Someone I knew through my business in 1985 grew up in Germany and was part of the Hitler Youth Program, Was he wrong in his beliefs? 

On what basis does the atheist have to say “Hitler was wrong!!!”

Early in his career Hitler was popular and many of the German people bought into his anti-semetic views. Does the atheist have an intellectual basis to condemn Hitler’s actions?

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One of philosophy’s biggest problems is that anything exists at all and has the form that it does. Another is that man exists as a personal being and makes true choices and has moral responsibility. The Bible gives sufficient answers to these problems. In fact, the only sufficient answer is that the infinite-personal triune God is there and He is not silent. He has spoken to man in the Bible.

The basic question Woody Allen is presenting to his own agnostic humanistic worldview is: If you really believe there is no God there to punish you in an afterlife, then why not murder if you can get away with it?  The secular humanist worldview that modern man has adopted does not work in the real world that God has created. God “has planted eternity in the human heart…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is a direct result of our God-given conscience. The apostle Paul said it best in Romans 1:19, “For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God  has shown it to them” (Amplified Version).

It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” The Humanist, May/June 1997, pp.38-39). Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism.

Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (The Humanist, September/October 1997, p. 2.). Humanists don’t really have an intellectual basis for saying that Hitler was wrong, but their God-given conscience tells them that they are wrong on this issue.

Here is fine film by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop that makes the case for human dignity.

Also here is the link for  another fine article on this same issue by Chuck Colson.

The Grand ‘Sez Who’

Let us take a close look at how you are going to come up with morality as an atheist. When you think about it there is no way around the final conclusion that it is just your opinion against mine concerning morality. There is no final answers. However, if God does exist and he has imparted final answers to us then everything changes.

Take a look at a portion of this paper by Greg Koukl. In this article he points out that atheists don’t even have a basis for saying that Hitler was wrong:

What doesn’t make sense is to look at the existence of evil and question the existence of God. The reason is that atheism turns out being a self-defeating philosophic solution to this problem of evil. Think of what evil is for a minute when we make this kind of objection. Evil is a value judgment that must be measured against a morally perfect standard in order to be meaningful. In other words, something is evil in that it departs from a perfect standard of good. C.S. Lewis made the point, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”[ 1 ] He also goes on to point out that a portrait is a good or a bad likeness depending on how it compares with the “perfect” original. So to talk about evil, which is a departure from good, actually presumes something that exists that is absolutely good. If there is no God there’s no perfect standard, no absolute right or wrong, and therefore no departure from that standard. So if there is no God, there can’t be any evil, only personal likes and dislikes–what I prefer morally and what I don’t prefer morally.

This is the big problem with moral relativism as a moral point of view when talking about the problem of evil. If morality is ultimately a matter of personal taste–that’s what most people hold nowadays–then it’s just your opinion what’s good or bad, but it might not be my opinion. Everybody has their own view of morality and if it’s just a matter of personal taste–like preferring steak over broccoli or Brussels sprouts–the objection against the existence of God based on evil actually vanishes because the objection depends on the fact that some things are intrinsically evil–that evil isn’t just a matter of my personal taste, my personal definition. But that evil has absolute existence and the problem for most people today is that there is no thing that is absolutely wrong. Premarital sex? If it’s right for you. Abortion? It’s an individual choice. Killing? It depends on the circumstances. Stealing? Not if it’s from a corporation.

The fact is that most people are drowning in a sea of moral relativism. If everything is allowed then nothing is disallowed. Then nothing is wrong. Then nothing is ultimately evil. What I’m saying is that if moral relativism is true, which it seems like most people seem to believe–even those that object against evil in the world, then the talk of objective evil as a philosophical problem is nonsense. To put it another way, if there is no God, then morals are all relative. And if moral relativism is true, then something like true moral evil can’t exist because evil becomes a relative thing.

An excellent illustration of this point comes from the movie The Quarrel . In this movie, a rabbi and a Jewish secularist meet again after the Second World War after they had been separated. They had gotten into a quarrel as young men, separated on bad terms, and then had their village and their family and everything destroyed through the Second World War, both thinking the other was dead. They meet serendipitously in Toronto, Canada in a park and renew their friendship and renew their old quarrel.

To paraphrase the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the person who argues against the existence of God based on the existence of evil in the world has both feet firmly planted in mid-air.

Rabbi Hersch says to the secularist Jew Chiam, “If a person does not have the Almighty to turn to, if there’s nothing in the universe that’s higher than human beings, then what’s morality? Well, it’s a matter of opinion. I like milk; you like meat. Hitler likes to kill people; I like to save them. Who’s to say which is better? Do you begin to see the horror of this? If there is no Master of the universe then who’s to say that Hitler did anything wrong? If there is no God then the people that murdered your wife and kids did nothing wrong.”

That is a very, very compelling point coming from the rabbi. In other words, to argue against the existence of God based on the existence of evil forces us into saying something like this: Evil exists, therefore there is no God. If there is no God then good and evil are relative and not absolute, so true evil doesn’t exist, contradicting the first point. Simply put, there cannot be a world in which it makes any sense to say that evil is real and at the same time say that God doesn’t exist. If there is no God then nothing is ultimately bad, deplorable, tragic or worthy of blame. The converse, by the way, is also true. This is the other hard part about this, it cuts both ways. Nothing is ultimately good, honorable, noble or worthy of praise. Everything is ultimately lost in a twilight zone of moral nothingness. To paraphrase the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the person who argues against the existence of God based on the existence of evil in the world has both feet firmly planted in mid-air.

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Related posts:

Humanist asserts: “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (Hitler’s letter from 1919 revealed)

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

Francis Schaeffer noted concerning the Beatles:

The Beatles moved through several stages, including the concept of the drug and psychedelic approach. The psychedelic began with their records REVOLVER, STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER, AND PENNY LANE. This was developed with great expertness in their record SERGEANT PEPPER’S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND in which psychedelic music, with open statements concerning drug-taking, was knowingly presented as a religious answer. 

The Beatles were looking for lasting satisfaction in their lives and their journey took them down many of the same paths that other young people of the 1960’s were taking. No wonder in the video THE AGE OF NON-REASON Schaeffer noted,  ” Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.” 

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

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1 Answer

Jon Pennington, I love music, any kind of music…

2.7k Views

Psychedelia is in the ear of the beholder, but telltale signs of psychedelic rock usually include unusual sounds and timbres (e.g., sitars, fuzz tone, mellotron, electronically distorted sounds), upwardly moving melodies that give the sensation of “flight,” oscillating or lurching rhythms, slowed-down rhythms, speeded-up rhythms, abrupt changes in rhythm to signify disorientation, use of musical modes that sound “Oriental” or “Indian,” lyrical references to bright colors, and an inward lyrical focus on the singer’s interior life.  Psychedelic influences start to creep into the Beatles’ work in 1965, but they haven’t necessarily produced any full-fledged psychedelic songs by then.

The songs from 1965 most likely believed to have some psychedelic influence, but probably can’t be classified as fully psychedelic, include:

• Help! (recorded April 13, 1965; one theory has it that it was inspired by the soul searching that John Lennon did after his coffee was dosed with LSD by George’s dentist in March 1965; not too psychedelic, but supposedly written as a Roy Orbison-style ballad that later became more uptempo)
• Norwegian Wood (recorded October 12, 21, 1965; except for George’s sitar, it was more inspired by American folk rock than psychedelic drugs per se)
• Day Tripper (recorded October 16, 1965; uses “trip” as a drug double entendre, but otherwise more influenced by R&B than psychedelia)

The Beatles’ purest psychedelic period doesn’t begin until the band takes three months off after finishing Rubber Soul:

• Tomorrow Never Knows (recorded April 6-7, 1966; includes Indian tamboura, a melody similar to an Indian raga drone that barely moves out of the key of C, lyrics borrowed from Timothy Leary, swirly vocals modified using a Leslie speaker cabinet, tape loops with unusual sounds at random intervals, drumming from Ringo that sounds like a tape loop but isn’t)
• Love You To (recorded April 11, 1966; George’s first song written in Indian raga style)
• Rain (recorded April 14, 16, 1966; included multiple overdubs recorded at slow speed and high speed to fatten up the sound and make the tempo slightly more draggy, includes drone-like textures)
• I’m Only Sleeping (recorded April 27-May 6, 1966; inspired by how John’s LSD use encouraged his desire to be lazy, use of dreamlike imagery, backward guitar sounds)
• I Want to Tell You (recorded June 2-3, 1966; lurching and oscillating harmonies, lyrics focusing on internal confusion, sounds of a piano that sounds out of tune)
• She Said She Said (recorded June 21, 1966; “fattened” vocals similar to “Rain,” lyrics inspired by an encounter John Lennon had with Peter Fonda while taking an LSD trip, tapes of Ringo’s drums may have been manipulated to sound choppier)
• Strawberry Fields Forever (recorded November 24 thru December 22, 1966; mellotron, George playing an Indian instrument called a svarmandal, two melodies in different keys combined into one song by playing them at slightly different speeds, introspective lyrics focused on self-doubt, insistence that “nothing is real”)
• Penny Lane (recorded December 29, 1966 thru January 17, 1967; may have been Paul’s first song reacting to LSD, lyrics mention poppies on a tray, use of harmonium and piccolo trumpet, focus on returning to childhood experience)
• Carnival of Light (recorded January 5, 1967; avant-garde free form piece still not yet released, possibly could be viewed as Paul’s version of Revolution #9)
• A Day in the Life (recorded January 19, 1967 thru February 22, 1967; disorienting time-shifts between verses written by John and Paul, symphony orchestra crescendos chaotically until ended in a long, droning chord)
• Only A Northern Song (recorded February 13-20, 1967; ethereal organ, musical instruments speeded up, in-studio chatter)
• Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite (recorded February 17, 1967; features tape manipulation and swirly organ sounds to approximate the sound of being in the middle of a circus)
• Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (recorded February 28, 1967 thru March 2, 1967; lyrics feature considerable color imagery, atmposhere shifts from slow and dreamy tempo on the verses to more uptempo on the chorus, ethereal vocals)
• Within You Without You (recorded March 15, 1967 thru April 4, 1967; inspired by both Indian music and philosophy, song rarely moves out of the key of C)
• Magical Mystery Tour (recorded April 25, 1967 thru May 3, 1967; partially inspired by the LSD-soaked tours of Ken Kesey and his “magic bus” in the mid-1960s, uses “trip” as a double entendre)
• Baby, You’re A Rich Man (recorded May 11, 1967; not very psychedelic lyrically, but the clavioline keyboard gives the songs a very unusual texture)
• It’s All Too Much (recorded May 25, 1967-June 2, 1967; distorted guitar, Hammond organ with lots of sustained drones, main melody rarely moves out of key of G)
• I Am the Walrus (recorded September 5 thru September 29, 1967; surrealistic lyrics, disorienting tempo changes between verses, nonsense chants, random radio noise from a BBC broadcast of King Lear)
• Blue Jay Way (recorded September 6 thru October 6, 1967; lyrics inspired by the disorientation of being lost in L.A., includes phasing and backward tapes, oscillates between C major and C diminished)
• The Inner Light (recorded January 12 thru February 8, 1968; Indian influence on melody, lyrics focus on how you can “travel” without leaving your house)
• Across the Universe (recorded February 4-8, 1968; the original version before it was modified by Phil Spector features floating Lennon vocals with droning noises and unusual wildlife sounds, a child’s voice matching John’s voice also appears in the mix)

Listing the recording dates is instructive here, because some of these songs   would not get released until the Yellow Submarine LP (It’s Only A Northern Song, It’s All Too Much) or the Let It Be LP (Across the Universe in its Phil Spector version), but were definitely made during the period when psychedelic drugs had the biggest effect on the Beatles creative output.  After February 1968, the Beatles went to Rishikesh to commune with the Maharishi, where they were told not to bring any drugs along, because Trascendental Meditation was a more natural high.  Although the Beatles probably did take some marijuana along to Rishikesh, their use of strong hallucinogens ended at that point, except for John, who used LSD a few more times after Rishikesh.

The Beatles celebrate the completion of their album, ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’, on May 19th, 1967 in London.

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SEARCHING FOR TRUTH IN THE NEW AGE

By Paul McGuire
My spiritual pilgrimage began at a very young age when the questions, “Who am I? What is my purpose in life?” and “What am I doing here?” haunted me and burned in my mind night and day. While other children were content to play, I was driven to ask questions about the meaning of life. Raised in New York City, I came from a liberal, educated family. Both my parents were teachers, and neither believed in God.

As a young boy, I thought science could give me the answers to my questions about life. Reading every book I could get my hands on about science and the lives of the great scientists, I often devoured ten books a week. I read about men like Albert Einstein, Nicola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Enrico Fermi, Louis Pasteur, and John Oppenheimer. Building a huge laboratory in my bedroom, I undertook amateur experiments on cryogenics and nuclear physics. Soon, however, I realized that these brilliant men did not have the answers I was looking for. Thus, at an early age I discovered the bankruptcy of scientific materialism.

After exhausting science as a means of finding the meaning of life, I next investigated the occult and Eastern religions. Biblical Christianity was not even an option for me. I had never once met a Bible-believing Christian or seen an evangelist on television, and the churches in my neighborhood were steeped in liberal theology or dead orthodoxy.

