When I first moved to town, back when I worked as an intern at a publishing company, the writers and suits are the place talked about this great golf trip they took every year to Colorado - to a place they called “Useless Park.” They did some writing, some mingling and lots of swinging at a little white ball. And they loved it.
I had no idea what Useless Park was or why it was so...useless. Was that a gripe or a compliment? Hard to tell among jaded music professionals sometimes. There’s a fine line between cynical and thankful sometimes.
But now I’m here and about to discover for myself what this place is all about. Turns out it’s actually called “Estes Park” and it’s a gathering of independent artists and professional musicians of all “Christian” genres coming together to learn and refresh and take in the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.
There are two views of the Gospel Music Association’s Music In The Rockies conference held here every year: 1.It’s an essential and life changing conference for anyone in pursuit of a “Christian” record deal. 2.It’s a waste of a lot of money for the independent artists it claims to benefit and is instead created as PR for the industry and recreation for it’s professionals.
I’ll weigh in with my two cents of course after I experience it for myself and do my best to make my participation in it meaningful for me and those in attendance.
Even if Estes really does turn out to be useless, at the very least I got to wake up in a corridor of America whose skyline is interrupted by snowcapped and tree dotted mountain peaks instead of steel and concrete creations of man. As artists it’s fitting and humbling to come together at God’s footstool, in the middle of his masterpieces, naked and unadorned by our doodlings and rendering of Him. Here it’s hard not to feel small. And that’s good for us big rock stars every now and then.
My parents weren’t into music, ever. Don’t ask me what my musical influences were growing up. There weren’t any.
My dad had a couple of Kingston Trio records, my mom an Elvis greatest hits collection, and at a garage sale once I bought a Buddy Holly record. I liked his glasses. Other than that there was no music in our house.
But early in the morning, while getting dressed for school, or late at night, always at the lowest volume possible, I hovered over the plastic record player beside my bed and listened intently to Bill Cosby and Robin Williams. Not the best staple for a developing mind but it got me through childhood and adolescence.
It made me the class clown and became my tool of choice for forging nervousness and self-loathing into approval from my peers and teachers. It taught me how to perform, how to time a joke and milk the ordinary for extraordinary, if only temporary, happiness. Laughing thrilled me like nothing else as a kid and I’ve always enjoyed infecting others with the same pleasure.
It must have been odd, to say the least, for my parents to watch their eight year-old recite an entire monologue from a comedy record, deleting the bad words along the way of course. Odder still for them to see me telling jokes of my own to crowds more than twenty years later who buy my “records.” Odd to them but a dream come true for me.
Becky and I both love comedy, clean comedy, which is hard to find. Well, it’s hard to find any that’s still funny. Rarer still is smart comedy. Let’s be honest, these are the days of the catch phrase, the “gitter dones” and “you might be a rednecks” are as ample as mindless feel good cliches on Christian radio and lowbrow brawls on daytime talk shows. Everyone’s dumbing down and piling up the money as a result.
I guess that’s one reason I loved Seinfeld when he first filled my TV screen. In a time of Chris Rock raunchiness and dozens of imitators Seinfeld was original in his refusal to stoop for applause. Truly funny intelligent people, I’ve always thought, don’t need to use “shit” instead of a pronoun. And Seinfeld doesn’t. Instead, I’ve watched amazed as this ordinary guy takes situations from my ordinary life and makes them extraordinarily hilarious in unpredictable ways.
So tonight, because comedy is a shared love of ours, and because Seinfeld is one of the best American comedians ever, we went to see Jerry at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville. We bought some of the last seats available, way up high and off to one side. He looked tiny but the whit was as massive as ever. And his new material is even easier for us to relate to now that he’s married with kids.
I didn’t stop laughing all night. I actually slapped my knee. What a great way for becky and I to celebrate eight years of great times together: smiling.
