A Very Long But Fairly Interesting Account Of How This Blog Came To Be

Every single person loves music. That’s an irrefutable fact. Not everyone likes every *kind* of music, but they love *their* music. I find it so interesting that we claim music to be our own, especially since it never is us who has created “our” music. Once I was at the Symphony Orchestra and the manager said to the audience in his preamble, “if music doesn’t move us, then what does it do?” That really resonated with me then as it still does now, and I think is also the reason why we are possessive of music. It touches us in an inexplainable level. It gets us, it’s there for us when no one else is, is expresses what we are unable to express or perhaps even able to get in touch with. It is ours because it knows us on an intimate level.

At least, that’s how I see music.

I like literally every single genre of music. When I say that, I’m not exaggerating. Name a genre, I have a song that I love. That being said, as with all people, I know what songs I *don’t* like. There are songs that I despise in literally every single genre of music, and I have a list of songs I don’t like that is just as long as the songs I do like. I will never say that I hate any particular genre of music though, because good music is good music anywhere you go. I know that I can like absolutely anything if I encounter a moment within the music that captivates me. I’m always seeking that captivating moment. I live for it.

Okay, I think we all get that I love music at this point. Nah, I think I’m going to drive the point home a little deeper. I constantly listen to music, and would only ever listen to music, if I wasn’t committed to consciously forcing myself to listen to something more brain formative and substantial every so often. It’s my drug. When I put in my headphones and press play for the first time in a day, I release a deep breath as if I had been subconsciously holding my breath up until that moment. The feeling is akin to taking the first sip of coffee in the morning-- euphoric, relief, releasing unknown pent up tension, cleansing.

We get it now. And my passion hath spilt itself over into this blog.

The idea for this blog has been building in my mind for a long time. It is an accumulation of lots of things, and I have every single reason written down in a book somewhere, but I’ll spare you most of the gory details. Several years ago I listened to Christopher West (a theologian of sorts) speak and he told me that our desires were good because they point to our infinite longing for God and I’ve never seen the world in the same way since. I’m a cradle Catholic and misunderstandings of our desires (read: everything is a sin and if you sin you go to hell) comes as part of the territory.  Misunderstandings though are simply misunderstandings, and the truth reveals itself in due time if you’re patient enough and stubborn enough to await its appearance. At the right place and at the right time, I *really* discovered that my longings for love and to be known and for meaning were all mere inclinations of my deep desire for Christ, and that all of my desires could be re-directed towards Him. Of course what goes for me goes for everyone else, and I stopped looking judgmentally at others as doing “bad things” because they “didn’t know any better,” and began to look at them as wretches just like me, directing our limitless desires at the first thing that would satisfy. I am no different from anyone else. We are all on the same quest for meaning.

If you’ve ever sparked me into conversation, you’ll know that I’m very long winded and seem to frequently go off in apparent tangents but TRUST ME, it all connects I promise!! (I’m about to go into a very long “tangent,” sorry / not sorry).

I want to go back to my “cradle Catholic” comment. I want no one to misunderstand me. And this is essential to understanding my take on music.

In my experience, I have found that it is easy for Catholics to demonize everything that isn’t explicitly Catholic, particularly when it comes to entertainment and the arts. Over time, I’ve come to realize that if everything is evil, nothing can be sacred. Being afraid of everything means that you have to remain in your own self-sustained bubble forever. I lived like this for a very long time, but it no longer sits well for me.

When I was younger, I was afraid of music that wasn’t explicitly Christian. It was a mixture of fear for the artist’s soul and for my own. My heart has always deeply feared death and the consequences of it for myself, but even more than that, it has feared for the souls of others once they met their own end. I’m not entirely sure why the fear of death and hell was so etched on my heart (#CradleCatholic). Regardless, the way I dealt with my fear was to avoid anything that might put my soul in danger. That meant no: swearing, non-Christian music, PG-13 movies, immodest clothing, makeup, boys, alcohol, the list goes on in the same ridiculous manner.

I grew up listening to Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, the Rankin Family, John Michael Talbot-- all extremely wholesome. (Also a lot of Olivia Newton-John, not *as* wholesome). I still love all of these people and their music has made a large impression on me and is part of my DNA. Being the oldest in a rather sheltered family (I’m not complaining about the sheltered-ness, I’m rather grateful for it), it took me an inordinate amount of time to discover music on my own. I knew that the Spice Girls and Britney Spears and *NSYNC existed, but they were not a part of my world. When I was in grade 8, we had to share our favourite song with our class for some bs language arts project, and the song I made my class listen to was Sonicflood’s version of Open the Eyes of My Heart. OPEN THE EYES OF MY HEART people!!!! I was 13 years old!! Oh my good gracious everyone I just looked it up on itunes and gave it a listen and it’s terrible. But how adorable was I, so pure! There you have the state of affairs of my music tastes. Very unspecific, very Christian. Ahhh.

