"Are You Being Meta?" A Sketch Toward Community

All I've been watching lately is the two seasons of Community. I love it more than any show I've discovered in a while, and we've been watching it in big batches--all the first season in a weekend, the second as fast as we could while still going to our jobs, and now we're working through it a second time, but just doing a few a night. I hadn't thought to write about it at first. It so compulsively watchable that it seems like a confection. Perfectly delightful, but no real substance. Not that I want to be the one who always explains what things mean (and is wrong about it half the time), but I think there's more to Community than a brilliant series of TV and movie homages. I think that the fairly regular but seemingly glib gestures toward "community," that the crazy study group must somehow become a family, actually indicates the significant substance of the show.

The show obviously appeals to pop culture aficionados. Spotting the references would be an obvious drinking game, and any research into the show would soon lead you to a site like TV Tropes. The existence of such a show proves that we've reached mass teleliteracy, just as technological changes starts to drain television audiences away. But despite episodes that ape My Dinner with Andre, Goodfellas, The Right Stuff, Bass and Rankin Claymation, and many other sources, Community is more than a parade of parodies. Instead, this shared imaginarium is a tool for the focal character, Abed, to understand the world. We, whether we admit it or not, are a lot like Abed. The savvy audience knows, with the characters on the show, that we don't want the telegenic leads Jeff and Britta to be together, because we've see Ross and Rachel and we've seen Sam and Diane. Instead of avoiding the romance, the show seems at war with it. They "hooked up" at the end of the first season, but the show explicitly disfavors this relationship in the first episode of the next season, declaring its attention for more stand alone shows, like Paintball. Abed wants to make life conform to TV. He tells Jeff, on one of his more despicable days,  that "TV makes sense. It has logic, structure, rules. And likable leading men... We have you." It's the inclusion of imperfect matches with its sources that show us that TV can and does help us understand the world. Even as the televisual fires die down, we still gather around them, to listen to stories together, to puzzle out the world together, and to become community.

Shirley, a blessedly non-sophisticated character, at one point asks Abed, with complete sincerity, "Are you being meta?" We get the sense that she only knows the word from having to understand her new friend's odd approach. The answer is always yes, but not only yes. In Community, we're being meta, but we're also being human.

STL #98: An Assay Into the Nature of the Fantastic

I haven't written an academic article in some time. In fact, I have on occasion wondered if I'll ever write one again. But I've had for some time in my mind a theory that would best be explored in such a setting (if it's not too banal).  My theory is as follows: "Science fiction and fantasy" is an umbrella term that yokes together two large genre groups that are radically different politically. Science fiction is inherently politically progressive while fantasy is by nature reactionary. This theory of mine obviously has two propositions, one about science fiction and one about fantasy, so in actuality would be best explored in two separate articles. I thought I might use this space to start to articulate my thoughts on the fantasy half  of the equation, in recognition of my recent reading.

My current obsession is George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, but I'm not ready to write about Martin's work yet. I tore through Game of Thrones and am a few hundred pages into the second book, A Clash of Kings. Being only 1,000 pages in to the yet-to-be-completed series, I can't actually make a judgement. I have the better part three fat paperbacks yet to read, not to mention a new hardcover of equivalent length and at least one unwritten volume. Among the many virtues I've found so far, though, is the political intrigue of the apparent dissolution of a kingdom. The characters, fantastic yet utterly believable, act as the participants of any court of any era might. The plot and storytelling is handled well in what I've read so far. Martin, a former television story editor, balance many strands and character viewpoints. We see the action from the shifting perspectives of a small number of key characters,  each, in the fashion of the classic screenplay, with desires and obstacles. As a result, he balances a number of character strands.  In Game of Thrones, the endings to these strands were thrilling. Because of the multi-volume format, each ending had to conclude the character's arc and start them out on a new one. Each marked a sudden but suddenly inevitable turn in character development. The first of the four endings was a pleasant surprise, the second a grand gesture. In response to the third, I pumped my fist in the air (an unusual maneuver to make while reading). As I read the fourth and final ending, I had a mild epileptic fit. On finishing the novel, I did a shamanic dance on one foot.

