual gerrymandering? Obama plays his evangelical card with characteristic finesse, but ten years ago would he be caught dead with the e-word label? I doubt it. And McCain… well at least he isn’t trying to pretend he is or ever was a card-carrying evangelical. He straight-up flaunts his ambivalence to the Dobsons of the world… and that earns him more than a little respect in my book. He’s not trying to be someone he isn’t.

I’m not saying Obama is lying through his teeth; I honestly do think he is sincere in his Christian faith. But in the terms with which evangelicals historically define themselves, Obama clearly does not fit the bill. And that is fine. Christians: it IS okay to vote for someone who is not exactly like you! We should be voting on the issues and qualifications of the candidates, not their church-going practices.

I guess I’m just fatigued by the whole idea that I—as an evangelical—am part of some monolithic group that will sway the election. Am I not free to vote for the person I think will be a better president for us? Do I really have to be “courted” and convinced by the candidates that my Christian point of view will be reinforced by them as president? That’s what happened when George W. Bush ran for president in 2000. And did everything become Christian and wonderful in America? Far from it.

I saw a fascinating, wonderfully made documentary film this weekend at the L.A. Film Festival. Called Mechanical Love, this film is directed by Danish filmmaker Phie Ambo and examines the interrelationship between robots and humans.

A lot of the film takes place in Japan, where most robots are researched and developed. A main character in the film is Hiroshi Ishiguro, a Japanese professor trying to build a robot that looks just like him. His research concerns are less about making a functional robot as with creating a “substitute human” who can fulfill the social and emotional needs of an interpersonal dynamic. His robot (which does look creepily like him) can talk and move, but only as an extension of himself—controlled remotely by Ishiguro at a computer. He dreams of the day when robots can live and work on our behalf—like a clone, providing the illusion of our presence even when we are absent.

But are we really, seriously thinking something mechanical could ever compensate for a human touch, a human love? The people in this documentary seem to think so. Some of the most compelling scenes in the film focus on how “therapeutic robots” can be used in places like nursing homes to provide companionship to the lonely elderly. Frau Körner, a nursing home resident in Germany, owns a pet Paro, a Japanese-made mechanical baby seal. She quickly comes to love this robo-pet, which responds to voices and touch. Frau Körner has few human friends in the nursing home and her family rarely visits her, so naturally she is thrilled to have this “pet” to love and be loved by.

Mechanical Love is a hilarious film (and who else but Jack Black was in the audience with me, laughing away), but it’s also quite creepy and profoundly sad. Is this where we are as a human civilization—that we are so sick of each other that we’d prefer mechanical love?

It strikes me as interesting that this very weekend, the biggest movie in the country was also about mechanical love: Wall E. Here’s another film that takes a future of sentient artificial intelligence for granted. Is there something in our collective consciousness that is just tiring of human interaction so much that robots (loving each other, loving us, and saving everyone from their own self-induced apocalypse) are becoming our only hope?

Perhaps this is just an outgrowth of the ongoing android trend in culture: humans becoming more machine-like and vice versa. Our technologies have always been extensions of our person, but never more so than now (am I really “me” without my computer? Without my cell phone?). Just look at what I’m doing now: expressing myself via a blog. I could be talking to you (well, maybe) in person, being truly present, sharing my opinions. But it feels just as appropriate (or more appropriate) to do it remotely, using a technological intermediary to evoke my sonzai-kan (the Japanese word that Ishiguro uses to describe the uncanny sense of presence he hopes his robot-clone will provide to those it interacts with). Maybe one day I can be digitally or robotically as real as I am humanly. There are already times when it feels that way.

We are officially halfway through 2008, and since I just can’t wait until December to highlight some of the year’s best films, I’m going to go ahead and list my top FIVE of the half year. Of course, as we all know, this is notoriously the lesser half of cinema’s calendar year, but there are always a couple gems. Here are the best of what I saw.

5) U23D – For as simple a concept as this is, U23D turns out to be a rather magnificent film. It’s just a concert film, in 3D, on a huge screen. But when the concert is U2, and the setting is some monstrous Latin American soccer stadium, the results are stunning. I hope these immersing experience films are the future of cinema.

4) Mister Lonely – This is a very odd film, but there’s something very touching and true about it. Something about watching a bunch of sad, lonely people dressed up like their favorite celebrities and performing their lives as if they were icons is very appropriate to the fame-obsessed culture we live in today. Plus the film (which stars Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, and Werner Herzog) is just beautifully made. It’s Harmony Korine’s most polished, coherent (if you can call it that) work yet.

