Body Piercing Saved My Life (Andrew Beaujon)

The first record my parents every bought me was DC Talk's self-titled venture into the then fledgling world of Christian hip hop.

It blew my mind.

It was 1991 and I was only 11, but I had already decided that Christian music was definitely not cool. With that cassette tape though, I was forced to accept the reality that Christian music actually, possibly, maybe ... could be cool.

I wore it out, memorizing beats and lyrics and imagining that those words (which were often pretty terrible: "Your life story is like my brakes' sound.") were written specifically based on my life and whatever universe-encompassing struggle I happened to be going through at the time.

Now, it's not like I fully got lost in the world of Christian Rock, or CCM (Christian Contemporary Music as it's known in the biz) from that point on. A year or two later my dad bought me Dark Side of The Moon, and my allegiance quickly transferred to Pink Floyd, where it remained faithfully for a long, long time.

But over the years I've never been too far away from the CCM world, and have often checked out new bands when I've come across them.

In recent years though, some of my favourite bands, such as Pedro the Lion, have been increasingly more difficult to define, mysteriously straddling the line between Christian Rock and the mainstream -- hesitant to reveal too much about where their loyalties lie.

In his new book, Body Piercing Saved My Life, Andrew Beaujon expertly explores the phenomenon of CR, mapping a journey that begins with pioneers like Keith Green and Larry Norman, through to DC Talk and Newsboys and hair metal bands like Stryper, White Cross and Petra, through the massive worship scene and right up to the less easy to classify bands such as Pedro and Sufjan Stevens, Switchfoot, MXPX and a host of others.

Beaujon, perhaps better than anyone else, is well equipped for this task, having covered the subject for years for Spin magazine and the Washington Post. He is in the rare position of being an expert on a subject that few people outside of the Christian community understand or know anything about.

With no religious affilitation of his own, Beaujon is well poised to provide an objective window into a world that is often firmly shuttered to the outside. He accomplishes this, providing a valuable history lesson on the origin and journey of CCM up to this point.

But the book also provides what I hope will be considered a valuable service within the Christian community. BPSML gives Christians the opportunity to see this huge part of Christian culture through someone else's lens. And Beaujon's lens is sharply focused, objective, and even sympathetic to the subject matter -- a rare vantage point for the largely ghettoized industry.

But beyond all that, the reason this book was impossible to put down was because intertwined through its 271 pages of history, bios, interviews and personal anecdotes, is Beaujon's relentless exploration and investigation of why so many Christian-comprised bands flee from being lumped in with the genre, and are even skeptical of having the label applied to themselves as human beings.

Pedro the Lion's David Bazan is sort of a legend for holding tightly onto such a position, despite a huge Christian following and a career that began on Tooth and Nail, the iconic Christian rock label.

Now, I'm a huge Pedro fan, so it was fascinating to read about Beaujon's encounters with Bazan and his friend and sometimes bandmate Tim Walsh, during the year or so he spent researching the book. I get the impression they became friends through the many conversations and discussions they had in various corners of the U.S.

Few of his fans can definitively peg Bazan down. Despite conventionally 'un-Christian' lyrics that include regular use of the 'F-word', and his fondness for booze, Bazan regularly plays Cornerstone, a massive Christian music festival, where he is the blackest of black sheep. But Bazan draws some of the festival's largest crowds with his poignant, sincere songs that explore taboo subjects and question accepted truths.

His now expected Q and A sessions between sets have added to the confusion with statements like "I believe in God and the Bible and everything, but I ain't no fucking Christian."

But then Bazan quotes scriptural concepts to Beaujon about servanthood and following Jesus' example, and passes the apparent contradiction off as misunderstanding.

"There's sort of a qualifier," he says, when Beaujon asks him why he always says no when asked at shows if he's a Christian. "I'm not equating myself with Martin Luther by any stretch, but him and people that were part of his movement stopped calling themselves 'Catholics.' I'd rather there just be a misunderstanding -- 'The guy's flipped out and totally abandoned his faith' -- because it's not necessary for strangers to know exactly how I feel."