But back to my basic theory, that sf is inherently progressive and fantasy is reactionary. I'll begin by saying that I don't intend any value judgement.  Though in my personal politics I am a progressive and feel stern antipathy to reactionary politics, as a reader I rather prefer the fantasy genre (being quite taken with Martin, for instance. I may be somewhat old-fashioned in the belief that one can separate aesthetic response from political facts (and, for what it's worth, I fancied myself a scholar of Pound's work some years back.) For another disclaimer,  I do not think my theory will describe the whole terrain in absolute terms. Some science fiction writers no doubt have been personally conservative and set out to write pronouncedly conservative books. Robert A. Heinlein comes to mind.  The reverse is no doubt true too. Rather, I mean to argue that each genre has developed a set of qualities that tend toward one political pole or the other. Science fiction is predicated on change: a story is not considered to be science fiction unless its world can be differentiated from our own. Fantasy postulates worlds without change: Elric of Melnibone is the 976th of the name. Change that does occur is either the coming of evil or a reversion to an older order; vide Return of the King.  Science fiction strives to explain change in lifestyle and technological development, sometimes to its detriment. Fantasy is under the obligation to explain nothing, having the option to mystify power into magic. Power is thereby festishized in a familiar fascistic manner. Finally, and I'm on shakier ground here, fantasy may tend to be racially essentialist in a way that sf is not. Alien races if sf can be symbols of humanity manifesting itself in myriad forms. First contact fiction generally ends with new understandings or accommodation of newness. The traditional races in fantasy realms (elves, dwarves, orcs) have essential natures that are less than the (often implicitly white) human race. This last point is problematic, because it compares shoddy examples of one camp with sophisticated examples of the other. One could select examples to make the opposite point.  If I don't think of some structural reason for this difference, I may cut it.

This brings me to the question of texts. In fantasy, I must at least address Tolkein's  foundational text and I will be thinking about this as reading Martin. While something like Norman's Gor series is a sitting target, Tolkein, which can be read as an anti-Nazi book is not a ready candidate for a fascist text, nor is Martin on the surface of it. Reading Martin, I do not feel myself to be in the company of a Tea Party zealot or even necessarily a Republican. (Nor is he patently liberal or progressive.) After finishing Martin, I hope to read further in the field to see if my theory will bear out. Then I'll return to sf, specifically the progressive novels of the 60's and 70's that inspired my theory in the first place.

STL #97: No Dylanologist I

I feel the need to note another huge gap in posting. Since I've again determined to begin a daily writing habit on my birthday last, I should resume a regular schedule on my lead up to STL #100.


Looking at a few of the many "10 Greatest Bob Dylan Songs" lists that appeared in recognition of the old man's 70th birthday, it is easy to discern the rules that govern them. You need one from early on, during his pure folk-singer incarnation; one from his Born Again or later, wizened minstrel, days; one or two from the decade prior to that (his first inward turn from John Wesley Harding through Blood on the Tracks (technically Street Legal)); and the lion's share from his major creative period from Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde, including one that wasn't on an album (but may have shown up later on The Basement Tapes). In the broadest terms, then, you can think of his career in three stages, each stage lasting longer than the last: the folk period, the major period, and the late period. While the arc of his career is fascinating, especially his penchant for recreating himself contrary to his audience's expectations or desires, I don't particularly respond to either his folk days or his long bizarre descent. If his major period was wiped away, I don't think I'd pay much attention at all to the young singer or the older one.