3) Wall E – Pixar has just about the best track record of any film company, and Wall E is just about the best thing they’ve ever done (just about). It’s a thing of beauty—a true artist’s picture that is both entertaining, provocative, subtle, sad, and joyful. It reminded me of A.I. a little bit, which is a very good thing.

2) Flight of the Red Balloon – This film from director Hou Hsaio-Hsien is an abstract meditation on childhood innocence, art, and all things bright and beautiful in the everyday. It’s also an homage to Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 classic short, The Red Balloon. The film captures so much truth in its images, and Juliette Binoche offers one of the year’s early standouts. I can’t wait to buy it on DVD and slip into its simple, quiet, elegant world once more.

1) Paranoid Park – I wrote on March 6th that Gus Van Sant’s Paranoid Park “is one of those films that jolts awake my deep love of cinema,” and that it was “without question the best film of 2008 thus far.” I stand by that statement now. This is a film of such daring cinematic bravado, such nuanced observation of human interiority, such organic beauty… It’ll be one I buy on DVD and watch multiple times a year, like a Terrence Malick film or something.

During the L.A. Film Festival this year, I was first introduced to the Youtube Screening Room, an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films. The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. Right now the four featured films include Miguel Arteta’s hilarious short, Are You the Favorite Person of Anyone? (starring Miranda July, John C. Reilly, and Mike White), Oscar-winner The Danish Poet (2007 best animated short), Oscar nominee Our Time is Up (starring a fantastic Kevin Pollack), and Love and War (“the world’s first animated opera”). I recommend viewing them all.

This new YouTube venture is terribly exciting, and has the potential to revolutionize the regretfully ghettoized short film form. Previously, short films have been largely relegated to life on the festival circuit, but with the Internet (and especially something like YouTube Screening Room), perhaps the short film will enjoy a popular renaissance.

More importantly, this will further democratize (possibly) the entry points to the film industry. Intrepid young filmmakers who score a featured spot on the site (and user-submitted videos will in fact be a part of it) and garner a million or so views will likely become attractive properties for bigger and better things in Hollywood. The Screening Room also provides a potential moneymaking venture for erstwhile unemployed aspiring filmmakers. Videos on the site will be eligible for YouTube’s revenue-sharing program, whereby filmmakers split some of the income from the advertising that accompanies their movies.

Finally, I think that if this is a successful venture, it indicates that the future of all art cinema will in the not-too-distant future be distributed first and foremost on the Internet. Blockbusters and event movies will always (well, for a while at least) be outside-the-home experiences, but art films will increasingly be seen via Netflix, HDNet, or the Internet. After all, not every city is like L.A.: most people in the world don’t have film festivals and 12-screen arthouse multiplexes to go to if they want to see obscure films.

It has become fashionable of late for progressive-minded Christians to distance themselves from Constantine. Constantine, if you recall, was the Roman Emperor who in the fourth century first adopted Christianity (which had been criminalized under his predecessor, Diocletian) and made it the empire’s official religion. In a short time, Christianity was transformed from a marginal “rebel” religion that was constantly persecuted to a state-sanctioned, protected entity that became fused with the governing authorities. It was at this moment that the church-state relationship was born. It was the first time when Christians wielded power in the culture, and they would never again relinquish it.

Today, however, many Christians are seeking to shed the Constantinian cloak of power once and for all. After the Crusades, slavery, imperialism, and other such bad side effects of institutionalized, power-wielding Christianity, many Christians are hoping to return to a place of humility rather than power, quiet love rather than public force.

The recent Evangelical Manifesto, for example, has an entire section called “The way of Jesus, not Constantine,” in which the writers firmly situate their hope for evangelicalism outside the state-sanctioned, power-wielding tradition of Rome:

“We utterly deplore the dangerous alliance between church and state, and the oppression that was its dark fruit. We Evangelicals trace our heritage, not to Constantine, but to the very different stance of Jesus of Nazareth. While some of us are pacifists and others are advocates of just war, we all believe that Jesus’ Good News of justice for the whole world was promoted, not by a conqueror’s power and sword, but by a suffering servant emptied of power and ready to die for the ends he came to achieve.”

The thought here is that Christianity was never meant to be a powerful political force, and certainly not a violent one. It is often pointed out that Christianity thrives the most when it is underground and persecuted by culture, not when it runs the culture. Look at the world today: Christianity is on fire in places like China (where it is outlawed), while it is dying out in places like the U.S. and especially Europe, where it institutionalized and entrenched and, well, easy.