I think Beaujon may have come as close as anyone has to actually figuring out the Bazan paradox. And perhaps, by extrapolation, the mysterious, complicated relationship so many 'Christian' bands seem to have with the rest of the world.

Beaujon writes: "Whether it's Bazan's empathy for those who came up the same way he did, or the thrill of hearing a marginally sanctioned heretic ... who's somehow still allowed inside the Christian cloister, Bazan's become a leading figure in alternative Christian culture because he's a reflection of those who can't square their desire to believe with their contempt for the system in which they find fellowship."

Bold words and incredible insight for a self-proclaimed non-believer who really took the time to explore the set of core beliefs that often drive this entire industry.

I'm not sure who Beaujon intends as his readership. No Doubt the book will sell well among Christian emo, hardcore and pop-punk fans hungry for insider knowledge about the bands they follow. But I hope the book also finds an audience both inside the wider religious circle and among those who like Beaujon, have little spiritual attachment to Christian religion.

His perspective can offer Christians the chance to view their own, often exclusive community or 'cloister', through a new set of eyes. The world at large, meanwhile, can gain a new understanding and maybe even an appreciation for the struggles, frustrations, beauty and integrity that is all tangled up in the world of CR, and is brilliantly captured in BPSML.

Click here to check out a story I wrote for CTV.ca about comic book heroes making the transition to the silver screen (I got to interview Spawn creator Todd McFarlane -- so cool!)

A Scanner Darkly (Philip K. Dick, 1977)

I’m pretty excited about A Scanner Darkly. The film comes out in two days, and stars actors whom I love -- Winona Ryder, Robert Downey Jr., Keanu Reeves -- and is directed by Richard Linklater (Waking Life, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset) who hasn’t let me down yet -- and is rendered in the dream-like rotoscopic animation that was made famous in Waking Life, which I envision to be the perfect medium in which to tell this story.

I’m so excited that I went to Indigo -- and I hate Indigo -- at least 19 times looking for a copy of Philip K. Dick’s novel by the same name until I finally found it. Of course, Indigo being a lame cousin to Chapters, which I also hate, it only stocks good books when it’s economically viable to do so. And in this case that meant the book, complete with a shiny new “ Now a Major Motion Picture” cover, appeared on the shelves about a month before the film was due for release, regardless of the fact it’s been a brilliant book since 1977 when it was first published.

Well, I sucked up my indie pride and bought it.

Sorry about that long intro. I know I haven’t even started to discuss the book, which I must say, is incredible.

The premise is brilliant, the prose is compelling, and it sucks you so far into a world of drug addiction and paranoia you begin to feel like one of the characters in the story.

Bob Arctor is addicted to a drug called Substance D. He and his friends are pretty liberal in their experimentation however, and everything from booze to cocaine and pot get used in heavy doses, and much of the story is spent describing in fascinating detail their conversations, interactions and efforts to get more drugs, while under the influence.

This unique portal into several lives that orbit almost entirely around drug use would be worth reading on its own, but the story takes the reader a couple of layers deeper.

Fred is an undercover narcotics agent working to infiltrate a group of drug users and dealers to find out where their supply is coming from. His superiors have installed a set of cameras, or scanners, and recording devices into the house where they all live, and part of his work is to review the material for useful evidence and discard the rest.

But one of the side-effects of Substance D is that it establishes a divide between the left and right halves of the brain, in effect allowing the addict to become two people without realizing it.

As Fred infiltrates the group in order to keep tabs on a heavy drug user/minor dealer named Bob Arctor, he is really collecting evidence on an undercover narcotics agent named Fred.

Clever and funny in parts, this story, based largely on Dick’s own experiences and meant as a tribute to many of his friends who lost their lives to addiction, is also deeply dark.

There’s a scene where Fred is hearing for the first time what he is suffering from. He comes to a conclusion that ties back to these words in 1 Corinthians 13 which are tweaked for the title of the book:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”

Fred, through the lens Substance D provides him, is seeing his own reflection in a darkened glass, and as such, he can’t recognize himself, and the realization of what he has become, or a distorted form of realization, sets in and he begins to realize how far he has slipped.

