Do Fear the Reaper

 

We’ve been driving around a lot since we arrived, and I’ve learned that Boston rock radio stations have two basic settings: a) songs which belong on a mixtape somebody made for your high school reunion: when you hear them for the first time in a long time, they have kind of a thrilling, guilty-pleasure quality to them, but after multiple listens within a narrow window they become horrifically tedious; and b) songs from a band called “Aerosmith.”

Setting a) includes tunes like “Back in Black,” by AC/DC.  As a red-blooded American male, I shamelessly concede that the hi-hat-plus-muted-power-chord count-in before the triumphant opening Emaj always gets my motor running, but by the time the third solo rolls in, and Brian Johnson is pummeling you with his umpteenth “HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY,” you realize there’s a reason you don’t spin this record at home so often.

Same goes for tracks like “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “Eye of the Tiger.”  They possess a certain loin-tugging allure, but after hearing them for the tenth time in a single weekend, you’re ready to steer your car into Fresh Pond.  “Cum on Feel the Noize,” “The Final Countdown,” “I Want You to Want Me:” the list goes on and on.  Or rather, it doesn’t, because the list only has a few dozen songs on it.

Don’t get me wrong: these are all great rock performances (okay, maybe not “The Final Countdown”).  And far be it from me to doubt the magnetism of Robin Zander or the charisma of Rick Nielsen.  The point is not that these aren’t good songs; it’s just that IMHO there are other songs worth spending time with.  And it makes me wonder about the mentality of the supposed listener.  Are there really people out there whose aren’t interested in hearing anything recorded after the first Bush administration? 

Of course, it’s not called commercial radio by accident.  The playlist is curated purely and specifically to lubricate the wheels of commerce – to keep the listener engaged long enough to make it to and through the next batch of ads.  Classic rock targets demographics (Boomers and older Gen Xers) who spend a lot of money.  And I imagine that, by delivering a steady infusion of songs which those demographics associate with their teenage years, the program directors are seeking to push certain buttons.  Buttons which might be labeled “freedom,” “fun,” “sex,” “drugs,” etc.

Still, those listeners have other choices, especially nowadays.  So why is that a market like Boston can still support a good half-dozen classic rock stations, even when a gazillion other songs are only a Bluetoothable phone swipe away?  I suspect that some people simply like to be reminded of what it felt like to be 16, especially while sitting in a mind-numbing commute.  Nostalgia for lost youth is good business.

As I put my top ten list together for 2020, I realize there’s an undercurrent of music snobbery going on here.  As if, by faithfully sitting through a bunch of albums made by people who are closer to my daughters’ ages than to mine, I demonstrate my superiority over the guy who Pavlovianly cranks up the volume at the opening bars to “Love in an Elevator."  A strong case could be made that the same quest-for-lost-youth/fear-of-death is motivating both of us.

More importantly: rest in peace to the lead guitar player for the first band I ever saw live, and who pretty much single-handedly redeems any classic rock playlists he's on.  Thankfully, he's on all of ‘em.

 

My listening schedule was truncated this year by our move to the US, but I still managed to cobble together a Critics Poll ballot for 2020. 

 

Top Ten Albums of 2020

 

10. Kiwi Jr. -- Football Money

You listen to this and you realize that Pavement took themselves much too seriously.

 

9. Andy Shauf -- The Neon Skyline

Linear narrative indie folk rock.  Vocals bear more than a passing resemblance to Paul Simon

 

8. The Beths -- Jump Rope Gazers

Seems at first like a fairly standard power-pop quartet fronted by a woman, and then it occurs to you that she’s singing melodies which remind you of someone, and that someone is Joni Mitchell.  The band is also super-tight. I see that they’re Kiwis, and this year this does seem to be the year for quality releases from ANZAC acts.  The video for “Dying to Believe” is also great.