My list, then, is as follows (in chronological order):

1. "Like a Rolling Stone":  I'm not including this because it's his most important song, defining and shaping a generation, but because of its complex structure and richness of meaning. I'm not crazy about his word collage explosions that really came to fore on Bringing It All Back Home. Like so many of those songs, it's hard to say exactly what this means, but that doesn't mean it means nothing. But beyond the words, this song's sound lets us know that it's creating a zeitgeist.
2. "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"- My favorite first line, perhaps of any song ever: "When you're lost in the rain in Juarez and it's Easter-time too." It makes me eager to listen to the song everytime. Who's in Juarez, why are they there? Why is the fact of it being Easter time a complicating factor? The sense of the words evoke both a detailed personal story but also the sweep of a mythic one. The  sound of it alone states that this is a song that will have beautiful language, but the narcotic liquids (ells and arrs)  and long vowels of the first half of line are snapped awake by the sudden tees and short vowels of the second half tell us it won't be an insipid beauty.
3."One of Us Must Know"--I went into Blonde on Blonde for "Stuck Inside of Mobile..." and "Visions" but came out with this song. Dylan has so many songs that it's easy to forget or overlook one that didn't particularly shake things up, like this. I include it on this list as a marker of the provisionality of any list like this. While #1 and #6 will always be on my list, the whole 10 could take many different forms.
4. "Visions of Johanna"-- Maybe the most obscure song lyrically on this list.
5. "Lay Lady Lay"--Maybe the most straightforward song lyrically on this list
6. "Tangled Up In Blue"-- My favorite Dylan song and one of my all time favorites. No Dylanologist I, but there must be a ton of exegesis on this one. Every time I listen to it I hear something a little bit different-I just realized this time how the directions invoked in the go from heading back east to the memory of coming west and then going north and drifting south to New Orleans. Quite honestly, I could compose a top ten only of songs from Blood on the Tracks and Desire. "Idiot Wind," "Shelter From the Storm," "Sara," almost every song on either album. The other one on Blood on the Tracks that really gets me though is
7. "If You See Her Say Hello"-- Pretty much each song is the embodiment of the same open sound, the same lost-love theme, and the same swirling through time.  "Sun down, yellow moon/ I replay the past" might be a simplified statement of the album's theme, and this song has a beautiful and simple arrangement and one of his finest, most emotive vocal performances.
8. "Hurricane"--So the last song, chronologically, is actually the most like his early work. It's nothing if not a protest song. It's the long story of an injustice that ends with a call to action ("This is the story of the Hurricane/It won't be over until they clear his name"--which they did.) Again, I could pick other songs from Desire, but this first song captures the sound of the album and a number of images ("Ruben sits like Buddha in his ten foot cell") remain burned in my brain. Like its predecessor, Desire has a unified sound, but where Blood on the Tracks is like a novel or a set of finely wrought interlocking stories, Desire is an anthology of pulp fiction genre stories: crime, the boxer, the gangster, adventure in a foreign land, romance.

The final two that I am throwing in are songs of BD sung by others:
9. "I Shall Be Released" as performed by The Band.  I can't say definitively that this is his first real gospel song. But listening to it now, it's no surprise that he'd later identify himself as born again.
10. "Si Tu Dois Partir" (aka "If You've Got To Go, Go Now") as performed by Fairport Convention. This is a good one to go out on, methinks, if for now other reason than the simple lyric has been translated to French and the folk rock idiom transposed into a cajun reel. It reminds us that Dylan was a musician, not a poet. One thing he did was write a lot of great rock songs, not all of which changed the world.

New Year

Since I don't have my calendar to write these things down yet, I'm scratching down a few notes on what I've been up to so far this year. By "up to," I only mean reading, watching, and cooking.

On Saturday the first, I started reading Tom Jones. I'm on a schedule of 85 pages a day which will get me done by the tenth. So far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The rules of the road haven't been set yet, so Fielding will sometimes address us directly, sometimes tell us what will happen later, sometimes tell us what someone is thinking and will sometimes deliberately and flagrantly withhold information. He's not afraid of coincidence or long speeches or chapter long asides thumbing his nose at his perceived critics. I passed on the chance to see Black Swan at the theater, instead watching The Kids Are Alright. I made some split pea soup and then we went to a party. When we got home, we watched some of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers vehicle Swing Time.