"'Through a mirror,' Fred said. A darkened mirror, he thought; a darkened scanner, And St. Paul meant, by a mirror, not a glass mirror – they didn’t have those then – but a reflection of himself when he looked at the polished bottom of a metal frying pan. … Not through a telescope or lens system, which does not reverse, not through anything but seeing his own face reflected back up at him, reversed – pulled through infinity, like they’re telling me. It is not through glass but as reflected back by glass. And that reflection that returns to you: it is you, but it isn’t. And they didn’t have cameras in those old days, and so that’s the only way a person saw himself: backward.
I have seen myself backward.”

The realization though, is just a step in a process that is too far-gone to halt, and he will fall further before he hits bottom.

There’s deep sadness in this harsh story, but somehow there’s hope and the footprints of redemption too –- maybe those are the traces of what Dick was searching for when he wrote it. If so, I hope he found it.

Art School Confidential (Terry Zwigoff)

Art School Confidential comes across, at first, as a half-hearted attempt at a gross-out comedy.

And 15 minutes into the film, I was disappointed, and was considering an early exit. But by 20 minutes in I was hooked, swept up by the ridiculous story and contrived characters all wound up in a package that is way too clever, and with a cast that is way too good, to be accidental.

Soon I was riveted to my seat, waiting to see where director Terry Zwigoff (Ghost World, Crumb) was taking me.

The story follows Jerome (Max Minghella) – a freshman, suburban America kid, as he ventures out on his own for the first time in an effort to hone his art skills, meet girls, and become “the greatest artist in the world,” like his hero Picasso.

But this school and the people in it are ridiculous, and he realizes quickly that he may not fit in any better here than he did in high school.

But he falls in love with Audrey, an artist’s model played by Sophia Myles, and his heart gets broken, and he starts smoking and drinking, and he twists some moral guidelines, and maybe accidentally kills someone – and soon he’s surrounded in all the inspiration an artist could ever ask for.

The girl I saw the film with is clasically trained singer. She told me that when she was in school, she knew musicians who wanted to be in a relationship just because they believed the passion and the pain – all the ups and downs of love – would make their music better.

If that theory is true, Jerome finds himself run over by a steamroller of inspiration by the time this story concludes.

But the plot and the characters really are so clichéd, and so over the top, that there has to be more to the message of this movie. I think it’s a mockery of Hollywood laziness. I think Zwigoff took these common clichés to an entirely new level – he really broke new ground in cinematic obviousness – in order to make a statement. I think he’s telling Hollywood ‘look, you guys need to try harder. Look at this brilliant film I made just by recycling all the old clichés and multiplying them by 10 and tying them together with a generic storyline. So smarten up!’

I mean seriously. The list is endless. Jerome’s roommates are a flamingly gay but still in the closet fashion student, and an eccentric film major who’s making a movie about a series of strangling murders that have taken place on campus. (Oh yeah, the subplot is about a serial killer haunting the campus.) And the roommate says the killings are the best thing that ever happened to him because they’re creating his plot for him.

There’s John Malkovich’s character – the jaded artist/prof who invites Jerome to his home and then hits on him.

There’s the more experienced, older art school veteran who becomes his best friend, showing him around, introducing him to people, but disappearing halfway through the movie when his presence is no longer necessary. “I’ve figured out who you are,” he tells Jerome, when it’s his turn to exit the plot. “You’re the class duschbag.”

There are even typecast cops investigating the murder – one who goes undercover as a student – a male artist’s model who walks around casually with everything exposed, and a jaded artist who hates the world and everything in it.

It’s crazy! It’s silly, it’s over the top. But somehow it works really, really well. My friend and I talked about it for a long time afterwards, and I’m still mulling it over.

The cast helps. Steve Buscemi is Broadway Bob, the owner of a café that is known for displaying the work of up-and-coming artists, Anjelica Huston is a professor at the school, Jim Broadbent is the once great, now jaded, alcoholic artist who is fed up with humanity.

And the fact that it, like Ghost World, was based on a graphic novel by Daniel Clowes, helps add credibility to the project.

