The Man without a Face

I've often said that my favorite movie is The Man without a Face. That's not entirely accurate. There are parts in the movie that really resonate with me. The movie is about a man named Justin McLeod. He has burns over half his body. He lives alone.

I'm really drawn to what he's surrounded himself with. It is a fortress. He's protecting himself from something. We don't know why until later. But it's almost a symbol of what we are. His home borders a lake; it's edge made of boulders. The sounds of sea-gulls are a rythmic song throughout the day, along with the mystical sound of falling waves. The house is beautiful. Trees enshroud the front, and it's back is exposed to the lake. There is a stable in the backyard housing a horse, a make-shift boat he's working on, a lawn neatly trimmed and taken care of. He is a man who is good with his hands, an outdoors-man. He is seen at one point cutting up red-meat with a butcher-knife and feeding it to a German Shepherd, who is obedient and trained.

His house is a treasure-chest of wonders. Nautical themes are festooned throughout the 1st floor: binoculers, ship models in bottles, worn maps on papyrus, antique clocks, rows and rows of hardback, leatherbound books, manikins posing for different motifs (McLeod is an artist), paints and pastels, rough drafts strewn about the floor (he has painted for Time Magazine), chess pieces arranged as if in the middle of a game, an attic full of mysterious boxes, a wooden tree-trunk with a tragic face carved within, Opera comes from an old record player while he reads the beginning lines of Virgil's Aeneid. He is a poet, an artist, a carpenter, a teacher, a scholar, a philosopher, a Thoreau-esque self-sufficient man, the kind of man a part of me is really drawn to.

But he is misunderstood. The town gossips about why he has his scars from his burns. It's rumored he's a homosexual, that he molested a former student of his, etc . . . So he is a recluse. Sort of like God. God is hidden only to those who don't search for Him. And for those who don't, the wildest theories surround who He is or what He's done.

There is a powerful scene where after reading from The Aeneid (he, like Aeneas, is under Juno's unslumbering wrath: I sing of war, and a Man at war: Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore), he puts a mirror up to his face, the scars are gone momentarily . . . until the mirror shifts to the right, revealing the burns, whereupon he is disgusted. That scene is very profound, as it gives us a brief insight into our spiritual wretchedness outside of Christ. McLeod is a tragic hero.

Meet Chuck Norstadt. He is full of wonder, he aspires to go to military school, and fulfill his dreams of being a pilot. The only problem is that he needs a teacher to help him pass the entrance exams. His family thinks he is a dreamer. He lost his real Father young, and his mother is 'seeing' another man. This event has affected him deeply; he is told his dad died when his spy plane was shot down, but later he finds he was an alcoholic, and driven to madness, later dying in an insane asylum. He needs a father-figure.

And thus begins the relationship between Chuck and Mr. McLeod. The wonder begins during their teaching sessions. There is a rough start, but they soon begin to enjoy the best things in life, as McLleod prepares Chuck - in his own unique way - for Military School. During one scene, McLeod teaches Chuck how to read poetry, especially Shakespeare. "It's not a cereal box you're reading.", McLeod admonishes. "Why can't I read it silently?", Chuck asks. "Because it's a play! You perform it! I hold the world not as the world, Horatio, where every man must play a part: and mine, a sad one." He tells Chuck to read a poem called High Flight by John Magee, a military pilot during WW2. The poem is magnificent; and the way Chuck reads it is very moving. If you want, please do yourself a favor, and read it here: http://www.woodiescciclub.com/high-flight.htm.

There's another scene at the end. Chuck is graduating; he's looking for that face beyond the crowd, hinted at at the beginning of the movie. Everyone is congradulating him; but he's not satisfied. He gets up on a chair and sees a lone man walking away from the crowd. He turns around. It's him. They wave. All this is meaningless to you unless you see it or share my sentiments. These are some of the reasons why I love this movie. It's strange, too, that the movie as a whole is imperfect, but that there are scenes that truly shine.