Is Christianity better as an underdog? Kierkegaard certainly thought so. In his Training in Christianity writings, the fiery Danish philosopher (a radical Protestant) argues that Christianity has been “done away with” by Christendom—“for it has become an easy thing, a superficial something that neither wounds nor heals profoundly enough.” He writes that Christendom has popularized Christianity and garnered many followers (because “people are only too eager to take part when there is nothing whatever to do but to triumph and join the parade”), but has lost the essential qualities of what he called “contemporaneousness with Christ.” For Kierkegaard, true Christianity requires a suffering and experience of offense that clearly separates followers of Christ (the Suffering Servant) from worldly pursuits. In established Christendom, he writes, “one becomes a Christian in the merriest possible way, without in the least becoming aware of the possibility of the offense.”

Clearly there is precedent for faulting Constantine (and the development of Christendom) for the failures of the church today. And I admit to sympathizing with these thoughts quite a bit. I do think that Christianity is better fit as an underdog movement rather than top dog institution, but part of me wonders: was Constantine really that bad for Christianity? Might he have been used by God—purposefully—to further His church on earth?

If we believe that God orchestrates history and has everything under control (and I, for one, believe this), don’t we have to see Constantine and his impact on Christianity as being God-ordained? Let’s think about the good things Constantine and the birth of Christendom did for Christianity. First of all, Constantine was the one who convened the pivotal Council of Nicea in 325, the first attempt at theological consensus and the birth of, among other things, the doctrine of the trinity, the holiday of Easter, and a concise articulation of Christian beliefs in the Nicene Creed. Without the precedent set by Nicea (which would likely not have happened without Constantine), Christian unity would have been long-delayed or otherwise impossible. And unity is crucial to Christian history.

Furthermore, perhaps we can look at the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire as the event God used to really get His church disseminated throughout the world. Would Christianity have spread as fast and as far had it stayed underground? We’ll never know. But once Constantine sanctioned and protected it, Christianity was allowed to thrive and grow like never before. It also added a legitimacy to Christianity: the Roman Emperor breaking with tradition to adopt this upstart religion? People undoubtedly considered Christianity in a new light after this.

But I don’t want to offer an apologetic for Constantine, or Constantine-esque Christianity. I only want to suggest that before we go rushing to cut ourselves off from what we (and most secular people) perceive as a pretty suspicious institutional past, we should consider that 1) despite everything, the church is still thriving on earth; and 2) If you were Constantine and you discovered this amazing new way of thinking, wouldn’t you also want to us all your power to strengthen and spread it?

It’s easy for us in the comfy Christianized 21st century to scoff at Constantine, but I wonder: would we prefer that he had been as tenuous and apathetic about spreading Christianity then as we are now?

It’s stifling hot in L.A., gas prices are surpassing $5/gallon, and the L.A. Film Festival is going on down the block in Westwood Village. This can only mean one thing: Summer is here!

In honor of this wonderful, extreme season, I’ve put together my annual summer music mix (I actually make several of these, to help pass the time in my new hour-plus commute). This year’s mix—comprised entirely of songs released within the last several months—is heavily electronic, 80s-nostalgic, more happy than morose, and a guaranteed good time.

Thanks to iTunes (and I promise they are not paying me to say this), you can locate and download these songs ala carte, with ridiculous ease. Hooray digital capitalism! Anyway, here’s the playlist. My soundtrack to the summer of ’08.

Coldplay, “Strawberry Swing” – Arguably the best overall song on Coldplay’s new album, this track—with its cheery rhythms and sunny guitar riffs—waxes nostalgic about blue skies, swings, and young love.

The Radio Dept., “Freddie and the Trojan Horse” – Sweden’s new-wave shoegazer outfit presents the perfect summer song from their wonderful new EP. It’s sweet like a popsicle.

Mates of State, “Help Help” – This bouncy, synth-bass-heavy pop gem from the husband/wife duo known as Mates of State is the best song off of their recent album, Re-arrange Us. You’ll love it, I promise.

Weezer, “The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived” – This song is a goofy good time. Borrowing a melody from a familiar Shaker hymn, Rivers Cuomo throws down a rock-opera of a pop song that features about a dozen kitschy mutations of its catchy chorus. Lots of fun.

M83, “Graveyard Girl” – If you haven’t heard the new album from French electronica geniuses M83, I highly recommend you check it out. The new single, “Graveyard Girl,” is a blissful shoegazer anthem with a hilarious video (see below).