We finished Swing Time on Sunday afternoon. I read another chunk of Tom Jones and made some risotto style barley with citrus and arugula. In the evening, we watched three episodes of Breaking Bad, which we found quite addictive.

Today, Monday the 3rd, I went in to the office to start getting things together for Spring semester. I had lunch with my colleague Mike at a big and okay Chinese buffet. I rather dithered away the afternoon buying some music (Jack Rose, Beach House, Sharon Van Etten). Now I'm off to write a thank you note or two for Xmas presents.

Tomorrow, I'm going to do some work on class, hopefully buy a calendar and check out some brewing supplies, and do another big chunk of reading.

STL #96: The Year in Reading (2010)

This was a disappointing year. What I most like to do is read and write, and as I look back, I see I didn't do much of either. A scant few posts to the blog after last year in reading post. In my reading log, pitiful few choices to winnow down for this year in reading. Oh, I write quite a bit. Comments on papers that are unread or ignored. A novel and a screenplay, both unfinished. I read a fair amount too. Horrible wretched prose by teenagers who likely will never improve. Distractions of modest length skimmed online. Even so, my list below is pretty decent, and shows that my mind isn't quite dead yet.

1. Shakespeare's Histories and Tragedies. This, despite my grousing above, is a pretty impressive mark. I finally got done with the most obvious hole in my reading, Romeo and Juliet along with the rest  of Shakespeare's ten tragedies and ten history plays. I'm not done with them, as I'm reading Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World and plan to go back to my play-by-play (heh) revisitation. The reading was sometimes frustrating and confusion, and sometimes illuminating. As I went along, I watched many of the film versions too. One of the worst movies I watched last year was O, based on "Othello." One of the best of the Russian King Lear, a black metal diadem of a film. 
2. Salinger. Works. Salinger is one of the easiest writers to read the complete works of, barring any posthumous deluge. I reread and enjoyed all his books. The "Franny" story was probably my favorite, along with a few of the nine stories. "Seymour: An Introduction" was probably my least favorite because of it's too devoted reporting of the details of Seymour's life and death. 
3. Scott Pilgrim. So lightweight it doesn't seem to belong here. But the thick books are delightful and quick. My favorite moment is the awkward shift about halfway through the first book where O'Malley finally figures out what kind of book he's writing and prepares for the first exhibition of Scott's heretofore unmentioned kung fu with a chorus line number.  
4. I'll balance it out with the heavier Skim  by the Tamaki sister and Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli. The graphic elements of these books are far more accomplished than the previous and more essential to the works than the following.
5. While I'm at it, I'll throw in Lex Luthor: Man of Steel by Azarello and Bremejo. While I don't like the heavily rendered style of art, the writer Azarello absolutely won me over to Luthor's side of the conflict.
6. Blackswan Green. David Mitchell. I listened to the audio book on my iPod. I was totally enveloped by the technique even so.
7. Rabbit, Run. While theoretically I turn my nose up at and the pedestrian realism that Updike represents, it was well-written and a legitimate stab at the Great American Novel.
8. Dancing in the Dark. Morris Dickstein's book could have been more comprehensive (why ignore comics, bub?), but tells the cultural story of the Great Depression in readable prose. 
9. Hunger Games. Came across this shortly after watching the Japanese film Battle Royal (best movie I saw this year) that begins with the same premise more or less.  Read the rest of the trilogy, of course, though they couldn't live up to the first one.
10. The Comics Journal 1987-2004. I scored a big stack of these for a dime apiece at the annual library sale. Watching the magazine change over the years was very interesting. It represented a critical industry without an object. Early issues would talk about issue of X-Men or Asterix and mostly complain about the medium's untapped potential. That general stance continued over the years, but at least a more respectable body of work grew up around them. I  also read a lot of New Yorkers which proved a more satisfying option to the Sunday paper. I work down a big stack every few months, and it's time to make another move on a building stack.
11. Even as I complain that it was a bad year, I'm going to put in two extra slots. If you prefer, imagine 4-5-6 all packed into one slot. In any case, I realized after completing the ten that I overlooked Cory Doctorow's Makers. While I have some complaints about Doctorow as a stylist, he does represent an important ethos that this book attests too. Also, I selected it for my first ever winter reading group, so I'll be reading it again in order to discuss it with my students. 
12. My records weren't the best this year, so I could be wrong about Makers and Skim.  I know that I read E.M. Forester's Aspects of the Novel, not for the first time, because I finished it yesterday. It formed the basis for a year of novel reading for the wife and I next year. We'll start big with Tom Jones (maybe Moll Flanders if there's time), then move on to Tristam Shandy (Sentimental Journey too), Mill on the Floss (maybe Silas Marner or Daniel Deronda), Sons and Lovers (and The Rainbow and Women in Love), and Ulysses (plus Portrait). We'll then read James Wood's How Fiction Works and make another list for then second half of the year, starting with Henry James. 

