The Spiritual Coldplay/Parachutes/Don’t Panic

The Spiritual Coldplay: A reading of Coldplay’s music from a spiritual perspective

[Be sure to check out my other Coldplay entries over in Top Posts]

Don’t Panic/Parachutes

Bones, sinking like stones,

All that we fought for,

Homes, places we’ve grown,

All of us are done for.

 

We live in a beautiful world,

Yeah we do, yeah we do,

We live in a beautiful world,

 

Bones, sinking like stones,

All that we fought for,

And homes, places we’ve gone,

All of us are done for.

 

We live in a beautiful world,

Yeah we do, yeah we do,

We live in a beautiful world.

 

Oh, all that I know,

There’s nothing here to run from,

And yeah, everybody here’s got somebody to lean on.

 

It wasn’t a hit single, and clocks in at only 2:17, so it might be easy to overlook “Don’t Panic,” the first track on Coldplay’s breakthrough Parachutes album. But let’s not gloss over this song. The first stanza alone evokes images of death (“Bones”), drowning (“Sinking like stones”), defeat (“All that we fought for” sinking with the bones), destruction (“homes, places we’ve grown”) and despair (“all of us are done for”).

 

What’s going on here? Remind me again why I shouldn’t panic?

All in all, it seems a pretty depressing start to Coldplay’s breakthrough album.

Hardship, suffering, oppression, injustice—all these things are not only obvious but inevitable. We live in a broken world.

 

BUT, that’s not the end of the story. Despite all this brokenness, “We live in a beautiful world.”

Do we really? “Yeah we do, yeah we do.”

Yes, it’s sung in minor key.

Yes, the brokenness isn’t going away, as those haunting echoing notes remind us. 

Yes, the “yeah we do, yeah we do” is sung as if he—or we—still need to be convinced.

But it’s still true. We live in a beautiful world. The message we are meant to walk away with is ultimately hopeful. Not trite, not Pollyanna-ish, not removed from reality—but hopeful. We DO live in a beautiful world, after all.

 

This song is really an expression—or confession—of faith. Faith that the world is beautiful, or will be beautiful one day, despite all appearances to the contrary. We don’t (yet) see where this beauty or this hope comes from. The object of this faith—and all faith has an object—is not yet clear. The only hint is that it is somehow connected to community, in relationship:  “everybody here’s got somebody to lean on.”

 

This song also tells us something about Coldplay, and hints at why their songs resonate so deeply with so many. While some bands might be afraid to place a song that begins so bleakly at the beginning of a (hoped-for) breakthrough album, Coldplay takes the bold step of making a statement. They have something to say, and they aren’t afraid to take risks to say it. And as we now know, that risk paid off, big time.

For Coldplay at least, the world was about to become even more beautiful.

 

Cell phone radiation levels?

The New York Times has an article today on levels of radiation emitted by cellphones, including lists of best and worst phones.

As I recently reported in my Well column last week, the data on cellphone safety is mixed, although a few recent international studies have suggested a link with three types of brain tumors. The Food and Drug Administration also says there’s not enough information to determine conclusively whether cellphones are safe or unsafe.

Gee, don’t you think it would have been a good idea to figure that out BEFORE equipping millions of people with cellphones, not to mention building huge RF-emitting towers in our backyards?

It seems people may be reawakening to this issue. As I’ve mentioned before here, some have called cellphones & wifi the biggest experiment in human history. Kind of scary!  

The NYT article links to a study and detailed ratings of cell phones over at CNET. Where does your phone fall? My phone, the staid LG VX5200 (pictured above), came in at a rather high 1.23 SAR (Specific Absorption Rate, as in how much radio frequency your body absorbs). Many phones (including the iPhone) are under 1. The FCC does not certify phones over 1.6. (Hmm, maybe I can leverage this with Jess to let me get a new phone!)

Yes, much of the fears are speculative at this point. But I’m concerned that this technology will continue to proliferate (WiMax anyone?), and only THEN will we figure out what it’s really doing to us. 

Hold on, I’ll have to finish this later, my phone is ringing…

An Interpretation of Coldplay’s Violet Hill

(For my reading of Viva La Vida, click here)

Violet Hill

It was a long and dark december

from the rooftops i remember

there was snow

white snow

clearly i remember

from the windows they were watching

while we froze down below

when the future’s architectured

by a carnival of idiots on show

you’d better lie low

if you love me

won’t you let me know?