The only religion we had at home was secular humanism – the belief that there is no God and man is the center of the universe. As a result, I was raised to believe that there was no absolute right or wrong. Around the dinner table, my parents taught me that human evil was due to ignorance and that the concept of a personal God was an archaic belief any educated person should transcend. In addition, they told me that Christians were intellectually pathetic people who were “anti-love,” “anti-joy,” and “anti-sex.” Instead of promoting anything good, Christians were responsible for the crusades and the Inquisition.

One Thanksgiving evening my grandmother asked my father to pray. Instead, he launched into a thunderous tirade about how there was no reason to thank God – everything we had came from man’s hard work.

In the atheistic environment of my home, the spiritual void within me grew deeper, and I plunged headlong into the New Age philosophy and radical politics. Soon after I reached puberty, my parents divorced, ripping my world apart. My spiritual pilgrimage merged with a growing hatred of all authority and society. I was ripe to be seduced by the counterculture and the psychedelic philosophy of the ’60s which has now become the New Age Movement.

Although my mother held a secular humanist worldview, she was always full of loving concern and discipline. She spent thousands of hours reading me books and taking me to museums and libraries. Genuinely concerned about her rebellious son, my mother sent me to a psychotherapist whom she hoped would solve my problems.

I told my therapist that I wanted to know why I was alive, who I was, and what purpose there was for my life. He could not help me and only provided a listening board. In the vain hope of finding answers, I began reading Sigmund Freud, Carl Rogers, and Carl Jung. But all the leading psychological theorists seemed to contradict each other, and I was left more confused than ever.

Then the “hippie” movement with its drugs and “free love” exploded across the nation. I remember the first time I saw Timothy Leary. Wearing a white outfit and grinning like the “Cheshire Cat” from Alice In Wonderland, he said on national television “Tune in, turn on, and drop out.” This psychedelic prophet of LSDwas in distinct contrast to the people involved in organized religion. Then the Beatles recorded “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” and the psychedelic invasion of drugs, Eastern religion, and promiscuous sex spread.

At the age of fifteen, I was wearing long hair and boots and demonstrating with Abbie Hoffman in New York City. I organized demonstrations and was even made an honorary member of the Black Panther Party for protesting outside a prison against the arrest of Panther leaders.

Simultaneously, I deepened my activities in Eastern mysticism and was introduced to drugs by an “honor student” in my high school. I read a book by Aldous Huxley titled Heaven and Hell and the Doors of Perception, which describes Huxley’s experimentation with hashish and mescaline as a means to enter a higher state of consciousness. This fellow student, whose father was a doctor, “turned me on” to hashish and mescaline as part of a serious scientific experiment. Together, we passed through the “doors of perception” and entered a higher realm of consciousness.

Fueled by drugs like LSD and mescaline, it was the psychedelic ’60s that ushered in the current New Age Movement. Powerful mind altering drugs like LSD blasted people into the spiritual realm and forced them to acknowledge the presence of a spiritual reality. This opened the door to the occult and the myriad practices of Eastern mysticism that gave birth to the New Age Movement.

In my own life, the use of powerful psychedelic drugs like LSD intensified my plunge into the New Age philosophy and Eastern Mysticism. Thus began an electric pilgrimage into Hinduism, Buddhism, the teachings of Don Juan, yoga, mental telepathy, altered states of consciousness, hypnotherapy, astral projection, reincarnation, the occult, devil’s weed, spirit guides, and a smorgasbord of mystical experiences. I was greatly influenced by men like Baba Ram Dass, Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, and Stephen Gaskin.

In fact, my major at the University of Missouri was called “Altered States of Consciousness,” a brand-new accredited field within the Department of Psychology. We studied different means of entering higher states of consciousness and engaged in exercises based on Eastern mystical teaching and experiences by men like Carlos Castaneda. It was during this time of intense New Age activity that I developed spiritual powers and “cosmic consciousness.”

My professor at the University of Missouri was a practicing mystic and taught a number of courses on mental illness. He believed, as did popular psychologists like R.D. Laing, that mental illness or madness could be a means of entering higher consciousness. In this theory, insane people are considered spiritual pilgrims caught between two realities.

My professor invited gurus to teach and perform supernatural feats of levitation. Once while my professor was lecturing, I heard a distinct voice within me shout, “Surrender to the dark forces within!” At this point in my life I noticed a growing intensity in the manifestation of strong paranormal experiences. Yet at the same time, I had a growing feeling that things were getting out of control. The more bizarre things became, however, the more I believed I was moving toward “enlightenment.” I became convinced that everything happening was due to my excess “karma” burning off.

As is often the case with people involved in drugs and the occult, I experienced mixed feelings of great elation and depression. I became a kind of mystical “wildman,” hiking into the woods while on psychedelic drugs and communing with what I thought was God. But I was like a comet crashing into the atmosphere, burning more brightly as I moved through the heavens and consuming myself in flames. One evening I broke into my psychology professor’s office and wrote him an anonymous note warning him of the dangers of “the journey.”

Invasion Of The Jesus Movement

In the early ’70s, a strange thing happen at the University of Missouri: The Jesus Movement spread from the West Coast and entered the campus town of Columbia, Missouri. I remember seeing an article on the Jesus Movement in a national magazine. Reading about these Christians, who I thought were going to regress mankind into a new Dark Age with their “primitive blood-stained religion,” made me furious. I hated them because I thought they would stop the “revolution” and the establishment of the new world order based on higher consciousness.

People involved in the New Age Movement hold the very same beliefs, for their goal is to create a one-world government and unify the planet under a spiritual system of higher consciousness. Like many New Agers, I viewed Christians with all their talk of Jesus Christ being the “only way” as an anachronism and a threat to the spiritual/political revolution coming to the planet.

About this time, however, I finally came face to face with genuine Christians who moved in the supernatural flow of the Holy Spirit and had the glory of God shining on their countenances. I encountered Spirit-filled Christians everywhere and thought it was my duty to defend the faith of Eastern mysticism and the religion of “higher consciousness.” Attacking and debating believers in philosophy classes whenever they spoke out about their faith, I delighted in trying to humiliate them and prove them wrong through intellectual arguments.

In addition, I increased my “outrageous” behavior in front of Christians in an attempt to mock and ridicule them. Since I studied film, I made X-rated animation movies with Barbie dolls in an attempt to sneer at Judeo-Christian morality.

Despite my bitter hatred, a couple of true Christians began to zero in on me and share the love of Jesus Christ. Beneath all my bravado was a hurting, frightened individual reaching out for answers. At first, my mind completely rejected everything they were saying. But they continued to love me with a pure, deep, spiritual agape love. Even though I thought what they were saying was complete idiocy, I felt myself being wooed and convicted by the Holy Spirit as they talked.

For the first time in my life, I sensed God’s love for me. All my intellectual arguments were reduced to nothing as I encountered something far more real than anything I had experienced before. This was not some “trip” or mystical high. The purity and love that I felt had to be God.

Empowered by the Holy Spirit, these supernatural Christians opened up their lives to me. They cared about me as a person and loved me. They invited me to their prayer meetings and had me over for dinner. Through their personal ministry to me, I felt the arms of the living God embrace me and hug me like my father never had. As the Lord touched me deep within my heart, the hurt and bruised child locked inside me emerged and responded to His love.

Although I wasn’t yet ready to surrender, the Holy Spirit continued to work in my life. I had all kinds of intellectual questions, so my Christian friends gave me a book by Dr. Francis Schaeffer called ESCAPE FROM REASON. It changed my life. I was shocked to discover that a person could be both intelligent and a Christian. Talking about God, film, art, and philosophy in brilliant and articulate terms, Dr. Schaeffer explained contemporary culture in a way I had never understood.

Still I fought with the Holy Spirit, and the forces of darkness did not want to let me go. As these Christians prayed for me, the Holy Spirit continued to convict me. Sometimes I found myself walking alone by the highway, and, even though I was “stoned,” I would begin sobbing and weeping as Almighty God touched me.

The Hand Of Providence

One afternoon a guy named Tim invited me to a retreat in a wooded area about an hour away from the campus. I had mysteriously met Tim in the hallway of a dormitory, where he sat reading the Bible that he carried with him everywhere. He was in the hallway to meet someone else, but providentially he met me and invited me to this Christian retreat. Tim’s eyes shone with sincerity and the love of God, so I accepted his invitation.

Dressed in boots, blue jeans, and long hair, I arrived at the retreat center. A brief look at the place quickly convinced me that these people didn’t have what I was looking for. They were the kind of Christians I had seen before – religious but lacking the depth and dimension of people who have had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.

While at the retreat center, I noted vague references to the Bible, but primarily we played games like “spin the bottle.” I was totally disgusted, for these people reinforced my worst preconceptions about Christianity. After spending the night I told Tim during breakfast that I was going to hitchhike back to the university. Tim walked me to the highway and said, “Paul, God will take care of your ride home.” Wondering if he was some kind of religious nut but hoping to humor him, I said, “Yeah, yeah sure.” Then I stuck out my thumb and tried to hitch a ride.

The first person to pick me up was a Pentecostal preacher. He and his wife talked to me about Jesus the entire ride. Stunned, I chalked it up as coincidence; after all, this was the Bible Belt. After they let me out, I stuck out my thumb and was picked up by a Bible salesman with a station wagon filled with Bibles! As we whizzed down the highway, he opened a giant Bible and began reading. With no hands on the wheel, he asked me if I wanted to receive Jesus into my life. I managed to gulp a “yes,” and he pulled off the road.

As we rolled to a stop, the thought raced through my mind, “What have I got myself into? Is this guy some kind of religious psychopath or axe murderer?” Growing up in New York City had taught me to suspect everybody’s motives and not to trust strangers.

The next thing I knew this Bible salesman was leading me in a prayer. With head bowed and hands clasped, I heard myself saying, “Jesus Christ, I ask you to forgive me of my sins. I invite you to come into my life and make me born again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” I couldn’t believe I had said this prayer. I wasn’t even sure what sin was, although it seemed to me like an archaic concept. But I prayed in faith and meant it.

Hours later, I forgot the incident had even occurred and “partied” the night away with friends. The next day I woke up hung over and decided to visit a Christian girl named Laura. She and her boyfriend, Burgess, had spent a lot of time ministering and witnessing to me about Jesus.

As Laura and I talked, we were walking next to some giant Roman columns in the university quadrangle. I told her about my highway experience, and another girl sitting on the lawn overheard our conversation. It turned out that she was a minister’s daughter wrestling with the question of whether or not Christianity was really true. Looking at me pointblank, she said, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God?”

All of a sudden the words, “Yes, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God!” leapt from deep within me. I was shocked. I had never said anything like that before. As I spoke, I had the most powerful spiritual experience of my life. It seemed that the sky had cracked open, and the presence of God overwhelmed me. A giant veil was lifted from my eyes as I realized God truly did exist.

I understand that I risk losing credibility by relating this experience exactly as it happened. True miracles can be cheapened by relating them in either a glib or a sensational manner. Many Christians carelessly utter the word “miracle” with such arrogance that it loses all its value. In addition, I understand that many people have had quiet but profound experiences with Jesus Christ that have just as much validity as mine.

But for me to minimize or reduce what happened to more logical terms just to make it more plausible would be inaccurate. I felt as if every dream I had ever had within the depths of my soul came true in an instant. Literally caught up in the Holy Spirit, I felt I was floating for weeks. Although I was higher than I had ever been in my entire life, I knew that the experience was genuine and pure.

Everything I had searched for in Eastern mysticism, human relationships, and the New Age Movement, I now found in Jesus Christ. This was not just another higher state of consciousness, an “upper story leap” without rational content, or a mystical trip. Nothing about this was artificial or mystical.

One could easily misconstrue my involvement in the New Age Movement and my encounter with Jesus Christ as the path of someone hopping from experience to experience lacking rational and verifiable content. Let me assure you that when I began my spiritual journey I did so as a scientist and a skeptic.

The contrast between mystical experiences and my encounter with Jesus Christ was as different as night and day. All of the New Age and Eastern mystical experiences I was involved in had an illusory quality no matter how real they seemed at the time. Jesus Christ was not just another “experience.” My newfound relationship with Him conveyed a reality so strong that I knew I had found God.

PAUL’S PERSONAL TESTIMONY ABOUT HOW HE ESCAPED THE NEW AGE MOVEMENT AND HOW JESUS CHRIST RESCUED HIM FROM DECEPTION?

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

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MARTY BALIN – JEFFERSON AIRPLANE TAKES OFF – Part2

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Marty Balin – Hearts

Marty Balin / Jefferson Airplane by mstrychowska Marty Balin / Jefferson Airplane by mstrychowska

Featured artist is Marty Balin

MARTY BALIN – I SPECIALIZE IN LOVE – THE BEGINNING……*

MARTY BALIN “VOLUNTEERS” with Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady

Marty Balin – Rock & Roll with a Splash of Color

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By Ashley Bates
photos SJBuchwald®

It’s not every day that a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee graces downtown St. Augustine, belting out rock hits.
In September, art enthusiasts at the First Friday Art Walk had the chance to see just that when Marty Balin of famed Jefferson Airplane came to town.But when Balin made his appearance at the art walk in September, it was to showcase his art work not his music.

Even though many of us know Balin for his historic rock hits like “Hearts,” “Atlantic Lady” and “Volunteers,” he was a painter long before he began recording hit songs. Actually, Balin got his start painting when he was a child and says painting was his first artistic expression.“I’ve been painting since I was young…selling my artwork in shows. I actually did that before I played music,” said Balin, who has lived in Tampa for the last 20 years.Balin’s full art collection, featuring rock legends many of whom Balin knew personally, can be found at 130 King Fine Art Gallery in downtown St. Augustine.

