Coming Soon

In a moment of inspiration, a blog is born. My inspiration? Several things, foremost of which is my friends Brantly and Krista Millegan's great blog, Young, Evangelical, and Catholic (they just had a baby!). If it wasn't for reading their excellent articles, I would have never even thought of a blog as a psychological possibility for me. Second, I have been reading since school let out for the summer, and Paul Elie's biography of Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Dorothy Day, and Walker Percy--The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage--is what got me up out of my comfortable reading position on my bed over to the computer. Elie pulls the reader into a riveting narrative following the lives of these four Catholic authors, and the way he describes their lives and literature really moved me to want to follow in their footsteps, even if their shoes are way to big for me to fill.

I have been ruminating on the idea of a blog for several months, since reading Brantly and Krista's. I started gathering some things I had written for a couple of classes I've taken as part of my Communications major, mainly discussing the intersection of media, religion, and society. These things are most influenced by the writing of Marshall McLuhan, as well as Neil Postman, Guy Debord, and Jacques Ellul.

Also, I've read a couple of Percy's novels since school got out--The Moviegoer and Lancelot. They, along with Elie's biography, have had me really thinking about what Percy calls "the predicament of man in a modern technological society," or in The Moviegoer, "the malaise." For McLuhan, Postman, Ellul, Debord, and Percy, alienation is a recurring theme, and it will be a recurring theme here, as I hoped to evoke from the title of the blog, Resident Alien. I hoped it would capture the tension between the alienation we often face in everyday life and the sense of irony that it is a part of our everyday experience.

The authors I have mentioned so far often tie alienation to technological progress, and there seems to exist more and more concretely a realization of this in general, especially in the mass media. One of my favorite examples is the song Human, by the Killers. Here's the music video and lyrics, enjoy and think about these for now. It will be a couple of weeks before I'm back home and can put some material together for some more formal and hopefully more interesting articles.

I did my best to notice

When the call came down the line
Up to the platform of surrender
I was brought but I was kind

And sometimes I get nervous
When I see an open door
Close your eyes, clear your heart
Cut the cord

Are we human or are we dancer?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancer?

Pay my respects to grace and virtue
Send my condolences to good
Give my regards to soul and romance
They always did the best they could

And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye, wish me well
You've gotta let me go

Are we human or are we dancer?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancer?

Will your system be alright
When you dream of home tonight?
There is no message we're receiving
Let me know, is your heart still beating?

Are we human or are we dancer?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer

You've gotta let me know
Are we human or are we dancer?
My sign is vital, my hands are cold
And I'm on my knees looking for the answer
Are we human or are we dancer?

Are we human or are we dancer?
Are we human or are we dancer?