 

7. Peter Oren -- The Greener Pasture

Indiana baritone sings about horses and cows, which you might expect, and about humanity and technology, which you might not.  The subjects collide beautifully in the album cover art, a cattle ranch envisioned by Sim City, and by “Don’t Eat Their Feed,” which is not actually about hormones and antibiotics in cattle feed.  Or is it?

6. Sarah Walk -- Another Me

This feels like it’s not at all my genre, mainly because I am not a lesbian, but I found this irresistible.  I love her singing voice, and she employs a nifty trick of riding on the same note with the vocals while chords are changing underneath (this worked pretty well for John Lennon).  Tim Merle’s drumming is also outstanding, even though he only plays on like 2 songs.

5. Morrissey -- I Am Not a Dog on a Chain

I understand that we are supposed to disapprove of Morrissey now, because of things he’s said about Brexit or something.  I'm sorry to say I haven’t been paying attention to all that, but I can say that when it comes to how one should consider mass media, or one’s mortality, the Moz is still worth a listen.

 

4. Poppy -- I Disagree

Like the demonic love child of Mr. Bungle and Girls’ Generation.  At first glance, she might seem like she’s trying to ride in the slipstream of the latest Harley Quinn major motion picture release.  But the songs are really good, and the backing band is really, really good.  Not something I’d listen to on a quiet, rainy Sunday afternoon, but this demands attention, in the same way a carjacker demands attention. 

3. Silvana Estrada -- Lo Sagrado

I want to call this deconstructed Mexican music.  The elements are there – female vocalist in Spanish, acoustic guitar, cowbell, horns – but played and arranged in a way that lets something extremely special breathe through.  And the songs are gorgeous.  And the guitar player (who evidently plays a guitar with like 26 strings on it) is amazing.  And the drummer is incredible.  The album is not called “The Sacred” for nothing.

Postscript: the day before we left Switzerland, I was giving a ride to a young brass musician to whom we had given a washing machine and some furniture that we wouldn’t be taking with us.  We struck up a conversation, and, upon hearing that he was Mexican, I put this on the car stereo.  After a few bars, he said, “Ah I know her.  Silvana was my brother’s girlfriend for a while at music school.”  Mundo pequeño.

2. Elizabeth Cook -- Aftermath

Evidently this woman has been singing at the Opry for two decades, but this is closer to Kula Shaker than Roseann Cash.  Overdriven vox, tight-but-not-uptight backing band, and lyrics that sound like they’ve been written by someone with some actual Life Experiences.

 

1. Tame Impala -- The Slow Rush

This isn’t my favorite Tame Impala album.  It might not even be my second-favorite.  But Kevin Parker’s grooves have a way of insinuating themselves into your consciousness, and in retrospect, it seems inevitable that an album about time a would end up on top in 2020.

 

Bonus content for all you lovers out there: my notes on the listening schedule below. Caveat emptor. 

* = recommended

 

070 Shake – Modus Vivendi

I didn’t realize until side 2 that the artist was a woman and not a man, and it forced me to recalibrate my assessment of this.  Initially I was thinking this was ersatz The Weeknd with a strong 808s and Heartbreak influence, which it still is to some extent.  But for some reason the story of betrayal and relationship-collapse lands differently when it’s a woman singing about it.  The converse was true when Leo Marochioli covered “Poker Face.”

 

*2ndGrade – Hit To Hit

GBV meet the Minutemen, with a nod to Real Estate up the Turnpike.  Melodies which climb to the top of the water tower to gaze at the landscape, before unzipping the backpack to get at the mixed beer cans individually smuggled out of their parents’ fridge.

 

Angela Aguilar – Baila Esta Cumbia

She’s got a great voice, but the rich, creamy sauce of horns, strings, and accordion are laid on a bit too thick for my taste.  Listening to Francophone radio over here, one often encounters accordions, and these meetings typically don’t go well. 