You wouldn’t be too surprised at what images Balin portrays in his artwork–rock legends from years past including several paintings of the Grateful Dead’s lead singer Jerry Garcia, the queen of rock Janis Joplin, The Door’s Jim Morrison and Elton John, all grace Balin’s canvases. 
Balin said he chooses specific musicians from certain time periods to relive a personal memory. 
“Really it’s a way for me to go back to those memories, like when you see a picture,” said Balin, who has been known to journal while painting to jot down special memories.

When asked what his favorite pieces in his own collection are, Balin explains that the French Le Pétomane pieces are his favorites. 
Le Pétomane was a French entertainer from the Belle Époque era (French for “Beautiful Era”). The famous cabaret, the Moulin Rouge in Paris, also became famous during that time. 
“I just love the idea of the Moulin Rouge, the top hats, the colors,” Balin said. 
The bright, whimsical colors can be seen in his Le Pétomane pieces complete with carousels, elephants and of course the French entertainer Le Pétomane.

The whimsical nature of nature of Balin’s artwork could be attributed to where he was raised as a young boy. Balin was born in Cincinnati but grew up in the San Francisco area, which is where he found his calling to rock music by none other than pop music legend Johnny Mathis. It has been said that Balin was one of the musicians that catapulted San Francisco onto the music scene in the 1960s. Balin formed Jefferson Airplane in the summer of 1965, in San Francisco, as a folk-rock group but the band later came to be known in the psychedelic scene, scoring a gold record with their 1967 second album, “Surrealistic Pillow.” Balin wrote hit songs for the band including “Comin’ Back To Me,” “Plastic Fantastic Lover” and “Share a Little Joke.”

Later, in the early 1970s, Jefferson Starship was formed by several members of the original band Jefferson Airplane.
 Balin and Jefferson Airplane were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, with the likes of David Bowie, Pink Floyd and Gladys Knight & the Pips, to name a few. “Rock and Roll will never die, good music will always be around,” commented Balin on the evolution of modern rock music.

Balin continues to record his brand of rock ‘n’ roll in the studio and is currently recording an album at the studio in Tampa. “Currently I’m in the studio. (The album) will be Marty Balin music…I haven’t come up with a name for the album just yet.”

Today some of the musicians he says are on his radar are Katy Perry and Madonna. “I guess Katy Perry is pretty good,” he said. “I was watching Madonna’s new tour on TV the other day and she’s still pretty good.”
Even though Balin has enjoyed supreme success in rock ‘n’ roll, he says his greatest accomplishment is “that I’m still here today and alive.”

Jefferson Airplane – Volunteers (Live at Woodstock Music & Art Fair, 1969)

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Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”  (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? ) 

How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles

Francis Schaeffer

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Related posts:

Francis Schaeffer’s “How should we then live?” Video and outline of episode 1 “The Roman Age” (Schaeffer Sundays)

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

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Today I am going to look at Paramhansa Yogananda who appeared on the cover of SGT. PEPPERS because the Beatles were at the time interested in what Eastern Religions had to offer. One of the problems with Hinduism is that has no way to explain the existence of evil in the world today. However, Christianity explains evil entering into the world in a space and time event called the fall. Concerning Paramhansa Yogananda Francis Schaeffer says the following in his book GENESIS IN SPACE AND TIME: 

Words have become so devalued today that we often have to use cumbersome terms to make what we mean understood. The word fact does not necessarily mean anything anymore. Fact can just mean upperstory religious truth, and therefore we have to use an awkward term like brute fact. In this particular case, we are fortunate because the liberal theologians themselves use the term brute fact for what they don’t mean by facts. The historic Fall is not an interpretation: It is a brute fact. There is no room for hermeneutics here, if by hermeneutics we mean explaining away the brute factness of the Fall. That there was a Fall is not an upper-story statement that is, it is not in this sense a “theological” or “religious” statement. Rather, it is a historic, space-time, brute fact, propositional statement. There was time, spacetime history, before the Fall, and then man turned from his proper integration point by choice, and in so doing there was moral discontinuity; man became abnormal.

In speaking of facts and brute facts, we are speaking of facts in the space-time sense, that which is open to the normal means of verification and falsification. As I stress in the Appendix to The Church before the Watching World, this does not mean they are then to be taken as sterile facts. These biblical facts are facts in past history, but they have, and should have, meaning in our present existential, moment by-moment lives.

Furthermore, in speaking of the Bible’s statements as propositional truth we are not saying that all communication is on the level of mathematical formula. There can be other levels (for example, figures of speech or the special force of poetry); but there is a continuity-a unity not a discontinuity-between these “other levels” and a flow of propositions given in normal syntax and using words in their normal definition, and this is a continuity which reason can deal with. Take an example outside of the Bible: Shakespeare’s communication with his figures of speech is a much richer human communication than is mere mathematical formula. The “other levels” (for example, his figures of speech) add enrichment. Yet, if, as in far-out modern prose and poetry, there are only, or almost only, figures of speech, with no adequate running continuity that can be stated in propositional form using normal syntax and words with normal meanings, no one knows what is being said. As a matter of fact, some modern writers and artists deliberately work this way so that this will be the case. Their work becomes only a quarry for subjective experiences and interpretations inside of the head of the reader or viewer. The early chapters of Genesis quickly come to this place if they are read other than as in propositional form using normal syntax and words in their normal meaning. As an example, Paramahansa Yogananda did this in his book Autobiography of a Yogi and most easily turned these chapters into a powerful Hindu tract.

I Am The Walrus With Lyrics

Monday, February 25, 2013

Besides his devotion to God, George was also devoted to Hindu teachers, especially Paramahansa Yogananda. Paramanhansa Yogananda is famous for being the wisdom of Hinduism to the West, and he taught the fundamental unity between Yoga and Christianity. George wrote his song, Fish on the Sand, from the 1987 Cloud Nine album about his devotion and reliance on Yogananda. George often enjoyed visits to the Self-Realization Fellowship Center in Encinitas, California, which was founded by Yogananda.

“India India” rare Beatles song and pictures

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

How Should We Then Live – Episode 8 – The Age of Fragmentation

How Should We Then Live – Episode 9 – The Age of Personal Peace & Affluence

“The people of India have a tremendous spiritual strength, which I don’t think is found elsewhere. The spirit of the people, the beauty, the goodness—that’s what I’ve been trying to learn about.” – George Harrison, 1966 

1974, George Harrison and Ravi Shankar pose in front of musicians from the album Ravi Shankar Family and Friends.

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Press conference, 1969, with members of the London Radha Krishna Temple

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(left to right) John Lennon, Paul McCartney, the Maharishi, George Harrison, Mia Farrow and Donovan. Photo:THE HINDU ARCHIVES

If God has not revealed Himself, then there are no absolutes. Good is evil and evil is good. We see this in Hinduism.

The new theologians also have no way to explain why evil exists, and thus they are left with the same problem the Hindu philosophers have; that is, they must say that finally everything that is is equally in God. In Hindu thought one of the manifestations of God is Kali, a feminine representation of God with fangs and skulls hanging about her neck. Why do Hindus picture God this way? Because to them everything that exists now is a part of what has always been, a part of that which the Hindus would call “God”—and therefore cruelty is equal to noncruelty. Modern humanistic man in both his secular and his religious forms has come to the same awful place. Both have no final way to say what is right and what is wrong, and no final way to say why one should choose noncruelty instead of cruelty.

IN THE VIDEO BELOW take notice at the 14:00 minute mark Schaeffer talks about the BEATLES and at the 22:30 minute mark  Schaeffer mentions the Hindu god Kali.

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

Rishikesh – Beatles With The Maharishi (1968)

The Biblical view concerning how sin entered the world is explained in the book GENESIS  IN SPACE AND TIME by Francis Schaeffer, Chapter 5  pages 33  -41:

chapter 5

The space-time fall and its results

Eve was faced with a choice, she pondered the situation and then she put her hand into the history of man and changed the course of human events.

The Fruit Is Eaten

The Genesis account is short and to the point: “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat” (Gen. 3:6).1 The flow is from the internal to the external; the sin began in the thought-world and flowed outward. The sin was, therefore, committed in that moment she believed Satan instead of God. At this point the whole matter was decided. Nonetheless, a history is involved, for first she believed Satan, then she ate, and then she gave the fruit to Adam.

Genesis 3:17 refers to this historical flow, for God in speaking to Adam says that he has “hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree.” And we are reminded, as we have seen in 2 Corinthians 11:3, that as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety (at her point of history) so our own minds (at our point of history) may also be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.

Paul in 1 Timothy 2:14 points out something further: “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” Temptation is extremely hard to resist when it is bound up with the man-woman relationship. For example, in Exodus 34:16 we are warned not to let the man-woman relationship lead us into idolatry (spoken of as going “a whoring after their gods”).

Two great drives are built into man. The first is his need for a relationship to God, and the second his need for a relationship to the opposite sex. A special temptation is bound up with this sexual drive. How many young women are there who are faithful as Christians until they come to a certain age and feel with their whole being, without ever analyzing it, the need for marriage and are then swept over into marrying a non-Christian man? And how many men are there who are faithful until they feel the masculine drive and give up their faithfulness to God by marrying a woman who carries them into spiritual problems for the rest of their life? I look upon such young men and young women as I see them going through this, and I cry for them, because in a way there is no greater agony than suddenly to fall in love and then to realize that one must say no to this natural drive because it leads in that particular case to a severing of our greater relationship-our relationship to God. While what happened in the Garden of Eden was a spacetime historic event, the man-woman relationship and force of temptation it must have presented to Adam is universal.

The Results of the Fall for the Human Race

The results of Adam and Eve’s action are recorded in many places in Scripture, but nowhere more clearly than in Romans 5:12-19 where Paul emphasizes that Adam and Eve’s action marked the entrance of sin into the human  race. I will quote here part of this passage: “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed [spread] unto all men, for that all sinned:-for until the law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come…. For if by the trespass of the one the many died…. For if, by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one…. So then as through one trespass the judgment came unto all men to condemnation…. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners . . .” (ASV).

The repetition makes the point obvious: By the action of one man in a historic, space-time situation, sin entered into the world of men. But this is not just a theoretical statement that gives us a reasonable and sufficient answer to man’s present dilemma, explaining how the world can be so evil and God still be good. It is that in reality, from this time on, man was and is a sinner. Though some men do not like the teaching, the Bible continues like a sledge hammer, driving home the fact that evil has entered into the world of man, all men are now sinners, all men now sin. Listen to God’s declaration concerning the human race in Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

Incidentally, in one way it is easier today than it was a few years ago to proclaim the sinfulness of man. On every side artists, novelists and protest singers are saying, “What’s wrong with man? Something’s wrong with man.” The Bible agrees and gives us a realistic view of life: “The heart is deceitfully wicked.”

I think the strongest words were spoken by Jesus himself in John 8:44, where he turns on those who are claiming the fatherhood of God and says: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do” (ASV). In other words, Jesus is saying, “You choose to be in Satan’s parade.”

Isaiah writes, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way” (Is. 53:6). It is obvious that if “all we like sheep have gone astray,” I can no longer merely say they have gone astray, but I must say I have gone astray. I, too, sin. Paul picks this up in the letter to the Romans as he summarizes the status of all the races-first the Gentiles and then the Jews: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10-12). If there is none that is righteous, no, not one, then I am included. I have written the word me in the margin of my Bible at this place. Galatians 3:10 carries the force: “For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” All mankind stands in this place. Not only the revealed law of God but also every moral motion of every man who has ever lived condemns men, because men keep neither the revealed law of God nor even live consistently according to their own moral motions. This is the point of Romans 2:1-2: “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.”

What Paul says involves the whole man as he comes to Scripture. The Bible never leaves this as a generalization or as an abstraction. Paul writes, “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man.” Perhaps the most important part of this is that it is in the singular, for it speaks to every individual who hears or reads: “Whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.” The simple fact is that it is not only the man who has the written law of God, the Bible, who stands under the judgment of law, but every man who ever lived. I have pointed out elsewhere that wherever anthropologists and sociologists have been, they have found that men have moral motions. The specific standards may be different, but all men operate under moral categories. So Paul says here that a man stands condemned on the basis of his own moral motions, for every time he condemns another man he has put himself under the same condemnation. Every man makes moral judgments concerning other men and then does not keep them himself. The results? All men are sinners, and all men sin.

This indictment includes those who are now Christians as well as non-Christians. Men are not born Christians, a sort of special race. Every single man who is now a child of God was at one time a rebel. We are all hewn from the same rock, whether we come from a church background or a non-church background. No sacerdotalism can help man.

Am I a Christian today? Never forget, then, that yesterday I was as much a rebel as anyone who walks on the face of the earth. As Ephesians 2:2-3 says in burning words: “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” He is talking here to the church at Ephesus. But he continues and adds himself to the list, he steps over and joins us, for it is not just “ye” but “we”: “Among whom also we all had our conversation [meaning here our total way of life, our “life-form”] in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” This is who we are. If we are Christians today, this is who we have been. We had a different king-the father of lies. We must not be proud, for as Ephesians 5:8 says, “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now ye are light in the Lord.” Remember, you were also marked by Adam’s sin, and you were sinners: “And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled” (Col. 1:21).

Don’t be proud. As you look out across the world of sinners, weep for them. Be glad indeed if you are redeemed, but never forget as you look at others that you have been one of them, and in a real sense we are still one with them, for we still sin. Christians are not a special group of people who can be proud; Christians are those who are redeemed-and that is all!