THEN IT ALL CHANGED. Because of a boy. Of course. Fast-forward to the end of grade 8-- I was in mad love with this boy and he was baaaadass. Like, he was sneak-out-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-go-drinking badass. My pure little heart was drawn to someone who I could redeem (it still kinda is). It was one of the last days of the school year, and the teachers didn’t care anymore, and it was an exceptionally beautiful day. We were cleaning the classroom and were allowed to listen to *any* music we wanted to (ONLY RICH PEOPLE HAD PHONES BACK THEN THE REST OF US PEASANTS LISTENED TO CDS). Boy lit up when this opportunity arose and pulled out his treasured Hybrid Theory CD, which he conveniently had stored in his backpack for such an occasion. “I guess it’s ok, put it on” the teacher said, obvious apathy and resignation written on her face. As if this would ever happen in today’s classroom haha… and then Linkin Park’s aggressive angst hit my ears for the very first time. It was the heaviest music I had ever been exposed to and it initially felt like an assault. As the songs drifted on though, I noticed that Boy was the happiest that I had ever seen him. I suspect that it was his softened features that softened my heart to the hard hitting music, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe I was just always predisposed to heaviness and just hadn’t known because of lack of exposure. It’s the big “chicken or the egg” conundrum of my life. It doesn’t matter though, my life was irrevocably changed. I officially liked my own music, and it just happened that “my” music now was Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory.

I suppose this is as good a time as ever to tell you about my blog name. “Transcendent” is after the 3 transcendentals of God, or the 3 ways that God reveals Himself on this earth: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. (I was told by someone whose intellect I admire that everyone is drawn to one transcendental in particular-- mine is Beauty, in case you were dying to know). “Theory” is after the first album that I truly loved, Hybrid Theory. There you have it.

I subsequently secretly bought Hybrid Theory  and secretly listened to it on the living room stereo when no one was home, but alas it was soon discovered and confiscated (it wasn’t Christian). So I went on an alternate route-- find heavy music that was “Christian.” Enter Thousand Foot Krutch, one of the greatest loves of my life. Later came Skillet, and Emery, and The Classic Crime, and Pillar, and Disciple, and Family Force 5, and Red. “Borderline Screamo” is how I described them back then, but I’d classify them all as “Hard Rock” today.

Even though I only listened to anything that classified itself as “Christian,” I found myself distressing over the lyrics of my songs frequently (of course I had them all memorized). If they were Christian, shouldn’t they be praising God? Shouldn’t they only sing about turning to God? Proclaiming truth?! Oftentimes I found lyrics to be about sin and about despair and it was so confusing to me. I struggled to reconcile my immature ideas of what it meant to be a Christian with my Christian music. This lead me to an eventual rejection of all of it, which resulted in a phase of ONLY Praise & Worship (plus Matt Maher, duh). And then I heard Christopher West (I swear he’s not the only influence in my life), realized I demonized everything, realized that our desires for God could be found in everything, started listening to Country (very unexpectedly and traditionally uncharacteristic of me), which lead to Pop, which I eventually got bored off, which lead me to listen to my “high school” music again, which lead me to Metal, which leads me to today.

Now that you are enlightened by my own personal little music history, let’s talk about what I’m trying to accomplish with all of this.

I want to be a beacon of light in the dark places.

I am deeply struck by the words of Catherine Doherty, Servant of God: “Go without fear into the depths of men’s hearts.” I think that she is telling us that we have to enter into the darkness and despair and gore of the world and stretch out our hand to others, as Jesus did when He reached for Adam’s hand in His descent to hell. Men's hearts today are entrenched in darkness and are depressed and anxious and indifferent and lonely and are used to being used and are discouraged and cower in fear and accept a mediocre fate. I say this because this is MY OWN heart. Sometimes I feel like because I’m Catholic, I shouldn’t ever feel despair because “I know better.” But here’s the thing-- I’m a human being living and breathing in this day and age and guess what? I despair. That’s just a fact. To pretend that I don’t does you and it does me a great disservice. If anything, we need to feel like there’s someone out there who can empathize with us. Even though I know that Christ has conquered all, my heart is still learning that truth. Until it does, which it fully won’t until I’ve left this earth, I have to rage war with my demons every day. And strive to find God in the things that delight me. So do you.

Catherine also says that “the joys and the hopes, the grief and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the followers of Christ” (The Gospel Without Compromise).  I’m convinced that in order to be Christ in this world, we need to identify with the people around us. In the words of Pope Francis, “the Shepherd should smell like the sheep.” I hope these quotes adequately communicate the depths of my heart which I have such a difficult time articulating-- I’ve just got to be where the people are. I’ve got to know. I’ve got to understand the thoughts and logic and hearts of the people. I’ve got to be connected with them. I’ve got to empathize. I’ve got to speak the same language. How else could I ever strive to love? I guess what I’m trying to say is this is why I dive into all music wholeheartedly, prudent or not. This is where the people are. Why would I stay in a safe bubble.

So. That all being said. All I want to do is “review” the important albums of my life, as well as those that I find have some semblance of substance. Most of all I want to identify the “glimmers of God” that I inevitably find in music. Let’s be real though, this blog is a very self-indulgent affair. It delights me to air my thoughts out in the open. Remember when I said that I like to redeem things? This is the manifestation of that. Maybe it’s a quest for salvation, working it out in “fear and trembling,” trying to justify and redeem the music close to me. It’s also a recognition of the yearning for God in the human heart. In music-- good music-- part of the artist’s soul is revealed and you are made privy to some of their deepest hauntings. I want to unearth those gems and illuminate them. When the light shines through, the thing just might refract rainbows. We’ll see.

So, truth, goodness, and beauty. Let’s unveil it.