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alternative explanations: Mark 3

February 18, 2008 by David Baer

It might have been the sheer numbers of people who followed Jesus into the region of the Sea of Galilee that spooked the custodians of religious stability. On the one hand, it is not easy to fault them. Religious madmen and the gullibility of the throngs had caused considerable harm to the Jewish people’s destiny, encased as they were in Imperium’s airless wax. Continue Reading »

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Aaron’s silence: Leviticus 10-11

February 9, 2008 by David Baer

When we might have expected paternal wrath or rebellious fury or grief’s loudest howling, Aaron gives us only silence. It is an enigmatic, even mysterious, stillness. In the wake of the summary execution by Yahweh of his sons Nadab and Abihu for the offense of offering unsolicited ‘strange fire’ on Yahweh’s altar, Aaron’s quiet is patient of more than one interpretation:

Now Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, each took his censer, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered unholy fire before the LORD, such as he had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the LORD meant when he said,
“Through those who are near me
I will show myself holy,
and before all the people
I will be glorified.”‘

And Aaron was silent.

Perhaps Aaron’s silence speaks of his resignation before YHWH’s judicial response to his sons’ innovation. His closed mouth may even represent assent to the circumstance, a tacit recognition that the death of reckless religionists—even when they are flesh and blood—is right and proper. Continue Reading »

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on my mind: Damien Rice, O

February 8, 2008 by David Baer

This stunning Damien Rice offering is by turns imperfect, soulish, quirky, self-absorbed, and fantastic.

Rice’s persuasive voice is complemented with uncommon tact by gorgeous female accompaniment. Though it never ceases to be a Damien Rice album, Lisa Hannigan and her friends are so good that they play a solid supporting role without which Rice would not be what he is. Almost the same can be said of the understated but skillful acoustic guitar that encircles Rice’s voice throughout O‘s tenspot of tracks. Continue Reading »

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at least there’s you: Daughtry, Daughtry

February 8, 2008 by David Baer

Like the mythological Athena, Daughtry seems have sprung full grown and fully armed from the head of his father, call him Music. I mean, where is the warm-up here? Where is the amateurish posing, the awkward yearning to be profound?

This eponymous debut album plays like a very strong sophomore effort, not the uneven first shot that one anticipates from a First Time Thing. The band’s sound fronts Chris Daughtry’s convincing voice and persona against the backdrop of tight vocal harmonies, crisp guitar and bass work, and unobtrusive but effective drumming. Continue Reading »

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Mr. Brahms successfully downsizes: The Complete String Quartets, The Complete Clarinet Sonatas (Philips Duo)

February 7, 2008 by David Baer

As an amateur music lover with only a spotty control of the repertoire, it always amazes me when it turns out that a composer whom I’ve come to know via the big works–his symphonies, for example–excels in the small stuff as well.

The Quartetto Italiano does Brahms proud on this Philips Duo recording of his complete string and clarinet quartets. Brahms the late Romantic composer sounds almost modern in these tight, diminutive, four-pieces. Something of the Modernist angst comes in to complement the celebratory reflex of Romanticism itself. One senses that we stand here at the hinge of two artistic eras. Continue Reading »

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watch your back: 24, Season One

February 6, 2008 by David Baer

Let’s face it, you’ve heard the phrase ‘a new kind of television’ enough times to make you go numb in the buttocks. Every two-bit wanna’be Seinfeld pilot gets styled that way, too often to cover up a lack of talent with the siren song of novelty.

But you’d be mistaken to be dubious about 24. This show in its first season was about as new as television can get. Continue Reading »

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tedium’s paradox: Exodus 36–38

February 5, 2008 by David Baer

It is well to temper one’s definition of tedium with humility. In the absence of this discipline, we all too hastily dismiss as boring and irrelevant aspects of reality that from other angles may appear enthralling and pertinent.

Or, at the least, worthy. Continue Reading »

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preaching to the choir: Ann Chamberlain, Rhodesian Ridgeback (Comprehensive Owners Guide)

February 4, 2008 by David Baer

‘Funny thing about Rhodesian Ridgeback books. It’s hard to tell the reader something he doesn’t already know.

That’s because this beguiling breed elicits such passion and understanding from its owners that most of us end up so attached to our dogs that we know their behaviors and temperament inside and out. As a result, we read about the breed while nodding our heads and commenting ‘Yup ….’, ‘Uh-huh …’ and the like. Continue Reading »

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the two infinities: Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

February 4, 2008 by David Baer

Some literary works are so sweeping in their vision, so penetrating in their understanding of the human condition and its psychology, so inexhaustible with respect to their spiritual insight that a reviewer feels quite small as he turns the last page and takes up his pen to comment.

Such is Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Three Karamazov siblings, products of the unrestrained loins of the hapless Fyodor Karamazov, spend most of the pages alloted to them walking their ever diverging paths and become more and more unlike each other. Then, in a hundred or so pages, Dostoevsky all but forces us to see how alike they are. How alike we are, whether under the Russian sun or some other. Continue Reading »

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a pregnant simplicity: Matthew 22

February 3, 2008 by David Baer

A proper perspective will frequently elicit the inherent simplicity from a mass of details rather than impose an external simple-ness. Such is Jesus’ view of the Hebrew legal complex, a hermeneutic for which Jesus himself would scarcely have claimed novelty. Continue Reading »

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