Everywhere we turn we find the same thing: “For we ourselves [notice the “we” again] also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Tit. 3:3). Paul never allowed those who followed his teaching to forget that they were not a special kind just because they may have been Jews at the beginning and circumcised or just because they were now baptized Christians. Each one must say, “I have been the rebel, I have been the sinner.” The force of this is perhaps brought most fully in the great statement in 1 John 1:10: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him [God] a liar, and his word is not in us.” To forget in our emotional reactions as well as in our words that we indeed have been sinners, not only involved in the results of Adam’s sin but deliberately sinning ourselves over and over and over again -to forget this is to call God a liar.

Thus, all men are under the judgment of God. Even the marvelous chapter that speaks so clearly of hope, the third go chapter of the Gospel of John, twice emphasizes that men are under God’s judgment. We read, for example, these words in John 3:18: “He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” The testimony of John the Baptist in the last verse of this chapter is even more emphatic: “He that believeth on the Son has everlasting life: but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (v. 36). In a world that loves synthesis, the Bible stands with a message of total antithesis: He who believes has life but he who does not is subject to the wrath, the judgment, of God. Here, then, is the basic result of the space-time fall that we are considering in the flow of history-men are rebels and under the judgment of God.

Guilt before God

Other results of sin were immediately evident in the Garden of Eden: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons” (Gen. 3:7). The word aprons in the Hebrew is interesting. Actually, it simply means to “gird yourself about,” so people have translated the word in various ways. One Bible, the Breeches Bible of 1608, got its name from the way it translated this word. But whatever an apron is, it is something one puts around himself.

The significance is that Adam and Eve were brought to a realization of what they had done. They began to feel afraid and to feel guilt-and well they might, for their guilt feelings were rooted in true guilt. When a man has sinned against God, he not only has guilt feelings, he has true guilt; and he has true guilt even if he does not have feelings of guilt.

“And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden” (v. 8). This is the verse we have used in our previous studies to indicate the wonder of the open communication which God had with man. In the garden in the cool (or the wind) of the day, there was open fellowship, open communion-open propositional communication between God and man before the Fall. But now that which was his wonder and his joy, the fulfillment of his need, an infinite, personal reference point with whom he could have communion and communication became the reason for his fear. He was going to meet God face to face! Once man had shaken his fist in the face of God, what had been so wonderful became a just reason for fear, because God was really there.

So we read: “And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And he said, I heard the voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat” (vv. 9-13).

The first thing we notice here is that Adam and Eve immediately begin to try to pass the guilt from themselves to another, and we have, therefore, the division which is at the very heart of man’s relationship with man from this point on. The human race is divided-man against man. We do not have to wait for modern psychologists to talk about alienation. Here it is. Man is alienated from his wife-the wife from her husband-as they turn against each other, especially at the points of blame and guilt. All the alienation that any poet will ever write about is here already. In a way, both Adam and Eve were right. Eve had given the fruit to Adam, and Satan had tempted Eve. But that does not shift the responsibility. Eve was responsible and Adam was responsible, and they stood in their responsibility before God.

God’s Judgment on Man and Nature

As God speaks to the parties involved at this moment of history, we find four steps in his judgment of their action. First, he speaks to the serpent who has been used by Satan: “And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above [from among] all cattle, and above [from among] every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (v. 14). As we shall see, all nature becomes abnormal yet the serpent is singled out in a special way “from among all cattle.'”

Second, in verse 15 he speaks to Satan; we will return to that.

Third, he speaks to the woman: “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain [this is more accurate than the King James word sorrow] and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” There are two parts here: the first relates to the womanness of the woman-the bearing of children-and the second to her relationship to her husband. In regard to the former, God says that he will multiply two things-not just the pain but also the conception. It seems clear that if man had not rebelled there would not have been as many children born.

In regard to the relationship to her husband, he says, “And thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” This one sentence puts an end to any pure democracy. In a fallen world pure democracy is not possible. Rather, God brings structure into the primary relationship of man-the man-woman relationship. In a fallen world (in every kind of society-big and smalland in every relationship) structure is needed for order. God himself here imposes it on the basic human relationship. Form is given and without such form freedom would only be chaos.

It is not simply because man is stronger that he is to have dominion (that’s the argument of the Marquis de Sade). But rather he is to have dominion because God gives this as structure in the midst of a fallen world. The Bible makes plain that this relationship is not to be without love. As the New Testament puts it, the husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church (Eph. 5:23). In a fallen world it is not surprising to find that men have turned this structure into a kind of slavery. It is not meant to be a slavery. In fact, it is in cultures where the Bible has been influential that the balance has been substantially restored. The Bible balances the structure and the love.

Nevertheless, it is still true: Since the Fall what God. says in verse 16 is to be the structure or the form of the basic human relationship-the man-woman relationship. It is right that a woman should feel a need for freedom, a feeling of being a “human being” in the world. But when she tries to smash the structure of this basic relationship, finally what she does is to hurt herself. It is like unravelling the knot that holds the string of human relationships together. All other things flow from it-the loss of her own children’s obedience and the crumbling of society about her. In a fallen world we need structure in every social relationship.

The Abnormal Universe

Fourth, God speaks to the man: “And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil [the word sorrow in the King James is inaccurate] shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life” (v. 17). In other words, at this point the external world is changed.

It is interesting that almost all of the results of God’s judgment because of man’s rebellion relate in some way to the external world. They are not just bound up in man’s thought life; they are not merely psychological. Profound changes make the external, objective world abnormal. In the phrase for thy sake God is relating these external abnormalities to what Adam has done in the Fall.

All of these changes came about by fiat. Creation, as we have already seen, came by fiat. And, though we have come to the conclusion of creation with the creation of Eve, yet fiat has not ceased. The abnormality of the external world was brought about by fiat. Putting it into twentieth-century terminology, we can say this: The universe does not display a uniformity of cause and effect in a closed system; God speaks and something changes. We are reminded here of the long arguments that date back to the time of Lyell and Darwin concerning whether there could be such a thing as catastrophe-something that cut across the uniformity of cause and effect. Scripture answers this plainly: Yes, God spoke and that which he had created was changed.

So now the earth itself is abnormal. We read, for example, in Genesis 5:29, which speaks of the world before the flood: “And he [Noah’s father] called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” The name Noah itself simply means rest or comfort. The Scripture says that at this point in the flow of biblical history men knew very well that the toil of their hands was a result of God’s having changed the earth.

Why is it like this? Because, one might say, you, O unprogrammed and significant Adam, have revolted. Nature has been under your dominion (in this sense it is as an extension of himself, as a king’s empire is an extension of himself). Therefore, when you changed, God changed the objective, external world. It as well as you is now abnormal.

It is interesting that in each of the steps of God’s judgment toil is involved: The serpent goes upon his belly; the woman has pain in childbirth; the man has toil in his work.

Verse 18 continues: “Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” The word thistles here means luxuriously-growing but useless plants. The phrase it shall bring forth to thee has in the Hebrew the sense of “it shall be caused to bud.” This phrase, therefore, suggests that here, too, the change was wrought by fiat. Furthermore, the phrase suggests the modern biological term mutation, a non-sterile sport. That is, the plants had been one kind of thing and were reproducing likewise, and then God spoke and the plants began to bring forth something else and continue to reproduce in that new and different form.

The introduction of toil does not mean the introduction of work, because in Genesis 2:15, as we have seen, God took man and put him in the Garden of Eden “to dress it and to keep it.” There was work before the Fall, but certainly we can see the force of the distinction before and after the Fall, in the language of Genesis 5:29, where labor is called the “toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” Since the whole structure of the external world has changed, the meaning of work has changed. Thus Genesis 3:19 says: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till [the concept of “until” is important here] thou return unto the ground; for out of it was thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

The results are twofold. First, man shall have his food (and all else) by the sweat of his brow. Second, there is an end to this-an end that is not a release. The end is the greatest abnormality in the external world-the dissolution of the total man. A time will come at the end of each man’s life when he physically dies and the unity of man the unity of body and soul-is torn asunder. Christianity is not platonic; the soul is not considered all-important. Rather, at physical death that unity which man is meant to be is fractured. This is the second kind of death brought about by the Fall, the first being immediate separation from fellowship with God and the third being eternal death as men are judged in their rebellion and separated from God forever.

Christianity as a system does not begin with Christ as Savior, but with the infinite-personal God who created the world in the beginning and who made man significant in the flow of history. And man’s significant act in revolt has made the world abnormal. Thus there is not a total unbroken continuity back to the way the world originally was. Non-Christian philosophers almost universally agree in seeing everything as normal, assuming things are as they have always been. The Christian sees things now as not the way they have always been. And, of course, this is very important to the explanation of evil in the world. But it is not only that. It is one way to understand the distinction between the naturalistic, non-Christian answers (whether spoken in philosophic, scientific or even religious language) and the Christian answer. The distinction is that as I look about me I know I live in an abnormal world.

Among contemporary philosophers Martin Heidegger in his later writings has suggested a sort of space-time fall. He says that prior to Aristotle, the pre-Socratic Greeks thought in a different way. Then when Aristotle introduced the concept of rationality and logic, there was an epistemological fall. His notion, of course, has no moral overtones at all, but it is intriguing to me that Heidegger has come to realize that philosophy cannot explain reality if it begins with the notion that the world is normal. This the Bible has taught, but the Bible’s explanation for the present abnormal world is in a moral Fall by a significant man, a fall which has changed the external flow of history as no epistemological fall could do. Heidegger’s problem is that, while he well sees the need of a fall, he will not bow before the existence of the God who is there and the knowledge that God has given us. Hence he ends up with an insufficient fall and an insufficient answer.

Separations

Another way to look at the results of the Fall is to notice the separations that are caused by sin. First is the great separation, the separation between God and man. It underlies all other separations, not only in eternity but right now. Man no longer has the communion with God he was meant to have. Therefore, he cannot fulfill the purpose of his existence-to love God with all his heart, soul and mind-to stand as a finite personal point before an infinite-personal reference point and be in relationship with God himself. When man sinned, the purpose of his existence was smashed. And modern man is right when he says that man is dead. It is not that man is nothing, but that he is no longer able to fulfill his mannishness. Genesis 3:23-24 shows this separation between man and God in a real, historic, graphic sense.

As evangelicals we sometimes emphasize the first separation and fail to properly emphasize all the others that now exist. The second great separation is separation of man from himself. Man has fear. Man has psychological problems. How does a Christian understand these? Primarily as the abnormal separation of man from himself. Man’s basic psychosis is his separation from God carried into his own personality as a separation from himself. Thus we have self-deception. All men are liars, but, most importantly, each man lies to himself. The greatest falsehood is not lying to other men but to ourselves. A related aspect is the loss of ability to acquire true knowledge. All his knowledge is now out of shape because the perspective is wrong, the framework is wrong. That is, man does not lose all his knowledge, but he loses “true knowledge,” especially as he makes extensions from the bits and pieces of knowledge he does have.

Furthermore, man has separated his sexual life from its original high purpose as a vehicle of communication of person to person. Sexuality loses its personal dimension; men and women treat each other as things to be exploited. Finally, at physical death comes the separation of the soul from the body, the great separation of a man from himself.

The third of the great separations is man from man. This is the sociological separation. We have seen already how Adam was separated from Eve. Both of them immediately tried to pass off the blame for the Fall. This signals the loss of the possibility of their walking truly side by side in utopian democracy. Not only was man separated from his wife, but soon brother became separated from brother, Cain killing Abel. And, as we will see in the following chapter, there is a separation between the godly and the ungodly line of men. The godly line (those men who have returned to God) and the ungodly line (the unsaved humanity going on in rebellion) constitute two humanities. In one sense, of course, there is one humanity because we all come from one source. We are one blood, one flesh. But in the midst of one humanity, there are two humanities the humanity that still stands in rebellion and the humanity that is redeemed.

Soon in the flow of history we come to the tower of Babel, and with it we have the division of languages. Modern linguistics has helped us to understand how great the issues are here. So much is involved with language. Then after the time of Abraham comes the division between Jew and Gentile. These separations (and others related to them) are like titanic sonic booms in the sociological upheavals coming down to, and perhaps especially in, our day.

The fourth separation is a separation of man from nature and nature from nature. Man has lost his full dominion, and now nature itself is often a means of judgment. There is, for example, the flood at the time of Noah and, of course, nature pitted against Job. The separation of man from nature and nature from nature seems also to have reached a climax in our day.

Man’s sin causes all these separations between man and God, man and himself, man and man, and man and nature. The simple fact is that in wanting to be what man as a creature could not be, man lost what he could be. In every area and relationship men have lost what finite man could be in his proper place.

But there is one thing which he did not lose, and that is his mannishness, his being a human being. Man still stands in the image of God-twisted, broken, abnormal, but still the image-bearer of God. Man did not stop being human. As we have seen in Genesis 9:6 and in James 3:9, even after the Fall men are still in the image of God. Modern man does not see man as fallen, but he can find no significance for man. In the Bible’s teaching man is fallen but significant.

Let us not be misled: Man is still man. The unsaved painter can still paint. The unsaved lover can still love. He still has moral motions. And, though twisted, the unsaved thinker can still think. And furthermore, he lives on after his own death. He doesn’t just come to the end of his life and suddenly the clock stops. Man has meaning and significance. He may think that his history is just trash and junk, but it is not so.

