Keep Feeling Fascination!

"Every generation gets to pick and choose what they want from the generations that came before them with the same arrogance and ego-driven self-importance that the previous generations had when they picked the bones of the ones before them."

That’s Bob Dylan noting a pattern. I wouldn’t want to attribute arrogance or ego-driven self-importance to anyone but myself. But yes, we get to choose our ancestors, borrow their eloquence, and make the best we can of what they leave behind by making it our own. We get to copy correctly. That’s what we do when we take things to heart in the positive sense. We receive someone else’s witness and make it our own. We copy correctly.

That’s right. Copy correctly.

I speak of copying correctly thanks to Alex Sager who alerted me to this passage from William Blake. Blake knew the score. Y’all know that, right?

"Copying Correctly," is, I think, all there is. It’s how a mind body learns. It’s another couple words for “learning.” Copying correctly could also be called drawing inspiration. Copying correctly brings to mind what Octavia Butler calls “positive obsession.” "Correctly" need not mean exactly or mechanically. It's relative to context & purpose. We copy mentors and perceived enemies alike. “Never know whose thoughts you’re chewing,” James Joyce mused Leopold Bloom mused to himself. Thom Yorke correctly copies Michael Stipe correctly copies Patti Smith correctly copies William Blake. I copy Todd Greene. Jesus of Nazareth copied Isaiah. Jasper Johns copies flags correctly.

Linford Detweiler once praised Everyday Apocalypse aloud to me. As one who’d been completely sold on Over The Rhine since 1992, this moved me deeply. I told him I’d just collected quotes and arranged them under chapter headings and then filled them in with my own prose. “Well, you’re a good collector then.” I hope I’m a correct copier too.

I don’t know what else to try to do.

If I have the timing right, what you behold above is the iteration of The Human League which gave us “(Keep Feeling) Fascination”. The song brought me joy as a child and it’s happening again. It came at me like a divine oracle I was afraid to let my mind believe as hard as my heart did almost instantly. Decisions to be made. Stories to be told. The forming of new connections. Study and play. It has a chorus to live by:

Keep feeling fascination.

Passion burning, love so strong.

Keep feeling fascination.

Looking, learning, moving on.

Wise counsel, right? I’m taking it to heart. I commend it to you.

In other news, I’d like to lift up the latest thing Charles Marsh (Bonhoeffer scholar, Nonviolent Movement of America expert, R.E.M. fan, friend, mentor, and author of Evangelical Anxiety) has helped cobble together from his perch at the University of Virginia.

I didn’t have anything to do with this one, but I contributed a chapter on Daniel Berrigan to the Project In Lived Theology effort—Can I Get A Witness?—that preceded this. It’s awesome as can be. This one is too. Want to hear from Jemar Tisby on Tom Skinner, Mallory McDuff on Rachel Carson, or Ann Hostetler on Toni Morrison? Are you feeling fascination? This is the book.

“The most important questions about our character can only be answered by the witness of our entire lives.” That’s Jemar Tisby. “Witness” gets it. Witness is the sum total of everything we’re up to. It dissolves the dividers. Personal? Private? Political? Business? Pleasure? Family? Friends? Yes. Your witness. Mine too.

Which brings me back to Dylan, we get “to pick and choose what” we “want from the generations that came before them.” Which brings me back to an afternoon Hortense Spillers paraphrased unto me Ralph Ellison’s adage: We’re stuck with our relatives, but we get to choose our ancestors. I’ve copied it ever since (See second paragraph of this entry).

We get to make our witness by drawing on the witness of whomever we choose. We become what we copy consciously and unconsciously and correctly and incorrectly. Mind who you copy. Mind whose thoughts you’re choosing and chewing. Discern the spirits.

Bloomsday’s coming. Keep feeling fascination. That’s an order.

Thanks for listening.