The ending takes a brilliant twist that somehow makes it plausible that Jerome really is well on his way to becoming the famous artist he dreamed he would be.
And then, at the very last moment, the movie ends with a reminder that this is parody and cliché taken to new heights – and that the viewer should strike a balance somewhere between not taking it too seriously, but not discounting the brilliance that went into every inch of celluloid that comprises Art School Confidential.

It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken (Seth)

I’ve become interested in graphic novels lately. I’m not sure why – perhaps it’s the union of pictures and words that creates such a compelling medium -- two tools, used together to tell a story that wouldn’t be told the same way in any other format.

This novella, by Seth (Palookaville, Mister X), reinforces this new interest.

It’s written in the first person, and tells the story of Seth -- a Toronto cartoonist who becomes obsessed with a cartoonist from the 1950s named Jack Kalloway who signed his drawings ‘Kalo.’

Seth comes across a couple of drawings by Kalo in old copies of the New Yorker, and becomes intrigued by his style and his seemingly brief career.

He becomes even more interested when he finds out Kalo was from a small rural Ontario town, like him, and he begins trying to track down anything he can find on Kalo.

Seth’s interest in Kalo, he admits, may come from his attraction to the past, and the fact that almost anything that hearkens back to a bygone era appeals him.

Pages are dedicated to rambling soliloquy as Seth wanders through old industrial neighborhoods in Toronto, thinking out loud about what makes him tick.

I guess that obsession with old stuff is part of what connects me to the book. I see a lot of myself in Seth and his yearning for a time when things were simpler and better.
He’s scared of the future, which he sees as a societal evolution away from character and beauty.

“Life is about change,” his girlfriend tells him. “I mean, don’t you get excited just thinking about the future? So much will have changed by the time we’re old. It’ll be amazing. Think of the old people today and how much change they’ve seen.”

“Don’t even talk about it!” Seth retorts. “I look forward to the future with nothing but dread. Things are getting worse and worse every year. As awful as things are right now, I’d be more than happy if the world would stay relatively like this until I die. I can’t face the next fifty years.”

But then later, during a conversation with his friend Chet (Toronto cartoonist Chester Brown), that near-rage has subsided and he takes a much more thoughtful perspective on his appreciation for the past – though he arrives at the same conclusion.

“Look how pretty that old building looks against the night sky,” Seth says.

“It’s funny, there’s something in the decay of old things that provokes an evocative sadness for the vanished past. If those buildings were perfectly preserved it wouldn’t be the same.”

“It’s the difference between a dilapidated old farm house and a pristine deco hotel lobby. Somehow that lobby doesn’t convince you of the reality or the beauty of yesterday.

“I’d hate to think that my belief in the superiority of the past was really just a misplaced, over-rationalized aesthetic choice. No, forget I said that. Things are obviously getting worse every year.”

The conversations Seth has with Chet and his girlfriend give the story a human quality. Without those relationships it would verge on near-oppressive naval gazing, but it’s saved by their presence. They, along with the other characters in the book, also help us to see different sides of Seth. With his family he’s frustrated, with Chet he’s comfortable and gentle, with his girlfriend he’s a little more aggressive and possibly trying to prove himself.

Seth’s appreciation for the past is apparent in his illustrations as well as his words. Even Toronto, and Strathroy, Ont. where both he and Kalo lived, it turns out, are rendered in a simple, uncomplicated style that seems to be a throwback to the ‘30s or ‘50s.

Toronto is captured beautifully in the illustrations – but there no sign of the cold, post-modern all-glass office towers or condos that plague this city. Those are ignored, left behind while Seth records the decaying industrial buildings, mom-and-pop restaurants and forgotten local neighbourhoods. It’s almost a historic record of these locales, which sadly, seem to be disappearing from the face of this city as Starbucks and Indigo take over their spaces. Like Seth, I get sad thinking about it.

In his efforts to close in on Kalo, Seth is searching for something. Maybe it’s his own past, or the 1950s cartoonist’s skin he feels he should have occupied, misplaced as he feels in this time and place.

There’s no clear explanation of what he’s searching for or whether he finds it. Those truths are left to the reader to decide. The final, complete picture, though, is of a man’s exploration of nostalgia, discontent, and the realization of the truth behind what one old man shares with Seth.

