You know music has power when it has you shivering while running in hundred-degree heat.

Güngör’s Ghosts Upon the Earth is like that, though. From the opening track, the album screams its willingness to be and do something terribly different from most Christian music of the last quarter century. For one thing, this is an album, not just a collection of songs. For another, the musical skill on display here combines with a willingness to forge a new sound, rather than retread the same old pop-rock milieu one more time.

Musical and lyrical unity in an album is a rarity today in any genre, but this album tells a story. Indeed, it tells the story.

But back to those shivers. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Tolkien was, unquestionably, a master of his art. There has never been anyone quite like him – not before him, and not since. I have written about this at some length before, and I suspect I will again.

In reading Christopher Tolkien’s The Return of the Shadow: The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part I, one salient point about artistic endeavors came into sharp focus: Tolkien’s remarkable self-discipline and work ethic. He just kept at it. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Art is always a thing of its own moment. Not in a postmodern, deconstructive sense, but in the simple reality that it is created when it is created, and not at some other time. I first conceived this post walking home from Hastings last night – I’d spent the evening preparing to teach a class at church this morning. Ideation, then, happened in a particular environment (walking down a sidewalk beside a reasonably busy street) at a particular time (between 9:15 and 9:30 pm on a Saturday night). More than that, however, it happened this Saturday night after that study. Had I been thinking another night, or after some other study, I would have thought different thoughts. Read on, intrepid explorer →

Two weeks ago today, one of the most anticipated video games of the year, Bioware’s Mass Effect 3, was released. Planned as a trilogy from the getgo, the Mass Effect series has engendered considerable investment from fans, and expectations were understandably high for the final installment. Unfortunately, while the majority of the game was excellent, the ending left much to be desired.

For my purposes here the details are unimportant – you can find plenty of information with a Google search – but the responses to the ending are fascinating. Gamers have responded with an enormous campaign for the developers to alter or expand the ending. The gaming press and quite a few others gamers have responded in turn.

These rejoinders (at least, the serious ones) have largely appealed to authorial fiat and the sanctity of the finished product. They fall prey, in other words, to a fundamentally modernistic conception of art that is and always has been absurd. Read on, intrepid explorer →

In which, inspired by Shore’s work on the film scores, I ponder Tolkien’s masterpiece. At length. (While glossing over some of the linguistic inspiration for Tolkien’s myth.)

The triumph of Howard Shore’s score for The Lord of the Rings films is that it makes me want to reread the books. Again. Read on, intrepid explorer →