 Other books in my stack include a book on Highway 61 Revisited, Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, Elephantmen, and two volumes of Nick Hornby's Believer columns, which, in the way they chronicle one man's reading life, will be good inspiration for this blog in 2011.

STL #95: How do you blog about Shakespeare?

So I've been reading my way through Shakespeare's plays in my spare time over the last year and a half. I started with the comedies, which took six months, then hopped to the end of my Riverside Shakespeare to read the romances (essentially his late, and less straightforwardly funny, comedies) over winter break. I began this year with a chronological reading of the histories (by time of the plot, not order of composition), and now am halfway through the tragedies. I haven't mentioned this reading here for two reasons: 1) I hardly write about anything here anymore; and 2) how do you blog about Shakespeare? The words "blog" and "Shakespeare" don't combine promisingly. One is ephemeral, imperfect and the other (rightly or wrongly) signifies the eternal and blotless. My posts are somewhat developed for an unaffiliated Internet poster (and I avoid the words blog and blogger), but it's hard to imagine myself writing anything that isn't cant and trite. Given my relative laziness (I'll read the plays and maybe the introduction in my edition, but have done no serious research) couple with a lack of training (by no means am I a Shakespearian scholar), what insight am I likely to bring? Instead, isn't it far more likely that I'll embarrass my anonymous self and mislead the legions of readers of this blog out there?

But my objections, that I'll embarrass myself or mislead my readers, are defeated in stating them: I do this anonymously, far from my professional life, and this forum remains in blessed obscurity. The reasons I keep returning to this space aren't entirely clear to me, but I think the following apply: it's a kind of r&d lab in which I might strike on something brilliant that I can develop and use elsewhere; it helps me figure out what I think about topics that matter to me; I remember things I write about much better than things I don't write about; it's fun, after a fashion.

Would writing about Shakespeare be so different than my adventures through Don Allen's "New American Poetry" anthology? You remember, dear reader, the epic run of STL #65-91, my dogged commentary on each poet included in that book. Half the time I was talking out of my ass, so why is it any different if the topic is Two Gentlemen of Verona rather than "A Supermarket in California"? Is it just because I don't need a footnote to explain what the setting is? My gigantic scholarly edition has those anyway. Using the lab framework, there isn't much difference, though I think I'm less likely to ever write anything formal about Shakespeare.

What would I gain by the writing? Primarily, the act of composition would help be regain what I've already started to lose-- a recall of the plays. Which one is Olivia? Is she in the one in Illyria? What was it Hamlet said to Osric (I just read that one, but I can't really remember) about his "bonnet"? Writing even a brief note on each play would help me reclaim it in my memory--and each note could be a gesture toward what I want to retain. But if I write as an aid to memory, what am I trying to reclaim? Or, to put this question another way, what did I hope to gain by the reading in the first place? That is not a question I can deal with here--the majority of my interior life is based on a reading regime which I continue on the faith that it enriches my life. But that remuneration can't continue if I forget the material, whatever its nature might be.

