my heart like a kick drum

"I won't look back anymore/I left the people that do/It's not the chase that I love/It's me following you"  The Avett Brothers

Not too long ago I was part of a conversation that shed a little light on how men and women operate differently when it comes to their expectations for one another.  One friend, female, we'll call her Heather; the other, male, we'll call him Jeremy.  I wasn't as much a part of the conversation as a spectator.  (Sidenote: You never seem more brilliant than when you keep your mouth shut for an enlightening conversation.  Try it sometime.) 

Now that the scene is set and the characters identified, I'll just make up recreate the dialogue that ensued.

Heather:  Guys just generally try too hard, I think.
Jeremy:  What do you mean?
Heather:  For instance, with dating.  Guys think they need to go out of their way to wow a girl early in the relationship.  Horse-drawn carriages, candlelit dinners and the like.  I think most girls prefer something a little more simple and organic.  It doesn't have to be a big show.
Jeremy:  I can understand that.  You don't want to base your relationship on creating a moment that is to a certain degree contrived.
Brent (interjecting):  Hold on.  For me, personally, I can't afford to hold anything back.  I'm not nearly charming or engaging enough to just hope it happens for me naturally.  I need to try hard just to make it seem simple.
Heather (eyes rolling):  True.  Your charm-deficiency is readily apparent.  So some will have to try harder than others.

OK, I'm not sure she really said that last part.  But she was definitely thinking it.  In fact, I remember the context of the conversation but almost nothing that was actually said so the above dialogue is shrouded in mythos at best.  Still, the point holds as long as the war wages between Ares and Aphrodite.  Girls think guys try too hard.  Guys think they don't get enough credit for trying.

I just recently got around to reading Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, an instant classic about music, manliness, and memory told through the voice of a protagonist forced to face his fears about relationships and get his life together after his girlfriend breaks up with him.  (A favorite among twentysomething, not-quite-directionless hipsters whose mothers can't figure out why they can't just a find a nice girl and settle down.)  Anyway, there's one particularly illuminative passage that sheds light on why relationships between men and women are doomed to inevitable failure.

You hear that?  She's not very good at slushy stuff?  That, to me, is a problem, as it would be to any male who heard Dusty Springfield singing "The Look of Love" at an impressionable age.  That was what I thought it was all going to be like when I was married...  I thought there was going to be this sexy woman with a sexy voice and lots of sexy eye makeup whose devotion to me shone from every pore.  And there is such a thing as the look of love...it's just that the look of love isn't what I expected it to be.  It's not huge eyes almost bursting with longing situated somwhere in the middle of a double bed with the covers turned down invitingly; it's just as likely to be the look of benevolent indulgence that a mother gives a toddler, or a look of amused exasperation, even a look of pained concern.  But the Dusty Springfield look of love?  Forget it. ...

Women get it wrong when they complain about media images of women.  Men understand that not everyone has Bardot's breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis's neck, or Cindy Crawford's bottom, and we don't mind at all. ...  We worked out very quickly that Bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don't ever look at us the way Ursula Andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us.  In my case, I'm not at all sure that ever did. ...

(I)t's much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of negliges and candlelit dinners at home and long, smoldering glances, had no basis in reality at all.  That's what women ought to get all steamed up about; that's why we can't function properly in a relationship.

That's the problem.  As men, we are constantly searching for that look that we have been taught is attainable from a million movies, television shows, and fairy tales.  We have literally seen the look of love, just never directed toward us.  It's a refusal to believe this reality is unreachable.  So results the constant struggle to up the ante, to make our pursuit of the woman more grandiose and cartoonish, still never seeing the look we think we deserve... that we've earned.  Women just don't fall in love like that.  At least not with guys that would try that hard just for the satisfaction of a fleeting glance.