Watch a man as he dies. Five minutes later he still exists. There is no such thing as stopping the existence of man. He still goes on. He has not lost his being as a human being. He has not lost those things which he intrinsically is as a man. He has not become an animal or a machine. And as I look out over the human race and see the lost-separated from God, separated from themselves, separated from other man, separated from nature-they are still men. Man still has tremendous value.

During the filming of the movie Help!, on location in the Bahamas,

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Today’s featured artist is Ronnie Wood!!

Not just a guitarist after all: Ronnie Wood cashes in on his artistic abilities as he puts £300,000 piece he painted up for sale

By SIMON TOMLINSON

PUBLISHED: 09:57 EST, 1 August 2013 | UPDATED: 10:31 EST, 1 August 2013

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382566/Ronnie-Woods-art-including-300-000-piece-painted-sale.html#ixzz3veZ5PoYJ
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Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood could be in for some satisfaction after putting one of his paintings of the band up for sale for £300,000.

The rock ‘n’ roll legend’s painting of his band is 1.5 metres by two metres in size and on display at Castle Fine Art, at the ICC, in Birmingham City Centre.

The 66-year-old, who listens to Mozart at his easel and whose first love was art, took formal training at Ealing College of Art, London.

Star treatment: This painting by Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood of the band has gone on sale for £300,000

Talent: Ronnie Wood (in front of a previous painting he put on display) took formal training at Ealing College of Art in London

Wood said: ‘When I get inspired, I get almost possessed and I just have to paint.

‘There is no kind of therapy like the one you have from starting and seeing a picture through to the end.’

It was as a child Wood showed early signs of artistic skill.

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‘He could have been a professional artist’: Beth McCarthy, gallery manager at Castle Fine Art at the ICC Birmingham, with some of Wood’s other works

I can get a lot of satisfaction: Prices for Wood’s Raw Instinct collection range from £1,500 for a signed limited edition print

Prices for Wood’s Raw Instinct collection range from £1,500 for a signed limited edition print.

Gallery manager Beth McCarthy said of the 40 original works, about 20 were still available.

She said the art gave an insight into Wood’s mind.

‘His life has been very well documented,’ she said. ‘He could have been a professional artist.

‘If you’re not necessarily a singer, but a musician, someone who creates music and writes songs, that gives people a sort of poetic sensibility.

Prolific: Gallery manager Beth McCarthy said of the 40 original works, about 20 were still available

‘They’re also, just by virtue of doing that, quite brave. It’s a similar thing with painting.’

The exhibition runs until August 9.

It will be followed by never-before-seen works by Bob Dylan in his Drawn Blank 2013 Collection. Beth said Dylan told the gallery he found art relaxing.

She said: ‘It’s physically hard work touring night after night.

‘For Ronnie Wood and Bob Dylan it’s almost like meditation making a drawing. Hours and hours go by without you noticing.’

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–

Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”  (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? ) 

How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles

Francis Schaeffer

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Related posts:

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The song ELEANOR RIGBY was a huge hit because it connected so well with “all the lonely people.” The line that probably best summed up how many people felt was: “All the lonely people, Where do they all come from? All the lonely people, Where do they all belong?”

Francis Schaeffer believed in engaging the secular society and attempting to answer the big questions of life from a Biblical perspective. However, some Christians opposed this approach. In Robert M. Price’s book BEYOND BORN AGAIN we read the reason that many Christians had avoided Beatles’ music:

Bob Larson warns, ” Lyrical content which is directly opposed to Biblical standards and accepted Christian behavior should definitely be avoided. For teenagers listening to the Beatles sing NOWHERE MAN or ELEANOR RIGBY would stop to realize the philosophical implications of the lyrics of these sayings. Nevertheless, the philosophical outlook conveyed will influence their thoughts.”

Eleanor Rigby-The Beatles

Cinema & New Media Arts | On Apr 05, 2013

Jake Meador writes on Edith (and Francis) Schaeffer over at Mere Orthodoxy.

Without the Schaeffers, I sincerely wonder if we’d have magazines like Relevant and Cardus or journals like Books & Culture or the Mars Hill Audio Journal. I know that the nonprofit Ransom Fellowship, run by two very dear friends of mine, would not exist as it does. And even as some of the work they inspired has fallen out of favor in recent years (most notably the Christian worldview movement spearheaded by Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey), I suspect its critics would not be nearly so well equipped to address the movement’s shortcomings were it not for the trailblazing work of the Schaeffers. After all, the worldview movement’s most astute critic, Jamie Smith, is drawing from the same (reformed) theological well as the Schaeffers.

The Schaeffers made it possible in a way it had not been before to be thoughtfully engaged with (and even delighted by) much of popular culture while still holding to Christian orthodoxy. That is a tremendous accomplishment when one considers that today’s evangelicals are, by and large, the theological descendants of fundamentalists who emphasized separation from the world. When Francis Schaeffer first came to Wheaton in 1968, he spoke on the music of The Rolling Stones and THE BEATLES and Pink Floyd. He talked about the films of Bergman and Antonioni–and at a time when Wheaton’s honor code forbade students from seeing any movies at all! That the Schaeffers accomplished such an enormous cultural work while also modeling a tremendously generous, sacrificial hospitality at L’Abri that imaged the Gospel to thousands of guests over nearly 30 years is nothing short of remarkable.

(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)

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“Eleanor Rigby” is a song about loneliness and depression representing a departure from the Beatles’ early pop love songs.

This is an early example of the Beatles taking risks and dabbling in other genres; in this particular its baroque pop, as made evident by the string arrangements. During the Beatles’ experimental phase, their producer George Martin experimented with studio techniques to satiate the Beatles’ artistic desires. To achieve the aggressive punchy sound of the strings, Martin had the microphones set up really close to the instruments, much to the chagrin of the session players, who were not used to such a unique set-up.

Eleanor Rigby – PAUL McCARTNEY

The Beatles Cartoon – Eleanor Rigby.

Eleanor Rigby

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For other uses, see Eleanor Rigby (disambiguation).

“Eleanor Rigby”
US picture sleeve
Single by The Beatles
from the album Revolver
A-side	“Yellow Submarine“
Released	5 August 1966
Format	7″
Recorded	28–29 April and 6 June 1966, EMI Studios, London
Genre	Baroque pop[1]
Length	2:08
Label	Parlophone Capitol
Writer(s)	Lennon–McCartney
Producer(s)	George Martin
The Beatles singles chronology
“Paperback Writer” (1966) “Eleanor Rigby” / “Yellow Submarine” (1966) “Strawberry Fields Forever” / “Penny Lane” (1967)
Revolver track listing [show]14 tracks Music sample “Eleanor Rigby” MENU 0:00

Eleanor Rigby is a song by the Beatles, released on the 1966 albumRevolver and as a 45 rpm single. It was written by Paul McCartney, and credited to Lennon–McCartney.^[2]

The song continued the transformation of the Beatles from a mainly rock and roll / pop-oriented act to a more experimental, studio-based band. With a double string quartet arrangement by George Martin and striking lyrics about loneliness, “Eleanor Rigby” broke sharply with popular music conventions, both musically and lyrically.^[3]Richie Unterberger of Allmusic cites the band’s “singing about the neglected concerns and fates of the elderly” on the song as “just one example of why the Beatles’ appeal reached so far beyond the traditional rock audience”.^[4] In 1987, American poet Allen Ginsberg stated that when they sang “look at all the lonely people,” the Beatles were referring to their fans, specifically the screaming members of their live audiences.

Composition[edit]

A promotional poster for the single from the UK.

Paul McCartney came up with the melody of “Eleanor Rigby” as he experimented with his piano. However, the original name of the protagonist that he chose was not Eleanor Rigby but Miss Daisy Hawkins.^[5] The singer-composer Donovan reported that he heard McCartney play it to him before it was finished, with completely different lyrics.^[6] In 1966, McCartney recalled how he got the idea for his song:

I was sitting at the piano when I thought of it. The first few bars just came to me, and I got this name in my head … “Daisy Hawkins picks up the rice in the church”. I don’t know why. I couldn’t think of much more so I put it away for a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me, and all the lonely people. But I thought that people would think it was supposed to be about my Dad sitting knitting his socks. Dad’s a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the name “McKenzie”.^[7]

Others believe that “Father McKenzie” refers to “Father” Tommy McKenzie, who was the compere at Northwich Memorial Hall.^[8][9]

McCartney said he came up with the name “Eleanor” from actress Eleanor Bron, who had starred with the Beatles in the film Help!. “Rigby” came from the name of a store in Bristol, “Rigby & Evens Ltd, Wine & Spirit Shippers”, which he noticed while seeing his girlfriend of the time, Jane Asher, act in The Happiest Days of Your Life. He recalled in 1984, “I just liked the name. I was looking for a name that sounded natural. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ sounded natural.” However, it has been pointed out that the graveyard of St Peter’s Church in Liverpool, where John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met at the Woolton Village garden fete in the afternoon of 6 July 1957, contains the gravestone of an individual called Eleanor Rigby. Paul McCartney has conceded he may have been subconsciously influenced by the name on the gravestone.^[10] The real Eleanor Rigby lived a lonely life similar to that of the woman in the song.^[11]

McCartney wrote the first verse by himself, and the Beatles finished the song in the music room of John Lennon’s home at Kenwood. John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their friend Pete Shotton all listened to McCartney play his song through and contributed ideas. Harrison came up with the “Ah, look at all the lonely people” hook. Starr contributed the line “writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear ” and suggested making “Father McCartney” darn his socks, which McCartney liked. It was then that Shotton suggested that McCartney change the name of the priest, in case listeners mistook the fictional character in the song for McCartney’s own father.^[12]

The song is often described as a lament for lonely people^[13] or a commentary on post-war life in Britain.^[14][15]

McCartney could not decide how to end the song, and Shotton finally suggested that the two lonely people come together too late as Father McKenzie conducts Eleanor Rigby’s funeral. At the time, Lennon rejected the idea out of hand, but McCartney said nothing and used the idea to finish off the song, later acknowledging Shotton’s help.^[12] The Rolling Stones’ song “Paint It Black” with its oblique reference to a funeral “a line of cars … all painted black” was in the charts when the recording of “Eleanor Rigby” was being completed.^[16]

Lennon was quoted in 1971 as having said that he “wrote a good half of the lyrics or more”^[17] and in 1980 claimed that he wrote all but the first verse,^[18] but Shotton (who was Lennon’s childhood friend) remembered Lennon’s contribution as being “absolutely nil”.^[19] McCartney said that “John helped me on a few words but I’d put it down 80–20 to me, something like that.”^[20]

Harmony[edit]

The song is a prominent example of mode mixture, specifically between the Aeolian mode, also known as natural minor, and the Dorian mode. Set in E minor, the song is based on the chord progression Em-C, typical of the Aeolian mode and utilising notes ♭3, ♭6, and ♭7 in this scale. The lead melody, however, is taken primarily from the somewhat lighter Dorian mode, a minor scale with sharpened sixth degree.^[21] “Eleanor Rigby” opens with a C-major vocal harmony (“Aah, look at all …”), before shifting to E-minor (on “lonely people”). The Aeolian C-natural note returns later in the verse on the word “dre-eam” (C-B) as the C chord resolves to the tonic Em, giving an urgency to the melody’s mood.

The Dorian mode appears with the C# note (6 in the Em scale) at the beginning of the phrase “in the church”. The chorus beginning “All the lonely people” involves the viola in a chromatic descent to the 5th; from 7 (D natural on “All the lonely peo-“) to 6 (C♯ on “-ple”) to ♭6 (C on “they) to 5 (B on “from”). This is said to “add an air of inevitability to the flow of the music (and perhaps to the plight of the characters in the song)”.^[22]

Historical artefacts[edit]

The gravestone of the “real” Rigby, St. Peter’s Parish Church, Woolton, August 2008

In the 1980s, a grave of an Eleanor Rigby was “discovered” in the graveyard of St. Peter’s Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool, and a few yards away from that, another tombstone with the last name “McKenzie” scrawled across it.^[23][24] During their teenage years, McCartney and Lennon spent time sunbathing there, within earshot of where the two had met for the first time during a fete in 1957. Many years later, McCartney stated that the strange coincidence between reality and the lyrics could be a product of his subconscious (cryptomnesia), rather than being a meaningless fluke.^[23]

An actual Eleanor Rigby was born in 1895 and lived in Liverpool, possibly in the suburb of Woolton, where she married a man named Thomas Woods. She died on 10 October 1939 at age 44. Regardless of whether this Eleanor was the inspiration for the song or not, her tombstone has become a landmark to Beatles fans visiting Liverpool. A digitised version was added to the 1995 music video for the Beatles’ reunion song “Free as a Bird“.

In June 1990, McCartney donated to Sunbeams Music Trust^[25] a document dating from 1911 which had been signed by the 16-year-old Eleanor Rigby; this instantly attracted significant international interest from collectors because of the coincidental significance and provenance of the document.^[26] The nearly 100-year-old document was sold at auction in November 2008 for £115,000 ($250,000).^[27] The Daily Telegraph reported that the uncovered document “is a 97-year-old salary register from Liverpool City Hospital”. The name “E. Rigby” is printed on the register, and she is identified as a scullery maid.