Indentity, the Self, and Art: random musings

What am I? I'm a body/soul composite. What's a soul? Well, a soul gives life to the body, and it's also a spirit. What's a spirit? That thing that thinks and wills. What is thinking? It's understanding, reasoning, and judging. This is kind of an empty road-map to the Self. But something is missing from every road-map: the one making the map. A movie-projector can project everything but the projector itself. You can't understand every fact about yourself, because you have to understand that, and then there's an infinite regress of understandings. Only the author truly understands the characters; not the characters.

What is this 'I'? Who is this "I"? Out of the heart comes all the issues of life, says Solomon; it's a fountain, and all the water comes from the fountain, but the fountain isn't just more water. It is that out of which the water comes. But it's very mysterious. Can Art give us any clues?

I want to talk about the connection between our identity and art. How do we know what we look like? Well, we look in a mirror. But in order to look in a mirror we need eyes. How do we know who we are? Can we look in another kind of mirror? How about the mirror of art? C.S. Lewis talks about a secret thread that binds together the books we love. But this can include other things as well. How about movies, poetry, painting, music, etc . . . Are these spiritual mirrors at which we can see 'through a mirror darkly' a dim image of our Selves? But to see these unique visions, we need eyes to see. This might be why Christ asks His hearers to listen if they have ears to hear, and to gaze if they have eyes to see; then they will hear His voice, and see His revelations. Chesterton says that all we call practical, rational, or technical means we forget that we remember; but all that we call Spirit, passion, or Art, means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot! Forgot what? Who we are! Nietzsche said, "We are unknown to ourselves, we knowers, we ourselves, to ourselves…we are not ‘knowers’." And yet Socrates asks us to Know Thyself.

How? It seems Art plays a pivotal role here. I'm inclined to agree with Chesterton. In the back of our minds, we feel - as Pascal says - like dispossessed kings and queens. If Christianity is true, this makes perfect sense. Eden, after all, is that undiscovered country that is the satisfaction of our deepest longings. It's no surprise that when moving Art affects us, our thoughts reach for Something that we've never experienced; and yet the experience is always arousing It. It seems like like Art is giving us a clue about who we are. And since we're all unique reflections of God, we can find His image in our Selves, and through Us, grope for Him.

St. Francis of Assisi said our bodies are dumb asses, useful for practical matters. But could there be a connection between bodily movement and our Selves? Why do we move our bodies when we listen to moving music? If it moves us too much, why do physical tears come from our tear ducts? Why does our blood pressure rise? Why might our eyes close, or our head look up or down? Why might we smile? How can Art have such power? Why did Plato think it was so powerful it needed to be censured by the Government? Lenin said you could judge the quality of a city-state by its music. Is that why Hegel thought Music could give a clue as to the direction of the Zeitgeist? Why is it we 'look down' when we pray? We almost feel it indecent to pray, say, while shaving. Why do we go down on our knees? Why do we lower our voices if we talk about something serious, even if no one's around? Our bodies seems connected, somehow, to our identities.

Back to our analogy. Mirrors are to bodies what Art is to our Selves. I stress this because it's hard to directly look at it. It's seems like a mirage, an illusion, unstable. It might not even be essential. We humans can be inhuman; we can fail to achieve our Nature! Our Selves can fail to be. Boethius said that if we become evil, we cease to be what we were; we lose our essence. Virtue can lift us above our nature; and vice lowers us. And so Man bound by vice are ex-men, a wolf, a dog, a fox, a lion, a deer, an ass, a bird, a sow. Different vices can make you different kinds of beasts, and not a man. We then can lose that image in us of God. Charles Williams said that in Hell we no longer have the capacity to say 'I'. Tolkien made Gollum say 'we', not 'I'. 'We want the Ring, the precious.'