This weekend, I was part of the $60 million-plus intake for ticket sales for the new Christopher Nolan-directed, Leo DiCaprio starring, dream-themed flick Inception.  (Worth every penny.)  Without giving away too much of the plot for readers who might still be planning to see it, the movie is structured around the proposition that you can change someone's mind, and as a result their entire being, by simply implanting an idea deep inside their mind and convincing them the idea is their own.  One character struggles throughout the film with the difference between fantasy and reality, memory and projection.  Eventually, he must come to terms with whether memory is enough to sustain a relationship with someone or whether simply projecting actions, events, and conversations with someone else is enough to keep that person alive at least within the confines of our own minds.  Can you really imagine the reaction of another person or create a dialogue when you are writing both sides of the script?  Can you really remember a person for all of their virtues and all of their flaws at the same time?  And if you can't then are you willing to accept the imperfect version you create in your own head?  Can the memory of what once was or the projection of what could be ever be enough to satify you?

It's a fascinating question in light of the above conversation I referenced between two friends that is vaguely related to real events.  Because in trying to impress and pursue a woman by creating this moment in time, hoping that will be enough to produce the look of love I desire, am I not in some ways simply trying to implant deep within her mind the idea that I am lovable and attempting to convince her that idea is her own?  Should she accept that kind of pursuit?  What am I after anyway?  Her or the projection of love as I think it should be?  Maybe Aphrodite is righteously indignant after all.

But what am I supposed to do differently?  How can I change now?  I have only been trained to over pursue.  Not just because my charms are lacking.  But because the look of love is the only thing I know to want.

no one man should have all that power

"Now I embody every characteristic of the egotistic/He know, he so... gifted."  Kanye West

In case you've been living under a rock or have no knowledge of or interest in sports whatsoever, LeBron James long thought to be the best basketball player of a generation decided to uproot himself from the only home he has ever known in Cleveland last week and "take (his) talents to South Beach" announcing "The Decision" in a one-hour ESPN special. 



His decision immediately unleashed a torrent of criticism from local fans who burned his jersey, said some pretty horrible (but possibly true) things about his mother, and generally just flooded the streets to yell obscenities.  No fan was drunker, less calculated, or more haterific than Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert who fired out an ill-advised letter.  (Except you're going to need to imagine that this letter was written in Comic Sans font... because it was.)

Dear Cleveland, All Of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers Supporters Wherever You May Be Tonight;
As you now know, our former hero, who grew up in the very region that he deserted this evening, is no longer a Cleveland Cavalier.

This was announced with a several day, narcissistic, self-promotional build-up culminating with a national TV special of his "decision" unlike anything ever "witnessed" in the history of sports and probably the history of entertainment. ...

To which the Reverend Jesse Jackson responded:

He speaks as an owner of LeBron and not the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers. His feelings of betrayal personify a slave master mentality. He sees LeBron as a runaway slave. This is an owner employee relationship--between business partners--and LeBron honored his contract. ...

LeBron is not a child, nor is he bound to play on Gilbert’s plantation and be demeaned. ...

And that pretty much brings you up to speed on where we are today.

Now various and sundry sports talking heads have attacked LeBron for his decision to spurn the Cavs for the greener pastures of Miami and a chance to compile championships with his friends Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh.  He has been attacked for everything from disloyalty to the cities of Akron and Cleveland and state of Ohio, to an alleged fear of trying to win championships without surrounding himself with other highly talented players, to joining Dwayne Wade's team, to being an egomaniac more concerned with pushing a brand than chasing the greatness of previous players like Michael Jordan.  Now rather than rehash all of the arguments I have made over the last week asserting that LeBron did his time in Cleveland and isn't the first 25-year-old to get out while he had the chance, that he can forge his own path to greatness without following the Jordan model to a T, or that you can't join someone else's team when the "team" is only four guys and not even enough to run fullcourt games; I think I just want to focus on the charge that "The Decision" special was nothing more than the overblown overindulgence of an overhyped athlete.

See, I think it is much more than that.  No matter what he does the rest of his career, if he ever lives up to the "King James" and "Chosen One" monikers, or how many rings he puts on fingers... last week, LeBron James changed the game forever.



Like Michael Douglas in Wall Street, he took control of his own destiny in every way.  Why?  Because only he could.  For the first time in the free agency era, a player didn't have to negotiate with teams or try to come to terms on a deal.  Teams came to him offering cart blanche and more.  They cleared their rosters, freed up money meant for him, tried to put their team in a situation over the better part of two years just to have a chance to talk to LeBron. 