 

* Ingrid Andress – Lady Like

This comes up as “country” on Apple Music, and there’s a wisp of pedal steel on the opening track to orient the listener just in case, but this does not get bogged down in genre stereotypes (she in fact decries the shortcomings of drinking one’s problems away, which is especially welcome).  High-quality singer-songwriter stuff in which every relationship is complicated, which hard-hitting couplets like: “Love me or don’t / But you can’t do both”

Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters

I tried like seven times to listen to this during the course of 2020, and for one reason or another I never made it past the third track. 

 

* Vanessa Carlton – Love Is an Art

One of those female singer/songwriters whose vocals are recorded with that technique that allows you to experience every glottal stop as if you were inside her glottal.  She grew on me over the course of the album, and I think she’s at her best when she’s channeling her inner Tori Amos.  The piano playing is very good, too.

 

Gus Dapperton – Orca

Kind of like the Early November, but after all the distortion pedals had been confiscated.  All those emo guys are really theater kids at heart.

 

Lana Del Rey – Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

You won’t find this on Apple Music, because it’s not music per se.  Del Rey released a book of poetry this year, and this is her reading it over a bed of incidental, reverbed-out electric piano, through what sounds like an iPhone in her backyard, where the whoosh of traffic and/or the ocean can also be heard.  I happened to read a lot of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes this year, and with those two as a reference, Del Rey’s poems are a bit hit-or-miss, but I’m sure her fans are devouring this like those chocolate-covered açai berries from CVS.  

 

* Lupe Fiasco & Kaelin Ellis – House

Like the ultra-smart guy in your freshman dorm who talked about the cosmos and was stoned a lot, but who was still a really sympathetic character.  Hyper-intelligent and -observant rapping about metaphoric dinosaurs and shilling on the Internet and covid, over somniferent beats.  Guest starring architect and designer Virgil Abloh, who squeezes every last drop out of the “soul/sole” homophone,

 

* Carly Rae Jepsen – Dedication Side B

In CRJ’s world, romantic relationships aren’t at all complicated.  And I suppose there’s a certain point in every romantic relationship in which things are bright and pleasant and optimistic and you can’t imagine why it wouldn’t stay like that forever, and during those times it’s best not to think about it too much and just enjoy it while it lasts.  An interesting contrast to Ingrid Andress. 

 

Tkay Maidza – Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2

Quality singing and rapping from an Australian by way of Zimbabwe, or vice-versa.  She hits her stride around mid-album, topped by the barn-burning “Shook.”  Brimming with talent, but I fear she has nothing much to say, and there should be a one-per-album limit on ending a couplet with “tetris.”

 

Megan Thee Stallion – Good News

It’s “of a piece” with “W.A.P.,” though the album doesn’t quite reach the raunchy glory of the single, and a full-length becomes extremely tiring.  Her producer’s incessant employment of her vocal quirk of saying “aaah” like there’s a tongue depressor (or, um, something) jammed into her throat becomes anxiety-triggering after a while.

 

Mildlife – Automatic

Psychedelic, groovy, experimental – all qualities which would normally float my boat.  And yet: trying to impersonate Pink Floyd, much less Tame Impala, is not the sure thing one might think it is.  These guys can certainly play, but I got the feeling, somewhere between the flute solo and the Al Jarreau guitar/scat bit, that they were showing off.

 

Roisin Murphy – Roisin Machine

I was happy to see everyone’s favorite insane Irish disco queen back at it, evidently with some strong label support.  I really wanted to love this, and there are some bright moments (“Kingdom of Ends,” “Gamechanger”), but too often this sounds like standard-issue EDM.   

 

* Nas – King’s Disease

Like Philip Roth in his last decades, Nas has nothing left to prove to anyone, yet he still delivers high-quality stuff that you want to engage with.  My only gripe is with the production, which sounds a little tinny, but it could have been a headphone issue.  Also, as a gout sufferer myself (it runs in the family), I appreciate Nas’s advice on the lemongrass and cherries. 