And I’m so thankful now that my earliest influences weren’t serious rock stars but people like me who poke fun at themselves and remind us all that life is filled with punchlines and reasons to grin. We just have to notice them. Thank you Mr. Seinfeld for helping us do that tonight.
Lighten up.
Got thoughts? Post a comment below or discuss on my message-board.
While MAC users only make up a single digit percentage of all computer owners nationwide, SHLOGGERS apparently have better than average taste. 20% of you use the MAC OS to SHLOG each day. That makes me happy inside.
Go ahead. Each one reach one. Take the hand of the person next to you and walk with them as they turn from their XP past to a new life with APPLE. Every head bowed and every eye closed as Bono sings…
I see that hand. We’re waiting on you…
I never finished an assigned book in school. I never read fiction and I almost never finish non-fiction that I begin. But magazines for some reason, odd ones picked up from airport news stands or on a visit to Barnes and Noble, always get read, underlined and saved. I’m through one before my Ritalin wears off. There’s an entire box of them in my closet, hidden away like treasures, each one containing some gleaming nugget of wisdom or humor or Cliff Claven quality trivia I found fascinating or hopeful once upon a time.
I subscribe to WIRED and ROLLING STONE (don’t recommend it) but often buy BILLBOARD and PASTE when I see them. Then there’s Q, RISEN and a zillion other rarities I buy into a handful of times a year if I’m lucky enough to stumble onto them. Lastly there’s the magazines I only buy once on a whim just to see what they’re all about. These are usually on topics I know nothing about or magazines I know don’t represent my view of the world at all. They’re a glimpse inside a universe far different from mine, sometimes even opposed to mine, and I often find myself learning as I think critically through their sentences - approving, questioning, pondering and sometimes crinkling them angrily in the process.
Here’s today’s example: an article in ODE, a zine that claims to be “international” and “pro-fourth world”. I picked it up in a whole food store check-out line. Amid the ads for self-healing workshops and “socially responsible” investment advice I stumbled upon a thought inspiring gem about the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh and it’s founder Muhammad Yunus, the inventor of the micro-loan that is helping curtail poverty in the poorest of nations. His words are worth ruminating over, especially for those of us charged with living a more others-centric life as followers of a Christ who turned everything in his culture’s value system upside down:
“The economics textbooks are ripe for revision. Then we can also rectify the misconception that a company is not always just a way to make money and a businessperson is not always someone who wants to maximize profits. Companies can also have another goal: to serve a societal purpose. The Grameen Bank is one such example, there are more and we need many more. We need companies whose first priority is striving towards a good aim. We need business people who are not driven by money but by their desire to contribute to society.”
“They’re out there you say? Of course, you mean those with a sense of corporate social responsibility. But tell me, how can you focus on corporate social responsibility if your primary aim is to turn a profit? The two don’t mix. I can understand that a business person would want to make a donation to the tsunami victims. You give money to a fund that helps sick children and you hang nice, framed documents in your office so that everyone can see the good things you do. But let me ask this question: why isn’t your company as a whole aimed at furthering a good cause?”
“Mind you, I’m not talking about charitable institutions, social or non-governmental organizations-they cannot, for instance, go to the bank for a loan and are dependent on subsidies and donations. I’m talking about a new sector: companies that don’t want to make a loss, so they can continue to do business that contributes to the community as a whole. There aren’t many like that because the private sector has been wrongly labeled as a group of merciless profit makers.”
Now that’s inspiration and radical rethinking I didn’t expect to take home when I went out for Soy milk and dried fruit. That’s more challenging and has me in greater dialogue with God than anything I’ve picked up from a Christian bookstore or a sermon in a long long time. Maybe we Christians should sell trail mix and leave the fight against selfish ambition and the rescue of the least of these to the pagans at the whole food market. I feel out zealed and out imagined. How about you?
Read the entire Muhammad Yunus article on-line here.
Got thoughts? Post a comment below or discuss on my message-board.