Recording[edit]

Statue of Eleanor Rigby in Stanley Street, Liverpool. A plaque to the right describes it as “Dedicated to All the Lonely People”

“Eleanor Rigby” does not have a standard pop backing. None of the Beatles played instruments on it, though John Lennon and George Harrison did contribute harmony vocals.^[28] Like the earlier song “Yesterday“, “Eleanor Rigby” employs a classical string ensemble—in this case an octet of studio musicians, comprising four violins, two cellos, and two violas, all performing a score composed by producer George Martin.^[28] Where “Yesterday” is played legato, “Eleanor Rigby” is played mainly in staccato chords with melodic embellishments. For the most part, the instruments “double up”—that is, they serve as a single string quartet but with two instruments playing each of the four parts. Microphones were placed close to the instruments to produce a more vivid and raw sound; George Martin recorded two versions, one with and one without vibrato, the latter of which was used. McCartney’s choice of a string backing may have been influenced by his interest in the composer Antonio Vivaldi, who wrote extensively for string instruments (notably “the Four Seasons“). Lennon recalled in 1980 that “Eleanor Rigby” was “Paul’s baby, and I helped with the education of the child … The violin backing was Paul’s idea. Jane Asher had turned him on to Vivaldi, and it was very good.”^[29] The octet was recorded on 28 April 1966, in Studio 2 at Abbey Road Studios; it was completed in Studio 3 on 29 April and on 6 June. Take 15 was selected as the master.^[30]

George Martin, in his autobiography All You Need Is Ears, takes credit for combining two of the vocal parts—”Ah! look at all the lonely people” and “All the lonely people”—having noticed that they would work together contrapuntally. He cited the influence of Bernard Herrmann‘s work on his string scoring. (Originally he cited the score for the film Fahrenheit 451,^[31] but this was a mistake as the film was not released until several months after the recording; Martin later stated he was thinking of Herrmann’s score for Psycho.)^[32]

The original stereo mix had Paul’s voice only in the right channel during the verses, with the string octet mixed to one channel, while the mono single and mono LP featured a more balanced mix. On the Yellow Submarine Songtrack and Love versions, McCartney’s voice is centred and the string octet appears in stereo, creating a modern-sounding mix.

Releases[edit]

The “Eleanor Rigby”/”Yellow Submarine” single issued byParlophone in the UK. “Eleanor Rigby” stayed at #1 for four weeks on the British pop charts.

Simultaneously released on 5 August 1966 on both the album Revolver and on a double A-side single with “Yellow Submarine” on Parlophone in the United Kingdom and Capitol in the United States,^[33] “Eleanor Rigby” spent four weeks at number one on the British charts,^[28] but in America it only reached the eleventh spot.^[34]

The song was nominated for three Grammys and won the 1966 Grammy for Best Contemporary (R&R) Vocal Performance, Male or Female for McCartney. Thirty years later, a stereo remix of George Martin’s isolated string arrangement (without the vocal) was released on the Beatles’ Anthology 2. A decade after that, a remixed version of the track was included in the 2006 album Love.

It is the second song to appear in the Beatles’ 1968 animated film Yellow Submarine. The first is “Yellow Submarine”; it and “Eleanor Rigby” are the only songs in the film which the animated Beatles are not seen to be singing. “Eleanor Rigby” is introduced just before the Liverpool sequence of the film; its poignancy ties in quite well with Ringo Starr (the first member of the group to encounter the submarine), who is represented as quietly bored and depressed. “Compared with my life, Eleanor Rigby’s was a gay, mad world.”

In 1984, a re-interpretation of the song was included in the film and album Give My Regards to Broad Street, written by and starring McCartney. It segues into a symphonic extension, “Eleanor’s Dream.”

A fully remixed stereo version of the original “Eleanor Rigby” song was issued in 1999 on the Yellow Submarine Songtrack, with some minor fixes to the vocals.

Significance[edit]

The “Eleanor Rigby”/”Yellow Submarine” single from Japan. The photo shows The Beatles on stage in Tokyo in 1966.

“Eleanor Rigby” was important in the Beatles’ evolution from a pop, live-performance band to a more experimental, studio-orientated band, though the track contains little studio trickery. In a 1967 interview, Pete Townshend of The Who commented, “I think ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was a very important musical move forward. It certainly inspired me to write and listen to things in that vein.”^[35]

Though “Eleanor Rigby” was far from the first pop song to deal with death and loneliness, according to Ian MacDonald it “came as quite a shock to pop listeners in 1966”.^[28] It took a bleak message of depression and desolation, written by a famous pop band, with a sombre, almost funeral-like backing, to the number one spot of the pop charts.^[28] The bleak lyrics were not the Beatles’ first deviation from love songs, but were some of the most explicit.

In some reference books on classical music, “Eleanor Rigby” is included and considered comparable to art songs (lieder). Classical and theatrical composer Howard Goodall said that the Beatles’ works are “a stunning roll-call of sublime melodies that perhaps only Mozart can match in European musical history” and that they “almost single-handedly rescued the Western musical system” from the “plague years of the avant-garde“. About “Eleanor Rigby”, he said it is “an urban version of a tragic ballad in the Dorian mode“.^[36]

Celebrated songwriter Jerry Leiber said: “The Beatles are second to none in all departments. I don’t think there has ever been a better song written than ‘Eleanor Rigby’.”^[37]

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees once said that their 1969 song “Melody Fair” was influenced by “Eleanor Rigby”^[38]

In 2004, this song was ranked number 138 on Rolling Stone‍ ’​s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time“.^[39]

Personnel[edit]

• Paul McCartney – lead and harmony vocals
• John Lennon – harmony vocal
• George Harrison – harmony vocal
• Tony Gilbert – violin
• Sidney Sax – violin
• John Sharpe – violin
• Juergen Hess – violin
• Stephen Shingles – viola
• John Underwood – viola
• Derek Simpson – cello
• Norman Jones – cello
• Peter Halling – cello
• George Martin – producer, string arrangement
• Geoff Emerick – engineer

Personnel per Ian MacDonald^[28]

Cover versions[edit]

Studio versions[edit]

The following artists have recorded “Eleanor Rigby” in a variety of styles, at least 62 released on albums by one count:^[40]

• Steve Allen recorded a narrative recitation version as a 1967 orchestrated album track (despite having criticised rock music during the 1950s and 1960s).
• Doodles Weaver recorded a comedic version for the record Feetlebaum Returns! that was also included on the album Dr. Demento‘s Delights.
• Vanilla Fudge covered the song on their debut album Vanilla Fudge in 1967.
• Joan Baez‘s 1967 version, included on her Joan album, was sung to classical orchestration arranged by Peter Schickele.
• Richie Havens included his version of the song on his 1967 debut album Mixed Bag.
• P.P. Arnold sang a cover of the song on her album The First Cut – The Immediate Anthology.
• The Free Design recorded a cover on their second album, You Could Be Born Again.
• Ray Charles released a version as a single and on his 1968 album A Portrait of Ray
• Lia Dorana recorded a Dutch version, written by Seth Gaaikema on her 1968 album Lia Dorana ’68.
• Bobbie Gentry released a version on her 1968 album Local Gentry.
• Big Jim Sullivan did a sitar reworking of the song on his 1968 album Lord Sitar.
• Booker T and the MGs included an instrumental version on their 1968 Soul Limbo album release.
• Lonnie Smith recorded an extended instrumental version on his 1969 album Turning Point.^[41]
• Aretha Franklin released a version as a single in 1969 and on her 1970 album This Girl’s In Love With You.
• Marty Gold covered the song on his 1969 album Moog Plays the Beatles.
• Dutch group Sandy Coast recorded a version of the song which was released as a single in 1969 (POF 166).
• Recorded under duress (from Columbia president Clive Davis, in search of more marketable material), Tony Bennett‘s poorly received 1970 album, Tony Sings the Great Hits of Today!, features a semi-spoken version, unflatteringly reminiscent of William Shatner‘s notorious 1968 cover of “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds“.
• El Chicano released a cover of the song on their 1970 debut album Viva Tirado. It was one of nine songs on the album that produced their first El Chicano hit single, “Viva Tirado”.
• Rare Earth covered the song on their 1970 third album Ecology.
• Jazz musicians such as the Jazz Crusaders, Wes Montgomery (on his 1967 album A Day in the Life), Stanley Jordan (on the 1985 album Magic Touch) and John Pizzarelli recorded it as an instrumental, with lead guitar taking over the vocal line. Jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi covered the song twice, on the 1968 album Vince Guaraldi and the San Francisco Boys Chorus and again on his 1970 album Alma-Ville.
• Australian band Zoot released a psychedelic rock version in 1971 that reached #4 on the Australian charts and went gold after its 1980 re-release.
• Australian folk singer Katie Noonan released a very fast jazz version on her Warner Bros. Records album Blackbird: The Songs Of Lennon & McCartney.
• John Denver released a folk version on his 1970 album Whose Garden Was This.
• The Percy Faith Strings released an instrumental version on The Beatles Album (1970).^[42]
• Don “Sugarcane” Harris, plays the song in the 1971 Album “Fiddler on the Rock”.
• German group The Rattles recorded an almost 10 min version of the song for their 1971 album “The Rattles” (Decca SKL R 5088).
• Dutch group Dizzy Man’s Band recorded an 8m 45s version of the song for their 1971 album Luctor et Emergo (CNR 657507).
• Jamaican musician, singer, songwriter and producer B.B. Seaton with the band The Gaylads recorded a reggae version of this song in 1972.
• In 1975, Wendy Carlos covered the song on her album By Request.
• Brazilian composer/singer Caetano Veloso recorded it on the 1975 album Qualquer coisa.
• Belgo-English progressive rock band Esperanto covered the song on their 1975 album Last Tango.
• German group Streetmark recorded the song for their 1975 album “Nordland” (Sky Records SKY 003). On the CD edition there is a Bonus track ‘Da Capo’ a variation on the “Eleanor Rigby” theme
• Wing And A Prayer Fife And Drum Corps recorded this song in their 1976 album Babyface.
• Cleo Laine and John Williams recorded the song for their 1976 LP collaboration Best Friends.
• In 1977, Singers Unlimited covered the song on their album Friends, featuring leader Gene Puerling‘s vocal arrangements, plus rhythm section and brass ensemble, arranged and conducted by Patrick Williams.
• Ethel the Frog covered this song on a single recorded for EMI in 1979.
• Mark Murphy recorded the song on his 1980 album Satisfaction Guaranteed.
• Sarah Vaughan included a version on her 1981 LP Songs of The Beatles.
• In 1982, Twelfth Night recorded an 80s-style cover of this song for a single, and later included it as one of the bonus tracks on an extended edition of their Fact and Fiction album.
• The Jerry Garcia Band played an instrumental version as part of a medley with “After Midnight“.
• Realm covered this song on their 1988 album Endless War.
• Junior Reid released a dancehall version of the song on his 1990 album One Blood.
• The Violet Burning released this song on their 1992 album, Strength.
• In 1992, The Lonely People released their version titled Eleanor Rigby.
• Wayne Johnson recorded an acoustic version of this song for his 1995 acoustic album Kindred Spirits.
• Shirley Bassey covered this song on her 1995 album Sings the Movies.
• Chick Corea performed a cover of the song on the 1995 GRP tribute album (I Got No Kick Against) Modern Jazz.
• Kansas recorded this song on their 1998 album Always Never the Same.
• A cappella band Witloof Bay recorded this song on their album of the same name.
• The John LaBarbera Big Band recorded a version of this song on their CD On the Wild Side.
• Ilan Rubin covered this song during his Coup recording sessions and released it as a free download.
• Joshua Bell released a cover version on the album At Home With Friends featuring Frankie Moreno.
• The Ides of March on the album Vehicle as “Symphony for Eleanor.” Apart from the lyrics it bears no similarity to the original, but is credited solely to Lennon–McCartney.
• Michael Lynche covered the song on American Idol and released it as a single. He was the lowest vote getter but was then saved by the four idol judges.
• The Fray recorded an acoustic version of this song on the album Stripped Acoustic Set.
• Soulive recorded an instrumental version for their album Rubber Soulive, an album of Beatles’ covers.
• B.o.B recorded a song called “Lonely People”, which features the actual “Lonely People” chorus.
• Hank Williams Jr. recorded a cover version on the album High Notes.
• The Chilean band Quilapayún realised an Andean version included on the official albums of the band in 1987 Survarío and in 1989 Quilapayún ¡en Chile!.
• Paul Jolley covered the song on American Idol. He was the lowest vote getter and was eliminated.
• Sacred Rite covered this song for their 1986 album Is Nothing Sacred?.
• The barbershop quartet Storm Front covered the song on their album Harmony – A Beatles Tribute, Volume 1.
• Gordon Haskell recorded this song on his 2000 album All In The Scheme Of Things.
• Godhead recorded this song on their 2001 album 2000 Years of Human Error.
• Tété recorded a cover version on his second album L’air de rien in 2001.
• Hank Marvin recorded this song for his 2002 album, Guitar Player.
• In 2002 the Argentinean band O’Connor released a version on the album Dolarización.
• Pain recorded this song on their 2002 album Nothing Remains the Same.
• Mark Wood released a version of this song on his 2003 album These Are a Few of My Favorite Things with his wife, Laura Kaye, on vocals.
• Talib Kweli & LaToiya Williams released a cover of the song in 2004 entitled “Lonely People” on Kweli’s The Beautiful Mix CD
• Liane Carroll includes a version on her 2005 album Standard Issue.
• Thrice included a cover of the song in their album If We Could Only See Us Now in 2005.
• Twisted Sister guitarist Eddie Ojeda recorded a cover version of the song for his 2006 solo album Axes 2 Axes. Dee Snider performed the vocals.
• Charlotte Perrelli covered Monica Zetterlund’s Swedish cover, “Ellinor Rydholm”, on her 2006 album I din röst.
• A cover of the song by David Schommer (feat. David Jensen) can be found on the soundtrack for the 2006 movie Accepted.
• Elevator Suite included a cover in their 2007 self-titled album.
• In 2008, David Cook, winner of the seventh season of American Idol, sang the song on the show and later released a single via iTunes.
• Greg Hawkes from his album, The Beatles UKE (2008)
• Ja Rule recorded a hip-hop version of this song entitled “Father Forgive Me” on his 2008 album The Mirror.
• While improvising on his own composition “Dynamo,” jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal briefly quotes the song on his 2008 album It’s Magic.^[43]
• Father released a cover version in 2009 as a pre-single to their untitled second album.
• Outside Royalty released a cover version on the single “Lightbulb (Turning Off)” in 2009.
• Jared Evan released a cover version in 2011 as a promotional track for his album unCOVERED.
• L.A. rockers Margate recorded a punk version on their EP “Rock and Roll Reserve” in 2011.
• Tree Pit recorded a cover version in 2011 as an album pre release to their début album.
• Al Di Meola covered the song on his 2013 album All Your Life.
• Cristian Rosemary wrote a Spanish version in 2013, called “Gente Sola”.
• In 2014, the Clare Fischer BIg Band covered the tune on its album Pacific Jazz, with Brent Fischer conducting his own revised and re-orchestrated version of his late father’s arrangement.
• Alice Cooper covered the song on the 2014 Paul McCartney cover album The Art of McCartney.
• Bay area rock band Letters From The Fire released a cover of the song as part of their self-titled EP in 2014.
• In January 2015 former A capella group leader Michael Tamashiro released a version for his self-title EP.
• Emil Viklický Trio, on their 2011 album Kafka On The Shore: Tribute To Haruki Murakami
• Jackie Wilson recorded the song for his 1968 album Do Your Thing

