New to Diary of a Single Christian Guy: Post Series

                Today I'd like to introduce you to my very first one, “Owl City Allegory,” and note that while I’ve had themed posts turn up in sequence over time, I have yet to organize them together in a concerted “blog series.” This first one will draw on similar analytical methods as used in Poignant Music, for example, and that article may be interesting to readers who were unaware of it, buried as it is in the middle of a sequential, but unorganized logjam of 150+ posts.

Part I: Lyric Interpretation of Owl City Songs

                As we begin, I want to explain that these are going to be intentionally pigeon-holed at times, after enough lyrical evidence has convinced me of the possibility of an allegorical interpretation, in order to suggest a way for the whole song to cohere together into one thematic message. These are my own interpretation, and I don’t insist that each conclusion must be what Adam Young (the writer, singer and producer behind Owl City) had in mind when writing, but the point will be that, intentionally or unintentionally, he has crafted the lyrics so that they can indeed be validly interpreted as a subtle theological message, without going to interpretive extremes. I believe my analysis will be fair, and I will point out shortcomings where I consider them to be. It must also be noted that Owl City music, especially the early variety, is characterized by whimsicality, and in many cases they are impossible for a bystander to interpret in the sense that they can be at all sure what Adam was thinking when he inserted those lines. However, Adam is a sincere Christian and based on his public expressions of faith on his blog and elsewhere, I don’t believe he would object to people’s attempts to find hidden spiritual meaning in the texts of his songs, so long as the conclusions didn’t amount to doctrinal confusion, of course. And with that preface, this endeavor of mine is primed to begin. 

Side note:

One of the benefits of Adam’s meticulously preserved formlessness (he has said so comparably little about his personal life and views that one article about him online even called him “completely non-political”) is that his fans have the opportunity to see themselves in him, even though they are very different in terms of life experience. There have even been some who claim he's gay--not as an insult to his music, but in a desire to more deeply connect with him in a shared identity. As it turns out, melancholy musings on inexpressible yearnings by an eccentric mind is something many share. We’re all a little bit odd, and the oddities in Adam’s lyrics, combined with their optimism and hope, have in my view given a lot of young people something to connect to and lift them up. They have, in Adam’s music, an alternative to contemporary offers of sympathy for their weirdness and desire to know they’re not alone. Consider Lady Gaga’s fans, affectionately (?) called “Little Monsters” by the artist. There is also a community of the strange and the burdened in her fan base, but I have yet to hear of someone vomiting on Adam during a concert. There is a huge difference in how the base is encouraged: Owl City doesn’t shy from quirkiness but it never encourages listeners to fester in despondency and feed their discouragement. So much of pop culture encourages “acting out” as a way to deal with personal struggles. Adam never has. I’m incredibly grateful to Adam simply for what I know he’s done to the young adult culture. He’s shown that if you’re sad, you don’t have to express it through attention-seeking delinquency or self-abasement. It’s okay to be sad, lonely, afraid and a little bit different from “everybody else.” These are normal things, but they don’t mean that your life is over. Instead, his songs offer a thoughtfully different approach.

It’s almost too easy for me to draw similarities between me and Adam. We’re both tall, though he’s taller. We’re both chronically uninvolved in long-term relationships, though we’ve both had romantic experiences in the past, and clearly think about love a lot. Which may be due to the age factor. He’s roughly 3 years older, so a lot of the things we’re dealing with in life are bound to be similar. We're both introverts and spend a lot of time alone just thinking or working on various projects. Hopeful optimists, but cynical realists. Adam deals frankly with issues like shame, death, depression etc and ‘calls it like it is,’ but he doesn’t wallow in grief, he looks up and always has a positive angle to the calamity around him. Or is it me? I am so passionately a fan of what I call “cynical optimism” (for an example, read the whole book of Ecclesiastes in a straight shot). You can’t ignore the flawed and terrible things in the world, but you can’t submit to the idea that those things will have the last word. In Adam’s lyrics, I see the innocence and childlike glee that I know at times, in my clearer thinking moments. The public face of Adam, and his song persona, is like the very best of me—if I also could sing. In the vein of “meditating on what is good and excellent and pure (Philippians 4:8),” listening to his songs can elevate my mind to dwell more naturally on positive things over negative, and in a very direct yet subtle way, make me a better person. I enjoy the occasional metal-rock song, but I can’t listen to that stuff all the time. Part of the reason is that they nearly never contain any hope. But Adam’s songs contain hope. And there’s a very simple and subliminal reason for that. It’s what I intend to show in this blog series. So let’s get started. :)

~ Rak Chazak

Of June

I wrote another poem. After the last one, I realized how much fun it was. I hadn't written a rhyme in years. Apparently, there's a distinction between "poetry" and "verse," the latter of which must rhyme. The poetry that doesn't rhyme often strikes me as very weird, anyway. Verse is the sort of thing that Rudyard Kipling wrote a lot of.

Here's my work, and I'll put an interpretation below. This dovetails nicely with my earlier entry about work.

Of June

June has brought cascading rains that clean the dusty air

Something tells me farmers will delight

My nose rejoices over that the pollen isn't there

It's getting washed away 'bout every night

Soon the star charts will proclaim that summer's finally come

The heat's already trying to break through

The soil enriched, rain fills the ditch. Our task has now begun

to work the yard again, but we are few.

Upkeep is a full-time task when you're the only ones

who, hands and feet, must daily work, and plan

to work some more until you've made a dent in all the tons

of things to do for each and every man

Seeing the fruit of your labor lets you silently rejoice

-- or loudly, if it happens to be your style

With satisfaction, head turned skyward, prayer lifts your voice

to thank God for another day worthwhile

Working is no curse if what you're doing is infused

with worth according to a divine end

The ability to tell apart bad things from good misused

separates the godly men from men

Rain in this life can at times be undeniably cruel

when instead of falling calmly, it monsoons

Because I don't see work and rain as goods instead of tools

I'm thus disposed to make the most of June.

I don't think it needs much explaining, but here's some background:
* The farmers will delight because it's critical for crops to get rain right now. Last year we had a drought.
* Prior to the rains, I was congested and sneezy. Now I'm nearly completely uncongested. Rain does have a cleaning effect on the atmosphere. It takes the dust particles that the droplets form around, and brings them back to the ground during the storms.
* By 'star charts,' I'm referring to the astronomical definition of summer as beginning June 20, which coincides with the solstice being June 21. We've had a few days of hot summer-like weather already in May, but the rains have cooled the temperatures a bit. It seems that this year, we're going to get the hot weather nearly right "on time."
* Working the yard refers to my immediate family taking time out of our week to maintain the house and property, which takes up nearly all the time left over when you're working full-time. I myself am still unemployed, but for me, looking for employment and otherwise working around the house is my full-time task. Our house is shaded by trees, so we get lots of stick litter to clean up.
* The fifth stanza refers to the article "Leisurely Labor" that I wrote about a week ago. Not all bad things are necessarily inherently bad. The realization helps to get more enjoyment out of work, which isn't being done for no purpose. See the image above. The sixth stanza wraps up this thought and asserts that with the proper perspective, I can enjoy the season. Those who are begrudgingly laboring might benefit from a change of perspective.

As a neat coincidence, the title I chose for the poem (which wrote itself) is the same as the title for Adam Young's (Owl City) first album, one he self-released. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_June) I figured that giving it this name would be a nice homage to Adam's music, which is itself an example of how a different perspective can give you much more enjoyment out of the simple, even mundane, things in life.

~ Rak Chazak