I am not a person who can turn my anger into art. I remember all those decades ago when Alanis Morissette came out with Jagged Little Pill. She–and that album of angry tunes–were all anyone could talk about. It was so revolutionary, I guess, that a woman would channel her anger into music. Either that or nobody had bothered to remember Loretta Lynn.
I’m angry about something, but I don’t know what. It’s been this way for six months or so; I’m not sure which of the triggers or life changes set it off, but it’s there and it’s grumpy.
Anger is not something I’m ashamed of, nor is it a sin. Channelling it, however, is not something I’m good at creatively. When I’ve got anger to burn off I usually exercise to loud and pounding music like Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys”. I can’t take anger and turn it into a story. If I try to turn it into a blog post (eg. the one about the Christys) it just pours gasoline on the fire and explodes into more white-hot rage.
I thought about painting or drawing but I really don’t want to look at endless slashes of red and orange. Instead of feeling like I’ve properly expressed my anger I just see that kind of art and get hungry for Burger King.
At dinner with friends last night one of my compatriots said “you’re hanging out with the wrong people.” This would be entirely true if I were, indeed, hanging out with any people at all. Howard Hughes and Greta Garbo saw more people in a given day than I do. Then again, they did not have the internet, and that tends to be where I find all these wrong people to hang out with.
Back in the days of Nashville is Talking and, later, Music City Bloggers I read a lot of blogs. Many of those blogs were angry and kept me in this angry sort of mood. I realised a couple of weeks ago that I’d accidentally fallen into the same habit of mind I had all those years ago and was again reading a lot of angry blogs. Back then they were angry about politics. Now they’re angry about religion. It’s ironic that so much of what I read from various professing Christians is so angry. Well, not the anger itself but the fact that the anger is so misused. Folks are angry over music choice or someone else’s sexual preference. No one is angry about hunger or human trafficking or the scarcity of clean water in so many communities around the globe.
Just like with those other NiT/MCB blogs, I’m glad that being in this realm led me to people I consider good friends. But just like back then I’m going to have to keep the friends and jettison the blogroll.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Oh, boy, do I get this. And I need to resolve to stay away from blogs that just piss me off for issues that shouldn’t even be that big a deal!! Why do Christians worry about the things they do? Are we really so blind? The rage monster is eating me up.
What you’re talking about is why this is about the last blog I still read with any regularity.
Of course now there is Facebook as well, but that’s part of the reason I mostly keep “things that anger” off of MY facebook wall, even if I dive in from time to time when others post such. As long as it’s not on my wall, I can escape from it much more easily as needed.
You might want to spend time with the Sojourners/Christian left crowd some, then. They’d agree with you more on your aims, and you’d probably get less friction although you’d need to put up with lack of agreement on different things. Libertarians these days seem to fit better with the left than the right; the left isn’t as hostile to their economic ideas as they say they are, while both sides tend to agree on social issues.
To be honest, I don’t worry about global hunger because there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change it apart from cutting a check. In my old church, you’d be surprised at how often missionaries would come, and tell us about the needs of their village, and what they do for them. Again, all we could do is pass the offering plate. A cause has to be more than the check you cut to some charity organization every month, whatever it is. But there’s very little most of us can do other than that for global problems.
I do. I tend to spend a lot of time with Christians of all political stripes.
You may be surprised at how many of the folks on the Christian Left really also hate traditional church music. It’s odd.
Also, I’ve had folks there get angry about other things that are just as petty to me. It seems like the Internet is where a lot of people come to be angry in what they perceive as a private sphere.
A lot on the right don’t either. It’s probably more a high/low church divide thing.
I’m very, very grateful to the old NiT. Most of the friends I’ve made in Nashville have come into my life as the result of things that followed from clicking on one little link there. And I’ll engage with the anger of those friends, whether they express it on blogs, in e-mail, or in person. Because they have become my friends, and their emotional state deserves my respect and concern. But, yeah, with people who (however righteous [or otherwise] their anger may be) aren’t friends but are just angry people on the internet, sometimes one just has to step away and leave them to it.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE NiT. It made my life better on fifty different levels. Gave me some of most cherished friends, encouraged me in my writing, taught me about kindness, etc.
I just remember how, towards the end and after they shut down and we did MCB, I was reading so many far-flung angry blogs from strangers.
Like you I don’t mind anger, sadness, etc. in my friends.
MCB was born out of such an angry situation that I think it was doomed from the start. But I don’t think even NiT with the awesomely competent and good-natured Brittney G at the helm could survive today, because the tone of the ‘net has changed.