Sigur Ros, “Festival” – My favorite song off their new album, this 9-minute opus builds from nothing to a grandiose climax that will doubtless shake the rafters in concert. Truly breathtaking.

The Notwist, “Good Lies” – The first track off this German electronic band’s new album is perfectly joyful, even in it’s solemnity.

Cut / Copy, “Hearts on Fire” – Listen to this song and you’d think you were listening to New Order or something else from the dancefloor 80s. But no, this is 2008 music from Australia. And it’s super cool.

Vampire Weekend, “Mansard Roof” – The Afro-pop hipsters from NYC may be a little overrated, but their bouncy tunes, like “Mansard Roof,” are absolutely perfect for summer. Check out the summery vid:

Wolf Parade, “California Dreamer” – What’s a summer mix without a song about California? This new Wolf Parade song (from their just-released, At Mount Zoomer) is an epic anthem that alternates between delicate balladry and headstrong rock energy.

The National, “You’ve Done it Again, Virginia” – Every summer mix needs a few somber entries, and The National is always good for that. This new song from their recent Virginia EP features more luxuriant Sufjan piano and their usual “Gatsby with a cocktail” tragic elegance.

Cat Power, “Ramblin’ (Wo)Man” – This song from her recent Jukebox album is a sweetly feminine riff on Hank Williams’ song, “Ramblin’ Man.” A jazzy, sexy song for humid summer nights.

Ladytron, “Ghosts” – Britain’s favorite electro-goth-pop band’s new album, Velocifero, is fantastic. And this song is the first breezily haunting single. See below for the trippy video:

Matt Wertz, “5:19” – This first single from Matt’s upcoming album, Under Summer Sun (to be released in August) is a lovely acoustic number with hyper-melodic hooks, perfect for summer love and heartbreak.

Fleet Foxes, “Ragged Wood” – One of the best discoveries of 2008, Seattle’s Fleet Foxes offer Beach Boys-esque harmonies with Appalachian and Irish traditional ancestry. It’s gorgeous, and the formidable “Ragged Wood” is a perfectly sweet/somber track to sample.

Nine Inch Nails, “Discipline” – For something edgier, try this fantastic new single from NIN’s The Slip—the album Trent Reznor gave away for free online this spring.

Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” – This 8 minute song is slow to build and mostly instrumental, but there is something quite dreamy about it. Its travelogue video is a perfect accompaniment to those of us traveling abroad this summer:

Okay, so that may be an overstatement, but for me, this is HUGE:

Terrence Malick’s long-awaited director’s cut of The New World is coming out on DVD October 14!!!

Reportedly the film is 30 minutes longer and hand-crafted by Malick himself. This is 15 minutes longer than the forever-lost version that was screened for critics in December 2005 (which I saw). In addition to offering Malick-philes a chance to see more heartbreakingly beautiful footage of what is arguably his most stunning film, the DVD will include a ten-part “making-of” documentary. I wonder if recluse Malick will show himself in the behind-the-scenes footage? Doubtful.

Anyway, I just had to share this exciting news. Coupled with the knowledge that a new Malick film (Tree of Life) is just around the corner, this latest news more than compensates for the 8 year drought I suffered in between The Thin Red Line and The New World.

Have you heard of this latest “what is happening with our kids” shock story? Apparently 17 high school girls at Gloucester High in Massachusetts decided last fall to make an unusual pact: to all get pregnant and raise their babies together. They wanted to, ya know, throw baby showers and stuff. Sure enough, they pulled it off, roping in whatever willing males they could find (including a 24-year-old homeless man) to help with the project. The group/club/clique members are expecting their bevy of babies sometime this summer.

The story broke just days after it was announced that 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to her baby, and a few months after Juno became the hippest teen-preggers pic of all time. Obviously it has people wondering: has pop culture made teenage pregnancy the new “it” thing?

In the past, teenage girls who became pregnant while freshmen in high school viewed it as a life-altering tragedy. Not at Gloucester. Reportedly the girls high-fived each other when one of their pregnancy tests came back positive. School officials are baffled, wondering what went wrong with their sex-ed programs and generous contraceptive distribution. Unfortunately no amount of contraceptives will prevent this new reproductive trend: girls trying to get pregnant.

This story horrifies me, in the way the recent Abortion Girl story horrified me. In both cases, pregnancy—the most sacred and miraculous of all human phenomena—was turned into little more than a recreational activity, a game. For Abortion Girl it was a means to make a political/artistic statement: getting pregnant as many times as possible, so as to abort as many times as possible. With these Gloucester girls, getting pregnant was a social activity, like going to the mall or the prom—just something fun to do together.