Jesus says something paradoxical and puzzling; if we save our Selves, we'll lose our Self; but if we lose our Selves for His sake, we will find our Selves. If we save our Selves, we somehow make our Self an idol, and then the idol possesses us, and we end in slavery. If we surrender our Selves to Him, our true Selves are given to us. Finding our true Self is another way of saying that archaic word 'salvation'. The tricky part is that 'finding our Selves' can't be a motive for finding our Selves. We almost have to lose our Selves; we forget our Selves. But we lose it in serving others or God . . . And then, magically, our Selves are given to us. Lewis says it's the same with originality; if you bother about originality, you'll never be original. But if you just say as clearly as you can what you want to say, you'll accidentally be original. It's the same with making impressions on people. As long as you're thinking about what kind of impression you're making while you're talking to someone, you're probably not going to make a good impression. But if you're just interested in what the other person is saying, and you forget about your Self, you'll probably make a good impression. This principle seems to involve alot of things.

Jesus asked what good is it if a man gains the whole world but loses his Self?

C.S. Lewis and Transposition

Imagine a funnel. It begins wide, and as we go down, the passage gets more and more narrow. Suppose the wide part is the realm of the Spirt; and suppose the narrow part is the realm of Nature. To understand this better, think of the same idea in the realm of our experience. For example, Mozart can be played by all the instruments in an orchestra; or, he can be played on a piano. If it's played by an orchestra, the composition has more layers and sections, embodied by different instruments. But if the same piece is played by just a piano, then all those layers and sections have to be filled in by just the piano.

Do you see the idea of a funnel again? The richness and many-layered orchestra (and let's say Mozart meant it this way) is funneled down to the one-layered piano. This isn't to say the piano piece is more or less beautiful; that is another question. We're saying, in this case, the music in one medium (the orchestra) is transposed to music in another medium (mere piano).

Think of our own emotions. When in love, we might have a sick feeling. This might be the same feeling you have when you're sea-sick. But if you're sea-sick on a ship, you're not in love, you're miserable. But we liked the sick feeling when we were in love, and we hated it when we were miserable on the ship. Here, 2 emotions - love and misery - transpose down to the body as the same feeling: sickness. This might mean that the world from which love and misery come is richer and many-layered, compared to the world our bodies inhabit. The richer medium decends into the lower medium. But it seems that - in some sense - the bodily reaction (sickness) IS the emotion (either love or misery), in some symbolic way.

What if this is an analogy between my body and my soul, Nature and Spirit? Think of the people who inhabit Flat-land. In Flat-land, there is only 2 dimensions, the line and the point. Let's say there is a denizen in Flat-land named Tom. Suppose we tried to tell Tom about our 3-d world. We tell him that lines and points inhabit space, and space is governed by time; this mysterious entity called time makes objects in space change, mature, decay, and die. And unlike the 2-d world, we have no pencil-marks, and the colors aren't made from the ink of crayons and markers. So far, it seems Tom would think our world less real, drab, and repulsive. After all, to Tom's mind, ink and pencil-marks dominate his conception of what Reality is, and change, maturity, decay, and death, while incomprehensible to him, sound hollow.

Tom has no idea how much more rich, multifaceted, and variegated our world is compared to his. And that if he inhabited our world for 1 minute, he'd never want to return to his. He'd see that there is no need for pencil-marks and ink, because the objects of experience possess their own color - that in his world, the objects in our world have been transposed, or funneled down, to ink and markings; and that objects define their own movement according to independent laws of Nature. He'd see a variety of near infinite complexity that no drawing could ever fully capture. He'd see that change and maturity allow for growth, discipline, character, relationships, love, and processes of soul-making. He'd see that a foreknowledge of his own decay and death could make him more grateful and responsible for what he had, in the time he had it.

Could this be our predicament regarding Heaven, or the world of Spirit? Perhaps in Heaven there's no eating, sex, time, or art. But could this just include our conceptions of them? Couldn't this be like telling Tom that in our world, there's no ink or pencil-marks?