Now this freaks people out.  Because everyone likes it better when these players are under control.  We already hate them for the money they make and the cars they drive and the women they pursue.  (See my previous loosely-related post "hater nation.")  But to have to stomach that one man can direct his own destiny without control from a team, an owner, a city, a fan base, the media, an agent, a PR rep, or anyone other than himself.  Now that we just can't swallow.  The hate is too thick to stomach.

This will destroy basketball.  It will shatter the dreams of little children who believe in heroes and puppies and rainbows.  This is the death of loyalty and fidelity and bravery and integrity.  Everything good has perished.  Only the dark reign of egotism remains.

LeBron is not the destroyer of basketball.  He is the liberator of it.

We hate him because we can't do what he can.

Imagine if you had the opportunity to declare free agency in some part of your life.  Don't have a job.  That's fine.  Declare free agency.  Watch the job offers come rolling in.  Don't like your cell phone company.  You're a free agent now.  Discounts are coming your way.  Need a better rate on your car loan, mortgage, retirement plan.  Free agency.  Time to put those banks in competition with each other.  This is the free market, baby.  Greed is good.

As a single, relatively well-to-do, comparatively young, certainly available man, I'm ready to declare some free agency of my own.  I'm ready to start hearing some offers.  I'll take my talents to South Beach myself if I like the terms of the contract being offered.

Point is, free agency is the way of the world.  We all take advantage of it any chance that we get.  It's not only farcical but entirely hypocritical to judge LeBron just because he is the biggest free agent in the world and made the decision he thought was best for him.

You don't like players having all that power?  You better get used to it.  The game is changed.  We are all witnesses.  And we are all free agents.

tuesday's gone

I have a couple of ideas for blogging soon but there is no way I can write anything else until I write this.

Lately, I have been encountering a wealth of pain and struggle, not of my own but of others.  Everything from the failure of relationships to the dissolution of marriages to death and sickness and poverty.  I have been witness to too much grief and too few miracles.  There is little else in the world that makes less sense to me than seeing parents mourn the loss of a child.  It is something that is particularly affecting my church family as our pastor reported on his blog just the other day.

The past 24 hours have been pretty devastating for us as a Summit family.

First, our beloved Helen Young, a matriarch in our church, passed away this afternoon. Helen had struggled with a severe case of cancer for some time…and went home to be with Jesus at about 4pm. Helen was our church’s backbone. I remember when she told me, 9 years ago, that God wanted me to be pastor of her church, then “Homestead Heights Baptist.” I thought she was crazy then. Perhaps she was. She has served us and our congregation faithfully, and up until the past year has been on just about every church-wide mission trip we’ve taken. She has entered into joys unspeakable.

Secondly, Chai Atwood, the son born 14 weeks premature to our college pastor Trevor Atwood and his wife Keva on Sunday, went home to be with Jesus a little before noon. We were praying for a miracle. God has taken Chai on into ultimate healing. No longer can he come to us, we will go to him. (1 Sam 12:23)

Third, we found out today that Nate Henn, the son of Summit members (North Raleigh campus) Bob and Julie Henn, was killed by a terrorist bomb in Uganda yesterday. Nate worked for Invisible Children, leveraging his life to see healing and hope brought to forgotten children around the world. Check out his story here.

I have said prayers for all of these people over the last few days knowing that feeble but powerful offering is all I have to give them.  For the Atwoods, it is a little more personal for me as I have served in the college ministry with them for years now and have learned so much from the example of Trevor and Keva as godly people and loving parents, even though they probably don't even realize what a testimony they have provided for me.  Shortly after I learned of what happened, I saw Trevor's response on behalf of his family and it was filled with grace, humility, hope, and strength.

Today much changed, Jesus did not. The gospel is true in the face of death. Thx to the 1st born among many brothers. Chai Samuel is yours.

I don't know if I'll ever be a man like that.

I am lucky to call Trevor a pastor and a mentor, blessed to call him a friend.  Inasmuch as he is like Jesus, I need to be more like him.