“When you get to my age, you realize that everything mattered."

Shopgirl: Steve Martin

The other night my brother and I were driving from Barrie to Toronto at night. There’s a point in the journey, when the city is still miles and miles away, when the road rises and a blanket of lights stretches out across the horizon, serving as a reminder of how enormous Toronto really is.

We got talking about the city, and how it’s really a collection of lives. Millions of human beings -- living, breathing, working, loving. And how each of them is connected, in some way, to others around them, forming tiny little networks and communities, pockets of friendship and community that interconnect and stretch into a giant web that make this city, which sometimes seems so cold, into a beautiful, livable place.

Shopgirl, based on a novella by Steve Martin, explores one lonely girl’s life in Los Angeles, and how she, almost by accident, builds her own little community.
I read the book first. It, like the movie, provided a glimpse into the life of Mirabelle Buttersfield (Claire Danes), a pretty ordinary young woman who lives in the big city, works at Saks Fifth Avenue, and every once in a while draws a picture, in a small way living out the artistic ambitions that brought her to the city in the first place.

She’s lonely, but her issues go deeper than that– touching on depression. She wants to change her life but she doesn’t really know how to go about it, and is just sort of surviving.

“She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near-misses is starting to overwhelm her,” says Steve Martin, who serves as narrator as well as one of the leading characters in the film.

By accident, two people come into Mirabelle’s life simultaneously, and they couldn’t be more different from each other, right down to the way they meet and their opening lines.

Jeremy, played by Jason Schwartzman, is a sloppy 20-something who has a job stenciling logos on amplifiers. Mirabelle meets him in a Laundromat.
“Hey. I mean hello. Hi,” Jeremy says, by way of introduction. He later tells her: “I’m an okay guy by the way,” and you intrinsically believe this is true, though there isn’t much substance to him beyond the fact that he is an “okay guy.”

Ray Porter, on the other hand, played by Martin, is a distinguished, wealthy, 50-something millionaire. He meets Mirabelle at the Saks glove counter where she works, purchasing a $145 pair of gloves. Disarming, yet giving little away, he leaves an impression on the wary Mirabelle. Later he gives her the gloves with a note that reads: “ I would like to have dinner with you.”

Mirabelle, glowing a little from the excitement of it all, dates both for a while. But inevitably, despite his assurances that he’s “not looking for anything permanent,” she falls in love with Ray and mostly forgets about Jeremy, who goes off to pursue a dream, somehow inspired by Mirabelle to do so.

Ray sweeps her away with well-practiced charm, gifts and maturity that give her a sense of comfort. But in reality, she’s less secure with Ray than she was without him, because his love is fleeting and superficial and he’s searching for something that Mirabelle can’t provide, and that maybe no woman can provide – perfection.

Things between then go okay for a while, but there’s a sense that this can’t last. And then the moment comes when it all has to fall apart.
Ray is planning a trip to New York, and he tells Mirabelle – cruelly though he doesn’t realize it -- that he’s thinking of buying a place, maybe a three-bedroom ‘in case he meets someone and wants to settle down.’

Those careless words break Mirabelle’s heart, but give her the kick she needed to walk away.
“I can hurt now or I can hurt later,” she says, before saying goodbye.

Somehow, Ray is not ready to love Mirabelle and never will be, and despite his early warnings to her, his spiel about “ keeping our options open,” and his attempts to make it clear they weren’t really together, her true feelings took over and she fell in love with him.

In the meantime, Jeremy has moved towards becoming the man Mirabelle needs, and when he comes back into her life, she sees that.

Ray has shown Mirabelle what she needs -- through what he doesn’t possess -- and Jeremy, through the process of life, has developed some of those characteristics and become someone she can love.

And when their paths cross it’s the right time and the right place, and something beautiful happens.

“I’ll protect you,” Jeremy says, now grown up and successful. And his words are just what Mirabelle needs to hear.

“What he offers is tender and true,” the narrator says.

Isn’t that what we all need?

