|
|
DAYS OF THE DEAD: A REPORT FROM IMAGINARIUM 2006 | |
| by Mike Hertenstein |
|
Arranging the program for the Imaginarium at Cornerstone Festival can
be somewhat tricky. We who are privileged to do so each year often feel like
lame-o wizards who don't know exactly how their magic works — so when
something wonderful happens, it's usually some kind of lucky accident that
makes things work in spite of our blundering efforts. This year was no
exception: both in the blundering, and in the magic working anyway. Indeed,
one of our favorite Imaginarium junior wizards, the lovely Athena, confessed
that she'd at first wondered what exactly the connection was between the
diverse thematic elements that made up this year's program. However, as the
fest went on, the connections became so apparent to Athena that she agreed
with other attendees that Imaginarium 2006 may have been the richest and most
coherent program we'd ever assembled. Well, hey, er, we meant to do that!
Some things are no-brainers: while not spending too much time racing after
and embracing The Next Big Thing, we do know that occasionally where there's
pop cultural smoke, there is fire. Putting a seminar on the hit TV show LOST
on the program was certain to fill the tent, and Lynnette Porter did a great
job sketching the landscape and speculating on the trajectory of that very
Imaginarium series. Lynnette hails from that rarefied branch of academia
devoted to scrutinizing television (two of my favorite words to run together:
"Buffy Studies".) We were pleased to welcome Lynnette to her first
Imaginarium to talk to us about LOST, and also one more of her specialties,
Dr. Who, another cult favorite sure to appeal to our flock of cultists.
LOST certainly fit within the "ruins" thread of our 2006 complex of themes.
That strand probably owed its genesis to several overlapping sources and
encounters. First off, I've stood in ancient ruins, and experienced that rush
of bittersweet longing one feels contemplating the longness of time and the
shortness of man — and the hint of something beyond both time and
man. The Romantics were always stirred to poetry and art by ruins, and I'm
of the opinion that anything capable of producing that sort of effect
probably deserves some attention in the Imaginarium. My encounter with the
films of Roberto Rossellini, especially his Germany: Year Zero really
sealed the deal, as I experienced that paradoxical sense of hope and despair
that "rubble films" and "rubble literature" provoke. The quest for more of
the same led me to the postwar novels and stories of Heinrich Böll, and
Christopher Woodward's excellent survey of ruins in art and history, In
Ruins. The trail then led back to one of my all-time favorite sf novels,
A Canticle for Leibowitz. Few books convey the weary sense of the
rise and fall of civilization, counterpointed by the faithfulness of the
saints, like this epoch-spanning tale of the monks at the abbey of the Blessed Leibowitz.
But it was tougher than it should have been to find somebody to talk about
the novel — especially among religious people, who should be reading and
talking about this book right up there with their Tolkien and Lewis. Luckily,
David Dark, among his own omnivorous reading and appreciations, includes this
work among his own favorites and he made his own overdue pilgrimage to the
Imaginarium to open this book for us most aptly. To grossly paraphrase
Walker Percy's view of the book, if the last section of Canticle
doesn't take off the top of your head, then it's on too tight.
Wherever there are civilizations falling into ruin, it seems there are monks
and saints. Rossellini's postwar quest for a new foundation on which to
rebuild Europe (which became the main film track of the Imaginarium's sister
program Flickerings) led him
to St. Francis. Anyone who knows the story of Francis of Assisi knows that
this wouldn't be the first time the saint had been called upon to rebuild:
Francis' original calling (delivered by the talking crucifix of San Damiano)
was to "Rebuild my church. It is falling into ruins." The Biblical story
itself is one of continuous exiles and destructions and rebuildings. For that
we can be grateful: for most of us know the feeling of standing in one kind
of rubble or another, wondering how to start life again. We could all take a
lesson from Rossellini and found our next rebuilding project on the ideals
and example of the Poor Man of Assisi.
But St. Francis in the Imaginarium — home of sci fi and monsters and rubber
chickens? It makes sense when you know that Francis referred to himself and
his followers as "Jugglers" or "Jesters of God," when you consider his childlike openness
and appreciation for all of creation, and when you recall that St. Francis
was the favorite saint of G. K. Chesterton, the Imaginarium's longtime patron
saint. Author Jon Sweeney has been busy reappropriating the wisdom of the
saints for some time and we were privileged to welcome him to the Imaginarium
to share with us what he's learned. Jon has also written of his own
Fundamentalist childhood, with gentleness and insight, and his reminiscences
of his upbringing struck a familiar chord for many in the Imaginarium who are
making the same journey and are eager to reclaim traditions and heroes of the
faith across the ages.
Now Kierkegaard in the Imaginarium — that's really pushing it.
On his way into his seminar, philosophy prof C. Stephen Evans asked what made
the Imaginarium different than the other seminar tents at Cornerstone. "It's
a cross between a Star Trek convention and the Mickey Mouse Club," I
offered. The reason we took this particular leap of faith was that
Kierkegaard's notion of the "Knight of Faith" seemed an important corrective
to the popular domestication of Francis. Everybody loves Francis, but any
easy embrace of the saint comes at the expense of shaving off his rough edges
and blunting the challenge he presents. Kierkegaard reminds us that saints
tend to color so far outside the lines that good people like ourselves are
scandalized. And if Francis doesn't reduce you to "fear and trembling,"
you're probably not paying attention.
