Songs for the Benedict Option parodying itself
(NB Pauli: perhaps it will simply beat itself to death with its other shoe)
Well, this is one way for Rod Dreher to put a halt to my making fun of his Benjamins Option* cult fraud being perpetrated on psychologically needy or otherwise uncritical Christians - by taking the lead himself.
Did I use the phrase "Dungeons and Dragons for Boutique Christians" in a recent comment? Well, here you go - Songs for the Benedict Option.
I'm going to excerpt a great wad of Dreher's hilariously cynical in-your-face-you-gullible-snipes mocking of his own reader-followers, because I could care less whether Dreher-TAC likes it or not, but mostly because, frankly, this beats anything I had on hand myself.
So here you go, Benjamins Option fans, future history pole-vaulting straight to farce:
A couple of you have sent me this song by a singer/songwriter named Bill Mallonee, suggesting it as a theme song for the Benedict Option:
Winnowing (CD, Vinyl or Digital Download formats!) by Bill Mallonee & The Darkling Planes
Here are the lyrics:
IN THE NEW DARK AGE (the only lamp burning bright is you)
All the dominoes fell
we went under a spell
and all hell. broke. loose.
Everything you held dear
when the dust finally cleared
it was just as you feared
Chorus:
In the new dark age
Nobody puts up a fight
In the new dark age
You’ll see no flares in the night
The only lamp burning bright…is you
All the mask [sic] came off
All disguises were dropped
The game was declared over
Love was escorted out
There was hardly a shout
I’ll take the crimson & clover
We’re all mystics & freaks
With the spirit beneath
Deeper than any ocean
Let the string section “riff”
Seal it up with a kiss
Honey, we are all golden
In the new dark age
no one trusts anyone
In the new dark age
they forget to have fun
The only light from the sun…is you
In the new dark age
nobody puts up a fight
In the new dark age
you’ll see no flares in the night
The only lamp burning bright…is you
The only lamp burning bright…is you
Nice. If I were writing it, I would only tweak it to say that the only lamp burning bright is us, and then put a verse in about Christ as the light of the world, and the only reason we burn in the darkness is that He burns within us. Then it would be truly Ben Oppy, though I would have to get over my reflexive, irrational prejudice against contemporary Christian music in order to listen to it.
And then there’s this 2004 standby, “Dégenération,” from the Quebecois band Mes Aïeux, which wouldn’t take much alteration — a verse about the loss of faith and Christian tradition — to be a perfect Ben Op song:
Alright, that's quite enough, don't you think? Frankly, I'd take the crimson & clover over this myself.
But, still, who says radical, adolescent role-playing nouveau-Christianisme can't be a ton o' funzies, even truly Ben Oppy.
Will there be an official BenOpCon - not the standard operating procedure, the Star Wars kind - where we can all dress up in SCA-esque costumes and sing the Songs for the Benedict Option?
If there is, I'll be there in my new, officially pretentious Benjamin Options avatar, The Wordsmith Monkster.
Strumming a lute.
*NOTE: all uses of my favorite new phrase should be credited to its originator, commenter Tom.
This suggestion by one of Dreher's commenters is indeed just-oh-so-perfect for the Benjamins Option:
ReplyDelete“Long Walk Home,” Neal Young. It’s from 1987 and clearly has to do not with Western cultural putrefaction but with the then-creaking Cold War. Still, given what looks to be the endless War Against Terror, its haunting refrain would fit right in on a BenOp concept album.
The reason that it is perfect for the BO is that the song was so wrong -- two years later the Cold War was won and by the US, no less. IOW, the touting of this song fits the elitist Vision-of-the-Anointed BO perfectly because it will have no accountability whatsoever with regard to reality.
The obvious question: when do we get Benjamins Option action figures?
DeletePik, I think one of the seals offering up a Queen-Bowie mashup underscores your point rather elegantly.
DeleteJeff says:
DeleteJanuary 13, 2016 at 11:48 am
How about “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”? In a metaphorical way, it’s spot on.