The Nature of Music

Music has always fascinated me. It seems other-worldly. It directly appeals to the ear, but it can be read as poetry as well, and so it indirectly appeals to the imagination. Modern music is accompanied by the 'music video'. In the days of the Opera, the orchestra accompanied the drama on stage. In ancient Greece, the Tragedies of Auschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides dominated the era. Here, like during the time of Wagner, both the eye and the ear are enchanted. Today, movies show the combination of the stage and music on a new level. The camera can reveal what a mere set piece might not be able to show. The reverse might be true as well. But we can all admit that music enriches - in some mysterious way - experience. It colors a landscape with a translucent glory. Our consciousness - when under music's spell - foists upon the things in our visual field a mystical aroma, and the objects themselves seem transfigured.


But what happens when the music passes the ear, or when the visuals pass the eye? What then? Music seems filled with information, since music is usually mediated through language. But what if we don't understand the language? Songs sung in a foreign tounge can be equally aesthetically pleasing. Consider the music of Sigur Ros, an Icelandic band. Much of their lyrics are Icelandic; but some of their songs are sung in a language the band made up. The language is called Hopelandic. Here, a message is being communicated, but I don't know what it is. And yet I'm moved. I'm moved sometimes to tears.

Scores with no singing can attain to the same grandeur. Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Bach, and other classical composers fall in this category. What is strange is that these composers tried to reincarnate human emotion in their compositions. How is this possible? And how is it possible for a critic - or you or me - to think, "Beethoven has succeeded in making this composition sound like the emotion of 'dread'." Or, at least, to me. Perhaps others are not moved.

Look out your window with no music. Depending on your mood, you might find the experience prosaic. But look out your window again, and this time play Debussy's Clair de Lune. Try not to pay direct attention to the music, but observe Nature through the window. Your vision seems to gradually transfigure, doesn't it? The music elevates the whole scene to a new height, and your immediate consciousness seems changed. The music arouses an inner mystical awareness of Something you know not what. But we don't deny the music points to Something. Our ignorance of it intrigues us more, since we get the feeling it's teasing us. Nietzche once asked us to assume that truth is a woman. What then? A woman is fickle; she isn't transparent about her intensions; and when we think we have her figured out, her whole nature morphs into something strange, and she vanishes again, only to reappear by incantation, as if by a spell.

Was Nietzche on to something when he wrote 'The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music'? Reason - represented by the god Apollo - doesn't have center stage. It is enslaved to the passions. We believe what we want, and then rationalize those wants. Hence, Pascal said that if we doubt the Christian faith, don't try to multiply proofs, but try to change your affections, and your mind will follow. Act 'as if you did believe', exhorts Pascal, and you will come to believe. If you multiply proofs with a hard heart, your doubts fester. Nietzche follows suit and gives music a preeminent role. Reason is enslaved by passion, and passion is born of Greek Tragedy, but Greek Tragedy spawns from the Spirit of Music. Music itself is at the bottom of it all. It is pregant with life, and it gives birth to more life. It seems the Bible goes along with this. Tradition says God sang the Heavens and Earth into existence. And when He called creation good, the angels sang for joy. Out of the Spirit of Music - perhaps finding an origin in the Trinity - Tragedy comes on the scene. We have grand, sweeping epics laced throughout the Old Testament, chronicling the success and enslavement of Israel. Out of this morass, the Logos emerges: Reason. In the fullness of time, Christ comes. Reason, again, submits to Death in the context of the Tragedy of his crucifixion. When Reason submits to this motif, Reason resurrects, re-born, and ascends again to whence He came, back into the Spirit of Music, within the Trinity.

In his book 'Either/Or', Soren Kierkegaard wrote a chapter entitled, 'The Immediate Erotic Stages, Or the Musical-Erotic', in which Mozart's Don Giovanni is examined. Don Giovanni is Kierkegaard's pick for a perfect musical work of art. Kierkegaard is looking for the perfect medium for what he calls 'the sensuous'. Music is that medium. Sculpture, painting, and poetry all fail. Not sculpture, because it's not inward enough. Not painting, because music doesn't have contours, though a painting can hint at it. Plus, it isn't contained in 'the instant', otherwise it could be painted. Since it itself doesn't necessarily have words, poetry - constituted by words - can't embody it. He says music has an element of time, since there is succession: before, during, after. But it itself isn't in time. And while we need the ear to hear the music, the music makes us wish we could break free from our senses. It calls us out of ourselves.