 

* Open Mike Eagle – Anime, Trauma and Divorce

Deft rapping over backwards-sounding backing tracks.  “WTF Is Self-Care?” an early front-runner for funniest song of the year.

 

The Proper Ornaments – Mission Bells

I listened to this while taking one of the cats to the douane to pay the fee that his breeder should have paid when he (the cat) originally entered Switzerland from Slovakia where he was born, without which we wouldn’t be able to take him to the US in 9 days, a scenario I don’t even wish to imagine, and which was probably not the ideal set of conditions for listening to this album.  Some interesting chord changes, but I believe the artist you are looking for is The Clientele.

 

Caroline Rose – Superstar

Mostly keyboard-driven, mostly danceable pop music.  The Apple Music notes say this is some sort of concept album, but it mainly reminded me of the music I used to hear through my gay neighbor’s door in the mid-90’s.  Great bass playing though, although I can’t find who’s playing, despite extensive googling.

 

Troye Sivan – In A Dream

Like the love child of Justin Bieber and James Blake.

 

Soccer Mommy – Color Theory

Young indie-ish singer-songwriter who strains to hit the high notes now and then, but is otherwise fine to have on while you’re cooking dinner.  “Yellow is the color of her eyes” is a great song.  She’s right to let those chord changes go on for 7 minutes.  Good candidate for should be sent to the minors, etc.

 

The Streets – None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life Alive

I first need to get over my need to grammar edit the album title: to change the “Are” to “Is,” and to delete “Life.”  Mike Skinner is back on the horse, with some bumping electro keyboard and trademark ambivalence about phones and the people who use them.  He sounds a little tired, but don’t we all at this point.   

 

The Strokes – The New Abnormal

What does one do when the denim and swagger starts to wear thin?  Retreat to 80’s synth and guitar sounds perhaps, or try to sing like Bono?  I feel like they may be onto something with the last couple of ballad-y tracks, but it felt like a slog to get there.

 

Taylor Swift – Folklore

A convincing Liz Phair impersonation, from the laid-back throatiness of her delivery to the carefully placed f-bombs.  This being Taylor Swift, I’m not sure if I totally buy the casual act, but the songs are certainly good enough.  Oh, look, she just dropped another album this year as well.  I suppose one can only make so much sourdough. 

 

Devon Williams – A Tear in The Fabric

Back in the mid 90’s when I was playing in a band in New York City, we would usually be booked with four or five other acts, each of which would get around 45-minute sets.  One night I remember there was another band playing which was clearly filled with music school guys: they were all very good at their instruments, and they were a bit older than the rest of us (the bass player was probably pushing 40).  They had a bald drummer, who from time to time would wink at the bass player.  The songs weren’t terribly good, and it seemed to me like there was something very intentional about them, if that makes any sense.  Anyway, for some reason this Devon Williams album reminded me of them.  Fans of The Church and Geddy Lee’s low notes might find this interesting.

 

* Hayley Williams – Petals For Armor

I’ve never really gotten into Paramore, so I don’t feel like I have the proper context to approach this.  Her people seem to have listened to some St. Vincent over recent years, and it sounds pretty damn great in these new Shure headphones I borrowed from my wife.  I’m not sure if she has anything interesting to say, but I recommend this for the drum textures alone.

 

 

Transit

For a moment, it felt like we were on top of things, but by the last couple of days in Geneva our possessions had gotten the better of us.  We did manage to get rid of a lot – friends of one of our musician friends were happy to take the washing machine and a lot of the furniture and appliances – but, inevitably, a few loose ends remained on Wednesday morning at 5 when the taxi came to remove us. 

Geneva Airport was less crowded than the last time I was there back in March, but there was no shortage of check-in tension.  We were flying KLM through Amsterdam, and a few days earlier the Dutch authorities had issued a new regulation requiring a negative PCR test before boarding any plane into the country.  Fortunately, I had received an email from the airline over the weekend, so we were able to scramble and get tested at the private clinic in Champel.  Others, including a group of Irish kids returning from a ski holiday, were not so lucky and were queuing up across the hall to have their flights rebooked.