Sure, why not. Or the theme from The Flintstones.
Keith: are you referring to "we'll have a gay old time" on purpose?
DeleteAnonymous: No, actually not; it was just the first thing that randomly came to mind. But, in a metaphorical way, it's as spot on as the Lightfoot tune.
DeleteThe diversity of foolishness over this from his peanut gallery does tell a savvy Dreher one thing: in the wild he's unlikely to find or have to face the sort of consistent logical critique of the BO one finds here at EQE. Like the song offerings ("Oooh - mine! Pick mine!"), criticisms will likely also be random and broadly distributed, thus more easy to suborn or dismiss in his Clintonesque way.
OK, the perfect BenOp theme song just came to me:
DeleteVogue
Strike a pose
Strike a pose
Vogue, vogue, vogue
Vogue, vogue, vogue
Look around everywhere you turn is heartache
It's everywhere that you go (look around)
You try everything you can to escape
The pain of life that you know (life that you know)
When all else fails and you long to be
Something better than you are today
I know a place where you can get away
It's called a dance floor, and here's what it's for, so
Come on, vogue
Let your body move to the music (move to the music)
Hey, hey, hey
Come on, vogue
Let your body go with the flow (go with the flow)
You know you can do it
All you need is your own imagination
So use it that's what it's for (that's what it's for)
Go inside, for your finest inspiration
Your dreams will open the door (open up the door).....
Its impossible to tell the difference between a piece written for The Onion and a Dreher blog post. And yet today he writes about how awful contemporary worship in megachurches can be with their insipid worship music.
DeleteIt is exhausting to think about how much time and energy he spends on reading, writing, and complaining about how other people do church.
DeleteIt is exhausting to think about how much time and energy he spends on reading, writing, and complaining about how other people do church.
DeleteOh my gosh. Nailed it.
It might even be a little more interesting if Dreher ever attended other churches and provided first-hand impressions. But instead, he spends all that time and energy ... reading, writing, and complaining about what other people say about how other people do church.
DeleteWow. I used to know Bill Mallonee, back in my music days. Interesting fellow. Pretty much raised Catholic, became a Protestant Evangelical and was in a world we called the Alternative Christian Rock circuit. (As were we.)
ReplyDeleteI dig your band. Looks like you're the Adam Clayton of the outfit (I also see a Bono-like guy and a guy with a cap like The Edge).
DeleteFor better or worse, music is a key means through which to capture a group at a pre-rational, emotive level. If you've ever listened to NPR, there's virtually no text that makes it on-air without a pre-conditioning music bed; David Burge had a classic post about this one time.
DeleteBecause Dreher cannot supply a necessary conceptual architecture for his BO, he must rope the rubes in by all other means, appeals to their basest natures (BenOppers are the self-Chosen Ones), a wraparound musicology, perhaps mass torchlight parades - sorry, thoughtful, candlelit evening walks.
ISTM the seals at the combox on this Dreher thread are trying to outdo each other in citing hip obscure songs that only Cool Kids would know.
DeleteOr maybe I'm just old and not up with today's music (well, not "maybe", that is indeed a fact).
On this post, Dreher has turned his readership into six-year-olds clapping on the classroom floor, completely enthralled with the balloon man.
ReplyDeleteI've mentioned before the franchising and other logrolling opportunities in the Benjamins Option for the likes of Jake Meador, Richard Beck and others looking to make Christianity a staple of their writing rice bowl - here's an opportunity right now to fan-kiss Leah Libresco, who tags her post with the only thing the BO is truly about.
But there's another aspect behind the BO that's solely Dreher, born of a lifetime of living in a world that has never truly recognized his genius, whose rictus glows radioactively through the mask from time to time in utter contempt and loathing for those who love him the most, because that love itself describes a retationship of co-dependence no truly Great Man should have to stoop to suffer. We've seen how that has already been visited upon his family.