Some theologians think that music will be our language in Heaven.

Arthur Schopenhauer thought that 'willing' was the source of suffering. Short of killing our will, he thought that music releases us from suffering temporarily. At the bottom of everything, Schopenhauer thought, wasn't Reason, but Will. And that music represented this Will, passion, striving, groping, reaching, desiring, love, emotion, etc . . . All other art 'copies' the Will; but music 'embodies' it. Could this 'Will' be God's love?

The fires in Hell are a metaphor.

Is the fire in Hell a metaphor?

I think so.

1. If the fire is literal, it contradicts other verses. For example, in Matthew 8:12, we read: "But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Here, hell is called the 'outer darkness'. If the fire is literal, there shouldn't be any outer darkness. Fire lights everything up. But you might say that 'outer darkness' is a metaphor. And I would agree. But what reason do we have to prefer one metaphor over another? The choice to make fire literal seems arbitrary. So, I'm inclined to call them both poetic descriptions.

Further, in 1 Thessalonians 1:9, we read that the damned, " . . . will be punished with everlasting destruction." Should destruction be taken literally? Some think so. But these think the damned will be annihilated in Hell. But other verses say the damned are punished forever and ever. Is 'forever and ever' a metaphor for a long time, and thus 'destruction' is literal? Or is 'destruction' a metaphor, and 'forever and ever' literal?

It seems like there are alot of metaphors used about Hell. And 'fire' is just one out of other metaphors. Fire just seems to be the one metaphor in everyone's imaginations. This might be because of Dante's Inferno.

2. Fire is a gas. You need fuel, oxygen, and heat. When these conditions are met, the gas gets a certain structure. This structure is what constitutes the flame. So, fire is basically gas that glows. But gas has mass. So, gas has extension, since whatever has mass has extension. But in Hell, we are disembodied spirits. Spirits have no mass, and so spirits have no extension. So, if the fire is literal, it seems the heat wouldn't affect spirits. The reason we now feel burns is because we have a physical body with nerves. But disembodied spirits don't have nerves. So, it seems disembodied spirits can't feel burns.

But can't something physical interact with something non-physical? Yes, but what do we mean? If we are now embodied souls, our souls can make our bodies move. I can lift up my hand. In this case, something non-physical affected something physical. While we're embodied, I'd say Yes! If you cut me, I feel pain; and when I feel pain, I'll cry out. When I cry out, it's not because my body is in pain, but 'I' am, my Self, body and soul. But this is only because my body and soul are in union. As Aquinas says, they are a body/soul composite. But in Hell we'll have no body. And so it's hard to conceive how a disemodied spirit can feel pain caused by physical stuff, like fire.

But there's a further problem. Hell itself is a spiritual place. So, it seems the conditions for fire can't even be realized. Fuel and oxygen aren't properties of spiritual places.

3. A note on poetic language. Just because the fires are figurative doesn't mean the experiences in Hell are any less severe. Suppose you're talking to a man who is in love with a woman. He has never been in love with any other woman but this one. Suppose he has never experienced or observed someone whose love was taken away. What if he asked, say, Edmond Dantes what it felt like to have Mercades torn from his rapture? What if the closest Dantes could get at describing the experience was if he told our man that his heart was ripped to shreds? Or, that the blue sky of his happiness had been blackened? Or that, as a result, his lonliness stretched out like a barren desert? Is Dantes trying to diminish the serverity of his experience? Perhaps only poetic langauge can grope at what the true nature of Dantes' anguish was.

Personally, 'As a deer pants for water, so my soul, oh Lord, pants for you.' touches - another metaphor? - deeper than, 'I have a desire for God.' Or, 'Our God is a consuming fire.' resonates more than, 'Nothing gets in God's way.'