Scaffolds

Music is an odd creature.  Its effect doesn’t welcome analysis. As with a pet dog the emotional animal that rises in us loses something important upon dissection.  To want someone else to feel a special song like you do is a delicate thing. One can play the song, and with detachment let the person make of it what they will. To push much further, even to verbalize the feeling, is to get a little naked. I suppose artists must build callouses against the emotional exposure.

I’m going to cut the dog.

I appreciate the song “Unless I’m Led” by Mates of State (1). Pitchfork singles it out as a low point in the album, calling it “a bit too maudlin even for the Mates” (2). And “maudlin” it may be; as far as I reckon from the lyrics, the song reflects on experiencing frustrating emotional needs, doomed relationships and breakups. What can I say? I have maudlin tastes.

Artistic expression is evocative by nature, and I find this piece clearly evokes an aura of emotionally rich reminiscence. I bet that this much is actually communicated: that the artists meant to evoke something like that, and that listeners reliably tend to receive something along those lines. But then sometimes when I’ve listened to the song, It’s evoked something more:  I experience a celebration of life, brining inspiration to live out the time given to me with fullness and gratitude.

I think I might like a fig leaf now. Did the artists intend that flavor of inspiration? Maybe but I doubt it. And should it matter? I doubt the reviewer from Pitchfork experienced much along those lines. Is it a legitimate hearing of the song? And supposing they didn’t have this inspiration in mind, should the artists behind the song be credited as a source of this inspiration?

Maybe one of the roles of art is open-ended. Asking a great question can yield responses in another that the asker did not anticipate. The one who responds may learn and articulate something that the asker doesn’t understand. And yet the asker deserves some credit for the artfulness of the question. Like questions waiting to be asked, maybe we each have unique spirits waiting to get stirred. Each is a potential that takes on form when called.

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I took a class once on tissue engineering. We learned about scaffolds. Suppose a piece of tissue is missing: a big piece of bone was removed, or the spinal cord broke, and the gap is too big for the body to fill on its own. Scaffolds in this context are materials that engineer re-growth.  They give cells colonizing the area something to hold on to, direction on where to go, and a cell’s equivalent of comfort and reassurance. The scaffolds temporarily fill the gap. Your body fills in the blanks with the goods. And then, when the new tissue is ready, a good scaffold fades away, leaving only healed tissue behind.

Some art is a scaffold for the heart. Or the gut. For feelings and intuitions and values, and seeds that sprout those things that need some soil. The artist experiences a gap in themself and fills it with a creation- something dead per se but hospitable to a certain sort of life. The artist hands the creation off to others, who colonize the scaffold with a little piece of themselves.

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I think poetry can do this. Many other writings really don’t:  they mean one precise thing and if you hear something else, you’re mistaken. If the text encouraged you in that, it’s to the writer’s discredit. I believe there’s a legitimate place for both types of writing.

Some writings aren’t easy to put in one box or the other. Take the American Constitution for instance. I haven’t studied legal theory, so take my speculations with a grain of salt. From what I can tell, some people believe upholding it means strict adherence to the particular notions that the authors had in mind as best as those notions can be discerned from what they wrote. Others take it as more of a projection of general values that can be adapted to our context in ways that may diverge from the authors’ personal notions at the time but (in theory) embrace the spirit of what those authors were pursuing in the constitution.

Scripture, it seems to me, often functions along these lines. Believers look for, find and mediate on ideas perceived in scripture that resonate with our deep intuitions and values. We tend to seek ways to interpret texts so that they are at peace with those intuitions and values rather than accepting interpretations in which we smell any hint of ignorance, folly or vice.  For instance, in this age we refuse to believe God endorses racism, bigotry, and the denigration of women. Most of us resist believing God teaches things that clearly contradict our understanding of nature and history, or recommends observably dysfunctional ways of thinking and making decisions, even when our sacred texts could easily be interpreted in those ways, even when perhaps they have been interpreted in those ways by many people for a long time.

Our predispositions shape what we see, but what was there in the text already also spurs us on, inspires us and directs our values and intuitions to develop in certain ways instead of others. We may wrestle with a passage that at first seems to demean women. After thinking and talking and reading about it we may then come to interpret it as meaning something different at second blush, something actually honoring and empowering women in a counterintuitive way—a way we hadn’t thought of before. So the words of the text, as well as the interpretations of those who came before us, shape our interpretation… but part of why we find what we do, part of the very thing we see is the body of values and perspectives that we ourselves bring, values that colonize the words on the page and are oriented and perhaps transformed by those words.

This is part of what happens, and I believe it happens in all believers to some degree. Still, some people probably don’t try to attend to their sense of goodness in this way when interpreting their scriptures. Fear of putting our own words in God’s mouth may hold us back. Some parts of the Bible are meant to be more dynamically evocative in their interpretation than others. Personally sometimes I accept interpretations that chafe against my intuitions of what is good.

In texts that are hybrids between evocative scaffold and explicit, instructive communication, disagreements about interpretation seem inevitable.  Many of us will make innocent mistakes. But we may also take the opportunity to deceive ourselves about the intent of the text.

We may also each form views that resonate appropriately with the text but contradict each other for other reasons. In science this seems to happen sometimes with our theories about physical reality: like how Newtonian physics is basically true and useful for our normal circumstances, but amounts to a simplification of reality that doesn’t apply to stuff that moves really fast. Yet teaching kids Newtonian physics is perfectly appropriate. I’m not sure how much it actually happened, but it’s easy to imagine one set of scientists arguing that light essentially consists of particles, and another saying that no, it really consists of waves. Maybe God paints us metaphors in the Bible’s teaching that can be integrated with our extra-Biblical perspectives in multiple appropriate ways, despite the apparent contradictions that may result.

I don’t know how far to go with this in my dealings with the Bible. There are still issues concerning which I don’t know how to reconcile my own sense of what’s good with my reading of the Bible in a way that I trust. These thoughts are part of me searching for solutions rather than the solutions themselves. I welcome your thoughts and reactions.

(1)    For lyrics: www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858889505/

Music video:  www.stereogum.com/1027451/mates-of-state-unless-im-led/video/

(2) pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15787-mates-of-state-mountaintops/