So, even as he utilizes his readers and followers as his meal ticket, from time to time Dreher betrays his loathing of them for that dependency and takes the opportunity to mock them for the very same gullibility he's able to successfully exploit.
This "Songs for the Benedict Option" is a perfect example of such a two-faced regard for the fan base he crucially depends upon (actual successful writers live off their royalties, not by dancing jigs for Wick Allison and catching blog hit coins in their hat): at one and the same time he encourages his fans to maximize their fealty to him while not only exemplifying their gullible foolishness but doing so through by mocking his own Benjamins Option enterprise itself in a way the Onion could never hope to.
Leah Libresco's post, particularly her question about doing things in public rather than in private, illustrates that what she means by the Benedict Option is something entirely different from what Dreher means by the Benedict Option.
DeleteBut that of course won't stop Dreher from latching onto her good work and intentions for his own benefit.
Pik, the wonderfulness of the BO is that that sort of utility is omnidirectional, that is, that Leah (or Meadors, or Beck) gain exactly the same advantage - more speaking engagements, more blog hits - doing exactly the same thing.
DeleteIt's the phrase Benedict Option itself that carries the writey-bloggy goodness, not what it means, because it can mean anything, or everything, or nothing.
To clarify even further: Andrew Sullivan could start talking about the BO to his own ends, and absolutely nothing would have changed. Why not? Sullivan's a Christian, there is no other litmus test, and any such litmus test leads to what Beck refers to as "othering".
What the Benedict Option means = "people talking about the Benedict Option". Thus, Leah (or Meadors, or Beck) can just as facilely latch onto Dreher's work and intentions to her own ends as he can onto hers for his.
What makes whichever flavor of BO-talking most attractive is simply a matter of the tastes of the passive Christian attracted to it, because, at bottom, the content-free BO is only an action placebo - something that makes those attracted to it feel like they're taking action without having to actually do so. For the passive, the BO makes Christianity seem fresh and new and exciting again. It's this season's new plastic ab-blaster. Order now.
Back in the real world, the only real action plans and the institutions that perpetuate them are no different from when we all wore sandals - and they remain just as tedious and difficult as life was back then.
When something declares itself to be a means to an end, it's sometimes difficult to believe, even if one perceives it, that it's actually only an end in itself, or, at best, a magical talisman serving only the ends of those who would milk it.
BTW, the next time Dreher starts mocking the music at an ugly church Mass, remind him of the BO Songbook.
I'm less concerned with the passive Christian than with the Christian looking to get active who wastes his time with this because he's sure there has to be a pony in there somewhere.
DeleteIn comments on her post, Leah says she uses "BenOp" as a "trendy term" to get people excited about doing the sorts of things that happen in an active Catholic parish.
DeleteWhich is refreshing honesty, if a bit casual about the only hope Christianity has to survive in the West.
Rod outdoes himself in self-parody by illustrating this post with the LARP-ing musicians. But of course, they are in France. Doing medieval re-enactment. In a rock cave. Outdoes himself, I say.
ReplyDeletehttp://tinyurl.com/j57etyq
(N.B.: no offense to these musicians, who are just playing a gig and, you know, realize they are performing.)
The Benjamins Option is what you do when the Ghost Weed from Kathmandu isn't strong enough to whisk you away from a crushingly tedious world which will never appreciate you for being you.
DeleteAnd maybe, just maybe, on that journey you can find a cyber-soulmate, not like your horrid neighbor Ed who always calls you "Buddy".
Keith's point about music beds is spot on. The Benedict Option has always been about emotive reaction, not a rational action.
ReplyDeleteI am feeling entirely triumphant today about that post. And the reason why is not just that everyone over there is using the post to talk about there favorite tunes. It is also because was able to propose two songs in his comments (posting with a pseudonym) which, as far as I can tell, have nothing to do with the Benjamins Option, and yet Dreher published them. This means that I am able to comment over there again, which is hilarious to me.