Forum for the Faithful

	Forum for the Faithful *Welcom to the ecumenical forum for THE CHURCH OF CHRIS MARTIN. Here we discuss the message and mission of Coldplay.*
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Hierophant

Nov 28, 07 - 12:19 AM

A Consumers Guide to the Apocolypse

Yet again, Coldplay crop up in discussions of the state of culture in the present age. THE CHURCH OF CHRIS MARTIN DID NOT MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

What accounts for the apocalyptic angst that is now so clearly present among Westerners who do not subscribe to any religious orthodoxy? Why do so many popular television shows, films, and music nourish themselves on this very angst? And why does so much popular entertainment feel compelled to give it expression?

In "A Consumer’s Guide to the Apocalypse: Why There Is No Cultural War in America and Why We Will Perish Nonetheless", Eduardo Velásquez argues that when we peer into contemporary artists’ creative depiction of our sensibilities, we discover that the antagonism that fuels the current cultural wars stem from the basic tenets of the Enlightenment. How do the irreconcilable facets of enlightenment science and Protestant theology accommodate one another?

From the author's blog:

"Coldplay, perhaps as no other popular, contemporary band, sings with feeling and eloquence about our yearning to know about and to locate our place in the universe. This yearning is borne of two principal questions that riddle our existence. Are we the animals depicted by science, that is, beings who are here accidentally, without any discernible purpose save the desire to preserves ourselves and in so doing maximize our pleasure? Or can our faculties of discernment and discrimination move beyond the numbers, planes, and figures with which science constructs an image of the universe to arrive at some more comprehensive understanding that speaks to our common sense experience of beauty, awe, wonder, and love? The prominent place Coldplay gives to science – understood broadly as a way of looking at and being in the world – seems to indicate that our rational faculties should be sufficient to come to terms with the questions of our physical and spiritual existence. Consider some of the song titles: “The Scientist”, “Speed of Sound”, “x and y”. But science cannot on Coldplay’s reading supply us with answers to life’s most pressing questions. It might answer the “how” of things but it cannot by its own admission answer the “why” of things. What then? Chris Martin and his fellow band members seek refuge in feeling or sentiment. To their credit, however, they acknowledge no simple “mind-body” dichotomy. Our feelings shape our thoughts and our thoughts shape our feelings. In the midst of a bout with despair, for example, the consoling words of a friend can alter the way we think and thus feel. For Coldplay then there is an awareness that we are as much a self or soul as body. There is no unadulterated refuge in our feelings. Our imagination is always mingled with them. Images and words intrude. We thus arrive at x and y and to the attention given to words when so much of the sentimentality of the previous two albums proves insufficient.Words do not emancipate however. We are caught in a vicious cycle moving from feelings to word, around and around. Metaphysics, asking about what lies beyond, courting transcendence, thinking about death, all become mingled with Coldplay’s larger meditation on the limitations of science. How do we escape? Who or what can fix us? Who put this perverted machine together in the first place? Beautiful ballads belie desperation and even rage. Love is solace. But Coldplay seeks permanence as much as love. Human love is fleeting. So much of their music is of lost love. Coldplay returns to the scientific metaphor and elaborates on a universe gone awry. Perhaps by going back to the beginning we can see “how it all began,” Martin and his band ponder. We discover evolutionary themes. Consider the pictures on the final pages of Coldplay’s “Twisted Logic” tour program: four members of the band, each representing one stage of evolution, the first member (Chris Martin) on all four and finally one standing erect reading a newspaper. Coldplay is one of the protagonists in a larger story I tell in A Consumer’s Guide."

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