Live performances[edit]

• The Four Tops recorded this song for their 1969 album The Four Tops Now!.
• The Supremes recorded this song in a live medley, together with The Temptations.
• Joe Jackson covered the track on his 2000 live album Summer in the City: Live in New York.
• Australian a cappella group The Idea of North sing a jazz version of “Eleanor Rigby” on their Live at the Powerhouse album.
• An electronic version appears on the Tangerine Dream album Dream Encores.
• Big Country played this live at Dingwalls in London in 1996 and the track can be found on the Eclectic CD/DVD.
• McCartney performed a live version of “Eleanor Rigby” at Citi Field in July 2009 in which he played acoustic guitar, and the string section was played on keyboard. This version can be found on that concert’s recording Good Evening New York City.

Samples[edit]

• In 1993, Marky Mark together with Prince Ital Joe sampled “Eleanor Rigby” for his single “Happy People” which became a Top 10 hit in Germany and Finland, reaching Top 40 in Austria, Sweden and Switzerland.
• In 1994, Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor used the lyrics of the song’s chorus for her song “Famine“, which appears on Universal Mother. The song was later remixed and released as a single in 1995, and was a Top 40 UK hit.
• In 2000, Dru Hill frontman Sisqo sampled the “Eleanor Rigby” song on the hit single “Thong Song“.
• In 2004, Brooklyn rapper Talib Kweli released “Lonely People”, using “Eleanor Rigby” as the main sample.
• In 2006, mashup artist team9 created a remix of “Eleanor Rigby” using Queens of the Stone Age‘s “In My Head”.
• In 2009, a beat produced by J-Dilla that sampled the live “Eleanor Rigby” cover by The Four Tops was used for Raekwon‘s “House of the Flying Daggers”, three years after J-Dilla’s death in 2006.
• In 2009, rapper Game (rapper) sampled this song for his single “Dope Boys”.
• In 2010, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra used the opening harmony as a guitar riff in their live performances of the “Gutter Ballet Medley,” which also features a cover version of The Beatles’ “Help!“.
• Immortal Technique “The Martyr” (from the compilation album, The Martyr) uses an interpolation of the string backing from “Eleanor Rigby”.
• In 2013, No’Side mixed “Eleanor Rigby” with the instrumental and hook of Bob Marley‘s Sun is Shining, dubbing it Eleanor Rigby is Shining.

Charts[edit]

Chart (1966)	Peak position
UK Singles Chart	1
Canadian CHUM Chart	1
US Billboard Hot 100	11
Chart (1986)	Peak position
UK Singles Chart	63

• UK, starting 11 August 1966: 8-1-1-1-1-3-5-9-18-26-30-33-42
• UK, starting 30 August 1986: 63-81

References[edit]

• “Beatles’ Tribute to ‘Father McKenzie'”. Northwich Guardian. 2000. Retrieved 15 January 2007.
• The Beatles (2000). The Beatles Anthology. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. ISBN 0-8118-2684-8.
• “Bel Canto & the Beatles”. Time. 2010. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
• Clement, Ross (27 September 2000). “Beatles Cover List”.
• Collett-White, Mike (11 November 2008). “Document with clues to Beatles enigma up for sale”. Yahoo News.
• Dewhurst, Keith (15 April 1970). “The day of the Beatles”. guardian.co.uk (London).
• “Eleanor Rigby clues go for a song”. Meeja. 28 November 2008. Retrieved 28 October 2008.
• Goodall, Howard (2010). “Howard Goodall’s 20th Century Greats”.
• Goodman, Joan (December 1984). “Playboy Interview with Paul McCartney”. Playboy.
• Harris, John (20 June 2004). “Revolver, The Beatles”. The Observer (London).
• Hill, Roger (2007). “Gravestone of an “Eleanor Rigby” in the graveyard of St. Peter’s Parish Church in Woolton, Liverpool”. Retrieved 9 March 2007.
• “Item 934 – Beatles: Father McKenzie”. RR Auction. 2007. Retrieved 17 January 2007.
• Ryan, Kevin; Kehew, Brian (2006). Recording the Beatles. Houston, TX: Curvebender.
• Lewisohn, Mark (1988). The Beatles Recording Sessions. New York: Harmony Books. ISBN 0-517-57066-1.
• MacDonald, Ian (2005). Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties (Second Revised ed.). London: Pimlico (Rand). ISBN 1-84413-828-3.
• Miles, Barry (1997). Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now. New York: Henry Holt & Company. ISBN 0-8050-5249-6.
• Pollack, Alan W. (13 February 1994). “Notes on “Eleanor Rigby””. Notes on … Series.
• “Revolver: Eleanor Rigby”. Beatles Interview Database. 2007. Retrieved 9 March 2007.
• “The Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. Rolling Stone. 2007. Retrieved 7 March 2007.
• “Shatner ‘breaks’ Beatles record”. BBC News. 2 May 2003. Retrieved 8 March 2009.
• Sheff, David (2000). All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. New York: St. Martin’s Press. ISBN 0-312-25464-4.
• “Sunbeams dinner and auction”. Sunbeams Trust. November 2008. Retrieved 14 September 2009.
• Swainson, Bill (2000). Encarta Book of Quotations. ISBN 0-312-23000-1.
• Turner, Steve (2010). A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song. New York: Harper Paperbacks.ISBN 0-06-084409-4.
• Tyrangiel, Josh (24 July 2006). “Tony Bennett’s Guide To Intimacy”. Time. Retrieved 7 March 2009.
• Wallgren, Mark (1982). The Beatles on Record. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-45682-2.
• Wilkerson, Mark (2006). Amazing Journey: The Life of Pete Townshend. ISBN 1-4116-7700-5.
• Carlin, Peter (2009). Paul McCartney: a life. ISBN 1-4165-6209-5.

Categories:

• The Beatles songs
• 1966 singles
• UK Singles Chart number-one singles
• Number-one singles in Germany
• Number-one singles in New Zealand
• Number-one singles in Norway
• Grammy Hall of Fame Award recipients
• Aretha Franklin songs
• Parlophone singles
• Song recordings produced by George Martin
• Songs written by Lennon–McCartney
• Joan Baez songs
• Ray Charles songs
• Tony Bennett songs
• Songs published by Northern Songs
• RPM Top Singles number-one singles
• Capitol Records singles
• Songs about loneliness

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Robert Morris is featured artist today!!

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Great article 

“Simplicity of shape does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience.”

Robert Morris

ROBERT MORRIS SYNOPSIS

Robert Morris was one of the central figures of Minimalism. Through both his own sculptures of the 1960s and theoretical writings, Morris set forth a vision of art pared down to simple geometric shapes stripped of metaphorical associations, and focused on the artwork’s interaction with the viewer. However, in contrast to fellow MinimalistsDonald Judd and Carl Andre, Morris had a strikingly diverse range that extended well beyond the Minimalist ethos and was at the forefront of other contemporary American art movements as well, most notably, Process art and Land art. Through both his artwork and his critical writings, Morris explored new notions of chance, temporality, and ephemerality.

ROBERT MORRIS KEY IDEAS

In the mid-1960s, Morris created some of the key exemplars of Minimalist sculpture: enormous, repeated geometric forms, such as cubes and rectangular beams devoid of figuration, surface texture, or expressive content. These works forced the viewer to consider the arrangement and scale of the forms themselves, and how perception shifted as one moved around them, which was a central preoccupation of Minimalism.

Morris’s 1966 essay “Notes on Sculpture” was among the first to articulate the experiential basis of Minimalist artwork. It called for the use of simple forms, such as polyhedrons, which could be grasped intuitively by the viewer. and also described Minimalist sculptures as dependent on the context and conditions in which they were perceived, essentially upending the notion of the artwork as independent in and of itself.

In the late 1960s, Morris began introducing indeterminacy and temporality into the artistic process, referred to as Process art or Anti-Form. By cutting, dropping, or stacking everyday materials such as felt or rags, Morris emphasized the ephemeral nature of the artwork, which would ultimately change every time it was installed in a new space. This replaced what Morris posited as the fixed, static nature of Minimalist, or “object-type,” art.

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MOST IMPORTANT ART

Box with the Sound of Its Own Making (1961) As its title indicates, Morris’s Box with the Sound of Its Own Making consists of an unadorned wooden cube, accompanied by a recording of the sounds produced during its construction. Lasting for three-and-a-half hours, the audio component of the piece denies the air of romantic mystery surrounding the creation of the art object, presenting it as a time-consuming and perhaps even tedious endeavor. In so doing, the piece also combines the resulting artwork with the process of artmaking, transferring the focus from one to the other. Fittingly, the first person in New York Morris invited to see the piece was John Cage-whose silent 1952 composition 4’33” is famously composed of the sounds heard in the background while it is being performed. Cage was reportedly transfixed by Box with the Sound of Its Own Making, as Morris later recalled: “When Cage came, I turned it on… and he wouldn’t listen to me. He sat and listened to it for three hours and that was really impressive to me. He just sat there.” Walnut and recorded audio tapes (original) and compact disc (reformatted by artist) – Seattle Art Museum, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright

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ROBERT MORRIS BIOGRAPHY

Childhood

Robert Morris grew up in a suburban area of Kansas City. Early in life, he began reproducing comic strip images, a habit that helped him discover a talent for drawing. A flexible outlook at his elementary school allowed him to spend additional time honing his artistic skills. He also participated in a weekend enrichment program that encouraged the students to sketch artwork in the local Nelson Gallery (now the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art) and draw at the art studios of the Kansas City Art Institute.

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ROBERT MORRIS LEGACY

Morris’s pioneering role in Minimalism and Post-Minimalist movements such asProcess art and Land art made him one of the most significant figures in American art of the 1960s and 1970s. His use of repeated geometric forms, industrial materials and focus on the viewer’s pure engagement with the object influenced the work of contemporaries such as Donald Judd, as well as later adherents of Minimalism such asFred Sandback and Jo Baer. Morris’s embrace of simple actions such as cutting and dropping and his use of unconventional materials resonated in the works of artists likeEva Hesse and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, as seen, for example, in the former’s coiled rope pieces and the latter’s works composed of spilled black licorice.

Morris also has an important critical legacy. His pivotal essay “Notes on Sculpture” directly prompted a negative response from critic Michael Fried who composed his famous 1967 essay “Art and Objecthood” as a response to Morris. In “Art and Objecthood,” Fried expressed his objection to Minimalist sculpture for abandoning the concern with the nuances of composition and form in favor of engagement with the viewer, or “theatricality,” which, in Fried’s eyes, removed the work from the realm of art and transformed the act of viewing into a spectacle.

Original content written by Tracee Ng

Edited and published by

Robert Morris. [Internet]. 2015. TheArtStory.org website. Available from:
http://www.theartstory.org/artist-morris-robert.htm [Accesed 03 May 2015]

ROBERT MORRIS QUOTES

“Have I reasons? The answer is my reasons will soon give out. And then I shall act, without reasons.”

“There’s information and there’s the object; there’s the sensing of it; there’s the thinking that connects to process. It’s on different levels. And I like using those different levels.”

“I’ve been interested in memory and forgetting, fragments and wholes, theories and biographies, disasters and absurdities, and drawing but not dancing in the dark.”