While all struggles are light and momentary in comparison to the glory and inheritance we have in Christ, my struggles truly are light and momentary in comparison to anything that matters.  Still I rage inconsolably blaming God and anyone else for my slight pin-prick of pain that I experience.  I am a bratty child in God's sight.  A sissy when it comes to pain.

The light of the gospel shines its brightest out of darkness.  Hope is precious to those who would be without and useless to those who have everything that they need.  One of the greatest gifts God can give us is the clear understanding of our desperate need of Him.

That will usually come when I stop trying to make sense of everything or presuming that I can or should know what God is doing in the world.  It comes from knowing that Christ does not change.  His love is steadfast.  His character remains the same always.  God doesn't wait around for me to need Him to show up.  He is always there, ever-present.  But thank God for the times it is made clear to me how desperate I am for Him.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn and pray for these people if you are reading this and are so inclined.

And I pray God that I will remember...

Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.  For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

change vs. more of the same

Change is the only constant.

This week, I have been thinking a lot about human relationships and also our relationship as humans to God.  I've been consciously pursuing a relationship with God for nine years now although he's been pursuing one with me for much longer.  (In fact, today marks the ninth anniversary from the day I walked forward in a church in Louisville, Kentucky as tears streamed down my mom's face on a Mother's Day that will probably always represent the best gift I ever gave to her.)  Like so many better men before me, that day I "admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps... the most dejected and reluctant convert" ever.

Nine years is a long time to hold onto a relationship.  In fact, other than the members of my family, there is not one person who has been constant in my life throughout all that time.  When I say that God knows me better than anyone, I don't just mean that he has more wisdom than anyone else could ever possibly hope to possess.  I mean also that He has been there through the good times and bad, the low points and high, the struggles, the celebrations, the hopeless nights, and the days that I thought I could take over the world.  God doesn't just know me because he knows everything.  There is nothing about myself, my thoughts, my motives that are not laid bare before Him.  I want to tell him everything there is to know about me because it is only in Him that I find acceptance even in my mixed motivations, my tendencies toward wandering, the cynical walls I build up around my heart for protection against unwelcome interlopers, and my sometimes seemingly unquenchable desire to fill myself with things that will surely end in my destruction.  My pastor said something this weekend that made a great deal of sense to me.  To be known but not loved is rejection.  To be loved and not known is superficiality.  But to be both known and loved, that is the thing.  God loves me like that.

As human beings, we are in a constant state of flux and change.  Everything around us is constantly changing.  Our circumstances, our preferences, our knowledge and ideas.  Our bodies are growing older, our hair and fingernails are growing longer.  Seas are eroding beaches, the earth is constantly spinning and making its way around the sun.  The moon waxes and wanes to mark the change of time.  In fact, change or variance is the only way we can measure time.  Without the alternating days and nights, or the rhythm of seasons, it is hard for me to imagine how life would continue or how we would mark the progress of our lives.

And yet constantly, we tend to live our lives in the constant fear of change.  We hold onto our notions that we are constant, that we never change.  We paint out own mental pictures that we are hunkered down as the world rages around us, rising and falling in an unpredictable rhythm and that if we can just hide ourselves from that oh so changeable world that somehow we can find bliss and protection in the serenity of sameness.  But the truth is there is not such thing.  Like sharks who must swim to live, change is to the human being as essential as breathing.  We evolve, we adapt, and we survive.  Change is our only constant.  It is unavoidable.  It is certain.  It is happening.

In my nine years of learning more about God and myself, I cannot tell you how many times I have felt distant from Him.  As if he had turned His back on me that He was somehow out of reach just beyond my grasp or that He just didn't care.  I have so many times grown bitter and disappointed and wrathful toward God blaming Him for changing and injuring our relationship.  But God doesn't change.  He always was and always will be.  He was in relationship with Himself by means of the mysterious Trinity long before I was ever created.  God is love.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  His affection for me has not waxed and waned.  He did not pull back or hide Himself from me.  It's me who has run from Him, tried to hide when came to find me in the Garden, and allowed our relationship to become less than a priority.  His love has been constant.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not making the argument that change is bad.  After all, the title of this post comes from a meme created by a political adviser during Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for the White House.  Almost every great movement in history and every political candidate who gets remembered is immortalized for bringing a desperately needed change to society.  As people, we need change.  That's why it is part of our basic natures and why God created us to experience change and growth and struggle.  Even in our salvation, we are changed from dead to alive.  "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."  "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here."  The Bible is full of calls to change.  I feel like I've lived a lifetime of mistakes.  There are days when the only thing I want to do is start something completely new, rewrite the rules to everything I've ever learned, and embrace the change as it comes.  Sometimes change is just what we need.

