The end of the semester is here; does that feel real? We keep on expecting things to feel real; I think we should just stop.
General Conference starts tomorrow, #ldsconf I think is the hashtag.* You know what I think would be amazing, they get up at the pulpit, endorse CANDIDATE for president, maybe even MANCHURIAN candidate, and cause this huge controversy and big, divisive, division, yeah? And the purpose of that is, everyone still taking anything seriously goes home, prays about it, and receives a spiritual confirmation-- not that they were right, but that they were wrong. It was all part of a secret test of character to see whether we as a church take the sayings of the General Authorities at face value, or whether we take time to ponder and pray about them and confirm them.
...ohhhh my crappin' heck gooosssh that's a teeerrible idea...
It's a fascinating interplay, the horizon between personal and general revelation. General Authorities, prophets and apostles have the (right? responsibility?) to receive guidance for the whole church, and the whole world, but it's still our duty to confirm what they say is right. Anyone (worthy) can be a prophet for their family or congregation under them, but only the prophet can be the prophet for everyone.
But it's a strange thing. I had a dream last night, night before last, that I was fighting all these Superman soldiers, and there were alien demon things, and I got defeated and knocked out, and Superman crucified me (I mean, come on, there was a prisoner to his left as well as a prisoner to his right; could the pseudo-symbolism get any more obvious?) and, when I woke up, Flash was in a weird electric time distortion bubble, trying to warn me. Only it wasn't the Flash; it was Flash Flash Hundred-Yard Dash, and he wasn't warning me that Lois is the key and save Martha and all that jazz, he was warning me to see Zootopia again instead of giving into curiosity about Dawn of Justice. If I had listened... well, I wouldn't have known what the heck anything meant, but...
No. Didn't really happen. But that's sooo much better a story than what really did.
*Hashtags are weird, aren't they. Hashtags are here to stay, web 3.0 stuff, but any particular thing that trends is obviously so ephemeral, which means that the ephemeral is embedded into the permanent. By the time mainstream media catches up with culture the culture's already moved on a decade or two-- I'm talking, movies, TV shows, that kind of thing. Which have adapted to technology, but remain almost completely oblivious to the culture of it. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; a work being too hip can date that work to a ridiculous degree.
For example, I'm writing a stage play-- not the one about the-- I tried a couple times to describe it briefly but I couldn't sum it up, but, the super postmodern one, the one I talked about here but didn't go into much detail on... not that one, but there is a conversation in that one also about this situation... dating yourself too much. (Because of course in that one, they fully acknowledge the exact date and time of the particular performance of the play. (Yes, it is very pretentious.))
So this other play, it's based off of a character conflict from a dream I had last summer, and somewhere along the line somehow it became decided that the main character is a huge Kesha fan. It felt right for the character; I don't know. So the characters all, bop around, make references to pop stars, whatever. Maybe that's going to date things. Is that a bad thing?
We view theatre as a high art, yes? Goth emo teenager Tumblrs are like, the greatest thing ever. Does the existence of super juicy emotional conflict found publicly available on these blog platforms reduce the pathos that the characters feel in this play? Are the characters in a position to wonder that same thing themselves? Can they do so out loud, that is? Maybe this direct confrontation of ideas could play a part in, that one other project I've mentioned before I'm working on. Makes sense.
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