Echoes and Moments

I wrote in a previous post on the abundance of high quality, richly textured music that we've been able to consume, to digest, to chew on, to sit with, to allow to mess with us over the last year. I still believe now, as I did at the end of last year, that we are in a new age of music, one where artists have the potential to go beyond the constraints of the medium of their chosen tools: sound and voice, to arbitrate culture and influence the conversations that shape our society. To reach the standards set by Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, and even (as divisive as he is) Kanye West, is to dialogue with the biggest questions of our existence: what is important? Why are we here? What makes us human? This last question concerns me as I survey the variety of music available for us to choose. As a form of art, music is inherently a description, sketch, and reflection of the humanity that creates it. You can see the ideas that my favorite band, Radiohead, wrestles with when they mov...

on Formation tour, 2016. I have a mildly embarrassing custom of talking in-depth with a friend about various cultural, socio-political, and theological topics over the worst food that our society has to offer: greasy fast food. This past week was more defendable than most, considering our chosen location for conversation, WingStop, prides itself on cooking everything fresh. But the amount of salt, fat, and grease that I consumed that night (and that found its way quickly through my defenseless digestive tract) was more than enough to make me think twice about my life choices. During this conversation, as I munched on a deep-fried chicken wing coated in lemon-juice glaze and pepper, my friend paused, looked intently into my eyes, and offered me a question with great severity: "Karl, I know you have thoughts on this. I just wanna know...why the hell should I care about Beyoncé and her twin babies?...because I just don't care!" I slid the last strip of meat from t...

Zdzisław Beksiński, 1981. Of all the things that I've longed to write about, this post's subject matter might be the most complicated and convoluted. Without knowing where the tangled threads of this identity will lead, I still find it critically important to unpack the implications of my heritage as a white man: both how I personally engage, understand, and value my white ethnic identities, as well as how the current political and social climate forces me to grapple and wrestle with this whiteness. It is a journey not without pain, but like all questions of identity, a deeply meaningful one. Each stream in my multivalent identity as a person of mixed ethnic backgrounds has developed in dramatically different ways, and at critically different points in my life. My Latinidad has stayed with me the longest, manifested as I was curious enough to critique the implicit racism I saw imbedded within the culture of my (mostly white) suburban school in Virginia and contrasted w...