But let me never put my faith and trust, hope and foundation in the changeable whims of other people.  No matter how important another person may be to me, no one else can determine my identity but the unchangeable, unwavering, unrelenting God.  The one who is called Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, the same from everlasting to everlasting.  For God, for nine years to eternity.

You are my only constant.

the end of the beginning

In the midst World War II, on the heels of an important victory for the Allies forces against the Axis, Winston Churchill took a moment to reflect.  It was later said that before the Second Battle of El Alamein the Allies had no victories and afterwards they had no defeats.  But at this critical juncture of history, among the shouts of glory and vitriol, Churchill cautiously reminded his people, "Now this is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

The health care overhaul approved by Congress last night hardly matches the magnitude of that great war though its effects may linger with my generation much as the World War II lingered with the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers.

No, our great war is not against an Axis of Evil or a piece of legislation or a political party or a philosophy.  Our struggle is against ignorance and apathy.  It is against the manipulation of politicians bent on controlling not only our deeds but our thoughts as well.  Our weapons in this battle are information to diffuse the malaise of too many arguments and technology to free us from the quagmire of rigid ideological dogma.

You need to know how this health care overhaul will affect you.

You need to educate yourself.  A good place to start is with this article in the New York Times and another in the Wall Street Journal.  But don't stop there.  Keep researching and asking questions and learning.  Don't just trust me or the talking heads on television or the blaring voices on talk radio.  But decide for yourself what you want for yourself, your family, your friends, and the rest of this country.  I know not everyone cares about politics and most of it feels like it doesn't affect your daily life.  I promise you that won't be the case here.

You need to know that health care didn't become free yesterday because Congress said so.  Congress is a powerful force in American life but they are not omnipotent.  Doctors and nurses still must be paid; prescription drugs still cost money; medical research still requires the financial resources that underwrite every great discovery.  That's the way the world works.

That means that insurance companies now forced to cover individuals they normally would not choose to cover without being paid to do so will be forced to raise premiums on those who already have insurance.  The vast majority of you reading this article probably have health insurance through your employer and may not even know month to month what you are paying for that coverage.  You will soon as you see more and more money drained from your paycheck to cover the cost of other people's medical care.  Insurance companies aren't going to make less money because Congress is mad at them.  That's not the way the world works.

See, Congress chose the worst possible way to keep costs down by asking government to control them.  Don't believe me?  Just do a little research on the development of Medicare and Medicaid since their inception.  You'll find that costs have skyrocketed out of control on a constant trajectory since the inception of those programs.  Working in state government, I have seen up close and personal how North Carolina like almost every other state across the country is nearly going bankrupt paying its medical bills because of Medicare and Medicaid.  Government is not an organization that find efficiencies and pinches pennies.  It spends money like a 12 year old boy at an arcade.  Until it's all gone.  When you print your own money, those numbers can really add up.

But people shouldn't have to be without health insurance.  It's not a privilege, it's a right.  Putting aside the odd paradox of newly discovered human rights for a moment, if it is a right to have health insurance then surely it must be a right to choose not to have it.  However, under this legislation come 2014 you won't have that right anymore.  If the time comes between you deciding between owning a car, or buying a home, or paying tuition and purchasing health insurance, the government has already made that choice for you.  I'm all for charity.  But charity hasn't traditionally been something that government has forced us to buy for ourselves.

