A student in the class was from a religious community and left. He explains to people he lost his faith. There is something about putting it like that doesn’t sit right with me, the use of “lost”. My thoughts he just started thinking differently. I get the sense that he avoids hearing anything by people into religion and I’m not a God guy but there are songs by the God-lovers I love too for lyrical ideas, poetic aesthetics – get me as good as anything gets me, if it hits the mark. I’d like to point him to that music but if I tell him they are amazing, he might think me trying to persuade him to find what he reported lost. I like how Leonard Cohen insinuates God is an asshole in You Want it Darker and how Randy Newman describes God admonishing the believers who complain about double standards, praying and experiencing catastrophes and God laughs at their assumptions in That’s Why I Love Mankind or Sister Rosetta Tharpe doing This Train on German television, “this train don’t pull no winkers (while winking her eye) no crap shooters or whiskey drinkers (while glancing over her shoulder at Otis Spann who’s cracking up on piano and then she makes an enigmatic grin) and Kanye’s Jesus Walks from his first record, the rhythm of the background vocal, the crazy synth by the 2cnd verse, the self aware lyrics that if he mentions sex and drugs and murder he’ll be added to the radio but if he sings about JC he be kept off. Listening to a lot of different songs like viewing many different kinds of films or many visual artworks enable thinking in a variety of ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"