Has creating a human life really been reduced to this? Call me crazy, but to bring a life—indeed, a soul—into the world (a world that has seen better days) seems to me a rather serious proposition. Yes I know it often happens on accident, but when it is planned should it not be planned with the utmost care and selfless love? Having a baby should not be like buying a new purse or getting a new haircut, and it certainly should not be an action taken out of desperate adolescent loneliness (it was suggested that the girls did this so they could receive some unconditional love).

Whatever the cause (and I don’t think it’s Juno), I’m pretty sure it doesn’t bode well for our society. God help us, and God help those poor little girls and their future children.

I wasn’t quite sure what I expected when I bought Coldplay’s new album earlier this week—I suppose I expected it to be a lot of patented sappy love songs and stadium anthems for the middle class preppies in the suburbs (I bought my copy in Starbucks, after all). But I have to say, this album shocked me—in a very good way. Is this really Coldplay? These songs are inventive—even progressive! They still have that ethereal “to the rafters” grandeur to them, but—amazingly—they are more restrained and nuanced than anything they have ever done.

From the gorgeous, electronic instrumental opening (“Life in Technicolor”) to the ghostly hidden coda track (“The Escapist”… aka part II of “Death and All His Friends”), this is an album of lush musical diversity and sonic subtleties. It’s exquisite. It’s not radio-friendly in the least (apart from the title track), but it may very well prove to be their most popular album. It’s certainly their best since Parachutes.

It’s also an album that—in some ways—represents what an album could (should?) be in this era of the death of the album. It is fitting that Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” song has been in all the iTunes ads this spring. This is an album for the iTunes age. With ala carte music consumption, music has re-oriented itself to songs over albums, randomized playlists over coherent LPs. Viva la Vida is an album in the sense that it is one collection of songs released together, but other than that it seems to be something altogether different. These songs have little to do with one another, and some sections of some of the songs have little to do with other sections.

Indeed, I wonder how we can categorize “songs” in the context of this album. Several tracks on Viva have more than one musical thought going on. Track 5 is the clearest example: “Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love” is a couplet of an upbeat rock number and a mournful electro-ballad, respectively. You might say the latter (which is my favorite song on the album) compliments the former, but I’m hard-pressed to see them as anything more than two completely separate emotional moments juxtaposed because, well, sometimes our moods change that fast.

Other songs on the album don’t even name their dual sections. Track 6, “Yes,” begins as an eastern-inspired minor chord anthem about sexual frustration (featuring Chris Martin singing in the lowest key he’s ever attempted) and then becomes a breezy shoegazer romp (apparently called “Chinese Sleep Chant,” but not advertised as such on the album cover). Same goes for the final track, “Death and All His Friends,” which ends on a rousing, rhythmically-daring note, only to be followed by the aforementioned fade-out song (“The Escapist,” also unadvertised). Many of these multi-section songs could easily have been split into separate tracks, but they weren’t. Why? It’s almost as if Coldplay is rewarding iTunes buyers by giving them two-for-one specials; or perhaps they are just showing how interesting an album of haphazard shifts and unpredictable turns can be.

The album feels totally incoherent, but in a coherent sort of way. It feels like an album of the 21st century, where our only frame of reference is, in fact, disjointedness. The album mimics our digitally fragmented lives, when everything is on shuffle and our attentions and cares and feelings are so interchangeable and fluid that sixty minutes of musical narrative (even five minutes of one song) have a hard time connecting with us. Indeed, Coldplay’s lyrics on this album are hardly narrative at all—just words and thoughts and random images, strewn together paratextually in the way our laptop screens bind together our images, emails, memories, interests, and connections. We are a windows world now; our interfaces are multifarious and rarely singularly focused. Sometimes we feel mournful (“Cemeteries of London”), sometimes joyful (“Strawberry Swing”), but hardly ever do we feel wholly one or the other. Coldplay’s album is the musical embodiment of this.

The title alone (Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends) shows how eclectic this album really is. The use of Spanish indicates the international feel of the music, and the nonsensical bonus title shows that the album is, well, anything you want it to be. Viva borrows bits and pieces of world music (Middle-eastern, North African, Latin American, etc) and borrows from a wild array of styles—everything from shoegazer to tribal organ to electronic minimalism. It’s pastiche of the highest order, and I absolutely love it.