As Ronald Reagan once said, "We have long since committed ourselves, as a people, to help those among us who cannot take care of themselves."  That is a promise we ought to keep, a dignity that ought to be held in high honor in this country.  But at what cost?  Will we really allow the federal government to take over every aspect of health care and its delivery to ensure that no goes without?  There are only two ways to make health care "cheaper" under government control.  Tax more to make up the difference between what people can afford to pay and what it truly costs or offer less care and poorer quality so that no one has to foot a bill we cannot afford to pay. 

That's no way to run a health care system.

As a country, as a people, we have abolished slavery, invented the automobile, survived two World Wars, put a man on the moon.  We made snowboarding an Olympic sport.  You're telling me that we cannot figure out a way to make health care affordable and accessible to all who want it?  I don't believe it for a second. 

We can do better than what we did with this bill.  And I hope you'll help us do it.

Now, to my Republican friends, a couple reminders are in order.  This is not the end.  It's not the end of liberty or freedom or capitalism or our constitutional republic.  It is not the end of American exceptionalism or the American dream.  If the history of this country has taught us anything, it is that the idea that is America may be tarnished but it is never broken.  Our flag may tatter but it is never.  Just as our government cannot declare something, it cannot long enslave those who would be free.  We as a people are stronger and smarter and better than our representives and every two years we get to remind them of that.

There are no final victories and no final defeats.  There is only here and now and the fight that has been and the fight that is to come.  America is an idea perpetually in the pains of birth crying out, demanding both liberty and unity.  There is only perserverance and courage and idealism and strength and hope to come.  We will not survive.  We will not endure.  But we will prosper.  Freedom always does.

This not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

bees, liz, and the low anthem

Every person in Cat's Cradle was surprised by the first notes of music emanating from the stage as the opening act snuck onto stage with nary a word and began their set.

The band was Annie and the Beekeepers.  Annie Lynch is Lisa Loeb as a boxy-figured blonde wrapped in plaid, full of post-teen angst and folk music.  Hers is a band that could comfortably cover "Home on the Range."  And probably kill it.

As she grabbed a banjo and began tuning and picking at it three songs in, Lynch announced that the band had a rather unique brand of merch: beeswax lip balm and, of course, honey.   Her sales pitch included the name of the maker of the honey whom she thanked but I missed.  It was no matter because she was quickly greeted by a catcall from the tall guy playing an upright bass at the back of the stage, "Actually, the bees made the honey..."  Part of the beauty of listening to live americana is that vaguely anti-social people have to tell you jokes while they tune their instruments.  There is an unwritten rule of rock and roll that lead singers must be able to talk and find a G at the same time.  Awkward laughter is the sound of enjoying folk music.

The closest thing we came to a transcendent moment in a 30 minute set that covered the ground of what sounded like one EP was "Like a Dog" in which Lynch expresses the paradoxical loneliness of the artist up front entertaining while missing out on the life she's singing about only in songs.  "Someone Else" was also a standout simply for the opening lines of, "When it takes too long to look away/You might catch me staring at the sun with thoughts I entertain/Not supposed to look that way/But it tickles at my senses/Puts the pleasure in the pain."  As Annie and the Beekeepers exited the stage with the generic, perfunctory nod to the next bands, they gave kind of show that makes you look over at the people you came with and say, "They were better than I thought they would be."  And I did just that as Lissie prepared to take the stage.

As Lissie Maurus belted out an appropriately gender-tweaked version of Hank Williams' "Wedding Bells" to open her band's set, she reminded me of a post-Southern rock incarnation of Cherie Currie.  (But Dakota Fanning wouldn't be my first choice to portray her in a movie.)  Everything about Maurus, from the jeans and tank combo she was sporting on stage to her stringy unkempt blonde hair to the way she guzzled PBR out of a 12 ounce can between songs, alerted the audience to the fact that she spent an inordinate amount of time in her adolescence playing guitar in the greasy garages of guys who didn't shower much.  In a world of "Good girls rarely make history" and The Purity Myth, the new feminists have underestimated the power of the kind of equality that comes from sitting behind an electric guitar and wailing on it.  Maurus has not.  Mystique that, Betty Friedan.

