“Seventh heaven? Big deal. I want to see the eighth heaven.”
Rosalía, mother superior of divine longing
This month, Spanish singer-songwriter Rosalía released her fourth album to tremendous acclaim. Lux is a masterpiece of collaborative energy and chaotic wonder, deeply rooted and deeply moving. Bold musical expression and inventive, liminal-space lyrics make this album worth listening to again and again.
Lux scratched at something that has shaped my own philosophy—C.S. Lewis’ argument that we are made to be divine. From Mere Christianity:
He said (in the Bible) that we were ‘gods’ and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him—for we can prevent Him, if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.
Listening to Lux is like sitting inside the imaginarium of someone conscious of their capability for divinity. And no wonder—Rosalía spent months studying the interior lives of saints as prelude to writing Lux—among them, Olga of Kyiv, Teresa of Avila, Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, and Hildegard of Bingen (who seems to be everyone’s favorite these days).
“I know that I was made to divinize,” she sings. That awareness comes clasped with an acknowledgement of the distance between longing and fulfillment, between what God intends to make of us and how we exist in the interim. From “Porcelana”:
My skin is thin, made of porcelain
And from it emanates
Light that illuminates, or divine ruin
In the chorus:
I am nothing, I am the light of the world
I am nothing, I am the light of the world
The dichotomy expresses what she is and what she hopes to be (and what she is now in small measure). The album is full of this unfiltered longing, “La Yugular” being the most direct expression of that. Listen to the song, then read the lyrics. It reminded me that, once, something bigger than the whole world fit inside a stable.
I fit in the world
And the world fits in me
I occupy the world
And the world occupies me
…
Besides all its spiritual and existential wrangling, Lux is a magnificent demonstration of musical capability.
Read Brigid McCabe’s review in America: Finally, a pop star who understands Catholicism
The Dissect podcast’s breakdown focuses on how Rosalía takes the lives of saints into consideration in her work, embodies them in her lyrics, and re-expresses their nature in a captivating way.
The music video for Berghain – masterful.
Switched on Pop: Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ brings the symphony to the club – yes, yes, yes.
NSS Magazine: All the saints and nuns mentioned by Rosalía in Lux
are we allowed to like women anymore?
Speaking of female saints…
Lately, the Discourse™️ has been taken with Helen Andrews’ argument that the large-scale presence of women in corporate, government, legal, and other spheres has and will continue to have negative downstream effects. (Female-majority university English Literature departments are not as problematic apparently.) Big sociocultural shifts are interesting to me, and the idea that a majority female Supreme Court (or company or university administration board) would operate significantly differently than a majority male one is worth an examination.
But, in an era where Helen Andrews, when pressed to do so by Leah Libresco Sargeant, seemed unwilling to delineate any feminine virtues (or virtues that women exhibit at a higher capacity than men), I think it’s important to take a step back and reaffirm that we are all still allowed to like women!
Celeste Davis has a piece on men who like women (Glenn Powell) and men who don’t (Tom Cruise) and being able to tell the difference. Her framework, extrapolated from an observation by Anne Helen Petersen) is not something I’d ever thought about. It makes sense though: a precursor to good male-female relations is genuinely liking the opposite sex. It’s gotten cool and trendy to dunk on men lately, but that energy has been going both ways.
I’m blessed to have been raised with five sisters whom I admire with all my heart. I was radicalized by the Christian women of Twitter back when it was still Twitter. I’ve married a beautiful, intelligent, artistic woman whose trains of thought I love following. (There are so many trains!) And I currently help lead a majority female communications team and wouldn’t have it any other way.
Guys should like women, regardless of romantic status.
I also applaud Haley Stewart’s take on the whole thing: Does “Feminization” Poison Things?
…acknowledging that there are biological differences between men and women is simply an acknowledgement of reality. But that’s not at all the same as viewing the world through lens that devalues women as deficient versions of men.
I keep forgetting I wrote something for Fathom Magazine about this topic years ago, and if everyone would’ve read it, we wouldn’t be where we are today: Blurred Reflections: Seeing the whole image of God in virtuous traits exhibited by men and women.
Also interesting…
Christianity Today: What Broke the Evangelical Women’s Blogosphere
The Atlantic: (Some) MAGA Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
excellence required
Dhananjay Jagannathan writes that one of the dangers of AI and LLMs taking over academic, workplace, and artistic environments is that it makes competence the standard and discourages the pursuit of excellence. When there is no impetus or reward to being extraordinary, everything becomes just fine. Serviceable. That’s it.
One reason for this collective lowering of sights is a lack of cultural coherence, a world in which one is force to either cater to a particular audience – often algorithmically identified – or to a mass audience devoid of aesthetic sensibility. But another reason is a widely shared sense that aspiration is folly, that nothing really matters all that much and that trying too hard is a sign that you’re playing a fool’s game.
In response to this thought, I say: excellere aude! Have the courage to excel!
I agree. Nothing is worth doing seriously if it’s not worth doing excellently. In your art, in your work, in your life, be excellent!
Read his full post: competence is not enough
asides + signal boosts
Elliot Ackerman’s take on how men make and keep friends and the way it differs from how women make and keep friends
For some reason, Matthew McConaughey’s White House speech in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting came up in my feed. I’d never seen it before. It reminded me of the reason we need artists—to tell stories, to provide context and compassion, to pull our eyes beyond the limited horizon of politics and make complex things uncannily plain. “Many children were left not only dead, but hollow.”
How could one not read something titled Being hot is not a fruit of the Spirit? I think it’s fun to argue otherwise, but Jenna Mindel rightly condemns the “Jesus glow.”
Soman Chainani’s White Witch Fan Club over on the C.S. Lewis substack was also a fun read.
Men who dress well are on the upswing, Adam Sage writes in The Times: Young French dandies find elegant solution to combat ugly world
📖 Reading
I’ve finally started reading the Percy Jackson books for fun!
🎞️ Watching
Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein—and I wrote about it here. Also, the 45-minute behind-the-scenes special on Netflix is very good too.
All of the Maze Runner movies. Solid.
The Netflix mini-series Adolescence got a lot of love a few months back and I just recently watched it. While I think some of the Issues could have been handled with more clarity—I felt like the third episode went in circles—the acting and film technique are on point. Ashley Walters and Faye Marsay are excellent in the first two episodes. And the final episode is soul-crushing and revelatory.
🎧 Listening—other than Rosalía
Propaganda’s poetry album The Beautiful Endling. It’s not every day that feelings ripped from my soul get put into words. Will be listening to this one again.
I also think I’m in my synthwave edit as I’ve been enjoying The Midnight, All the Damn Vampires, WOLFCLUB, and The Strike.
It continues to be a busy season. I’ll be back with more written things soon!
I'll join you in your synthwave edit. Thanks for the recommends!!!