My main source of worry leading up to the trip was going through security with the cats, which would require me to take them out of their carriers and walk them through the metal detector thing.  Fortunately, my nightmarish images of their clawing their way out of my arms and disappearing somewhere in the bowels of the airport went unfulfilled, and the other passengers were treated to the image of a middle-aged man in stocking feet walking back and forth three times through the metal detector, each time with a different Siberian clutched to his chest.  The cats themselves were basically fine for the rest of the trip, save some complaining and panting from Nocturno the larger male.  I put his carrier on my lap and petted him through a slightly unzipped opening in one of the doors, and that calmed him down a little.

There were maybe ten people in the normally heaving passport control area at Logan.  We handed the documents for L&C’s immigrant visas to the Customs and Border Protection guy in his booth.  These were in manila envelopes that I had picked up at the embassy in Bern a few weeks before, all edges of which had been sealed with packing tape and rubber-stamped with warnings not to open or the applications therein would be invalidated, which lent a silly cloak and dagger vibe to the whole process.  The CBP guys try hard to project a stern and menacing aura (and I’m sure the experience is not at all pleasant for some people trying to enter the US), but they can’t completely suppress their innate American friendliness.  The guys downstairs who gave our bags a final run through the x-ray seemed more interested in admiring the cats than in sussing out any contraband.  I breathed a slight sigh of relief, realizing that I would not have to explain the sourdough starter and kombucha scobys in plastic bags deep in my suitcase.

We took a taxi to the apartment we had rented, sight-not-exactly-unseen, but only seen through a YouTube video.  The driver took us up 93 and around Cambridge, along the Mytsic River and then along 16 which snakes alongside Alewife Brook.  These are not the prettiest parts of town, especially in the grey sogginess of winter.  L&C commented how everything looked like a movie to them.

Rob the property manager, well-groomed and wearing a property-management-branded mask and a dark necktie, was waiting for us when we arrived.  We trundled bags into our apartment, which felt bigger than in the videos.  We released the cats and showed them where the litter was.  Later we would take an Uber back to the airport to pick up the rental car.  We could have done this right when we arrived, but the idea of dealing with the shuttle bus and another line at the rental car place after 14 hours of travel was too daunting. 

It was already dark as we drove back into town.  I opted to go the longer way, over the Longfellow Bridge and through the middle of Cambridge.  Still disoriented with jet lag, we realized we were hungry, so I stopped by the Clover in Kendall Square.  For the uninitiated, Clover (officially Clover Food Lab) is a chain of healthy fast food joints started by a Harvard MBA, with a highly optimized user experience and killer rosemary fries.  As we pulled up, the seating area was empty, and a lone person puttered in the kitchen area, so I thought for moment it might be closed.  The door swung open though, and I entered a makeshift vestibule, walled off with three big plexiglass screens in a half-hexagon.  The young woman on the other side explained that they were only doing pick-up service, but that we could order online, and she pointed me to a QR code taped to the door.  We ordered and paid for our food from my phone, and the website told us that it would be ready in 7 minutes.

8 minutes later, we ate our food – chickpea fritters and hummus and Japanese sweet potatoes and egg and eggplant platter and ginger soda – sitting in the parked car.  I felt the stress and anxiety of the long day of travel displaced by, for lack of a better term, fun.  Fun that America, with its market-honed ability to comfort and gratify, is especially good at enabling.  Fun which I know in the longer-term can lead to some dark and unhealthy places.  But that night I chose not to think about it so much, and I reached into the compostable bag for another handful of fries.

Moving Pictures

 

So my plan to post something here every day in November kind of fizzled.  I did end up writing most days, but without time for ideas to simmer and for prose to get edited, quality suffers.  Maybe once a week is a better frequency for me.  Although I reread a few of the things I had written kind of offhandedly, and in retrospect some of them are not too bad. 