Maurus' band was just as impressive as the frontwoman herself.  Eric Sullivan looks like he belongs in a Rage Against the Machine cover band but he's just too talented for it.  The hidden gem of this group, the moment he shined through the brightest was on Lissie's cover of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."  I couldn't tell if hearing a woman sing the song made me believe that James Hetfield was really the pre-eminent momma's boy of metal but Sullivan sounded better than Kirk Hammett on that guitar solo.  Sullivan strikes me as a kid who could have went to space camp and actually become an astronaut or been the only stock broker on Wall Street to survive the financial collapse but instead he was gifted with the kind of skills you channel into a guitar.  There's probably thousands of guys like him on nameless tours across the country not getting their due but he got it that night before dozens of people whose respect for his artistry was tangibly present in the room as that song ended.

Yet the true baller of the group might be Lewis Kellar who plays bass, kick-drum and hi-hat... at the same time.  If this dude has an off night, it's going to be bad news.  As soon as Lissie finished their set, I looked over at a friend and said, "I hope he's getting paid double for this gig."  I'm destined to be an unimportant talent agent breaking up fledgling bands over frivolous contract issues.

I realized nearly as soon as the headliners took the stage that The Low Anthem is awesome not because they are maybe the most talented group of people to ever perform in the same room as me (though they are).  They are awesome because they wrote an album about Charles Darwin and when they play, they make you want to believe in God.  They opened their set with "Ticket Taker," and never has the life of a carnie sounded simultaneously so dull yet metaphysically important.  Everything sounds more important when Ben Knox Miller sings it.

The band began when a folk musician/painter from the Hudson Valley, Miller, met a jazz bassist/baseball scholar from Jersey, Jeff Prystowsky, when they were both on-air personalities for Brown University's college radio station.  (Prystowsky actually ended up being a slight, excitable man of unknown ethnicity with a funny hat and an excellent mustache who stood in front of me for the first two band's sets.  This is the kind of band The Low Anthem is.  Easy to miss but with an uncommon energy.)  Now they record music in an abandoned pasta sauce factory once owned by the nefarious mayor of Providence, Rhode Island.  The story of the group's genesis proved to be just as unpredictable as their set, which Miller at one point graciously described as "bipolar."  Multiple personality disorder would likely be the more clinically appropriate diagnosis.  I'm certain that every member of the band switched instruments between each song.  Which is quite possible because they use for instrumentation: voice, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, upright bass, electric bass, banjo, clarinet, violin, mandolin, harmonica, keyboard, piano, fun machine, casio, horn, trumpet, trombone, drum kit, tongue drum, cell phones, music box, zither, pump organ, Tibetan singing bowl, broom, shakers, tambourine, wood block, cowbell, filing cabinet, crotales and oil drum.

Using cell phones as accompaniment was one of the truly unique aspects of any live show I've ever been a part of.  I say "been a part of" because Miller actually implored the audience to participate in making the music by waiting until after the second chorus on a song from their 2007 album, What the Crow Brings, to call a friend they came with, set both phones and speaker, and let the feedback wail.  This is music to The Low Anthem.  I think anything is.  I only wish I could use words with the kind of versatility this band treats every object on earth when it comes to music.  The result was this incredible participatory experience between band and audience.  After all, it takes a certain humility to leave the sound of your concert up to the people listening.  But it also results in an experience no one in the room is likely to ever forget.

hater nation

hater (n.) - A person that simply cannot be happy for another person's success. So rather than be happy they make a point of exposing a flaw in that person.  (UrbanDictionary definition)

We are a nation of haters.

You want evidence for this claim?  Just look at the last week in the life of American pop culture.  How many stories have you heard about the downfall of Tiger Woods and the ugly details of his travails with toothless Perkins waitresses across the country?  All because we love to see the previously flawless superstar to fall from grace.  TMZ is a website entirely devoted to hating.  American Idol hosted their first voter elimination of the season last week.  The tweeny-bopper vote likely skews heavily female and immediately dispersed with the two most attractive young ladies on the show.  This comes as no surprise as we all know that the collective cattiness of American teen girls is channeled in making sure that none of their friends are ever hotter than them.  Hating is the new bra-burning for a 21st century revolution in feminist anti-solidarity.  Finally, though I would sooner endure countless hours of waterboarding that watch even one episode of The Bachelor, I couldn't help but be subjected to a torrent of statuses, tweets and buzzes about Jake picking Vienna over some other person I couldn't care less about.  All of them dripping with the pooled resentment of textbook haterdom.