It was a long and dark december

when the banks became cathedrals

and a Fox

became god

priests clutched onto Bibles

hollowed out to fit their rifles

and the Cross was held aloft

bury me in honor

when i’m dead and hit the ground

a love back home unfolds

if you love me

won’t you let me know?

i don’t want to be a soldier

with the captain of some sinking ship

with snow, far below

so if you love me

why’d you let me go?

i took my love down to violet hill

there we sat in snow

all that time she was silent still

so if you love me

won’t you let me know?

if you love me,

won’t you let me know?

This song, like Viva La Vida, is a protest song. But where Viva La Vida is written from the perspective of the pious-but-perplexed head of state (whether that be George W. Bush or an English king of old), this song is from the vantage point of the foot soldier. As such, it is less oblique than Vida, and about as preachy as Coldplay gets.

The song begins with snow, which is often a symbol of purity, in Scripture (eg, Psalm 51:7; Isaiah 1:18 ) and elsewhere in literature—perhaps indicating innocence and purity of heart in the soldier.

But it also indicates vulnerability. He’s freezing “down below” on the ground, in the cold of the snow (it is a “long and dark December,” after all), trying to make sense of his circumstances.

As the pulsing drumbeat kicks in, reminiscent of both armies marching and cannon fire, his position is contrasted with that of his leaders, who are up high in some edifice “architectured” (is that a word?) by the “carnival of idiots on show.” They are watching “from the windows” (and warmth and safety). This soldier is like one of the Revolutionary soldiers at Valley Forge, but without the benevolent George Washington leading him.

The bleak December continues as corruption politics makes its way into money and the media: The banks became cathedrals—in worship of the “almighty dollar.” Soldiers are being sent into battle not for peacemaking, but for money.

“The Fox became god”: Rolling Stone caught that this was a Fox News reference. Very clever, there Chris. (Thanks to the commenters below for catching it too!)

But TV is not the only propaganda tool. Again, (as we see in Viva la Vida) religion was employed in efforts to marshal support for military action: priests with Bibles in one hand and rifles in the other. The Cross was held aloft, as a banner to rally to, as a banner to lead into battle. This war is couched as a religious effort, a new Crusade. Despite the aforementioned unrighteous motives, public opinion is swayed by more righteous motives.

In the US, evangelical Christians have been seen as the “useful idiots” of the Republican party, whose hot-button issues have been co-opted by power brokers to further Right wing agendas. Bush won election, and especially re-election, with the support of this powerful voting bloc.

(Interestingly, unconditional evangelical support of Republican politics seems to be changing. The recently issued Evangelical Manifesto declared, among other things, that Christians ought not to fit comfortably into either political party, and called for a new style of political engagement. Also, voting habits of younger Christians reflect broader and different areas of concern, which in some cases make them more left-leaning).

Back to the soldier at the center of this song. He is conflicted about the conflict he finds himself in. He’s skeptical, even cynical, about the motives for this conflict, and doesn’t want to be a soldier on a sinking ship. But if he must fight, and likely go to his death, he wants to be buried in honor. He will serve with honor even if the conflict itself is not honorable.

While he clearly can’t control world events, he pleads for his love to at least let him know if she loves him. He would like to know this before he is buried with honor. This is a plaintive, heart-rending cry. As he stares death in the face, he repeats “If you love me/won’t you let me know” several times. It is his greatest wish, desire, and vulnerability. He feels powerless, and wonders what will happen to him.

In keeping with the “Death and All His Friends” theme of this album (which is shaping up to be more political, angry, and morbid than previous efforts), it seems that the Violet Hill in question may be this soldier’s cemetery plot, where flowers are laid on his burial mound. At this final resting place, he hopes his love will finally be requited by her presence, if not her words.

Why a violet hill? Perhaps we are meant to recall the Purple Heart, the award to those who have been wounded or killed in combat.

Some have suggested that the Violet Hill is a snow-covered hill stained with blood. This seems unlikely given that the song is called “Violet Hill,” not “Crimson Hill.”

It the end, this song protests unjust war by compassionately entering into the condition of the individual soldier. It is a caring expose of the pressures placed on soldiers in wartime. As recent media reports have noted, divorce rates and depression rates among US soldiers are sky high.

This song also demonstrates that this foot soldier is no faceless entity, a numbered dog tag attached to a “military asset,” but a human being with love and fear and questions. He isn’t as dumb or naïve as the carnival of idiots think he is—just vulnerable.

David Brooks on Maturity–Presidential and Otherwise

The always illuminating David Brooks had a terrific column over at the NYT on what constitutes maturity these days, and harkened back to Abraham Lincoln to demonstrate the evolution of the concept. Abraham Lincoln went through some dark, mercury-pill-induced days early in his life, apparently coming close to suicide in 1841. (I’ve read quite a few Lincoln books but didn’t know about this episode).