For example, from the day after Thanksgiving:

“Everyone sent pictures of food yesterday.  Aerial shots, camera hovering over plates and platters.  I indulge too from time to time, and I suppose it’s relatively harmless.  On one level it’s a simple celebration of a custom, and a way to share the experience, especially poignant this year, with (at least some) people abstaining from family gatherings.  But on another level it’s straight up narcissism: look at me and what I have done.  Not only in the sense of look at the dish I’ve prepared, but look at the status I’ve achieved, and at the comforts I have gathered around me.  Of course one could say the same thing about everything on social media, more or less.

Perhaps I’m just bitter and a little jealous.  Next year if I happen to be in the US for Thanksgiving, surrounded by my broader family, maybe I’ll send pictures around too.”

A handy transition to the news that we are moving to the United States in four days.  I choose my words carefully here: I resist saying “moving back” to the US, even though it is my home country and I spent the first 35+ years of my life there.  Because I’ve been living in another country for the past 13 years, and because meanwhile the US has changed and I’ve changed, I’m under no illusion that this will be anything like settling back into an old, familiar life.  Not to mention that, for my wife and stepson who have never lived there, this move is not “back” anywhere.

There’s also an element of not wanting to admit defeat.  As if by saying moving “back” to the US (or, even worse, “back home”), I would be classifying my time in Switzerland as an aside from the main plot.  There is a strong tendency among my countrymen to do this: to treat any experience outside the US as “an adventure,” fodder for future stories to be told to friends back in the states, delivered with a bemused fascination of the exotic Other and a glib satisfaction of being back in the Land of the Free.  See also “Emily in Paris” (or, rather, don’t, and take my word for it).

Meanwhile, we spend the remaining days of the awful year that was 2020 dealing with visas and pet vaccinations and administrative processes in different countries and finding new homes for appliances that won’t run on 110 volts. 

The other day we had to go to the caisse de chomage, which sits in the office complex on top of the big post office in Montbrillant, which I never knew existed.  The knowledge that we’re going to leave soon made Geneva feel different, as if the city’s existence was starting to cleave away from my own.  The people walking between the buildings in the office complex – a community into which I have been trying to assimilate for the last 13 years – start to become just another group of people in another country, who were here before and who will continue to go about their business when we’re gone. The big Swiss and Geneva canton flags which flank the Mont Blanc bridge were waving, and they will go on waving after we leave. 

Joe Biden

 

Joe Biden gave a speech yesterday.  He stood in front of a yellow backdrop, the color of sunrise, or of the lymphatic system.  There were two American flags, or it may have been four.  His design team has created a transition logo with a small, tasteful “46” at the base of the presidential seal; this may run afoul of the presidential seal style guidelines, but no one seems to be complaining.

Joe Biden walked on stage, looking like the old man that he is.  His walk has that combination of stiffness and teeteriness that suggests a fractured hip is in the realm of possibility.  As he crosses the stage, you see him in profile, and you notice that mini-mullet-flip of white hair at the back.  Like all of us, he probably assesses his appearance by how he looks straight-on in the mirror, so the mini-mullet-flip doesn’t really come into play.  Joe Biden looks straight ahead when he walks, which may be a strategy to avoid a fall, but it gives him an air of purposefulness.     

Joe Biden talked about his own loss and suffering, which he is not shy about doing.  He quoted the psalms.  He said, “To love your neighbor as you would love yourself is a radical act.”  I wonder how many so-called Christians in America heard this.  

Homemade Prayers Vol. 2

 

TCS

Dear God,

Thank you for the TCS* guy,

who comes to set me free

when the car won’t start.

It’s reassuring to see

how orderly everything looks

under the hood,

even though I know

the orderliness is

more or less

an illusion.

Amen.

* Touring Club Suisse, like Triple-A in the US.

Tresspasses

Dear God,

My bad.

Amen.