Hate actually... is all around.

And here comes your objection: "But what about you Mr. Hatier-Than-Thou?  You're the one who spent half your weekend torturing poor, defenseless Canadians about a hockey game you didn't even really care about.  You hate Canada."

First, I don't hate Canada.  Saying I hate Canada is like saying I hate candy circus peanuts.  They're unpleasant.  I don't understand why any sane, rational person would enjoy them and it somewhat baffles me that we even allow them to exist on the Earth.  But I don't really think about them that much.  Canada is just circus peanuts to me.

As Bomani Jones of ESPN's Page 2 and HardcoreSportsRadio helped make clear to me the other day.  Many other countries in the world hate us.  But we don't hate other countries.  We just don't think about them that much.  Take, for example, a story he recounted about some friends from Canada who live in Toronto and were constantly being asked if they were going to be seeing any of the Olympics in Vancouver.  Now, Canada is fairly sizable land mass, third largest country in the world to be exact.  Vancouver and Toronto are not exactly close.  It would take about a five day trek to drive through the Canadian wilderness to traverse the distance from one city to the other.  Point is, even if 90% of Canadians live within 10 miles of our border secretly hoping to become Americans by breathing the same air we do, they are working with a pretty serious amount of land up there (mostly inhabited by caribou, beavers, and guys with odd facial hair).  Quick.  Name 5 Canadian provinces.  Are there five?  Who knows?  Did you know Michael J. Fox was from Canada?  No, why would I?  But I am rather disturbed that we have all these secret Canadians living among us.  I used to be one of the few people in the world who found Ryan Reynolds funny.  No more.  (Plus, Canada gave us Nickelback.  For that, we can never truly forgive them.)

As Americans, we just don't think about other countries that much.  But think of how weird it would sound if someone from another country just told you they were going to visit America.  Can I get a city, a state, area code, zip code, something?  Visiting Los Angeles and visiting Montana are two different experiences.  You can't just visit America.  Everything is different here.

A few years back, I had a friend who spent a few months in India (and rather impressively still maintained the roster of his fantasy football team).  Now wherever he went obviously had computer access but I still don't know what city or province he visited.  If it's not in America, it's all India to us.  Is that narrow-minded, jingoistic, uber-patriotism?  Maybe.  But it's also our God-given, American birthright not to think about other countries too much.  Let them think about us.

So hate is a worldwide phenomenon.  Americans hate other Americans and the whole world hates us.  It's the circle of hate. 

So what can we do to stop the hate?

Ironically, though it is probably our generation of Millennials more at fault than any other for the continued foment of Hater Nation, I think we are the world's last, best hope to end it once and for all. 

Recently released research from the Pew Research Center shows that Millennials are more like than other generations to list "helping others in need" as one of the most important things in our lives.  Also, for all the talk of Millennials shedding the ethics and mores of our parents' generation, 72 percent claim being a good parent and/or having a successful marriage as a top priority.  Our generation is also less likely to feel like it has the strongest work ethics or most righteous moral values of any generation.  That is not to say we aren't competitive.  We'll likely be the most highly educated generation in history.  But we are humble about who we are and what we mean in the world.  We don't look to cast judgment on our elders or on our peers.  But we're also not trying to live in our parents' world.  We're trying to create one for ourselves.

Our generation is the most open to change of any other and we are also the most optimistic.  In a country whose politicians most often define themselves by what they are against instead of who they are for, we were swept up by a campaign banking on "hope" and "change."  And although we may have been a bit naive and now have been somewhat disillusioned, it is important to remember that our faith is not in politicians or businessmen or leaders but in ourselves to make the world around us a better place, to recreate the American landscape in our image.  The economic, political, and social movements who begin to understand that will capture the hearts and minds of this generation for decades.

But please, just stop the hating.  We can all just get along.