Music

My wife and I saw Andrew Peterson in concert at Springdale Community Church tonight here in Louisville, KY. It was an awesome, small show in a pretty nice facility. It turns out a sizable portion of our church decided to show up, too... it was like an impromptu evening service.

We got to hear some good stories about several songs that (to me at least) really made them come alive. It was great to hear the Scripture and Gandalf / Elijah comparisons that went on in Andrew's mind as he wrote All You'll Ever Need, and being a space nut I loved hearing his story of meeting an astronaut and writing Rocket in honor of seeing a shuttle launch.

Naturally, Andrew gave a quick plug for his Wingfeather Saga toward the end of the concert, and I enthusiastically cheered for them. (It's my moral duty as the owner of a fan site for the series. )

So, we had a great time, and I got to pick Andrew's brain about writing after the concert. His advice? For him, he used three things to make it to the end of On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness:

• Discipline
• Audacity
• Friendly competition (with his brother, author of The Fiddlers Gun)

He said that after you get your first book published, it starts to look more like a 9 - 5 job (assuming the publisher wants more). I'm not there yet, and I'm not sure I ever will be. In the meantime... anyone up for some friendly writing competition?

I hear Michael Card a lot in Andrew... esp. regarding interacting with the Bible at the level of the imagination. Michael's quote that has stuck with me is also an inspiration to pursuing something like writing - "Always perform at the level of your own inadequacy." I think that falls under Audacity!

The first album by the Christian band Jars of Clay remains one of my favorite CDs, and I still listen to it regularly despite all the music I've collected since I first heard them in high school. One song on the CD continually grips me. Its message has reached me at various stages of life and on various continents (I have a very encouraging journal entry inspired by the song during a trip to Ecuador in 2002).

The song is titled "Worlds Apart" and what follows are some of the lyrics. I particularly love the poetry of the first verse in both the allusions to Icarus and the comparisonof the love of Jesus to the tears of a world embracing every heartache. When I finally grasped the image in that line alone I was amazed and reminded that, indeed, the love of Jesus is limitless. How many tears have I shed even in a world that does its best to flee from heartache?

Worlds Apart
By: Jars of Clay

I am the only one to blame for this
Somehow it all adds up the same
Soaring on the wings of selfish pride
I flew too high and like Icarus I collide
With a world I try so hard to leave behind
To rid myself of all but love
To give and die

To turn away and not become
Another nail to pierce the skin of one who loves
More deeply than the oceans,
More abundant than the tears
Of a world embracing every heartache

And can I be the one to sacrifice?
Or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow?

To love you - take my world apart
To need you - I am on my knees
To love you - take my world apart
To need you - broken on my knees

All said and done I stand alone
Amongst remains of a life I should not own
It takes all I am to believe
In the mercy that covers me

Did you really have to die for me?
All I am for all you are
Because what I need and what I believe are worlds apart

...

I can't remember who first sent me the link to this video, but I'm sure you'll enjoy it. The instrument is called a theremin, a pretty sweet piece of electronics that changes pitch and volume based on hand movements and positions. It's based on radio somehow. :? The science museum here in Louisville has one, so I got to play. :D

Well, my wife laid plans for March 31, 2008 and told me not to plan anything. I believe she told me almost a month in advance, and today I finally got to enjoy the surprise... she bought us tickets to go see Michael Card play a show in an intimate setting at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. As he's one of our favorite Christian musicians, we thoroughly enjoyed the show and had a quick chance to catch him before the show to give him a thank you card.

For those who don't know, Michael Card has been doing music for quite some time. He has the particular distinctions of being an excellent musician and an excellent theologian, and his songs often teach you more about Jesus than you'll learn in a book. I highly recommend him to you!

Catch him on his radio show via his website: http://www.michaelcard.com/archives.html

I listen to music at work to drown out all the office noise and focus on coding. More often than not, that means screaming along (quietly) with some rock band while hacking away on Ubercart. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it gets the job done.

However, I do occasionally put on some indie tunes that I like to pass the hours. They're not quite so heavy, and you may even find yourself enjoying one of the following types of music...