Brooks notes that it was the (Judeo-Christian) concepts of sin & depravity that shaped Lincoln’s self-understanding and ambition. His mastery of his inner demons during this season enabled him to walk down even darker passages as President, when he faced not only the losses of war, but the loss of his son.

Brooks then connects the dots to modern, competing definitions of maturity:

This concept of maturity as self-conquest didn’t survive long into the 20th century. Progressive educators emphasized students’ inner goodness and curiosity, not inner depravity. More emphasis was put on individual freedom, authenticity and values clarification. Self-discovery replaced self-mastery as the primary path to maturity, and we got a thousand novels and memoirs about young peoples’ search for identity. [eg, Catcher in the Rye and its derivatives]

In the last few years, we may be shifting toward another vision of maturity, one that is impatient with boomer narcissism. Young people today put service at the center of young adulthood. A child is served, but maturity means serving others.

And yet, though we’re never going back to the 19th-century, sin-centric character-building model, for breeding leaders, it has its uses. Over the past decades, we’ve seen president after president confident of his own talents but then undone by underappreciated flaws. It’s as if they get elected for their virtues and then get defined in office by the vices — Clinton’s narcissism, Bush’s intellectual insecurity — they’ve never really faced.

It would be nice to have a president who had gone to school on his own failings. It would be comforting to see a president who’d looked into the abyss, or suffered some sort of ordeal that put him on a first-name basis with his own gravest weaknesses, and who had found ways to combat them.

“Boomer narcissism”–Hillary’s non-concession speech last Tuesday, anyone?

Brooks’ analysis is right on. In recent years, a chorus of critics have cried that the Emperor of Self-Esteem has no clothes, that a generation of self-esteem education has not raised up happy, well-adjusted kids, but in fact the opposite. 

He is absolutely right in stating that young people–the ones concerned about maturity in the first place–identify service as the shape and context for maturity. 

But I appreciate Brooks’ recognition that the older, “sin-centric” approach (which, of course, is much older than the 19th century) has its uses. While it seems utilitarian to him, I’d say it “works” because it’s true. It’s paradoxical, but “the way up is down.”

The Christian tradition that Lincoln (and millions of others) was drawing on holds at its core this profoundly simple (and to many, offensive) Gospel (or “Good News”) message: that you and I are more sinful, depraved, messed up, and broken than we would ever want to admit, but Jesus Christ’s death on the Cross atoned for the sins we have committed and started the process of making all things right, and therefore we are more loved and valued and accepted than we could ever dream. 

In other words, strength, maturity, and freedom does not flow from our esteem of ourselves, but from God’s esteem of us. Too high self-esteem–as evidenced in too many world leaders, and countless individuals–can become destructive.

The Christian message is unique in that it deals with all-comers. Overweening pride, self-confidence and ambition? The Gospel humbles you by exposing the depth of your depravity. Overwhelming guilt, depression, and shame? The Gospel elevates you by exposing the depth of God’s love.  

While the self-esteem game can become one of seeking a murky balance–”love yourself, but not to the point you become arrogant or conceited.” The Gospel avoids this by getting your focus off of yourself. The goal is not to somehow love and hate yourself in the right proportions, but to love God and receive his love. From this foundation come true identity and freedom. 

The Gospel meets you where you are at. It gets you out of the 2-dimensional sliding along the continuum, into a new dimension. It’s not your voice–or other human voices. Its a voice “from above,” the 3rd dimension. How do we get there? The way up is down. 

Back from Vacation

We had a great time in the OC (Ocean City, NJ) last week. Some great weather, time on the beach, bike riding, mack & manco’s pizza, and fun on the boardwalk. During the week it was definitely off-peak and the beach & boardwalk felt like a ghost town.

Sam especially is a real beach bum and enjoyed all aspects of the sand and surf. He even biked all the way up and down the OC boardwalk (4.5 miles)!

The highlight of the week was probably our ride on the ferris wheel which perfectly coincided with a fireworks show. We were stopped at the top during the finale. It was awesome. 

Now we’re back in the Philly heat, and gearing up to move on to 5 weeks in Grove City in ONLY A WEEK. Then we’ll finally be moving in to our new home the weekend of July 26th. A lot to do between now and then. 

Down the Shore this week

We’re down in Ocean City (NJ) this week, getting in some vacation time before our transitions to Grove City and then State College over the next couple months.

After our vacation, we only have 10 more days in the Philly area before moving on! 

I won’t be blogging this week, but look for some updates after June 7.