The Voice: The Last Eyewitness (2006)

So, Holy Week is almost over. So far it’s felt pretty normal. Almost like any other week really. That’s my own fault and I’m pausing now to ask forgiveness….
Last weekend though, I attended an event that inspired me to search out some holiness. It was a pseudo book launch for a project called The Voice: The Last Eyewitness. There were some good bands there – Waterdeep and the Rob Seay Band – who lifted my spirits considerably. And the main writer and proponent of The Voice, Chris Seay, was there too.
He challenged and inspired me and I bought the book.
The Voice is a retelling of the last week of Jesus’ life. Meant as a companion to the Bible, not a replacement, its intention is to recapture the art, poetry, the prose and the beauty of the scriptures as they were originally written. Seay, and the others behind the project, believe much of that beauty has been lost in translation over the centuries that have passed since the New Testament was written.
“Too often the passion, grit, humour and beauty has been lost in the translation process,” reads a description of the book. “The Voice seeks to capture what was lost.”
The story is told in the voice of John, Jesus’ beloved disciple, as an old man looking back on the most important period of his life, and in history.
This is done with scripture, mostly from the Gospel of John but also from the other three Gospels. It’s incredibly illustrated, and uses boxed sidebars that explore what John may have been thinking – often these are insights from scholarly sources -- as he witnessed miracles, questioned, and grew in faith as he saw heaven and earth joined together in this son of man called Jesus.
The Voice was crafted carefully and painstakingly, with the creative skill of people like Seay tempered by theologians and historians to ensure the accuracy of the content.

I quickly became absorbed in the pages as they told this story that is so familiar to me, in a brand new way that made me feel like I was hearing it for the first time. I often felt, as was the expressed intention of the writers, like I was sitting around a campfire with good friends talking about the most important thing in the world.
“I’ve outlived the rest of the “the twelve,” and His other followers,” John says, early in his narrative. “I can’t tell you how lonely it is to be the last person with a memory, some would even say a fuzzy memory, of what Jesus looked like, the sound of His voice, the manner of His walk. The penetrating look in His eyes. All I can do is tell my story.”

And the story is told beautifully. John emphasizes over and over the fact that he witnessed the events of Jesus’ life with his own eyes, and that when everything else is forgotten, it must be remembered that what he is setting down on paper…is true.
“Now I want to be very clear. This is my story, but unlike what you hear from most storytellers, this is completely true. I am giving you the testimony of an eyewitness, and like my brother disciples, I will swear on my life that it is true.”

Hmmm. I can almost smell the campfire smoke as I settle-in to listen to the story.

Chris shared an anecdote from his own life that helps me to explain why this book is important.
He shared about his grandfather, his “Pappy,” who only had one arm. He passed away when Chris was still young. Chris was often curious as to how Pappy lost his arm, but his family always shied away from the subject. Finally, when he was old enough, he learned that Pappy had been shot when he objected to the way a man was treating a woman.
But Pappy was so angry that despite his wound, he picked up his attacker with his good arm, and threw him across the room. And, such was the force of the blow, the man died.
After the incident, Pappy became a pacifist, desperately avoiding violence or confrontation.
After Chris learned this, he started to realize some truths about his own life. He realized why his own father also avoided confrontation, even at times when Chris felt he should have taken a stand. And he realized how his grandfather’s life, and the implications of that event, had trickled down and affected his own life, contributing to make him into the man he is now.
When Chris became a Christian, he realized that the Bible, the written, divinely inspired words of Jesus and his followers, had the same ability to help him see truths in his own life. It is Jesus’ story, and as a follower of him, it was Chris’ story too – a living story that coincides with the heartbeats of those who seek to know Him.

The Voice is an attempt to broaden and deepen that search for truth by helping us know who this man Jesus was and what his life could mean to our own.

So, as Holy Week now merges into Good Friday, a day that commemorates the most important journey Jesus would take in his short life, I’m trying to take some time to get lost in these pages and rediscover Him as I struggle along on my own journey.

Check out the conscious reflex drawings of Rob Pepper at: http://www.dailydrawingdiary.com/
Check out Waterdeep at: http://www.waterdeep.com/