Two of my favorite modes of operare deliberation and codification. I love to decide in writing, and I love to establish rules for myself to follow. So having determined that I can proceed, the real question is how should I proceed? Since the reading project has encompassed the whole body of Shakespeare's drama, I'd like to touch on each play, if only briefly. Since I'm nearing the end, that suggests a retrospective: I'm late in the tragedies, but began early in the comedies. This might be a good opportunity to put the plays back together in a way different than I read them: in the (supposed) order of composition. I did begin reading with one Shakespeare's first plays, the "Comedy of Errors," but my reading order led to seeing how his comedy developed. What if I reconsidered the "Comedy" as the play between Richard III and Titus Andronicus? Not that I'm in any position to expansively synthesize themes--such things have been done before I'm sure. No, this reconsideration is simply to help me think about the plays again.

So I'll return through them in order of composition. To further the concept of this writing project as a reclamation for memory, each piece will focus on something I find worth remembering about the play in question--a scene, an insight, or some piece of language. I know that I want to commit some few lines to memory, so I'll start with Shakespeare's first words as a dramatist.

Henry VI, a three-part potboiler, starts with a series of speeches bemoaning the death of King Henry V, who Shakespeare will chronicle later in a far better play. Henry VI is a clunkly, obtuse play, but right from the beginning we can see the playwright's verbal gifts. The Duck of Bedford opens the play:

"Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky,

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars

That have consented unto Henry's death.

King Henry the Fift, too famous to live too long!

England ne'er lost a king of so much worth."

Notice the sound patterns at play here--interlocking aspirant h and b in the first line, which introduces the liquid l that manifests in the l and r's holding together the middle lines. The kr of crystal turns around in the form of "scourge" which takes the returning b and a sequence of l and r's as its object. The rhetoric of the passage is interesting itself--using a astronomical sign to punish the engines of the fate, the "bad revolting stars" who are blamed for taking Henry V, and the fine line of saying not that Henry was the best king (and therefore better than the current king) but the best they have lost.

I'll let this happy beginning stand in for the entire trilogy. So having begun, I'll try to continue at a fairly rapid pace. Next week, I'll do address at least "Richard III" and "The Comedy of Errors."

STL #94: Evil or Divine

Ronnie James Dio died a little more than a month ago. He was 67, died of cancer, and is the first metal person to die from what is sort of old age. His passing was noted as expected in the media--the second singer Black Sabbath, he who introduced the devil horns into the metal world, fronting his own band in the 80's, etc. While to the casual follower of pop culture he was the guy who replaced Ozzy, to the metal world he was unto a god. (See Lars Ulrich's moving letter to Dio.)

Dio is an example of a the role of lead singers in the metal world. When Ritchie Blackmore hired him to be the lead singer in what was originally called "Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow," it clearly showed that the identity of a band was not necessarily derivative of the lead singer's personality. Tony Iommi must have been taking notes, because he hired Dio to replace the charismatic but unreliable Ozzy Osbourne a few years later. Band identities in metal are not linked to a line-up of players; in most bands, most of the players were replaceable. The singer, like any other member, was a hired gun, and could choose to leave or be fired in a corporate model. While this might seem to lead to a kind of facelessness or interchangeability, it also encourages competition and virtuosity--if you are good enough, you could rocket to the highest reaches. Dio was definitely good enough: nearly every fan debate on Dio vs Osbourne era Sabbath begins with the premise that Dio is one of the three or so best singers in metal. He might have felt miffed by lack of appreciation in his two previous bands, since he learned the key to job security after leaving Sabbath--if you name the band after yourself, they can never fire you. Both Rainbow and Black Sabbath carried on with other singers, though of course the band Dio never could.

