gangstagrass

what does dobro, banjo, steel guitar, hillbilly yodeling, and fiddle have to do with urban beatz, gangsta rap and prodigious use of the n-word?

well not much if we are knowledgeable of the context and culture of appalachian bluegrass and urban gangstarap respectively. but if - while appreciating both - we can recognize these categories to be only arbitrary - the idea of any "real" or absolute walls between the two fall away. that is, while genres are not true - i think the music of gangstagrass is. (more on my take of arbitrary vs. true)

(download gangstagrass free - you might need a meal or two before it finishes downloading)

while it is important to appreciate the context, culture and story of genres (styles), i think there is a huge difference between (particularly the integrity of) recycling old ideas/formulas just because thats the way its always been done (or worse because it sells); and respecting the heritage and stories of the past, but creating something new with integrity that reflects your story, or a new story, or a new take on an old story.

(as a groove-challenged caucasian i can do those links better with bluegrass than i can with the gangsta / urban side of things).

while listening to gangstagrass - its is difficult to conjure up the circumstances by which this music would've emerged organically. there is a convergence of elements here that don't correlate to anything we know about (earth's) history: black urban america doesn't use acoustic instruments - and the downward spiral of urban decay and drum machine beatz has no meaning where there is little infrastructure.

still - after listening, we might begin to consider that a dobro can sound as badass as a drive by shooting... and we might start to think that rappers have a thing or two to learn from the machine gun timing of an olde timey auctioneer (track 15). and we might even begin to see commonalities in these respective stories: that the hard times in urban america and the hard times in rural appalachia are both born of pain and truth and expressed in sounds that resonate - with each other.

and thats the magic - i think - when an appreciation, mutual respect and a bridging happen.

so anway - i could be talkin about anything - but last night i was talkin with some friends about rethinking worship & arts & integrity & church & tradition & respecting historic christian modalities...

invariance

"Code is Poetry"

it's a cool little quip.  but the point, whether we are einstein or not, is that we each develop an intuitive feel of how to approach a problem *before* we work out a logical replication of that as a rational thought.  they way we work out something intuitive, is art.

it struck me then - that if code is poetry - then the code of reality - revealed in say mathematics - would display God's intuitive sense, and be his poetry, his art.

Psalm 19:1-9 (The Message) A David Psalm
God's glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon. Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening. Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded, But their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere. The revelation of God is whole and pulls our lives together. The signposts of God are clear and point out the right road. The life-maps of God are right, showing the way to joy. The directions of God are plain and easy on the eyes. God's reputation is twenty-four-carat gold, with a lifetime guarantee. The decisions of God are accurate down to the nth degree.

there are a number of lines of God's code that have revealed themselves - accurate and also elegant to the nth degree. at the top of the pack are Einsteins Mass-Energy Equivalence and Maxwell's Electromagnetism Relationships.  But I would argue other lines of code have revealed themselves and are evident to all... love, redemption, beauty, grace, mercy, his infinite power, and goodness. these lines of code run rampant throughout all human experience - and they remain changeless regardless of your frame of reference.  this idea is called invariance. and it's a bombshell.

what i want to rail against, is that we pretend like we live in a newtonian (or flat euclidean) universe - but we don't.  we really live in an einsteinien (or curved minkowskian) universe.  but that doesn't mean that there aren't things that are changeless.  we've just been looking in the wrong categories for things to anchor ourselves to.  

for instance, we've been looking at facts-as-parsed-by-language to be True-from-all-perspectives-and-sides, and failed to recognize / respect the dimensionality of reality.  we need to recognize the ramifications of what Einstein learned about God and reality a hundred years ago - and start to graple with its meaning for us.

This is God's code.  This is God's poetry.  This is his art.  It's breathtaking in it's beauty, magnitude, elegance, and invariance.

p.s.  and of course, an einsteinien universe is not the last most correct understanding / revision of reality - there is a problem ;-)

bwaha hahaa haaaa