“So long as the form (in the broadest possible sense: situation) is not reduced beyond perception, so long as it perpetuates and upholds itself as being in the subject’s field of vision, the subject reacts to it in many particular ways when I call it art. He reacts in other ways when I do not call it art. Art is primarily a situation in which one assumes an attitude of reacting to some of one’s awareness as art…”

INFLUENCES

ARTISTS

Marcel Duchamp

Jackson Pollock

FRIENDS

Simone Forti

Donald Judd

Yvonne Rainer

MOVEMENTS

Abstract Expressionism

Dada

Robert Morris

Years Worked: 1960 – Present

ARTISTS

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Barry Le Va

Bruce Nauman

FRIENDS

Richard Bellamy

Leo Castelli

Rosalind Krauss

MOVEMENTS

Minimalism

Post-Minimalism

Process Art

Robert Morris at Sprüth Magers

March 21st, 2012

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Francis Schaeffer’s favorite album was SGT. PEPPER”S and he said of the album “Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…for a time it became the rallying cry for young people throughout the world. It expressed the essence of their lives, thoughts and their feelings.”  (at the 14 minute point in episode 7 of HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? ) 

How Should We Then Live – Episode Seven – 07 – Portuguese Subtitles

Francis Schaeffer

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Related posts:

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Eleanor Rigby-The Beatles

No one remembered Eleanor Rigby enough to come to her funeral. It is sad but Francis Schaeffer points out King Solomon’s words on death from 3000 years ago and they seem similar to the song’s conclusion.

Eleanor Rigby – PAUL McCARTNEY

The Beatles Cartoon – Eleanor Rigby.

Ecclesiastes: The Voice of Experience

Solomon then sought pleasure in wine, women and song. He experienced every physical sensation he could: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure” (Ecclesiastes 2:10). But pleasure did not bring him happiness either: “Everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (verse 11)….Solomon was bitter that, having had every advantage in life, he had no advantage in death. This bitterness increased until he ended up hating even life itself (verse 17).

(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)

Francis Schaeffer comments on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of death:

Ecclesiastes 9:11

¹¹ Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all.

Chance rules. If a man starts out only from himself and works outward it must eventually if he is consistent seem so that only chance rules and naturally in such a setting you can not expect him to have anything else but finally a hate of life.

Ecclesiastes 2:17-18a

¹⁷ So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind. ¹⁸ I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun…

That first great cry “So I hated life.” Naturally if you hate life you long for death and you find him saying this in Ecclesiastes 4:2-3:

² And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. ³ But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.

He lays down an order. It is best never have to been. It is better to be dead, and worse to be alive. But like all men and one could think of the face of Vincent Van Gogh in his final paintings as he came to hate life and you watch something die in his self portraits, the dilemma is double because as one is consistent and one sees life as a game of chance, one must come in a way to hate life. Yet at the same time men never get beyond the fear to die. Solomon didn’t either. So you find him in saying this.

Ecclesiastes 2:14-15

¹⁴ The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness. And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. ¹⁵ Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity.

The Hebrew is stronger than this and it says “it happens EVEN TO ME,” Solomon on the throne, Solomon the universal man. EVEN TO ME, even to Solomon.

Ecclesiastes 3:18-21

¹⁸ I said in my heart with regard to the children of man that God is testing them that they may see that they themselves are but beasts. ¹⁹ For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.^{[n] 20} All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.²¹ Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down into the earth?

What he is saying is as far as the eyes are concerned everything grinds to a stop at death.

Ecclesiastes 4:16

¹⁶ There was no end of all the people, all of whom he led. Yet those who come later will not rejoice in him. Surely this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

That is true. There is no place better to feel this than here in Switzerland. You can walk over these hills and men have walked over these hills for at least 4000 years and when do you know when you have passed their graves or who cares? It doesn’t have to be 4000 years ago. Visit a cemetery and look at the tombstones from 40 years ago. Just feel it. IS THIS ALL THERE IS? You can almost see Solomon shrugging his shoulders.

Ecclesiastes 8:8

⁸ There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it. (King James Version)

A remarkable two phrase. THERE IS NO DISCHARGE IN THAT WAR or you can translate it “no casting of weapons in that war.” Some wars they come to the end. Even the THIRTY YEARS WAR (1618-1648) finally finished, but this is a war where there is no casting of weapons and putting down the shield because all men fight this battle and one day lose. But more than this he adds, WICKEDNESS WON’T DELIVER YOU FROM THAT FIGHT. Wickedness delivers men from many things, from tedium in a strange city for example. But wickedness won’t deliver you from this war. It isn’t that kind of war. More than this he finally casts death in the world of chance.

Ecclesiastes 9:12

¹² For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.

Death can come at anytime. Death seen merely by the eye of man between birth and death and UNDER THE SUN. Death too is a thing of chance. Albert Camus speeding in a car with a pretty girl at his side and then Camus dead. Lawrence of Arabia coming up over a crest of a hill 100 miles per hour on his motorcycle and some boys are standing in the road and Lawrence turns aside and dies.

 Surely between birth and death these things are chance. Modern man adds something on top of this and that is the understanding that as the individual man will dies by chance so one day the human race will die by chance!!! It is the death of the human race that lands in the hand of chance and that is why men grew sad when they read Nevil Shute’s book ON THE BEACH. 

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By the way, the final chapter of Ecclesiastes finishes with Solomon emphasizing that serving God is the only proper response of man. Solomon looks above the sun and brings God back into the picture.  I am hoping that Woody Allen will also come to that same conclusion that Solomon came to concerning the meaning of life and man’s proper place in the universe in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14:
13 Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the whole duty of man.

14 For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil

SONG FACTS:

• Paul McCartney wrote most of this song. He got “Rigby” from the name of a store (Rigby and Evens Ltd Wine and Spirit Shippers) and “Eleanor” from actress Eleanor Bron. He liked the name “Eleanor Rigby” because it sounded natural.

• McCartney explained at the time that his songs came mostly from his imagination. Regarding this song, he said, “It just came. When I started doing the melody I developed the lyric. It all came from the first line. I wonder if there are girls called Eleanor Rigby?”

  McCartney wasn’t sure what the song was going to be about until he came up with the line, “Picks up the rice in a church where a wedding has been.” That’s when he came up with the story an old, lonely woman. The lyrics, “Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door” are a reference to the cold-cream she wears in an effort to look younger.

• “Father Mackenzie” was originally “Father McCartney.” Paul decided he didn’t want to freak out his dad and picked a name out of the phone book instead.
• A string section scored by Beatles producer George Martin consisting of four violins, two violas and two cellos were used in recording. Paul may have been inspired by the classic composer Vivaldi.
• The Beatles didn’t play any of the instruments on this. All the music came from the string players, who were hired as session musicians.
• Paul McCartney (from Observer Music Monthly November 2008): “When I was a kid I was very lucky to have a real cool dad, a working-class gent, who always encouraged us to give up our seat on the bus for old people. This led me into going round to pensioners’ houses. It sounds a bit goody-goody, so I don’t normally tell too many people. There were a couple of old ladies and I used to go round and say, ‘Do you need any shopping done?’ These lonely old ladies were something I knew about growing up, and that was what ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was about – the fact that she died and nobody really noticed. I knew this went on.”
• There is a gravestone for an Eleanor Rigby in St. Peter’s Churchyard in Woolton, England. Woolton is a suburb of Liverpool and Lennon first met McCartney at a fete at St Peter’s Church. The gravestone bearing the name Eleanor Rigby shows that she died in October 1939, aged 44. However Eleanor was not like the lonely people in McCartney’s song, as she was married. Another of the gravestones there has the word “McKenzie” written on it. McCartney has denied that that is the source of the names, though he has agreed that they may have registered subconsciously.
• This was originally written as “Miss Daisy Hawkins.” According to Rolling Stone magazine, when McCartney first played the song for his neighbor Donovan Leitch, the words were “Ola Na Tungee, blowing his mind in the dark with a pipe full of clay.” (thanks, Bertrand – Paris, France)
• The lyrics were brainstormed among The Beatles. In later years, Lennon and McCartney gave different accounts of who contributed more of the words to this.
• Microphones were placed very close to the instruments to create and unusual sound.
• Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin both had hits with cover versions of this.
• Because of the string section, this was difficult to play live, which The Beatles never did. On his 2002 Back In The US tour, Paul McCartney played this without the strings. Keyboards were used to compensate.
• This song was not written in a normal chord, it is in the dorian mode – the scale you get when you play one octave up from the second note of a major scale. This is usually found in old songs such as “Scarborough Fair.” (thanks, Rachel – Bath, England)
• Vanilla Fudge covered this in a slowed-down, emotional style. They’ve done this with many songs, including hits by *NSYNC, and The Backstreet Boys. Their version of “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” was a #6 US hit in 1968. Says Fudge drummer Carmine Appice: “Most of the songs we did, we tried to take out of the realm they were in and try to put them where they were supposed to be in our eyes. ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was always a great song by The Beatles. It was done with the orchestra, but the way we did it, we put it into an eerie graveyard setting and made it spooky, the way the lyrics read. Songs like Ticket To Ride, that’s a hurtin’ song, so we slowed it down so it wouldn’t be so happy. We would look at lyrics and the lyrics would dictate if it was feasible to do something with it or not.” (Thanks to Carmine for speaking with us about this song. His website iscarmineappice.net.)
• Former US President Bill Clinton has stated that this is his favorite Beatles song. (thanks, Adrian – Wilmington, DE)
• In 1966, this song took home the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Pop Vocal Performance, Male. It was awarded to Paul McCartney. (thanks, Tommy – Flower Mound, TX)
• In August 1966, the long-defunct British music magazine Disc And Music Echo asked Kinks frontman Ray Davies to review the then newly released Revolver album. This is how he reacted to this song: “I bought a Haydn LP the other day and this sounds just like it. It’s all sort of quartet stuff and it sounds like they’re out to please music teachers in primary schools. I can imagine John saying: ‘I’m going to write this for my old schoolmistress’. Still it’s very commercial.”
• See the statue of Eleanor Rigby in Song Images
• The chorus of this song was sampled as part of Sinead O’Connor’s 1994 song “Famine,” which is based on the story of the potato famine in Ireland. (thanks, Annabelle – Eugene, OR)

• In 2008 a document came to light that showed that McCartney may have had an alternative source for the Eleanor Rigby name. In the early 1990s a lady named Annie Mawson had a job teaching music to children with learning difficulties. Annie managed to teach a severely autistic boy to play “Yellow Submarine,” on the piano, which won him a Duke of Edinburgh Silver Award. She wrote to the former Beatle telling him what joy he’d brought. Months later, Annie received a brown envelope bearing a ‘Paul McCartney World Tour’ stamp. Inside was enclosed a page from an accounts log kept by the Corporation of Liverpool, which records the wages paid in 1911 to a scullery maid working for the Liverpool City Hospital, who signed her name “E. Rigby.” There was no accompanying letter of explanation. Annie said in an interview that when she saw the name Rigby, “I realized why I’d been sent it. I feel that when you’re holding it you’re holding a bit of history.”

  When the slip went up for auction later that year, McCartney told the Associated Press: “Eleanor Rigby is a totally fictitious character that I made up. If someone wants to spend money buying a document to prove a fictitious character exists, that’s fine with me.”

• This was released simultaneously on August 5, 1966 on both the album Revolver and as a double A-side with “Yellow Submarine.”
• The thrash band Realm covered this song on their 1988 album Endless War. It is a speed metal version of the song that got them signed to Roadrunner Records. (thanks, Ben – Phoenix, AZ)
• McCartney told Q magazine June 2010 that after recording the song, he felt he could have done better. He recalled: “I remember not liking the vocal on Eleanor Rigby, thinking, I hadn’t nailed. I listen to it now and it’s… very good. It’s a bit annoying when you do Eleanor Rigby and you’re not happy with it.”

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422. Beatles – ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (1966)

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Joe Tilson is the featured artist today!!!

Art dealer John Kasmin with artists Joe Tilson and David Hockney

Joe Tilson

Joe Tilson, LOOK!, 1964, oil, acrylic on plywood 73-1/2 x 76-3/4 x 3 in. unframed Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Art Center Acquisition Fund, 1966, © Joe Tilson, 2010.

Pop Art Legend Joe Tilson to Exhibit at the Bohun Gallery

Posted JAN 23 2014 by EDITOR in ART, ENTERTAINMENT AND LEISURE, EVENTS

Over its 40 Year history, Bohun Gallery has had the opportunity to work with some of Britain’s greatest printmakers and we are delighted to introduce the work of Joe Tilson RA and to celebrate his achievements in this long-overdue solo show between 1-22 February 2014.

One of the founding figures of British Pop art in the early 1960s, Joe Tilson was famous long before the Beatles and David Hockney. He studied at St. Martin’s School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art. In 1955 he won the much coveted Rome Prize, which took him to live in Italy where the octogenarian continues to live and work today. He is a Royal Academician and his artistic career was celebrated at the Royal Academy in a retrospective exhibition in 2002. Despite his success and perhaps due to his relocation to Italy, his work remains one of the most affordable artists of his generation.

A lifelong dedicated printmaker, Joe Tilson has gained a reputation as one of Britain’s foremost artists producing prints, multiples, constructions, paintings and reliefs. His enduring appeal relies on his consistent refusal to recognise the artificial divisions between the unique and the editioned artwork. Many of his prints are largely hand-painted and his ‘paintings’ are based around print-making techniques. His early work embraced the hedonism and optimism of the 1960s and he became a natural exponent of the ‘Pop Art’ era.

The 1970s saw a shift in his work when he moved to Italy as he began to reflect on the five elements and Greek and Roman mythology. Italy remains a strong focus in his work and some of his most recent imagery is inspired by the churches of Venice. All periods of the artist’s career will be represented in Bohun Gallery’s show with a wide selection of prints, multiples and constructions.

Bohun Gallery, 15 Reading Road, Henley on Thames, Oxon RG9 1AB
Tel: 01491 576 228    www.bohungallery.co.uk

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