hjartað hamast
My current favourite song. The vocal harmonies make my spine tingle. The lyrics are a little morbid but that's not always such a bad thing. It's funny how things you've heard a million times before, like a 1m-7-5m-6 chord pattern, and harmonies in parallel 6ths, can still seem new and fresh and startlingly beautiful.
Apparently these guys are playing in Auckland in April. Pity I shall be in England at the time. Also a pity they will have just left England by the time I get there.
Questions: is it idolatry to love works of art (e.g. music, books, paintings, people, nature)? To draw emotional/spiritual strength from them? Judaism, Islam and some branches of Christianity would all say yes. When does loving something turn into worshipping it? Or does it not matter as long as the beauty of the created thing directs one's heart toward God, and the worship goes to Him? Is it any different to loving the teddy bear your friend gave you because it reminds you of them? Is the love of goodness the same as the love of God?
Edit: oh yeah, and the orchestral part at the end of viðrar vel til loftárása is just flippin' genius. How do they, a) think of these things, and b) achieve them? I am at a loss.
Apparently these guys are playing in Auckland in April. Pity I shall be in England at the time. Also a pity they will have just left England by the time I get there.
Questions: is it idolatry to love works of art (e.g. music, books, paintings, people, nature)? To draw emotional/spiritual strength from them? Judaism, Islam and some branches of Christianity would all say yes. When does loving something turn into worshipping it? Or does it not matter as long as the beauty of the created thing directs one's heart toward God, and the worship goes to Him? Is it any different to loving the teddy bear your friend gave you because it reminds you of them? Is the love of goodness the same as the love of God?
Edit: oh yeah, and the orchestral part at the end of viðrar vel til loftárása is just flippin' genius. How do they, a) think of these things, and b) achieve them? I am at a loss.
posted by Kat | 2/07/2006 08:36:00 pm
5 Comments:
I like being able to appreciate the same stuff as people who can say stuff like 'a 1m-7-5m-6 chord pattern, and harmonies in parallel 6ths' properly. :) I actually haven't been listening to this album, but now that I do, I don't know why not.
Response (unfortunatly not answers) to questions:
How could it be wrong to follow apon desires that God has given us?
Interesting that we can't really take God's own example, as God can't love himself in the same way we do. So he's allowed to love other things, because loving only himself would be narcicistic. But he does love himself? At least is self-glorifying
Perhaps we can love what God loves? Love other stuff because God does? But does this mean we can only have a descending love towards things, seeing them only as the reflectors of God's glory?
Perhaps, True Love in and of itself can not be wrong. So if we could purely love things, selflessly love other things, it would all resolve itself?
The third album (the untitled one) is in a made-up language called Hopelandic (or rather, an Icelandic word that means Hopelandic). Well, it's not a language, just gibberish with a name.
Aegaetis Byrjun and Takk are in Icelandic (actually Takk might be a mixture?). I looked up the translations on the net. Hjartath Hamast is just kinda introspective I'm-about-to-explode kind of stuff, ending with the lines 'I search for a good beginning, but everything ends in disappointment'. Or something like that.
Nath: 'How could it be wrong to follow apon desires that God has given us?'
Presumably this is often wrong - the obvious example being that God gave us our sexual desires, but told us to control them within appropriate bounds. Would suggest that pretty much all our desires contain some kind of goodness, some kind of God-given-ness, but everything can be overdone or misapplied. Thinking of Alex in 'A Clockwork Orange' whose great love in life is beating up and raping people. Presumably this is a perversion of his natural sexual desires, and his artistic sensitivity (he sees violence pretty much as an art form).
'God can't love himself in the same way we do'
This brings us back to my question of whether loving goodness is the same as loving God.
Gotta go. Will get back to this later.
Yeah. I had meant that first question to be tongue in cheek. I don't make things obvious when tired. Apologies.
And don't feel like you have to respond to all my thoughts - they were just typed as I thought them, and so are of limited merit.
Oh. Now I feel silly. Ah well.
Your comments are generally found to be worthy of a response, my friend.
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