Given our emphasis on monastics and Medieval piety, it seemed appropriate to
open the 2006 Imaginarium with our own version of a Vespers service —
though if I'd have thought of it sooner, it would have been fun to find some
Benedictines willing to come to teach us how to chant. As it was, we managed
to stretch the borders of the Imaginarium to cover some new ground as Jon and
Lint and others helped us with something resembling a mildly liturgical
worship service Wednesday night. After some prayers and readings, we had a
time when those in our little congregation could come forward and share a few
words about the saints who have been most meaningful to them — and
again, in the Imaginarium, we stretched the borders to include saints from
St. Francis to Flannery O'Connor to Atticus Finch. Only in the Imaginarium
will you hear a heartfelt and even genuinely-moving testimony to the
spiritually-formative influence of Batman in a young man's life. It was
inspiring to also hear a few grandpas and grandmas remembered in the capacity
of saint. As a part of our service, everyone was invited to add with
pictures of their saint a paper flower to the arch of our Mexican
ofrenda, to symbolize their part in the Great Cloud of Witnesses.
The saints whose pictures were added to our gallery included Rosa Parks,
Dorothy Day, St. Anselm, Nelson Mandela, Mr. Rogers, Simone Weil, Wendell
Berry and Johnny Cash.
We made a more traditional use of the ofrenda the next night, on our
Dia de Los Muertos. Of course, I am full-blooded gringo, and ours was
an audience of similarly-hued souls and we were blundering our way (humbly, I
hope) into someone else's tradition. (I was grateful for an advance look at an excellent upcoming book
Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico And Beyond by Stanley H. Brandes).
We were also dealing with real people,
real losses, real griefs — and things got very real. I'm grateful that
Paul Leggett (who we have advertised as a man "who knows more about monster
movies than any other Presbyterian minister in New Jersey") was on hand to
lend some clerical credibility and structure to our second sort of worship
service in so many nights at the Imaginarium. Paul, who has been a
missionary in Latin America, opened with a prayer in both Spanish and
English, and closed with a Benediction that he whispered into my ear that we
needed, as well as a Doxology led by Kathie Lundquist, who no sooner
had mentioned that she sometimes sings at church service than she was
recruited for this one.
Since we none of us at this year's Imaginarium really come from a tradition
that celebrates the Day of the Dead, and we had hoped to avoid simply being
abstracted consumers of Otherness (aka "tourists"), we adjusted some of the
traditions to fit our particular context. After passing out some very
authentic Mexican calaveras de azúcar (sugar skulls), we encouraged
attendees to make their own authentic connection by writing their own name,
along with the names of their living loved ones on the skulls. Alternatively,
they could also write the name of someone who had passed away who they wanted
to remember in the Imaginarium. We've been at this festival business for
quite a few years and as a consequence, we actually have several former
Imaginarium attendees or speakers who are no longer with us in this life. I
shared a few remembrances of some of these friends (including Tom Peters,
Bill Backus, Bob Passantino and Stan Grenz), then left on the ofrenda
in these friends' memory a pair of those most characteristic Cornerstone
foods, an Elephant Ear and a Lemon Shake-Up. Other attendees took turns at
the mic offering sincere and often moving remembrances of their own friends
and relatives.
Among our friends and relatives, we remembered Dave Sjoberg, a long-time
Imaginarium stalwart who had been, for me, the perfect Imaginarium attendee
— our target audience, in fact. Year after year, Dave came to the Imaginarium and
sat in the front row for every seminar, stayed for the whole fest, took
copious notes, asked great questions and snapped lots of pictures. Each year
after the fest was over, he'd send me copies of his pictures and enthusiastic
thank-you letters, expressing the most articulately I've ever heard some of
the things we've heard quite frequently over the years — how much the
Imaginarium had meant to him; how he used to come to the fest for the music
with his kids, but now came for himself to the Imaginarium; how he was raised
in a religious tradition that spurned intelligent interaction with culture
and ideas — all the usual stuff, in fact, but expressed with the sort of
profound and humble gratitude that can make you keep going when the going
gets rough. We shared some lines from Dave's letters at our Day of the Dead
service, and remembered him, most fondly, as he would certainly have wanted
to be remembered, in the Imaginarium. It was an incredibly moving
experience.
As we closed, I noted that we might as well admit what we always have known,
though perhaps have never known exactly how to express: that for our little
flock, the Imaginarium is very much church. And with that, I added
that in a few moments Pastor Leggett would be returning to the podium to give
a scene-by-scene exegesis of The Cat People. Paul's seminar this year
was on the films of Val Lewton, which majored on spookiness over rubber
monsters, and Paul's appreciation for them (as usual) was contagious. This
year, Paul brought his kids, James and Gwendolyn, and you could tell they had
indeed been raised in the faith. (Gwendolyn especially was full of ideas on
what we should be screening in the Imaginarium and she when she refers to
classic Universal horror films she is careful to make the appropriate
distinctions between Gold and Silver and Bronze age films from that studio.)
It will be interesting to see where The Next Generation of the Imaginarium,
perhaps bearing less baggage from traditions phobic about myth and story,
symbol and ceremony, will be able to take this project from our rickety
beginnings.
|
|
|
|
|
|