As a sometime resident of the metal world, I knew him as a giant voiced, impassioned singer--he was what we call in that realm, "awesome". His voice was always what you would call "big" but not, as some recent commentators have said, "operatic." Unlike Rob Halford of Bruce Dickinson, he never used his pipes for sheer pyrotechnics. I've listened to a lot of his work lately, including his early band Elf and even some of his doo-wop stuff recorded as Ronnie and the Prophets, and he also had a sense of phrasing in service of the lyrics.His awesomeness can be demostrated in a relatively short playlist. I'd skip over his first 15 years and start it with "Man on the Silver Mountain" (1976) when he was the lead singer in Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow. Then "Heaven and Hell" (1980) from his first Black Sabbath album and "Mob Rules" from the second, and round it off with three from his band Dio: "Holy Diver" (1983), "Rainbow in the Dark" (1983) and "The Last in Line" (1984). This last song in particular has been a longtime fascination of mine. Emerging from the contemplative first minute, it is an example of the chiaroscuro technique beloved by classic metal--to go from light to dark, light to heavy, at a moment's notice. The moment of transformation, of waking up, occurs with one of the greatest high intensity screams of eighties metal is at the 53 second mark of "The Last in Line," when he kicks it up to 11: "We are coming... HOME!"

The lyrics of "The Last in Line" meant a lot to when inscribing them on the inside of my Pee-Chee at the age of 14, but I'm still moved by them now. Dio's work has a penchant for repeated imagery of an elemental variety: "We are fire, we are stone" that creates a sameness when bingeing on his music, but summons an archetypal mood in the moment. Sometimes this elemental imagery muddles into non sense, like in "Mob Rules": "If you play with fire, you'll burn your fingers, and lose ahold of the flame." In "The Last in Line," though, there is nary a false step. He flirts with incoherence in the second verse: "We are all born upon the cross/We're the throw before the toss"--what does that mean? But that moment of bafflement is washed aside, everytime I hear it, by the dynamic fall at the end of the line "You can release yourself but the only way to go is down."

The grandeur his voice perfectly suits his major theme the problematic search for the truth. This is present in all of the songs I mentioned above, and is the primary topic of "The Last in Line." Truth is the ultimate goal ("We search for the Truth, We could die upon the Truth") but it is never clear--we will not know until the Final Reckoning is "We're Evil or Divine." In this case, the search for truth is bound up with his other great lyrical theme, loyalty. In the song, he forms a community of the cast out and abject in the chorus--"We're the last in line." Watching online videos of performances, I saw a communal aspect (in the sense both of community and communion) of this song in particular. The crowd would come alive, joining in singing and throwing the horns with the master himself.

Dio explained that the devil horns were taught to him as by his superstitious Italian grandmother. Pointing out with the fingers down is a method of giving the evil eye, that is, of cursing an enemy. Held up, in the ubiquitous heavy metal salute, is a means of blocking the evil eye. So what is commonly viewed as Satan worship is actually a spell of protection. The horns are a unifier--gathered together, his people, the last in line, were protected, and learned the occult means to protect themselves (forbidden knowledge to be sure). There is a sense of allegiance in throwing the horns--you gain the protection and fellowship of a community, but don't succumb to the fellowship of Christianity and 'upstanding society' that has travestied itself so many times over.

When a public figure dies, the rest of us strive to make sense of what his or her life meant. Newspaper obituaries and fan tributes both recap the major events of the deceased and in varying degrees, make an argument about why he or she was important to the culture and society he or she departed. Though Dio made his impact in less than a decade's time, his longevity is part of his legacy. Tenacious D helped RJD experience a kind of revival in the last few years, through a novelty song about how RJD was too old to rock anymore, and should pass the torch on to Tenacious D. This is intended as joke of course--Jack Black couldn't hold a torch if there was one to offer, but it's true that at this Dio's flame will keep burning in all the rites he originated.