Sunrise

Dear God,

This morning,

Your indigo sky looks

Somehow both indifferent and loving,

Above the rooftops of the city,

Whose façades of metal and glass strain to reach You,

but know they can’t.

The sky knows what’s going on down there:

People going about their business, etc.

She tolerates patiently,

Like a mother waiting for the child’s tantrum to fizzle out,

Before it falls,

Spent and inarticulate,

Back into your embrace.

Amen.

Palate Cleanser

I reread what I posted yesterday, and I thought I did a decent job summarizing the whole dual/non-dual thinking concept, which is not so easily summarized.  Though for the life of me I cannot figure out what I thought that dream had to do with it.  Witness the risks of trying to publish something every day.

Anyhow.  Here’s a pretty picture from a hike we went on last weekend.

The Doors

 

This morning I had a fragment of a dream in which I was in the bathroom at the other end of our apartment.  I extended my hand to turn the door handle, which makes a heavy “clack” sound when you turn it.  At that moment, my dream overlapped with my waking experience, and the same “clack” came from down the hall as C exited the bathroom.

I felt the neutral emotion of my dream get displaced by a feeling of annoyance that C was making too much noise and waking us up.  This feeling wasn’t justified: he wasn’t being too loud, and it was already time for me to get up anyway, and I was already half-awake.

I occurred to me that I had just been presented with a metaphor, at a mundane, micro-level, of the difference between dual and non-dual thinking.  Non-duality is a central concept among the neo-contemplative crowd, including Richard Rohr, Cynthia Borgeault, and Thomas Keating.  The basic idea goes like this: our perception of reality is conditioned by an “egoic operating system” which makes sense of  things by differentiating between them: I know an apple is an apple because it is not a unicycle, I know three is three because it’s not four, and so on. 

Our sense of ourselves and our reality follows the same framework: I know who “I” am because I am not you.  This “this-or-that” logic creates additional binary categories like good and evil, right and wrong, yes or no. 

This way of thinking isn’t all bad.  It comes in quite handy as we go about our lives, doing our jobs, and going from place to place.  But, as Rohr argues, “the dualistic mind cannot process things like infinity, mystery, God, grace, suffering, sexuality, death, or love; this is exactly why most people stumble over these very issues.” 

In The Wisdom Jesus, Bourgeault applies this thinking to an interpretation of the gospels, arguing that JC was not trying to teach us the difference between good and bad, or between “Godly” vs “Ungodly” living.  Instead, he was trying to show us how to evolve beyond our self-centered, nondual way of thinking and being.    

A prime example is in Matthew 4:17: “From that time on, Jesus began to preach, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.’”  An old-school Christian interpretation of this line might be something like, “Jesus says stop sinning and doing other bad things, because God is keeping score and if your spiritual balance sheet is not in order, you’re not going to get into heaven when the time comes.”  This interpretation is not only false, argue the neo-contemplatives, it's also highly dangerous, and it's led to all sorts of suffering, on the personal and societal level, over the last 2,000 years.

The key to interpreting this passage is in the original Greek word which is translated into “repent.”  That word is metanoia, which literally means “go larger than (or beyond) the mind.”  In other words, get out of your own head, because, guess what?  Heaven is not some nightclub in the sky with St. Peter behind the velvet rope checking to see who’s on the VIP list; it’s right here, right now.  And all you have to do to experience it is to see things, not from your small selfish perspective, but as God wants you to see them.

This is enlightening stuff, and I know I haven’t done it justice here.  I also admit I find it hard to completely embrace.  Non-duality can easily get swamped by an inchoate, new-agey vibe of “it’s all good, man” which struggles to get traction.  Taken to an extreme, it leads to passivity and even apathy.  I have a tough time reconciling it with other worthy concepts like growth, accomplishment, and positive action.  Nonetheless, spending some time with it (e.g., in meditation or contemplative prayer) does encourage greater empathy, openness, serenity, and, if you will, peace.  And maybe there’s your answer right there.